Case Study – Britney Spears Launch Her Womanizer on X Factor Stage in the UK

Britney physically went to London to promote her new album Womanizer on the album launching day in the UK, and her appearance on the X Factor was one of the most hotly anticipated TV shows. So, why X Factor? It is so well known in the UK music industry and the people watching the TV series are the ones most likely to buy Britney’s album. In another word, X Factor targets the same customer base as Britney does.

Any other reasons? Well, thousands of journalists and reviewers keep an eye on X Factor in the UK, they talk about any X Factor news they could ever found. In such a way, Britney’s new album automatically became a hot topic all over UK, including local magazines, newspapers, other TV programs and even websites. So, the launching news went all over the places without extra work.

Lessons to Be Learned – Hold (preview), Hold (create the buzz), Fire (launch!)

PREVIEW STAGE – It is so important to find the right foreign launching partners, and keep them informed the stuff are you working on. By doing this, your targeted foreign customers will get a preview of your work via the launching partners’ network. Also, tell your partners the official launching day as earlier as you can. So, they can get the message over, and then their customers will help to message fly further as they’ve got something to share with their friends.

BUZZ STAGE – A few days before the launching, ask your foreign partners to work out a VIP list, who will receive exclusive information and resources about your product. Keep in mind, your partners know the foreign market better than you do, so give them the privilege to do the list.

The people on the VIP list are your evangelists, and they extent your potential foreign customer base to the a new level, where the BUZZ is fully loaded and all about your new product.

LAUNCH STAGE – It is the show time! Deliver what you promised and keep all the new customers happy. To achieve this, there are 2 things your partners can help you with: A. Get your foreign supply chain smooth; B. Get a better understanding of the local culture.

The whole point of marketing is to promote your products via effective advertising channels. In another word, spend less money to get more sales. So, it would be wise to have a better understanding of your customers’ habits and the entire trading environment before developing your marketing plan.

Assumption Is Dangerous

Any marketing action should be based upon research but not assumptions, and the reason is simple: you don’t sell things to yourself. So, why do you care about what you think too much? Your customers may NOT like the stuff you like, and the things that obvious to you may NOT so obvious to your customers.

Continuity Planning

Marketing campaigns normally only boost your sales within a short time period, and your sales volume  falls back when the campaigns end. That is the nature of campaigns. As a business owner, you certainly expect to get more value than the quick sales from the expensive adverts. So, before you start the campaigns, you can ask yourself that how each of them would add value to your brand, including product name, logo, and any other trade marks you own. By doing that, your intangible assets will be worth more money, together with a better industry reputation.

Customer Relationship

You need fans of your products, and they say good things about you all the time. It is not too difficult to turn your customers to evenglists. What you need to do is to keep good relationships with them by providing better service all the time. In fact, the easist way to achieve that is to sit back and review the whole sales process as often as you can. Take the TV sales for example, you can give your customer a ring several hours before the delivery time, and then spend a few minutes to set the TV up for them. You can also ask them to fill in a survey or feedback form for you. Remember, every little helps!

We’ve signed up a Twitter account recently. After playing with it for a while, we found twitter is really cool and useful. To be honest, we didn’t see its beauty and power for the first few days, we thought it was too simple to receive such a lot of applause from the world. I have to remind myself, however, that all great ideas are simple.

Now, we really enjoy using twitter and found some simple ways to get valuable information for our business, and here are some tips.

Read industry’s break news:

Twitter is arguably the best place to find and follow the industry’s news you care. It’s designed in such a way to avoid spam, because you can pick and mix the messages from the news providers you trust.

Keep up with your customers:

I believe you all understand the importance of customers loyalty, which would make them into your evangelists. For that reason, it would be ideal to know what they are talking about in real-time. Twitter, again, makes all these possible!

Help your colleague:

We live in a world where information is overloaded. But, we also need to get things done in an easy and straight forward way. Twitter is quick in the way of post-n-reply, which can be applied in our working environment. Got a question? Post! Got an answer? Reply! Simple as that.

Turn conversations to leads:

Twitter is a platform and a community, where you can find potential customers. If you go to search.twitter.com, and search the products/services related to your business, you can soon find people looking for help and recommendations. Bingo! Now, you can kick off the conversations with your knowledge. Please please remember, you are there to help and to build your reputation. Focus on the long-term relationships but not the direct quick sales.

Understand your competitors better:

Time to turn your attention to your competitors. It is always smart to keep on eye on them, isn’t it? Again, you can either follow them or search their name on search.twitter.com.

Some people hate their competitors and they’d like to do things to damage their competitors’ businesses, while others try to build decent relationships with the competitors by not being too aggressive. Well, it may surprise you if you respect your competitors and say some good things about them sincerely.

Follow Bizroof On Twitter

It is difficult to run a business, especially during the economic downturn. People are very careful spending their money by all means. Your suppliers start to chase outstanding invoices and your customers order less than ever.

So, it is really important to review your cash flow on a regular basis to find out your exact CASH situation.  And then, you have to dig deeper to look at “everything” could help you through the troubled economic times. If you are not cash flow positive at the moment, you need to work out a plan to achieve that asap. And one way you can do that is by negotiating prices with all your suppliers, even your broadband provider. Remember, every little helps!

Your cash flow, at the same time, measures your business performance and assesses your options for growth. Why? It is always telling you the truth and never trying to hide anything.

Are you looking for a place to ……..

• Get your startup founded and get the snowball rolling;
  
• Get yourself a mentor who will see your business from a different perspective;
  
• Get significant media attention (VCs, fellow entrepreneurs and press).

