2007 November

How To Strategically Position Yourself In An Overcrowded Marketplace

Posted by Sant Qiu in : Strategic Positioning & Branding on November 29, 2007 , 2comments

I’m back from a short break. And in this post I thought of sharing something that my clients often ask me about: How did I manage to help them multiply their profits exponentially, usually with minimal expenses (even though I literally did it in front of them). They want me to EXPLAIN my strategies to them.

One of my ’secret’ power tools I regularly use is the creation and development of a solid positioning. When you’ve created a strong positioning for your self/products/services, it’s like having a spotlight shine on you on the stage. All eyes are on you. Sure there may be other supporting cast members in the background with various degree of visibility. But when you do it right, you can be the lead act on the center of the stage.

The problem is…

Creating a positioning is a strategic move. It requires thinking and planning. However, most businesses are focused on marketing activities such as advertising, distribution of flyers/brochures, telemarketing, etc; which are tactical activities. They often neglect to really think about the message (the strategic positioning) that those marketing materials contain. It doesn’t help that most tips and advice found on the Internet are focused on tactical activities. “Do this… do that…” etc.

This explains the proliferation of the ‘me-tooism’ in the marketplace. Everyone is trying to be like somebody else (their competitors, their mentors, their idols, etc). I know many gurus/mentors encourage the concept of modelling, which is to emulate the business/person you want to be like. Heck, I am personally pro modelling.

BUT… while modelling is an excellent method to improve, it’s a very bad strategy for marketing. If you are using this strategy you’ll just be ‘another one of them’. Just think about it. Which famous brand is well-known because they are like another business? Yep! A trick question.

Well-known brands are well-known because they are ‘different from’ not the ’same as’! And yet, most businesses adopt the ‘fight fire with fire’ strategy to compete in the marketplace. For example, if their competitor introduces a new product/service, they will react by launching something similar. This is a ridiculous strategy! You fight fire with water, not fire!

Fighting fire with water means that instead of trying to do the same thing you do something different or unexpected. Carve out your own positioning and create your own niche. It is also a useful strategy to ’steal their thunder’.

Let’s say you are in the beauty industry. If a competitor launches an oil-based anti-wrinkle product, instead of launching something similar, you can introduce a water-based one. And you then explain why water works better and (subtly) explain why other base ingredients (such as oil) is not as effective. Go the opposite direction.

This way you are seen as a leader and an innovator, not a follower.

Here’s a real marketplace example. There are hundreds of toothpaste brands. However there are only a few that have managed to create a solid positioning. You will notice that all of them have differentiated themselves from each other (even though in reality they are competing in the same market).

Colgate Total: Complete 12 hour protection
Crest: Fight cavaties
Close-Up: Freshening Xperience (Freshens your breath. Their positioning is about getting people close together. They even have kissing tips on their website! That is congruency.)
Ultrabrite: Whitens your teeth

As you can see, they each positioned themselves differently, solving different problems even though essentially at the core, they all help to clean and protect your teeth. Each of them have created their own spotlight so the target market can find them easily. Have you created yours? Or are you just ‘another one of them’?

Secrets To Getting FREE Publicity & Achieving Expert Status Literally Overnight. . . For FREE!

Posted by Sant Qiu in : Speed Profit Secrets on November 18, 2007 , add a comment

This is the 3rd part of the “Profit Booster Case Studies” where I reveal my profit boosting strategies that brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars for my clients. Apply the strategies and you will get real bottom-line results… Guaranteed!

In this case study you will learn how you can easily apply my strategies to…

Secrets To Getting Advertising Worth Thousands Of Dollars & Achieving Expert Status Literally Overnight… Practically For FREE!

And NO, it’s NOT the same old create a ’story-the-media-would-be-interested-to-publish’ strategies that don’t work.

Read this Profit Booster Case Study 4 here:

http://www.maneuvermarketing.com/blog/case-studies/

In it you will see:

How I use my system to get FREE media coverage for ordinary folks and businesses
The exact steps I used that have been proven again and again to work
How you can create a powerful impact & buzz within your target market for pennies
How you can use the system to launch your products
And many more

As always, the case study is content-rich and shows you exactly how I implemented my system, not just some vague principles.

If you’re working on a shoestring budget, this case study can help you tremendously. I really believe if you just follow my steps, you will reap massive rewards.

