Busy Owner: “Is there a simpler and faster way to understand what clickTRUE can do for me?”

The short answer is Yes, read on. (The “not so short answer” can be found here)

So what does partnering clickTRUE mean for you?

4 things mainly.

First, it means you get Relevant Traffic to view your Media Ads and enjoy Media Optimization on Facebook, Google, YouTube, Instagram, etc so that more people can know more about your company; understand your best offer in a way that saves you money in ads and provide the clearest transparency to your media spend. #transparency #trusted

“Remember just because you’re doing a lot more, doesn’t mean you’re getting a lot more done. Don’t confuse movement with progress.” – Denzel Washington

Second, it also means you get a best in class mobile responsive landing page created via our Partner Led Consultation so you can surface your most persuasive pitch online and start to test better promotions/offers to your targeted audience. #noexperienceneeded

“We have completed over 3000 campaigns in the last 4 years by our Partners with almost 20 years of digital marketing experience each.” – clickTRUE

Third, it means you get Leads from advertising via our proven “multiple magic buckets” approach to Lead Generation so that your salespeople can have warm meetings and hot outcomes besides getting pure branding and exposure. This mean more revenue from marketing. #BetterLeadsPlatform #LeadsRUs #ROI

“Your customers need to take an action before your business can profit.” – Jackie Lee

Fourth probably the most important of them all, it means you can free up your TIME from the daily non-core time-sucking marketing activities and focus on more important growth challenges e.g. training sales, enhancing product/service development, more research, better customer service, lower returns/refunds, more income. I can save you months, even years of time from avoiding all the common mistakes in marketing so that you can spend more time on growing your company or just think about the time you’ll be able to spend with your wife, your kids, can you honestly put a price tag on something like that? #timeismoney #time #yourmostpreciousresource

Hope that helps in understanding my calling and purpose of starting clickTRUE. We also made sure the engagement with us is straightforward, truthful, transparent and requires no prior marketing experience. I also hate people throwing jargons at me during a presentation. It’s agonising.

If you aren’t convinced of the reasons above, we can continue the conversation further!

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“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.” – Theodore Levitt

In most things in life and even work, we always talk product specs and features (the quarter-inch drill) and not so much on the benefits and hopeful outcomes (the quarter-inch hole). We tend to assume it’s obvious but most of the time, it is just the lack of patience to go down to the specifics. Specifics and Benefits work. Hard work works.

Your Advertising & Marketing needs to marry Features with Benefits. Features fulfill immediate needs. We need to find out about the Needs behind the Needs.(In sales, we will focus on the keywords from clients and keep asking questions to find out the real why from the prospect). It builds rapport and it surfaces their inner fears and wants.

For example, you are looking for a nice apartment at the high floors. Would a good property agent focus on the specifications of the invisible frameless window grills (the features)? Unlikely. The clever agent will probably paint you the picture of how you can have a great view of nature, the sea, and water horizons or perhaps a nice pool view where you can watch your kids play from your balcony (the benefits). Then add that your kids are safe with the “Glass Curtains” feature (note the plug for our newest client selling “Glass Curtains”).

Benefits shed light on Value. A mediocre (lazy) salesperson will often just give a discount without helping the client to understand the Value and worse, he may be reluctant to spend more time to understand the client’s needs and business. This is a sure step to failure. B’cos Discounts are useless unless people understand and appreciate the real value of what you are selling. If you are having such salespersons, you probably should fire the worst one and reinvest to get more leads for the better ones.

Asking more WHYs can help us to get to the specifics of things.

For example… Why do people want to make more money, save costs and conserve time?

Why? People work very hard so that they can stop working eventually, and they want to improve their family’s quality of life and then have the time to spend with loved ones. But what are the specifics of the things they want to do? (go to the beach, learn how to bake, go travel the world, do a bungee jump) What are their fears if they are not able to do so?

Asking questions will uncover more about each industry, each company, each client and understand how to prepare a better Marketing Plan. People always like to say marketing in B2B or B2C is different. I think it is just another excuse in marketing. Frankly today, we are all still marketing to humans (at least robots are not the decision makers for purchases yet) Behind Every B(usiness) there is always a C(onsumer) or a group of Cs. Talk Human; Talk Real.

In doing so, you get a lot more specific into their challenges and you are more likely to prepare a better proposal, and have compelling copywriting about the specifics to surface actual real fears to encourage a response or an action. Good Marketing and Copywriting is beyond good English and vocab. That’s the easy part. The hard part is being real and getting passionately into the specifics to achieve the “WOW you read my mind”. 🙂

“Your customers need to take an action before your business can profit.” – Jackie Lee

I will like to quote an example of how linking a Feature to a Benefit can improve the Headline of a campaign.

Feature: 8-week raw vegan meal plan
Benefit: Lose 20 pounds in 8 weeks and lower blood pressure and cholesterol. Feel better about yourself.

What typical advertisers do is to focus on the feature. However, by linking up the Feature with the Benefit, a more informative copy can be created:
“Get the 8-week raw vegan meal plan that will help you lose 20 pounds in 8 weeks. Lower your blood pressure and cholesterol. Feel better about yourself.”

Then imagine your prospective customers reading this headline copy on your mobile responsive landing page combined with a kick-ass video of the ingredients of the meal plan being prepared. Will this combination get your customers to take action?

I would bet that the leads will flow in (and that is what our Better Leads Platform can do).

