Jay Zheng's Marketing Blog

Importance Vs. Urgency

Jay Zheng — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:20:27 +0000

Just because something is urgent, doesn’t mean that it’s important. It could very well be the opposite, and you are just letting your deadlines making decisions for you.

The distinction between having to do something simply because the due date is approaching and having to do something is often overlooked.

Sometimes spending a little time choosing to do what matters versus being forced into doing what’s “necessary” could make all the difference in the world.

Promoting Your Competition

Jay Zheng — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 02:06:57 +0000

Few people or businesses have the guts to do this. They are afraid that they will lose customers this way.

The thing is, if you are selling just about the same thing as your competitors, then whoever offers the lowest prices wins, period. And it isn’t very smart to deny or hide that fact.

On the other hand, if you are selling something completely different (hopefully better), why not promote your competitors on your website? Believing that your customers are smart and are capable of making the smart decision (of choosing you over everyone else) might just go a long way.

Sure, your competitors will use your compliments to brag, but so what? You could gain something way more valuable: trust and attention.

Building a Badminton Tribe

Jay Zheng — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:30:50 +0000

Badminton is not nearly as popular here in the US as it is in Asia. And because of that, the community is small but tight with not much competition, and sometimes lacks a leader. If you can somehow manage to find a niche to create something remarkable, you then can build/lead a tribe that will eventually benefit your business.

Your business objective should be: What do badminton players want?

- To improve their game.
- To find nice places to play.
- To find better games (play with people at similar level).
- To find better partners.

Here is the key:

#1. Pick one or more items on the list, and keep giving them away for free.
#2. Make sure that whatever you are giving away for free is so good, that people are willing to pay for it.

Go Microsoft!

Jay Zheng — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 03:01:22 +0000

According to this Engadget Blog post,

“Courier will function as a ‘digital journal,’ and it’s designed to be seriously portable: it’s under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn’t much bigger than a 5×7 photo when closed. That’s a lot smaller than we expected.”

I haven’t been the biggest Microsoft fan, but after watching the videos above (If they don’t show up in your RSS reader, click here to see), I might just have to jump on the bandwagon.

Go Microsoft!

The Enemy

Jay Zheng — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:07:28 +0000

I think it’s dumb for industries to treat the Internet and/or social media as the enemy, and then try their best to resist, discredit or even fight them.

The Internet isn’t here to put you out of business — whether you are in the music, real estate, movie, magazine, newspaper, or the numerous businesses who have seen your sales go down every year since the inception of the Internet.

Instead, the Internet presents an opportunity to grow. Let’s not forget that the Web is still fairly young. Google, for instance, has only been in business for a little over a decade. As it continues to develop, at the very least, you should grow with it.

Sure, you are not the first one to blog or create a Facebook Fan page or Twitter, but please don’t let that be the reason to not start doing them today. If your company doesn’t have a web team yet, you might want to consider starting one. Just as you don’t expect your sales team to handle accounting, you shouldn’t expect anyone else in your company to understand the Web. It’s not in their job description.

The Internet is here to stay. You probably can’t beat it, so join it.

James Cameron: Before Avatar … a curious boy

Jay Zheng — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:26:27 +0000

Avatar was not an accident — it’s a lifelong project/dream/journey. And dreams do come true.

For Every…

Jay Zheng — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 01:13:59 +0000

“I’ve seen it worked before”, I can show you a “I’ve seen it failed before.”

And vice versa.

“It” could be anything from a multi million dollar trade show or a $10 Google AdWord campaign.

So perhaps you should consider scratching both of them off your list of reasoning for “why it would (not) work”.

If you can afford the outcome, good or bad, just try it.

Palm CEO’s Letter to Employees

Jay Zheng — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 08:08:56 +0000

Palm announced on Thursday that its phones aren’t selling as well as expected, and revenue for the year ending in May will be “well below” its forecasts.

Here is an internal email from its CEO to all of its employees to explain the disappointment.

