Category: Business

Marketing is the Lifeblood of your Business

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For any business to survive, you need to do some form of marketing or advertisement to spread the word around. For instance, in online marketing, your new web site will not be noticed if you don’t do any promotion to spread the word around about your products and services. You need to invest some money into advertisement and marketing so that you can get traffic which could potentially turn into clients for you.

When people come and visit, they could be interested in what you have to offer and thus buy on the spot from your web site. You can sell info products or tangible items with a shopping cart installed, with safe and secure payment gateway. Marketing will catalyse and propel your business to greater heights of success and visibility. The word will be spread fast like wild fire on the world wide web if you own a web site selling products like tangible items or even info products such as reports, ebooks and such.

You need to spend one third of your investment in developing the web site, one third in maintaining the web site and the final one third in marketing and promotion. This is how you should allocate your resources equally, as a benchmark. Even in my business, I do postage marketing extensively. Each postage of a calendar and marketing letter with 80 cents stamps attached cost about $1.50. But the returns are much higher should we be successful in clinching a project which costs tens of thousands or somewhere in that region.

So, it does not take rocket scientists to figure this out that marketing is key to the success of your business – be it online or offline.

Contemplating a Franchise Business

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Some months back, I was contemplating a sandwich franchise business in Malaysia. The renovation cost comes to about $400,000.00 and this does not include the kitchen ovens, tools and utensils. Moreover, you have to pay 10% franchisee fees for every meal bought by patrons. Although it is the world’s biggest food franchisor in the world due to its low start up capital at $45,000.00, we decided to shelve the idea because too much is at stake.

We have the finances, but not the time to dedicate this business full time and concentrate on it 100%. It is like a marriage. You need to put in 100% effort and commitment to see it through to success. As we are currently in the sports business, we cannot allocate more of our commitment and concentration to be diluted to the food franchise business.

The issue is that we cannot be everywhere attending to different businesses. It is not good to be Jack of all trades but master of none. If we commit to a business, say sports, then we need to have targeted laser concentration on the said business. Don’t try to do everything and branch into different types of businesses where you cannot possibly concentrate fully.

This sandwich franchise business is sprouting everywhere all over the country. It is a very popular brand and easy to clean up, since no cutleries are required, other than paper wrappings that can be thrown away easily. Hence, cleaning up after a meal is easy peasy – as opposed to dining in Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets where the bones, skin and what not have to be removed and table wiped clean.

 

Blue Ocean Strategy

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In blue ocean, there are plenty of fishes and there is no competition, unlike red ocean where competition is very fierce. So, when we do business, we have to pick a niche where there is plenty for everyone and hardly any competition around as in the blue ocean. However, in any prospering business, competition may come from your own workers who have learnt the tricks of the trade, come out and compete directly with you, sometimes even taking along your former clients and contacts. It happens everywhere.

However, this can be prevented with discerning boss who knows how to take precaution and keep secrets away from workers. You cannot trust them completely! Sooner or later, they will still come out and join venture with other workers to compete with your business. To maintain the blue ocean strategy, it would be wise to hire a separate worker to handle all the imports and contacts from suppliers and keep this a top secret from your installers who are the biggest threat.

If you are in the supplier material business, it would be advisable to remove the source contacts and emails of the labels on the products. At times, competitors may pose as a potential client to check out your products and ask for samples. This is where a wise boss will try to remove all information of the source of material from the samples so that your competitor or whoever contacted you will not be able to contact your source directly and compete fiercely with you. It happens every where, and you cannot presume that the email origin is from a genuine client, but could potentially be from your competitor, out to check and try to benchmark you.

At Mandarin Oriental

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I am now at Mandarin Oriental for 1 night. Will meet up with a client later this morning and also took some pictures of scenic kolam, since Deepavali is just around the corner. Business is fine so far but it can still be improved with more drivers in our team of workers. Right now, we are short of drivers to bring the workers all over Kuala Lumpur for the different projects.

A night at Mandarin Oriental is $1,200, but with the Elite membership with discount vouchers, we pay $696 net with taxes total. It is just next door to KLCC where I had dinner and lunch. KLCC is the premier shopping centre right in the heart of Kuala Lumpur that carries branded labels like Salvatore Ferragamo, Gucci, Tods, Prada, and so much more.

What I like about Mandarin Oriental is its exclusivity and prestige. It also has very cosy bed and furnishings. You will be given complimentary cookies, plain milk and a bar of chocolate sprinkled with dried fruits like peaches, raisin, orange peels, nuts, cherries and such. There is also the welcome basket of fruits to whet your appetite for main course dinner downstairs on the second floor, at a Chinese restaurant.

The japanese restaurant is located on the basement, beside the car park. As members of the Elite club, you get complimentary meal for 2 at Wasabi Restaurant, the only Japanese restaurant in Mandarin Oriental. I think, I shall renew the membership for next year.