61% of all money spent on Google AdWords does not result in a single conversion. Let us help you avoid this!

If you want marketing that works or have any comments please reply in the form below and I’ll get back to you right away!

Hope you enjoy the story and learn some new things this week. P.S. Glass Curtains® is one of clients on our BLP as well. If you like the benefit of sitting back and enjoying your open view, check them out here.

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*The following content is taken from our weekly newsletter sent by our CEO. If you are keen to subscribe to our mailing list, click on the bottom right corner of the page.*

First and foremost, I will like to wish you and all Singaporeans an early Happy SG52 National Day. Wishing for peace, harmony and prosperity for Singapore.

Grateful to have received quite a bit of happy comments from the community in my last email. Hope you have also enjoyed the story of the Onsen Egg versus the Hard Boiled Egg. If you haven’t, you can still catch up on it here.

Here is another story from a business owner whom I met over the weekend for sharing.

Let’s just call him – Max.

 

SME Boss Max: Hey, Jackie. You last email was well written. Very persuasive yet subtle. Kept me reading till the end. Well done.

Jackie: Thanks Boss. I am glad you are still a subscriber and an active reader of my stories too. I love sharing them nonetheless. How’s business?

Max: Business is somewhat slow. Feeling a bit lousy.

Jackie: Sorry to hear that. What’s making you feel lousy? Economy or business?

Max: I think it is more me than the economy. I basically have to do everything from sales, marketing, finance, HR, legal, admin but I want to spend more time to improve my product, enhance the service delivery and better my customer service. I can’t seem to get enough time to focus on these more important areas.

Jackie: It is great that you are aware. There are a lot of folks out there who can’t seem to pinpoint where to begin or what are their more important areas. Should you solve it now?

Max: If I continue to ignore these areas and my competitors somehow managed to find time to focus on them, my business will surely be affected. My business will probably slow further and I will not be able to pay my staff and probably I will then blame the economy for my business closure. #sucks

Jackie: Which areas do you think you can outsource or hire more to grow your business? Where are your lowest hanging fruit?

Max: Finance and Admin are ok. Marketing takes up a significant portion of my time. The range of activities are just too wide. Even just on digital marketing alone, one needs to get very much involved especially when I have to DIY everything. However, hiring a team is very costly and how do I know if they are capable enough, well kept up-to-date with online tactics, trustworthy, professional and dependable. Furthermore, I need someone who can spar with me on the branding marketing strategy. Someone who understands my firm’s purpose and mission; helps me thereafter to execute the campaigns towards my near term objectives which may change in the next few months. I am also mindful about the HR management of hiring my own team. What if I don’t have the training environment to keep them updated and motivated? And worst what if they leave halfway?

Jackie: Yes, it is costly to own and run a full fledged digital marketing team. But more importantly, do you know exactly what to do with your freed-up time once you’ve outsourced your marketing?

Max: With marketing activities and day to day campaign duties out of my list, I will be able to train up more sales folks, improve my customer service, reduce refunds, develop a better product offering. Working on any of these core areas which I cannot/should not outsource because those are MY OWN BUSINESS, can create a positive impact to growing my business. Tell me more about your firm’s solution, Jackie.

I then spoke for a short 15 mins on how we have assisted thousands of firms. The same way we embrace our solution fully for ourselves as well.

Max: I like your proposition, your transparent platform and your one headcount pricing. I fully understand that I need to conserve my most precious resource – my time. You’re right to say that I may be good at what I do, but I am definitely not the best or better at managing marketing activities as compared to your team. Because my team is not constructed to do that, I don’t have time to keep up to date with the latest marketing channels and tactics and keep up to date on that is not my core business. One last question: Should I fire my worst performing salesman to hire your marketing services? Sounds like a good idea to manage cost budget and risk.

Jackie: This is the 3rd time I have to answer this question in the last few weeks. I will like to answer it with a question instead. Is it Sales AND Marketing or is it Sales OR Marketing? Firstly, you trust that whoever that is currently in your firm is there because there is work to do and he/she is proficiently doing it. Secondly, your precious time should be invested into Sales Training to ensure your sales people are equipped with the Right pitch and Right tools to help you to sell better and win more in the marketplace. Living Things need Air, Food and Water to live. Should you give more Air and then reduce the Water?

Max: Ok, I get it. Thanks. I should fine tune my sales pitch and train up more sales. Concurrently, I should generate more leads for them to meet more prospects during the investment period.

Jackie: Indeed you are wise, Max. Let’s recap our meeting. You wish to:

• Spar with a good partner on marketing strategy and set a clear direction
• Not get involved in the daily marketing campaign duties
• Get more information and insights from your customers and sales than you ever did
• Understand more about their desires, wants and needs
• Be able to sell more products more quickly at higher prices
• Increase your income and lower your refund rates and improve your business

Well, Max, we would be honoured to be your partner. We can begin immediately. Can I have your okay on starting your Leads Generation campaign ?

Max: Bring it on.

Hope you enjoy the story and learn some new things this week. If you wish to know what I spoke about to Max for 15 minutes, please hit reply or book an appointment with us here.

Not ready? Check our one of our guides to help businesses like yours.

*The following content is taken from our weekly newsletter sent by our CEO. If you are keen to subscribe to our mailing list, click on the bottom right corner of the page.*

 

I get it. I know you guys like stories. Let me tell you a lunch story with my lunch buddy.