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1. Number of applicants: 1000+ groups.
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DEMO (3 times a year)

1. Number of applicants: 1000+ groups.
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Y Combinator (twice a year)

1. Number of applicants: ?.
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3. Founding: $5000 + $5000n, where n is the number of participating founders (i.e. 2 founders get $15,000, 3 get $20,000).

SeedCamp (once a year)

1. Number of applicants: 400+ groups.
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3. Founding: Up to EURO 50,000.

TechStars (once a year)

1. Number of applicants: 300+ groups.
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3. Founding: Up to $15,000.

WHAT’S YOUR WEAKNESSES, SMART SALESPEOPLE?

Good salespeople always know what, how, when to talk to their customers. Wow, that must take ages to learn! How the hell could they remember all the previous conversations with their customers?

Hmm… that is not that difficult… I can simply take notes about phone calls and have a look at them just before I pick up the phone again. Ain’t I smart?

But what if you are not the only person talk to the customer? What if your colleague take a day off and the boss want you to do his work on that day?

Hmm… I don’t know then, what do you reckon?

You need a database to store the contacts and conversations collected by all the people in your office. You will soon discover the magic of that database which tells you everything you need to become a smart salespeople.

GOOD PRODUCT + EFFECTIVE MARKETING + ? =  REPEAT SALES

We have a brilliant product. We invest heavily on marketing. BUT, the sales report makes me cry. I need advice.

If you think your potential customers believe what you tell them, you are in danger. They do digest your message, BUT they prefer to trust what their friends tell them. Therefore, you need to focus on your existed customer and MAKE THEM HAPPY, and they will definitely pass the “happy” experience to their friends.

How could I make them happy?

Simple, you just do whatever you promised, even tiny stuff. The straightforward approach is to populate the “promises” onto an easy-to-use calendar which makes you confident to say “I’ve done it all!”

WHAT DOES BIZROOF PROMISE?

We try the best to provide a best way to store, organize and share information.

We try the best to make you succeed.

Online advertising is all about conveying a simple idea to your potential customers as quick as you can. Time is precious in the age of information overload. So, you have to get your concise message to the targeted audience in an effective way, which doesn’t make them think and eager to hear more.

Lessons learned from my experience:

1. Understand the habits of your targeted customers. For example, what websites do they visit on a regular basis? What are their common interests? What do they say about your competitors?
2. Tell your customers how you’re going to solve their problems. Make sure people understand what values they are expected to get, no matter how you’re trying to reach them.
3. The ads / messages should be driven by keywords for SEO sake. i.e. 5% to 8% of the content should be the keywords themself.
4. Tell the bloggers why their readers should be interested in your topic.

It is not hard to write a long list of great ideas. If you are lazy, you can just visit some business startup forum or network sites to steal them. Sitting around your office, sipping latte and looking at the idea list, now what? You probably thinking how the hell you can convert a idea into a product…. It is probably pain in the neck to get it built. But, if you find the right person to do it, you can still get it done without any problem.

And now, you feel released and excited about the beta launch… You are in danger if you think you make a solid step in the direction of making money, seriously. The real battle is just about to start, and the new product is no more than a weapon. Come to think of it this way, any senior web developers like myself can clone an application like ebay, facebook, amazon etc within months, but could any of them make me a millionaire? Not now, and not in a million years.

As time is ticking away after the beta launch, you will loss your enthusiasm and start to doubt about the product. The big question marks will be all around your office – what have I done wrong? Nothing wrong but you didn’t realize the fact that either the idea nor the product itself will make you rich.

9 months back, I was in that situation…. But, I was lucky, I found a great mentor who showed me everything from a new angle, including:

1. Think globally from day one
2. Understand your competitors as much as you can, including their strengh, weakness and targeted markets
3. Ask yourself how are you going to provide the best customer service
4. Ask yourself what could be the worst case scenario in terms of markeing approach, and then how you can improve on
5. Don’t make assumptions. If you don’t know say I don’t know, and then try to find the answers

Regards,

Matt

Understand the people who work with you

As an entrepreneur, you take the full responsibility of any business decisions and the consequent outcomes. Also, for any failure, no matter big or small, you are the person to blame. Unfair? Not if you don’t understand the people who work with you. So, what do you need to know about them then? Here are my opinions:

1. You want a profitable and scalable business. Do you know what do they want apart from the salary?
2. You expect them to deliver. But, do you know if they’ve been experiencing problems? Also, do they tell you the problems in detail?
3. You think you put them onto the most suitable tasks. Have you asked them what they think?
4. Do you know if they are 100% confident with your business model and roadmap?

Pay serious attention to your financial reports

What is a business? My definition is the accumulated outcomes from the products or services you are offering. So, you will always be looking for new and more valuable ways to organize your available resources. But, how do you know if the new method work? I don’t know the answer, but your financial reports (Cash Flow Account, Balance Sheet) do. Therefore, the paperwork deserve your regular review with respects.

1. Transparency across the entire business, no matter small or big operation
2. Avoid duplicated data entries, and save precious time for more creative stuff
3. Productivity and collaboration on top of accurate performance measurement and trends analysis
4. With full access to customer contact histories (notes and events), the sales team will be much more focus and provide higher quality services
5. Management is all about managing exceptions, and which can be prevented with early precise decisions beneficial from critical operational data
6. Substantial cost reductions, and more competitive pricing
7. Real-time data updates enables all the staff to have a better understanding of what’s happing in the business right now, no matter the team members are in the same building or from different countries
8. Marketing process becomes smooth and pleasant. Think it this way, you and your targeted clients are literally a few clicks away
9. Absolutely no need to worry about data backup and computer crash
10. Manage your business online is just the future. If you don’t make the move now, you will be behind your competitors. Seriously