FishPond(tm) Marketing

"Fish where the fish are" is an old saying echoed by marketers for hundreds of years.

You can find fish in river, lake, sealine, and many other places.

So why don't go fish in a fish pond?

There are thousands of fish in a fish pond. That's a place where fish eat, sleep, play and die.

It is in your control how many fish you want to fish up anytime!


To market your business, you can either find your fish pond, your build your fish pond.

In an email marketing course I am working on, which is targeting movers, I have come up with the below fish ponds:

1. Use search engines, like Google. When people are looking for 'moving company' in search engines, they are motivated to find a moving company. SE is like a channel of fish which are flowing through. Isn't it easy to catch one?
2. Partner with Real Estate agents. Movers serve both residential and commercial customers. When a house is sold, when a property is leased, there are needs for moving. Build a good relationship with a couple of RE agents, you can sit and enjoy passive referrals.

There are other places to find people who needs to move. The two I listed here is just throw out some ideas.

This is find your fish pond.

You also need to build your own fish pond.

Business is risky. You never know what will happen tomorrow. You might face a downturn right around the corner, or you wants to sell your business as an exit, but it turns out you have no much asset at all.

That's why you need to keep all the contacts of your existing customers. I will use email marketing as an example.

Step I: Collect your customers' emails.
Build a large database. When you have a promotion or special offers, keep them informed. They feel comfortable to buy from you because they have done that before. They have trust in you.

Step II: Feed the fish reguarly.
You have their emails don't mean you can sell to them as you want. You need to build relationship and show them your respect. By sending useful and helpful tips or anything you think help, you can building a personal touch. Don't think of them only when you want to sell! - that's a mistake most people do.

There are more you can do, by using personalized emails, you actully improve the efficiency of the automated emails.

FishPond Marketing can be applied to any business!

The REAL power of Email Marketing

I got a chance to re-watch the apprentice season two - I know it has been such a while, but the things we can learn will never outdate.

The tenth week's project is to compete selling bridal dresses, between Apex and Mosaic.

Sure from the programme, we can see different personalities, leader skills, but one thing brougt my most intests: Marketing.

Apex was totally lost, they think they have a bridal shop, people will come, and they can make sales. So they focus on getting vendors.

Mosaic is lucky to have a girl from wedding business. So this seems easy? She point out right away how to get traffic - during their team dicussion. She suggest blast emails to theknot.com subscribers. They spent $1000 and sent to 23,000 emails.

It was SUCH a difference to see the result. When the big time comes, there a huge lineup at the front of Mosaic's shop, but literally nobody visit Apex's shop.

How did Apex market their business?

They sent thousands of flyers in stations!!!

Who is your targeted customer? How to approch your customer in the most effective way?

Mosaic just made an excellent live example of Email Marketing!

The result, Apex profited a bit over $1000, but, Mosaic pocketed in a huge profit close to $13,000!

What a difference!

Marketing is nothing new, but creative and know how to use the BEST tools.

Donald Trump was so happy to Mosaic's success, he rewarded the team $50,000 worth of diamonds.

When it comes to marketing, never limit yourself to the level of your competitors - YOU can do much better.

E-commerce Services in Toronto, Canada

Our main business is to build E-commerce solutions for Toronto and GTA's business people.

Ecommerce comes with two different formats:
1. Make an online shopping cart system with proper online payment solutions. This is the mostly used business model to leverage technology to generate more sales with less resources.
2. Use estabilished E commerce system to make sales.
The best example is eBay. eBay has been the most visited ecommerce platform for people to trade online. There similar platforms, like Yahoo! auction, craigslist.com

The first one is build a platform owned by the merchant himself, the upfront investment is big, but there are no much ongoing cost. The second one is to borrow the credibility and traffic from big players to make sales. There ongoing costs for using such a system.

That's why at Topsky.ca, we build different systems for different situations.

We can build the most advaned Ecommerce system from the scratch, to perfectly meet the smallest requirements of each client, we can also provide the just-released ebay management system to cater active ebay sellers.

To know more details, visit this link: E-commerce Toronto

P.S. Our ebay management system is seamlessly incorporated into our ecommerce system, which strongly benefits our existing Ecommerce clients. Even though most of existing clients are located in Toronto, we are looking for a better solution to deliver the product to customers around the world.

Google pay per click

I ran across some google pay-per-click users today, and after some research, I realized google has been testing this since roughly Nov. 2005 - it has been a while but i never see such option available in my adwords account.

How will it work? Personally, I am shy to ask the other party to call me, i don't feel comfortable before I get to know more about the vendor.

But it is said Pay per call is a huge market.

We'll see.

Outsourcing to the right person

Outsourcing to off-shore development companies can save a huge amount of cost has been widely recognized by software buyers.

But as I noticed a lot more information on some software bidder/buyer websites, a lot of people bluntly states 'NO OFF-SHORE PLEASE'.

Why is that?

According to my own experience, it is a big headache to outsource to an off-shore company, which might be located in the othe end of the earth. Here is my story:

1. Tried to deal with a small company.
They started work on it, but later run into a technical problem, so they just disappeared.

2. Tried to deal with a big company.
This company is big for its open source project. I gave them a pilot project, they failed to do to my requirements, but they keep on asking for deposits. I have been burnt, how can I gave you deposit if you can not even finish a test project? They finally go away, and left me with a unexpected eBay bill - this project is about ebay. They have no idea about eBay sandbox, but they dare to promise they can do the job!

Not a while ago, when I chatted with a very successful software investor, he commented, "****s are horrible".

I am not a racialist, I myself is also a minority in this country. But in terms of work ethic, I think people from some countries really have a long way to go.

Now, whenever I want to outsource, I find the people in my country, or in North America. I feel relieved.

So many people give you the best guarantee and shiny smile, but when the work starts, they change.

That's why the software investor recommends check reference is a must.

Before you give the work to others, check their references. It is not about trust, this is business.

alibaba.com President is on the list

From business 2.0, the president of alibaba.com is standing at #15. I didn't know his Engish name is Jack, but I know his Chinese name is Ma Yun.

A pretty paranoid guy. He stood up with the IT boom, but he never failed out as others, instead, he pushed Alibaba to all the world.

Once a client mentioned Alibaba.com, that gives me some shock. Mr. Ma definitely open the door between China and the world.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/peoplewhomatter/

Google adwords 404 error?

When I was using Google adwords to do some keyword research, at around 8:20pm, i saw this error.

What could make this happen? Sure the index page is deleted or something.

But when I am writing this post and check it again, it is back to normal.

Anyway, I have the screenshot, in case somebody lost money in this minute, can get evidence from me. However, keep in mind it is copyrighted :)

LOL.