Monday Lunch

Jackie: This is a nice ramen store. I heard it has a one-star Michelin award for their Tokyo main store. Let’s try it.

Jereme: Yeah, saw their marketing and the branding is not bad. Let’s try it.

Jackie: Seem like a nice place and it is quite full and the comfort level is good. Let’s go for their specialty. (Their best offer)

Jereme: Sure. They look like they know what they are doing pretty well. Good process, neat and clean.

Jackie: Will you like to add on an onsen tamago egg with your ramen?

Jereme: How much?

Jackie: S$1.80 more. Not cheap.

Jereme: Go for it. It’s good.

Tuesday Lunch

Jackie: Hey I tried the Nasi Lemak Burger by McDonalds. It was ok. Everyone was eating it last evening when I was there. The sambal sauce could have been better. Then again, nothing beats the real thing. Let’s go for Nasi Lemak today. It’s the most popular choice at the canteen.

Jereme: Sure lah! Marketing works and tactical promotion campaign works even better when you have done your Brand marketing well. I am sure McDonalds will sell a lot of Nasi Lemak burgers during this period compared to the nasi lemak at the canteen.

Jackie: Hey, do you want to add a hard boiled egg to your Nasi Lemak? Only S$0.50.

Jereme: No lah.

Jackie: How come? You didn’t even need to think yesterday when I asked you to top up at S$1.80 and now at S$0.50, you immediately rejected. You are a very funny man. It was more than 3 times the price!

Jereme: Come, let me explain to you. It is true that they are both eggs. But do you know what it takes to make a purposeful Tamago Onsen Egg? What goes into making the egg runny, soft, creamy and delicate to ensure a good experience each time? What’s the thinking of the chef when he paired up his ramen with such a taste?

The onsen tamago is much harder to prepare. The onsen tamago is a deliberate choice by the chef when he was thinking of the texture, pairing, soup base, noodles and condiments for ensuring a delightful experience for his client each bowl each time. If you want silky whites and creamy yolks, you have to slow cook the egg for 40 minutes at a temperature where the whites and yolks just start to solidify. Other variables that can potentially make or break your egg are the initial temperature of the egg and the size of the egg.

That’s why, when we recreate their our own onsen tamagos at home, we tend to end up with an egg that is either over- or under-cooked. All these compared with just boiling the eggs for 15mins to get a HardBoiled Egg. Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes, we just need 2 hard boiled eggs in the rush morning hours to get the job done before we hit the road. (Just needed the calories)

Digital marketing is a bit like that as well – many try to do it themselves, only to end up with less than desired results and/or spend more time than they should when they should be working on their core business. It takes an experienced chef to create the perfect onsen tamago for his ramen, just like successful digital marketing requires years of practice and learning from past mistakes and experiences.

Let me share a recent testimonial from the real estate industry which resonated a lot for us.

“Yes, the solutions and services cost more at clickTRUE than many other “dime and a dozen” digital agencies but in life, you get what you pay for. Price is only an issue when Value is a mystery. With their platform and services, value is certainly no mystery.” ~ Eric Tan Head of Training & Sales (Assoc), Savills Residential Pte Ltd

I believe every experienced chef has his own go-to secret recipe for cooking, similarly we also have a tested and proven recipe for digital marketing that was created from our many years of experience. The good news is that we don’t charge 3 times as much. You will be delightfully surprised just like our happy customers. Talk to us today.

If you want to start producing tasty purposeful onsen tamagos or just the run-of-the-best-mill hard boiled eggs kind of digital marketing, hit me a reply and I’ll be happy to share our secret recipe with you.

Back to my Nasi Lemak lunch with Jereme. You have a good lunch too!

If you would like to know more about our Onsen Tamgo digital marketing process, leave behind your contact and we can connect soon.

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Most SMEs face seemingly insurmountable challenges when trying to market their products and services and get people to support them.  In fact, some of these bosses look enviously at the bigger companies and wish that they had their vast resources. To some extend, even feeling sorry for themselves or begrudging the success of these corporations.

It is thus a rare opportunity for us as a pretty small SME to get a sneak peak into the world on the other side – a conversation with the CEO of SPH Magazines, Mr Loh Yew Seng. Although SPH Magazines is a S$100 million company, it is still classified as a SME in Singapore’s context (see it is true…check out the definition here).

Disclosure: clickTRUE is an associate company of the SPH Magazines Group. 

Jackie: Hi Mr Loh, thanks for taking time off to chat. Let’s dive straight into it. Is it difficult for companies to market themselves?

Mr. Loh: Call me Yew Seng. It’s a pleasure to share and spar on topics occasionally with practitioners like yourself. Marketing is still about creating that Brand Awareness, propagating and distributing that Interest, creating more Desire and finally driving towards Actionable outcomes. Our consumption ways have and will surely evolved over time. Our needs can change and our impression of what is good can be influenced. No matter how technology advances, we are still trying to market to human beings, our clients are still the man and woman and not robots. We have emotions, we yearn for hope and trusted vehicles. We listen to our friends or experts before we make our purchase.

Jackie: With Google & Facebook, wouldn’t it be easier for companies to advertise? Why do we still hear much complaints?

Mr. Loh: Admittedly, Google and Facebook have done a great job portraying themselves as an effective advertising medium. They are like two planets with strong gravitational forces attracting advertiser over the years. However, do not be naive to think that one can create a strong and sustainable brand by advertising with just 4 lines of texts or a carousel of images. Don’t get me wrong. These are great technologies that makes a portion of the work we do as marketers easier.