…As we mentioned in our press release, our softer than expected performance is due to slower than expected customer adoption of our products, which in turn has prompted our U.S. carrier partners to put additional orders on hold for the time being.

I guess it roughly translates into: “consumers aren’t choosing the Palm Pre over the iPhone even though we believe that we have a superior product, and we can’t figure out why.”

You could blame it on Apple’s better marketing if you want. Or perhaps consider following my 3 steps to beat the iPhone.

Why the Internet Will Fail?

Jay Zheng — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 08:57:43 +0000

Granted, the essay by astronomer, amateur hacker tracker and Klein-bottle maker Clifford Stoll is written in the year 1995. Still, it shows that nobody really has any idea about what the future holds.

What the Internet hucksters won’t tell you is that the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don’t know what to ignore and what’s worth reading. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them—one’s a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn’t work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, “Too many connections, try again later.” ….

Lesson to be learned: while you may sound smart to complain about the problems, it’s much more fun and profitable to actually solve them. Just ask Google.

The Uneducated Public

Jay Zheng — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:48:43 +0000

Consumers are sometimes proven to be shortsighted and not that smart with our money. And by understanding that, marketers can persuade us towards making decisions which benefits the sellers (instead of the buyers).

An interesting question: what’s the benefit for you to buy a subsidized cellphone today? According to the NY Times, the answer is probably none:

Let’s say that you buy a MyTouch 3G, one of T-Mobile’s most popular smartphones, for $400, and sign up for its unlimited voice, text and data plan for $60 a month. The total cost of the phone over two years would be $1,840.

If, instead, you buy the phone subsidized by T-Mobile for $150, that same unlimited plan will cost $80 monthly – which is still the best deal among the major carriers, by the way – bringing your two-year total to $2,070.

And imagine how much more money the service provider could make if the customer doesn’t switch carriers after the two year contract has expired.

I think if you are one of the cellphone manufactures or carriers, you should see this as a huge opportunity. By voluntarily disclosing this information to your customers and helping them save money, you could end up earning trust from many of them, and eventually a big chunk of the market share.

The question then becomes: do you really have the courage to become the first one in your industry to refuse taking advantage of the uneducated public?

Competing with Free

Jay Zheng — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:19:09 +0000

Most businesses are afraid of “free”. It’s understandable. Once your competitors start to give away what you are selling, it’s lights-out. Game is over. You can’t compete with free.

But I think you are wrong. You can compete with free, and it’s easy: just give away something better.

The hard part for most businesses to grasp is this: once free enters into the equation, you are no longer competing for money. Instead, you are competing for attention — to see who can figure out the best (fastest, most efficient, most cost effective, etc.) way to build the biggest and the most passionate following.

If you can’t figure out a way to turn attention into income, then that’s your problem, not your followers.

An artist who has 1,000 passionate subscribers to his (free) blog shouldn’t have any trouble making a living, neither should a business with 10,000 true followers.

The Future isn’t THAT Far, Really.

Jay Zheng — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:09:10 +0000

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Look Forward

Jay Zheng — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:33:05 +0000

If you don’t look forward to work everyday, then you are probably not doing the best job that you can.

If your best customers don’t look forward to hear from you, then you are probably not doing the best job that you can.

Price of Innovation

Jay Zheng — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 04:48:00 +0000

“Research firm Strategy Analytics reported that the top handset maker in the world, Nokia, earned an estimated $1.1 billion with 35% global market share, while Apple earned $1.6 billion with 2.5% market share.”

Enough said.

Home Gym

Jay Zheng — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:44:35 +0000

For most home gym owners, they don’t use it.

It’s not that they can’t afford it, or that they don’t have access to it, or that they don’t know how to use it. For no particular reason (but plenty of excuses), they simply choose not to use it.

I guess the same could be said about most companies on social media.