You can read it here:

http://www.maneuvermarketing.com/blog/case-studies/

If you missed out on the previous Profit Booster Case Studies you can also read all of them at the link above. If you have any questions, feedback, comments and thoughts you can also post them there.

I’ve received quite a number of questions on the Profit Booster DVD Set that I’ll be releasing on 20 November, Tuesday. I’ll be answering your questions in a short FAQ on Sunday.

Meanwhile, enjoy the case studies and profit from them. Cheers.

Are You Missing Out On 80% Of Your Traffic Because Of This Simple Mistake?

Posted by Sant Qiu in : Written Persuasion on November 16, 2007 , add a comment

I was checking out my stats of this new blog using WP Blog Stats plugin. The plugin is pretty good and it shows the number of views I received daily in a graph and the most popular articles I have.

I’m pretty happy to see that readers have increased consistently. In particular, the past couple of days views has skyrocketed. However, as I took a closer look at the stats I noticed something very interesting…

There were several really high spikes in the history of the chart. Curious as to what caused those spikes (so I can reproduce those in a more consistent basis), I checked out the articles corresponding to those high views. What I found kinda slapped me awake!

I discovered that the spikes were caused by articles that had… drum roll… ready for this? => Compelling Titles! <=

Frankly I was rather peeved at myself. After all I’m a copywriter who write copy that brought in big profits. I should know the importance of a great headline. Heck I just explained how important a headline is in the Profit Booster Case Studies. And yet I missed this!

The titles are equivalent to the headlines of the articles. And since subscribers might only read your titles in their email notifications, they might not be compelled to go to your blog and read the whole article if the title is weak.

To make sure that I made the right conclusion I check other possible variables such as content quality, time of posting the articles, social bookmarking activities, etc. And nothing else corresponds as clearly as the difference of the titles of the articles.

And the difference of viewers between a weak title compared to an engaging one is as high as 80%! That was a wake up call for me. Frankly, when I blog I’ve been rather lazy and just type in what came to mind at that particular moment. But now that I see the huge difference of just tweaking the titles, I’m convinced I can do much better.

Here are a few of title changes I just made:

From “Profit Booster 2: Boost Your Results By 300%” to “Boost Your Results By 300% - Profit Booster 2” (The first few words are generally more important so I put the benefit up front)

From “Profit Booster Case Study 1 Is Ready” to “How A Letter I Wrote Raked In 5 Figures… And Growing“

From “I’m Revealing Specific, In-Depth Case Studies” to “Actual Campaigns That Raked In $100,000s Revealed In Detail For You“

You would agree that the revised titles are more irresistible, yes? The content is exactly the same. But viewership will definitely improve. Are you missing out on as much as 80% (or more) of your traffic because of weak titles?

Are You Doing The Important Stuffs?

Posted by Sant Qiu in : News, Updates & General on November 15, 2007 , 2comments

Since the start of this blog last month, I’ve implemented various traffic strategies to get my blog ranking up. Submitting to blog directories, article marketing, did a traffic challenge, etc. And within less than 6 weeks my traffic has jumped up quite a bit and my ranking is still increasing steadily.

But today, suddenly something occured to me…

I happened to flip through some of my notes and I realised I’m getting a bit too caught up with all these technology and getting swayed from my original purpose of this blog. It’s not about trying to drive as many free traffic as possible and get nice rankings. It’s about creating my branding and using it as a tool to build my online business.

I’ve unconciously slipped into focusing on the activities and missed out the big picture. It’s amazing how easy we get caught up with doing small (unnecessary) stuffs that are costing us the really important things, isn’t it?

Do you remember the story of the professor who stood in front of his class with a big glass jar and started filling it with the big rocks? (This story probably had travelled the world a few thousand times thanks to viral emailing) And when the jar is full of the big rocks then he filled it with the smaller rocks, which filled in the gaps between the big rocks. And then he poured in the tiny sands. And lastly the he poured the water in.

The moral of the story? The guy had a bad childhood and missed playing in the playground. Just kidding. The moral is that we need to focus on the big, important things in our lives (and businesses), and the small things will fit in just fine. If we focused on the small things too much, we would’ve missed the really important things cos the sand and the water would have filled up the jar.

So I’m declaring today as “Refocusing On Your Purpose” day.

Are you doing the important stuffs in your business and your life? Stop for a minute. Take a moment and take a step back. Are the things you are doing currently moving you towards your goals? Or are they moving you further away? Are they necessary at all?