Jackie: Is there an example that you can provide us on how one should do marketing to get impact in Singapore?

Mr. Loh: We did a recent campaign with Ctrip, a popular online travel agent from China who is big in tactical pay-per-click on Baidu, China’s largest search engine. As a new entrant to Singapore, they knew that they need to focus on awareness among consumers and increase brand visibility in an engaging manner, while gaining insights into their travel habits.

To achieve this, SPH Magazines created a fun and interactive travel quiz which ends with a recommended travel destination for the reader and an opportunity to win a trip. The quiz was then marketed across 13 relevant digital editions in our SPH WIFI Library and their online platforms, together with an email marketing programme, aggregating a reach of 5.1 million consumers. Over 15,000 people completed the quiz over a period of 2 months.

Ctrip was wise and clear about what their objectives of the campaign were. Beside the tactical outcomes, they needed a trusted brand to associate their brand with. A vehicle that has earned trusted readers and segmented affluent viewers. A network that assures their brand safety throughout the implementation anytime and anywhere on multiple devices. That’s our SPH Magazines Advantage. You can find out more about this on our blog.

Jackie: Hmm…it seems that besides expecting returns from marketing campaigns, one must be realistic that enough people must know about the brand first. This means budget should be spent on branding and awareness. I know most SME bosses hate to spend on branding. They expect to get profit from each action they take. Call them Kiasu…or Kiasi …but they are always afraid to lose out or get cheated of their hard earned cash by the marketing agencies.

Mr. Loh: I remember you spoke to me about your client, John – the aspiring SME owner who has done well. He probably had a good run with you on the lead generation ROI run. I will recommend that he considers at these time a Branding campaign on an 80/20 approach to reach out, to brand build and let more related audiences beyond Facebook and Google know why he is kinda of a Big Deal 🙂 (using John’s words)

Tell you what I can help you and John on next steps. We are in support of Singapore SMEs going places just like ourselves. For every month he is on your awesome lead generation platform, we will offer him a one-time 50% off up to 3 magazines insertions or online advertorials on his right audience from our Men’s Network. To top it up, we will also bring awareness of his products and services onto our Facebook pages with our tens of thousands of fans. This will offer John a much needed boost in his Brand Image, bolster Trust value and achieve some PR mileage with our writers and editors. Something that tactical platforms like Google doesn’t do well. How’s that?

Jackie: That’s amazing value, Yew Seng. We at clickTRUE will also reciprocate on this offer. Your Branding campaign clients will also be able to test our tactical packages at 50% off for 3 months. I think this will be interesting for SMEs to make use of to gain an advantage at a great value. Will mention to John as soon as I can of this “I’m kinda a Big Deal” package. As a savvy business owner, he will recognise this immediately. Always a pleasure talking to you, boss.

Yew Seng: Pleasure. Alliances and strategic partnerships – Sun Tzu. More value for the industry. Indeed wise.

So if you’re interested, find out more about the 80/20 Branding and Tactical of the “I’m kinda a Big Deal” package. We have never done anything like this before… and we may never do this again. 🙂

ps: We are only working with 10 SMEs on this package this month. CHOPE your space by filling up the form below.

pps: Hi, the above offer has ended. But you can still check out our Leads Generation Services or go ahead to get one of our online marketing guides. 

Jasmine here. I’m a clickTRUE intern.

That’s right, I’m the culprit behind our weekly blogs. Besides that, I also write the company’s weekly email newsletters.

Let me share a story with you.

There was this person who told me that I can toss corporate speak in the bin and write blogs like how I want it.
There was this person who told me to incorporate memes and Singlish into the company blog.
There was this person who told me that interns are worth his time and effort.

Well, this person is Jereme! (aka COO of clickTRUE, aka my boss).

Today’s blog will cover something a little more light-hearted and personal – my experience at clickTRUE. More specifically, I will share 5 things that I’ve learned.

5 Things I’ve Learned

#1 Write with an audience in mind

With SMEs being clickTRUE’s target audience, I’ve learned the importance of writing with their needs in mind. Our blogs and emails should be something that can give value to them, and not hard selling our services.

That explains why my most popular blog post is the “Budget Cheatsheet for SMEs 2017”. After all, it meets the needs of our audience, SME owners, by giving them access to a summary of all the important budget policies .

With this newly acquired skill, I decided to rewrite my cover letter to see if I’ve learned anything.

(My old cover letter. Gosh it is embarrassing to look back at it!)

(If I could rewrite it now, this is probably how it would look like.)

Here’s why the new cover letter is better:

• Kept concise with only the key information, considering that the hiring manager would not have much time to read it.
• Bolded certain phrases, so that it is easier to speed read.
• Written in a way that focuses on what the company can gain when they hire me

#2 Being different pays

“Pays” in a good and a bad sense. Some people will love you for being different, but some might think it’s just bad taste.

As I mentioned in the beginning, Jereme encourages me to be different in my writing. So as the weeks go on, I became more daring.

I started to use Singlish…
I added memes…
I told stories with cartoon characters…

Thankfully, most people actually embraced this informal of writing! Jereme showed me actual replies from people saying that they enjoyed our emails. Imagine my joy when I found out that there were people who said that they actually look forward to our next email!

In fact, Jereme told me that I even managed to help them close two deals with my emails!

While the response was generally good, there were also some who didn’t appreciate it. They said it was bad English and embarrassing.