The Toyota Recall

Jay Zheng — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:20:41 +0000

MarketingVox had an great article today on What Toyota Still Doesn’t Get About Social Media.

They listed out three main reasons:

1) Mediocre outreach: mediocre is unacceptable by today’s standards.

2) Ignoring the obvious: only 1/45 of Toyota’s homepage is devoted to the recall.

3) Failure to build up a fan base: Toyota only (btw, how many does your business have?) has 75,000 fans on Facebook.

I love this quote:

“When times are tough, the first place and the first people to turn to are customers, loyalists, enthusiasts, fans, friends, followers, advocates, evangelists…hell, even critics. These groups of people don’t magically materialize overnight. They are built, earned and nurtured over time.”

The thing is though, Toyota isn’t the only company who is making these mistakes. I assure you that almost all businesses (including yours) are making the same mistakes. They don’t realize it because they have yet been hit with a major crisis. And when that day comes, they would be doing exactly the same things which they criticize Toyota for today (as a customer or a competitor).

Courage to Design

Jay Zheng — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:54:49 +0000

It takes more courage to leave out something that makes people uncomfortable about your design than to add something that makes it average.

Explaining Your Marketing

Jay Zheng — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 03:56:20 +0000

To whom and how you need to explain your (new) marketing activities/projects usually is the first indication of how your marketing is being run. The most brilliant ideas might not matter if it takes 10 meetings to get the approvals for them.

Instead of waiting around, I think you should start small. Turn action into results, and use those results build up your reputation. Keep in mind that it takes time, and it doesn’t mean that people will stop doubting you or questioning your ideas. It simply gives you a little bit more bargaining power in your next meetings which hopefully leads to a quicker decision with less explaining.

Pleasing Everyone

Jay Zheng — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:55:50 +0000

Marketing isn’t about pleasing everyone, and it certainly isn’t about pleasing the CEO of your company either.

For people who are already buying from you, I am guessing that you already have they want. In this case, do a little extra for them. Surprise them.

For the people who are not buying from you yet, you can probably break them down into different segments:

- Some may care solely about the price.
- Other may focus on the looks.
- Or the packaging.
- Quality.
- Quantity.
- Uniqueness.
- Experience.
- Fun.

The list goes on.

As you can see, no product can please everyone on the list. The trick is to pick one, maybe two at the most, and please them.

Then be brave enough to give up the rest.

We Don’t Deserve It

Jay Zheng — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:28:55 +0000

As customers, I am not sure if we deserve that little extra nice from businesses.

Let’s be honest, if we are buying a $20 product from a multimillion dollar corporation, why should they care, really? More specifically, why should an entry level employee whose job is to simply follow a set instructions handed down from the management, care?

I mean, you wouldn’t care about a penny on the ground if you had $10,000 cash in hand, would you?

Don’t get me wrong, customers matter. Customers are all that matters. But that only applies to ALL customers. As individuals, we are simply not worth as much.

So next time when a business does something extra nice for you, please don’t take it for granted. Realize that the world needs more of that, and show your gratitude by spreading the word.

Re-package for Return

Jay Zheng — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:09:48 +0000

I saw a lady returning an Acer LCD monitor at Walmart today. Both the lady and store clerk weren’t familiar with the product. The monitor wasn’t properly packed in the first place (it was brought in a plastic bag) and the clerk was trying very hard to forcefully stuff the monitor into its original box. From the looks of it, the screen would probably end up being scratched by the cables.

So I was thinking, that as companies design their retail packaging, how simple a product can be re-packaged for return by someone who is not an expert is often overlooked.

– How easily can someone open the package and put it back together?
– What if the packaged was “ripped” open?
– What if the person threw away the packing materials?
– How do we avoid the product being damaged during shipping if it’s not packaged properly?
– How do we make it so that it’s ~~nearly~~ “impossible” to not package the product properly?

It probably won’t be a game-changer, but something that could add a little extra to your product (marketing) and perhaps save you a lot RMA cost.