Have fun and enjoy focusing on your dreams and goals again.

Boost Your Results By 300% - Profit Booster 2

Posted by Sant Qiu in : Speed Profit Secrets on November 14, 2007 , add a comment

This is the 2nd part of the “Profit Booster Case Studies” where I reveal my profit boosting strategies that brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars for my clients. Apply the strategies and you will get real bottom-line results… Guaranteed!

Something ‘interesting’ happened right after I sent out the first part of this series. But before I get into that let me give you the latest part (2nd) of the Profit Booster Case Studies here:

>> http://www.maneuvermarketing.com/blog/case-studies/

In this case study you will learn how you can easily apply my strategies to boost your results by over 300%, without spending additional money… even if you’re just a self-employed entrepreneur or salesperson.

Now for the ‘interesting’ part. Since my announcement of the upcoming launch of the “Profit Booster DVD Set” on 16 November, I had a few people emailing me about it. A few of them are already very interested in the DVDs and one lady even said she is extremely interested, though she will be away in Europe on the date of the launch, and she doesn’t want to miss it!

Why is it interesting?

Because I’ve not even talked about the contents of the DVD set!

So why haven’t I written about the contents of the DVD set? Well, frankly it’s because the sales copy for it is not ready yet. I’ve been busy juggling clients and posting the case studies. In fact, this 2nd part of my “Profit Booster Case Studies” should have been posted a earlier.

But don’t worry, when the sales copy for the DVD set is up, you will get a very good idea of what the program covers, in detail. Meanwhile, you can read the latest case study here:

>> http://www.maneuvermarketing.com/blog/case-studies/

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them here. I love to hear from you. Have fun & profit from the case study, and let me know your thoughts. To your profits,

P.S. By the way, Chris Garrett suggested that I create a page to list all the case studies for easy access. Great idea! So I’ve created the page here:

http://www.maneuvermarketing.com/blog/case-studies/

I’ve also updated the old links to the above page.

How A Letter I Wrote Raked In 5 Figures… And Growing - Profit Booster 1

Posted by Sant Qiu in : Speed Profit Secrets on November 12, 2007 , 2comments

This is the 1st of the “Profit Booster Case Studies” where I reveal my profit boosting strategies that brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars for my clients.

I guarantee that when you take action and apply these strategies, you will get tremendous bottom line results.

I’ve shown a few of my friends a sneak peek at the case studies I’ll be sharing and they are certifying me CRAZY! They are wondering whether I’ve lost my screws up there because I’m giving so much away. Apparently they are concerned that I’ll be ’spoiling the market’ by giving away my exact strategies… for free.

These are more detailed and in-depth than most of the marketing materials floating around. This first case study showed how a letter I created Raked In 5 Figures… and it’s just barely starting! The letter brings back $295.20 every time it is mailed out! You can get the first case study here:

>> http://www.maneuvermarketing.com/blog/case-studies/

Question: Imagine if you have that letter in your hands, how many letters do you want to send out?
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them here. I love to hear from you and interact with you.

Have fun & profit from the case study, and let me know your thoughts.

By the way I plan to release the next one tomorrow, so look out for it. I’ll let you know when it’s up.

Here’s the link again:

>> http://www.maneuvermarketing.com/blog/case-studies/

Actual Campaigns That Raked In $100,000s Revealed In Detail For You

Posted by Sant Qiu in : Speed Profit Secrets on November 9, 2007 , add a comment

If you’re a regular reader of this blog then you might have known that I’ve spent most of my working life as ‘The Strategist’, behind the scenes of many successful businesses and promotions in Singapore. For those ‘in the know’, I am the go-to guy who helps them radically improve their business and income.

The good news is: I’m about to start a series of case studies where I’m revealing exact same strategies I used to help my clients raked in literally Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars… in detail!

These are the same strategies I used to help AKLTG (Adam Khoo Learning Technologies Group) become a million dollar training business within just one year starting from scratch.

Here’s what Adam has to say:

“Sant played a very valuable role in the growth and expansion of the company. He is a fantastic marketer and copywriter! He wrote most of the marketing materials from scratch, including the advertisement that we ran.

That headline was so successful that the phone rang off the hook the first time we ran the ad. It was a phenomenal result!