To be very honest, that was pretty disheartening, especially when I thought that I was doing a good job the whole time.

But what Jereme said to me at that time made a lot of sense.

It’s all about taking calculated risks. With decision you make, there is a risk associated with it. It could turn out to be a failure. When it does, could you live with it? If you can, then do it.

#3 Don’t be afraid to speak up

I’m an introvert, so talking to new people drains my energy.

(Image from Dr Carmella’s Guide to Understanding the Introverted by Schroeder Jones)

And while I’ve improved a lot over the years, I still find it difficult to speak up at times.

The doubts and fears in my head always seem to make me lose my voice. But I understand now that these fears have to overcome in order for me to grow.

I’ve learned that it is better to be the idiot who says stupid things and learns from it rather than the person who doesn’t say anything for fear of looking like an idiot. After all, the idiot is making progress while the latter is still stuck at the status quo.

#4 Soft skills > hard skills

Before coming into clickTRUE, I’ve always focused on improving my hard skills.

I thought that if you want to work in digital marketing, you need to know SEO, SEM, Facebook ads and so on. True, hard skills are important. But they can be very easily obtained and taught, especially with today’s technology.

You learn about SEO by reading a blog, or watching YouTube videos! So instead of hard skills, we should really be looking to develop our soft skills instead.

Soft skills include likeability, influence, communication, interpersonal skills and so on. They are innate to a person and cannot be learned as easily. While this means that it is so much harder to teach soft skills, it also means that those with soft skills are going to be more valued.

Jereme advised me to think carefully about what I want to learn in the next 2 years and focus on achieving them. Personally, I want to work on my communication and confidence.

#5 Improve communication

For me, I don’t have a problem communicating with writing, but I still struggle to communicate verbally. Many times, I just shoot my mouth without giving it much thought and end up regretting it later. (Urgh, word vomit.)

(Image from Seraashling)

Jereme’s tip for me was to take up a sales job. After all, practice makes perfect and in sales, you can practice talking to different people every day. and really hone your communication skills.

He also suggested listening to podcasts. By copying the way they present their ideas and knowledge, I can have a mini “script” in my head when someone asks me something about that topic. Sounds neat, huh?

Moving On

It was a rewarding three months at clickTRUE. I consider myself very lucky to have a great boss who really stresses on my learning. More importantly, I’m thankful for having found my passion for writing, which has given me a better direction of what I want to do in my life.

And to the next potential intern who is reading this, don’t hesitate to send in your application.

Don’t worry if you don’t have any marketing experience. I mean, I’m a Human Resource major and know nothing about marketing! Just come in with right learning attitude and I’m sure you will benefit as much as I did.

For now, it is time for me to transform from a part-time intern into a full-time exam mugger!

(Okay, I kid. Please don’t come at me!)

(This is a continuation from our previous blogs. To keep you up to speed, the skinny stickman is Mark, a gym owner who is looking to start on online marketing. So far, he has created a marketing plan, a landing page and set up some online advertisements. Read on to see what’s next!)

After a few days of running his online ads, Mark started to see a consistent flow of leads – people are filling in the form on his landing page.

(Needless to say, he is super excited.)

(Sorry Mark, guess you can’t quite pang gang yet.)

Sensing that Mark was about to make another mistake, Jackie swooped in to correct him.

Optimisation is quite like the seasoning you use in cooking. You can serve your dish without seasoning, but it certainly wouldn’t taste as good!

(Featuring Jackie’s favourite chilli crab)

In fact, many businesses fail in their digital marketing efforts because they failed to optimise their campaign.

Determined to not let his efforts go to waste, Mark started to look at optimisation.

Mark thought that optimisation meant that he had to look at his dashboard and performance metrics. So that was what he did. He studied about the different metrics, their meaning and implications.

But Mark has no prior marketing knowledge, and there was so much data to analyse…

… so he kinda just fried his brain.

(psst… Hey, reader! Jackie told me to tell you that if you are like Mark and can’t make sense of these platforms and metrics, you can leave that to us!)

It was at this moment that Jackie told him, this is not what optimisation is about.

Actually, many people are like Mark. They think that optimisation is all about tweaking and refining their Adwords or Facebook targeting. In fact, that only the last 20% effort.

(After all, your marketing message and buyer persona are what makes or breaks your campaign.)

Here is optimisation in 3 simple steps.

#1 Revisit your plan

Mark took out his one-page marketing plan and reviewed his buyer persona.

(Mark’s old buyer persona)

Basically, he was targeting a very wide group of people – just working adults in general. His marketing message is as a result, not very targeted.

Even though he was generating leads, it falls short of his intended targets. Now he has to diagnose the reason for not hitting his targets.

So he studied his leads in detail and realised that most of his leads were young male working adults.

His problem was that his buyer persona was not well-defined, leading to poor targeting and fewer leads. Now that has made the diagnosis, he can treat the problem.

#2 Come up with your next marketing idea

Mark decided to narrow down his buyer persona to young working adults, specifically males.

(Mark’s new buyer persona)

To better target his new target audience, he decided to change his marketing message.

He will sell his gym as one that is “open 24/7” so that these busy young adults can gym even at the wee hours (or whenever they are free).

For his next marketing campaign, he will construct his landing page and online ads around this new marketing message. With such better targeting, he would definitely see an improvement in his leads.

