REAL (Rewards, Engagement And Loyalty). It may seem a little rhetorical and you might already know (or not) that these three concepts serve very different roles and have very different effects for marketing. Yet in today's myriad of advertisements and campaigns, not to mention the number of Social Media and user generated stuff going on, the correct application of each of these concepts to achieve the desired effect is could, though it should, be a difficult and often misunderstood. Here's a little personal take with examples on what's what and hope it will help you in conceptualising your marketing efforts for 2012.

Rewards - Yes as the term suggest, the use of rewards/gifts to induce a certain behaviour. Such as giveaways, lucky draws, freebies and to a large extend points and miles. What can this do for you in marketing? Like holding out a candy in front of a donkey, it allows you to attract and steer your audience towards a certain behaviour.

2 major considerations come into play here. First the candy and secondly the donkey. Well of course, you have to be holding out the right candy in front of the right donkey for the donkey to follow the candy. Simply put you've got to hold out a reward that your target audience wants. How far (hard/easy) do you put out that candy will also determine if your donkey will try for it. Make it too easy and you might find yourself out of candy before you get the donkey where you want. Make it too hard and the donkey might not be following you at all.

This however should not be mistaken with Engagement and Loyalty. You CAN'T make engaged nor loyal customers with Rewards. So up to this point your miles card, stamp for free coffee card, lucky draw DOES NOT make a loyalty program. As much as most use such their main thrust of their loyalty marketing. It's not. That's why people switch cards/companies once they find a better rewards program. However, appropriate rewards can allow you to induce (buying) behaviour, that you want to achieve.

In short rewards have a very short term view. I give, you want therefore you do. Think about and start noticing the use of rewards around you. Free gifts, free parking, white papers, FREE iPad!(The current hot favourite amongst audiences of all age groups and hence marketers). It's extremely effective in traffic spikes and attracting the attention of the audience who is really attracted by the reward, and distracting them from the point that you are trying to push sales. Afterall the bottomline of marketing is still sales. However... Once I don't give you don't do. Unless...

Engagement and Loyalty comes into play. Watch this space as I write about what Engagement is about, what Loyalty is about, how do we effectively combine the three into an effective customer capture campaign.

Now that you've read about rewards, discounts especially ridiculous discounts like Groupon is in fact Reward marketing. Why doesn't it work for some? Well because once the reward (ridiculous discount) is taken away, the customer is not buying. To effectively capitalise on the Reward behaviour, one has to also prepare an engagement and loyalty strategy.

If you are following this series please leave a comment below or like this post. Since we are on the topic of rewards, I'll give away 2x $5 coffee vouchers to 2 lucky winners. It's a small candy but it's appropriate for the exercise.

Yes... I'm shutting down Gloplay Pte Ltd. But... doesn't mean that I'm shutting down the idea. I'll be back with something bigger better and more exciting. Thanks for all your support I'll be right back. :)

Being a professional in the digital marketing space, I have so often been asked this magic question "How can I be first on Google?". Wow... How can you? And so many have paid from $50 to thousands of dollars to unlock this Google mystery. Well this question is complex and simple all at the same time. Here I've included pointers on how you can improve your search ranking without the technicalities of meta tags and using search friendly URLs etc..

1. Create content that is perpetually relevant. While hype and gossip content (then again some gossip content especially exposed secret vids, are always popular) can bring about good traffic in the short run due to current interests in them, but if your content is something that people are forever relevant, it is more likely that other content writers will link back to your article and it's less likely that people will "bounce" (leave without reading) from your site.
2. Link your site EVERYWHERE! Wherever you migh have an online profile, remember to include your website. On Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums, even in review sites where you provide feedback. Your link your website to ALL your online profiles.
3. Apply common language (/sense). Use words in your content that your audience would be searching for.
   If you were your target audience, how would you search for your own site? Don't go too narrow (like requiring to name the street that you are at or your direct company name). If someone were looking for me and for some reason forgotten my URL though it's just (my name)spot. He may have met me at the TedxSingapore event and go searching TedxSingapore Ming or searched using my name on my name card Ng Ming Liang or just Ming Liang Web Marketing. In both instances, I come up right on top. Then again mine is a very personal name and unique event, so it's a little easier to come up on top. If you were doing something more generic like selling guitars online, you might consider winning on phrases which your target audience might use instead of trying for guitars Singapore, you could pick something like guitar effects Singapore, if your particular niche was in guitar effects. It's uphill trying to win just the generic term but if you picked a right niche, you might just beat the bigger boys to traffic. Usually the customers do know what exactly they want when they search. Even something like "(your competitor) sucks" can work. I remember finding tons of payment solutions when I put "paypal sucks" in Google.
4. Repeat these words often enough in as many pages and subpages as possible. Yes that's the only way the bot knows if your content is a match or not. It can't read your mind or pictures, it can only read what you write and the closer the match the better it thinks you fit the search requirement.
5. Write for others. Be a guest writer in other blogs and free article sites. These sites need fresh content all the time and you need the links.
6. Update frequently. This is straight forward, if a site has new content all the time, it's more likely that it's updated and relevant and hence it gets ranked better.
7. From above create a pool of content, content is king on search.
8. Don't just write... make videos... Yes! Google (the audience) love videos. Make them distribute them and link them back to your site. It's boring to read after a while, it's fun and cool to forward good videos.
9. Get credible sites to link you. One tip, look at schools and news sites. Find a way. Sponsor a school event? Internship?:) You know what to do...
10. Don't use Flash. If your site is on Flash, Google is blind to it. It doesn't know what you are doing or saying and so it ignores you. If your agency did your site in Flash they obviously don't know what they are doing and are just blinding you with nice visual effects.
11. If your business has a location, claim the listing/add the listing to Google Places. Straight forward enough.

Just remember... right words in your content, plenty of fresh content and lots of link back.

This posting is so wordy man... I'll find nice pictures another time. It's late now. Another point about writing articles, don't make it so wordy like me, it's likely that the reader will "bounce".

Like most things in life, if all else fails, hire a professional.

 

Yes I've given this site a new look. Some of the older articles/images will see a little out of alignment cos the main content area is now 600 from the previous 700+ px width.  I won't be resizing/rewriting the older articles cos it'll be too much work but articles from this point will be 600 px width. Happy CNY all!!! May this rabbit year be a great one!

New Year Resolution

1) Put games back on this site, including a Hold'em lobby just for some of my dear friends.

2) Organise some "tournaments" for the games section

3) Launch Gloplay

4) Make 6 million dollars. Hahaha...

Oh yeah... write that article about Facebook marketing. I know people have been asking. I just haven't really had the time to do any real writing.