He also came up with a structure to use very low cost and extremely efficient marketing techniques. Within the few months that he was with the company, he helped the company bring in more than $500,000! I recommend him highly.”

- Adam Khoo, Founder
AKLTG Pte Ltd

I’m also sharing the strategies I used to help Dr. Dennis Wee (another multi-millionaire entrepreneur in Singapore) to win prestigious awards such as the ‘Spirit of Enterprise 2006′, ‘Lifelong Learning Awards’ and also arranged for his appearance in various media such as The Straits Times (multiple times), Singapore Business Review, Steer (and many others). We even wrote a best-selling book together called Get Rich Now.

Here’s what he said about me:

“Sant’s marketing ideas and strategies are powerful, creative and practical at the same time. He is a dependable friend and someone with integrity. Any business will definitely benefit from working with him.”

- Dr. Dennis Wee, President
Dennis Wee Group (DWG)
Top 12 Entrepreneurs of the Year
Winner of Spirit of Enterprise

>> NOTE: To be notified of NEW Profit Booster case studies for FREE subscribe using the form on the top right sidebar on this blog.

And in case you think that those strategies might not be relevant to you because they are for ‘big businesses’, I’ll also be sharing specific case studies of other small & medium businesses (the bulk of my clients) and how my strategies helped them raked in the profits BIG TIME! Below are some examples:

=> Like the software developer who was struggling to sell their products until I created a strategy that motivated their prospects to approach them instead of the other way around. In fact, my client more than doubled their prices and yet each of their customers are buying a few sets of their software.

=> The math tutor who was struggling to get students even when her fees were way below the market rate… until she asked for my help. After applying my system, she raised her prices to the premium level and yet she had more students than ever before!

=> An IT company that was fighting to increase sales in their highly competitive industry. After following my strategies, their sales jumped by 30% and they spend 50% less time closing their sales.

=> The brand new bakery that started in a new market. In just a couple of months it was supplying well-known cafes and restaurants with a 20% premium pricing.

=> The real estate entrepreneur who experienced over 300% more responses after applying my strategies… even though he is in a highly competitive area.

=> The massage therapist who was failing to promote her services to schools. After applying my strategies, her prospects were seeking her out and offering 5-figure deals.

And many more! I could go on but I think you get the idea.

I’ll break down the strategies to their nuts and bolts so you can see how you can apply them in your own business. These will not be one of those generic or regurgitated advice most people are posting. These are specific in-depth strategies I personally used to create massive results from. You will get to see the blow-by-blow implementation and the results they generated.

>> NOTE: To be notified of NEW Profit Booster case studies for FREE subscribe using the form on the top right sidebar on this blog.

Why am I doing this?

There are 2 main reasons.

Reason 1: Earlier this year I decided to stretch myself to help more people. While I did, frankly I know I can do much more. This will be one of the ways I can do that. (I swear my up-coming birthday next week didn’t give me more pressure to achieve this goal!)

Reason 2: On 16 November, I’m about to launch the “Profit Booster DVD Set”. (It is quite a massive collection of 15 DVDs + many bonuses.) This DVD set is jam-packed with the exact same highly potent and ultra explosive strategies I regularly use to help my clients rake hundreds of thousands of dollars in a matter of weeks, sometimes days!

I have applied them in many different industries such as education, training, IT, design, F&B, production, real estate, health, beauty, publication and others. And every single time, without fail, they raked in the profits!

There will only be 70 sets available and only for the Singapore market for now. This is because most of the specific case studies I teach in the DVD uses Singapore context (although the principles are applicable anywhere).

If you’re an entrepreneur, business owner, in upper-management or in sales based in Singapore, you might want to pay close attention and mark the date - 16 November.

But I Need Your Help…

While the DVD set is only for the Singapore market, the high octane principles and strategies can be used anywhere, in any business. And I would like to have as many people benefit from this as possible. So I’m asking for you to help me spread the word about the coming case studies.

If you’re a newsletter, ezine, blog publisher or you have a list of subscribers who are interested in entrepreneurship, business, marketing and sales strategies, let them know about this post. Please only send to your relevant lists as they will probably be the ones benefiting the most.

Your subscribers will thank you for it and they will know that your recommendations are of high value to them. This will help you establish better loyalty with your readers too.

The case studies begin in the next post.

>> NOTE: To be notified of NEW Profit Booster case studies for FREE subscribe using the form on the top right sidebar on this blog.

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