#3 Analyse data

At your dashboard, you will see many different metrics that help you to analyse your marketing performance. In summary, you need to be able to answer these questions in your analysis.

Is your landing page getting enough visitors?
Reason being, you need minimum 1000 visitors for your data to be statistically significant. Otherwise, you can’t really conclude anything.

Where are these visitors coming from?
Facebook, Google Search, mobile or desktop?

Which traffic source is giving you more conversions?
Once you gain that insight, you can reallocate your budget to focus more on the effective channels.

There are many other smaller metrics such as clicks to visits ratio, bounce rate and so on. But I’ll spare you the torture of having to read such technical details. That is not the purpose of this blog.

It seeks to debunk the myth that optimisation is all about monitoring metrics when it is only 20% of the process. While it an important step, merely looking at metrics would not make a huge difference if your marketing message is wrong.

That is why 80% of optimisation efforts should go into reviewing the marketing plan and improving the pitch.

And this marks the end of Mark’s online marketing journey. If you’d notice, he followed a 4-step process to complete the journey.

Recap Mark’s journey here:

#1 One-Page Marketing Plan for SMEs: stop wasting time and start making money
#2 5 Tips to Capture More Leads With Your Landing Page
#3 2 Tested and Proven Online Advertising Channels for SMEs
#4 (current) Debunking the Myth about Digital Marketing Optimisation

In fact, we can condense the 4 steps into a simple Get More Leads magic formula.

Plan + sales page + online ads + optimisation = BOOM! Consistent flow of leads

Pretty simple huh?

But if you still have questions, check out our lead generation services, leave a comment or your contact details, and we’ll help you.

Check out our guide for more goodies:

Mark, the skinniest gym owner you’ll ever meet, is back!

(Opps… Sorry Mark, you weren’t supposed to hear that.)

If this is your first time meeting him, you can get to know his story here.

Mr Skinny Mark is feeling great because he has a swanky landing page that can sell like his top salesman. (Psst… check out our previous blogpost to find out how he did it!)

But, what use is a landing page if nobody views it?

At first, Mark wanted to use SEO to get more traffic.  He thought that once it was set up, he would have a steady flow of free traffic!

But then, he remembered his wise agency friend told him…

SEO wasn’t suitable for him because it is extremely time consuming, he has to build a lot more content for it to be effective.

Mark decided to follow Jackie’s advice.

He got down to work and researched about the various online marketing channels available today.

Mark, being overly zealous, wanted to invest in all of the online marketing channels available.

Uh oh, so what now?

… That’s right you guessed it!

Marketing Superman, Jackie swooped in to correct his mistake. 

(Seems like he is in his commoner disguise today.)

If you are in the B2B business, Jackie suggests that you try out Google Search and LinkedIn.

But since Mark is in the B2C business, he decided to build a presence on Google Search and Facebook first.

Google Search

What is it?

Google Search is what companies use to have their website featured on the top, sides and bottom of a search results page.

It uses keywords, aka what the user searches on the search engine. Your ads will only show up for the keywords that you buy.

If you are like Mark and haven’t heard of Google Search, you’ve probably heard of search engine marketing (SEM) right?

Evidently, Google knocks off the competition as far as search engines go, so we can actually use “Google Search” and “SEM” interchangeably.

Mark did a quick google search for “gyms in Singapore”, and saw that many of his competitors are already using Google Search!

Why is it awesome?

Plenty of exposure. After all, you are going to be at the top of the search results of the world’s largest search engine.

It is targeted. Your ads are shown to people searching about you, so you are reaching out to those who are already interested. Also, there are also plenty of targeting options available to control who sees your ads – making your marketing dollar much more efficient.

It is measurable. You can see exactly how much you are getting from your marketing dollar. In fact, if done right, an ROI like this is definitely achievable.

(Image from Neil Patel)

It is instant. Unlike SEO that will take weeks or months to kick in, Google Search can drive traffic for you instantly.

Why is it not awesome?

Increased competition. With more and more people jumping on the SEM bandwagon, the cost per click is going to go up, up, up. You also have to work harder to make your ads stand out.

It is easy to lose money if not well managed. Due to the plethora of targeting and optimisation options available, it is hard for a business to D.I.Y their Google Ads campaign without the relevant experience and expertise. Even after the campaign is set up, a lot of time has to be committed to monitoring to see what works and what doesn’t.

(That’s why some businesses choose to get the help of digital marketing agencies like us!)

With these in mind, Mark set up his Google Search ads.

Facebook Ads

What is it?

Facebook is the one social platform even your ah ma knows. Facebook advertisements are essentially the display ads on a user’s Facebook.

Check out what Mark did up!

Why is it awesome?

It is easy to drive awareness. Over 20% of the world population is on Facebook, that is 1.86 billion users. If you are just starting out, Facebook is an obvious choice.

It is targeted. Facebook allows you to target based on demographics, location, interests and user behaviour. Remember creating a buyer persona with Mike on our previous blog post? Facebook ads will reach out to those who fit the persona, making your marketing more value for money. (Not clear what are buyer personas and how to create them? Check out our Ultimate Inbound Marketing Guide to Buyer Personas for Better Sales & Smarter Marketing)

It makes use of visual elements. Unlike Google Search, Facebook allows you make use of images and videos to enhance your ad. People are visual creatures. Having a catchy image or interesting video can making your ad more compelling and persuasive.

It is affordable. Considering the reach and targeting options it provides, Facebook is remarkably affordable with a minimum cost of only $1 daily. In fact, the people at Moz found that Facebook has the lowest cost per 1,000 impressions. This makes Facebook ads very suitable for SMEs with limited resources.

Why is it not awesome?

It is hard to get noticed. A typical Facebook newsfeed is so cluttered and oversaturated with ads, that it is hard to stand out and vie for attention.

Time and effort are required to optimise your campaigns. Although it may seem like you can forget about your Facebook ad after it has launched, that is not true. If you fail to manage it properly, it might cost you, though less so than Google Search.

Conclusion

Now you know about the pros and cons of Google Search and Facebook marketing, Mark has a question…
Which one really depends on your business, product and audience.

Go for Facebook if you have a well-defined audience and something with visual appeal.

Go for Google if you want to stand out from your competition and attract prospects who are already keen to buy.

Go for both if you want to have the best of both worlds. (Of course, this means more time and resources to be invested.)

With all these in mind, Jackie left Mark another tip.

What does he mean by that? And how do you determine how many leads you have?

We will explain it all in our final blog post about monitoring and optimising your campaign.

In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment or your contact if you have any doubts about Google Search or Facebook Advertising that we can help with.

If you want to meet clickTRUE to get leads now, click here.

Remember Mark?

That’s right, the guy with the gym!

(If you have no idea what I’m talking about, check out our previous blog about marketing plans.)

Now that he has a marketing plan for his gym, he is ready to move on to the next step.

Mark has an awesome salesperson, Mike. Every time they have roadshows to promote the gym, Mike always brings in the most signups.

He is really good at explaining about their equipment and why their gym is better than competitors.

Mark’s trusty marketing superman, Jackie said to him –

(Don’t worry, Mike you are not going to be enslaved.)

Mike 2.0, the top salesperson who will work 24/7, is none other than a landing page!

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a webpage that allows you to capture a visitor’s information through a lead-capture form (aka a conversion form).

This is a landing page.

This is also a landing page.

So now you know what a landing page looks like, you might wonder – how do we create a basic landing page?

Anatomy of a Landing Page

(Infographic courtesy of Unbounce)

#1 Your Unique Selling Point – headline, supporting subheader, reinforcement and closing argument

#2 Image/video showing your product/service

#3 Benefits of your offering

#4 Social proof – e.g. customer testimonials, social shares, number of sign ups

#5 A single goal (clear call to action)

Why Landing Pages Rock

Landing pages to marketers are what coffee is to the caffeine-addicted employee, and what po chai pills are to the person with diarrhoea. Essential.

A big mistake many SMEs make is to direct their campaign traffic to their homepage rather than a landing page. That is equivalent to throwing leads away.

By sending them a targeted landing page instead, you can capture these leads at a much higher rate. This is a typical homepage vs a landing page to help you understand why.

(Screenshots courtesy of Oli Gardner)

There are many distractions in a homepage – other offers, links and services. Which one is your prospect supposed to focus on?

What if a prospect got directed to Mark’s gym homepage, hoping to find out more about Mark’s March gym promo. But they got distracted by Mark’s ”BuffMeUp” protein shakes and forgot all about the promo!

In a landing page, there is only one clear call to action. That’s why it’s your top salesman who can sell your flagship product like hotcakes 24/7.

What is Landing Page Optimisation?

For your landing page to do its job, it has to be optimised to give you as many conversions at the lowest cost. Lead Generation Digital Marketing agencies (like us) specialise in this. 

Here are 5 pro tips you can use to start optimising your landing pages. 

5 Landing Page Optimisation Tips

#1 Create synergy with your advertisement

If you clicked, expecting to find information about a “40% off gym membership promotion” but get directed to a page talking about how awesome their gym is instead.

Will you be happy? Probably not.

That’s why you have to match the copy of your ad to the headline of your landing page

#2 Use context

You wouldn’t invite someone to your house and act like you don’t know them. That’s why you have to continue the conversation from whatever channel you used to drive traffic to the landing page.

If they came from an email campaign where you have communicated with them in a very personal way, they will feel disconnected if they see a generic landing page only boasting about how great the company is.

Here are some simple ways you add context to your page by making it more personal:

• Show gratitude to your visitor for clicking on the ad.
• Use conversational copy to humanise the relationship (write like you would to a friend.)
• Include a personal message from the person who sent the email.

#3 Encourage them to fill in the form

Make it seem easier to fill in the form by making it shorter or splitting it over more than one page.

A form will be a whole lot easier to fill if you avoid asking open-ended questions. If you have drop-down menus, put the most common answer as the first option in the drop-down menu. Also make sure that there is an “others” option, in case they do not belong in any of the given options. Lastly, get rid of that troublesome security captcha!

Give them an incentive to fill up the form by offering free ebooks, whitepapers, webinars, newsletters, discounts, giveaway entries, free trials etc.

#4 Copy that converts

Your headline is what gets the foot in the door. You need an interesting and relevant headline to capture your prospect’s attention. Choose clear over clever headlines, do not be overly “click-baity” at the expense of the message.

Beef it up with a supporting statement that further elaborates on how you can solve your prospect’s pain point.

Close the lead by building a sense of urgency and brings them back to the call to action.

#5 Design elements to highlight the call to action

I know, this is a super minimal “landing page”. Not exactly the most bombastic example.

But it works, because it directs the prospect’s attention to the form, which is a fundamental basic in landing page optimisation.

1. Highlight the form to make it stand out
2. Use contrasting colours
3. Use directional cues (aka arrows to point attention to your form)

Conclusion

Don’t have the time and resources to make a landing page from scratch or prefer to have a digital marketing expert do it for you?

Your residential marketing superman, Jackie, can lend you a hand.

The next step – driving traffic to the landing page using online ads (stay tuned!)

This is Mark.

Mark runs a gym.

To promote his gym, he manually gives out flyers to people working nearby.

There was hardly any response. In fact, most of his flyers ended up in the rubbish bin!

Mark is stumped.

Then Mark discovers the term “online marketing”.

Determined to revive his business, he studied it furiously.

He learned about various online marketing tactics he can use to market his gym.

Feeling confident, he shared his ideas with Jackie, a friend who owns a digital marketing firm over a cup of coffee.

To his surprise, Jackie said this –

Many SME owners tend to jump into digital marketing without much thought, dumping money into SEO and SEM only to realise it’s not what their business needs!

It was at this moment that Mark realised why he needs a marketing plan. It acts as his road map to achieving his business goals. Marketing without a plan will be a waste of time and money.

The best thing is, creating a marketing plan can be very simple (even if you have no prior marketing knowledge.)

Here’s how.

#1 Review your customer persona

Every successful marketing strategy starts with customers.

A customer persona helps you understand your customer’s psychology and behaviour, and guide you in reaching out to them.

If you don’t have a customer persona, then you are not ready to create a marketing plan yet. Start envisioning your ideal customer and create an identity for them. A basic customer persona should look something like this,

If you already have a customer persona, review it to make sure that you have covered all relevant preferences or behaviour that will affect your product or service. It is also important that it is up to date.

#2 Analyse your competitors

Make a list of your top three worst and best competitors.

Beside each competitor, jot points on how your business is/could be better than theirs. This will determine how you should position and market your business.

#3 Decide on four marketing goals

Must it be four? Yes.

Four is a good number for most small businesses like Mark’s gym because it is realistic. Too many goals will easily cause burnout, leading to no specific marketing results.

All of your four goals should directly impact your bottom line, i.e. increase your business revenue. Goals will vary depending on your industry and business life-cycle stage.

Here are some guidelines to follow when creating your marketing goals:

1. Find out where your business stands at now (number of leads, revenue, customer acquisition rate), and set the bar higher.
2. Be specific. Have actual numbers rather than general ideas. E.g. “55 online leads per week” vs “increase leads generation”.
3. Goals should be measurable. If you can’t determine whether you achieved your goals, what is the point of creating one in the first place?
4. Set a time-limit. Each goal should have a deadline, after which it should already be achieved.

Once again, remember that your four goals should always link back to increasing your business revenue.

#4 Identify four key activities that will achieve those goals 

Once your goals are set, the next question is “how to achieve them?”

If “leads generation” is one of your goals, some marketing activities could be designing a landing page or content marketing.

It is best to keep it to four because again, having too many will lead to burnout and achieve nothing. Rather than attempt to do everything halfway, focus on a few key activities and go all the way with it.

This is often what differentiates the successful business from the less successful ones.

#5 Have three key KPIs

List three key performance indicators (KPIs) for your marketing campaign to determine if it is successful at the end of the day.

Here are five common marketing KPIs to help you out. It’s a non-exhaustive list, so you can check out this blog if you want more KPIs to refer to. (Remember, just pick three key ones!)

• Sales revenue from online marketing

(Total sales for the year) – (Total revenue from customers acquired through offline marketing)

• Online Marketing ROI

(Sales Growth – Marketing Investment) / Marketing Investment

• Organic traffic

Refers to the number of people who searched for your website on their own.

• Social media traffic and conversion rates
  • Lead conversions generated via each social media channel.
  • Customer conversions generated via each social media channels
  • Percentage of traffic associated with social media channels

Analysing such metrics will help you to focus your efforts on the more effective social media channels.

• Traffic-to-lead ratio (aka new contact rate)

If this ratio is low, it means that people are visiting your site but are not filling out the form. Examples of forms are “contact a rep” forms, “sign up for newsletter” forms or “download my free ebook” forms.

A lead is one who fills up such forms and leaves their contact details.

Choose a suitable software that can help automate your analytics for you. This pinpoints areas in your marketing that are doing well and ones that are not, giving you insights on how to improve.

#6 Constantly review and make changes if necessary (Ongoing)

Be clear on the fact that your marketing plan is never set in stone, it changes constantly.

Your team changes. Your customer changes. Your competitor changes. Your goal changes… When such changes happen, you need to be ready to readjust your marketing plan accordingly.

Review your KPIs and metrics regularly to ensure that your marketing campaign is working. If it is not, look at the metrics again to diagnose where can be improved.

Conclusion

Most SMEs tend to stumble at step 4 – identifying key activities. They bite more than they can chew and end up with a half-baked and ineffective marketing method. Do not fall into this trap!

Using these six steps, Mark managed to create a one-page marketing plan for his gym. Check it out!

Do you still find a marketing plan too tedious?

Mark is willing to introduce you to his online marketing guru, Jackie! He’ll do the tedious and boring parts for you so you can focus on other things.

Now that Mark has his marketing plan armed at his side, he is ready to move on to the next step.

Any guesses as to what that is?

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If you guessed landing page, you are absolutely right!

Want to hear about how he went about it? Then stay tuned for next week’s blog post.