Ryan Ho's Entrepreneurship Blog

In any business, you often see big companies have many departments, especially two departments that seems to share the same job scope when sales is concerned.

They are the Sales and Marketing department followed by the Advertising and Promotion department.

Big companies have both of these departments whereas small businesses only focus on advertising and promotions, this is the primarily reason why most small businesses never ever grow bigger, because they are not copying the best practices in business organizations.

Sales and marketing is actually more like a branding campaign. One that sells a brand, promoting the value, encouraging the loyalty and offering unforgettable customer service experience in giving customers as well as business partners more reasons why they would want to come back to buy from a company that focus on sales and marketing.

Advertising and promotions on the other hand is a quick temporary method to boost sales, generate traffic and create publicity to get people talking about the brand. The focus here is to generate more interest in either a newly launched product or service to clients and giving them more reasons to visit the new business over existing businesses who may not be offering such offers and rebates to attract new leads with hopes of converting them into a customer and try to convert them into long term loyal returning customers with the help of sales and marketing department.

In traditional businesses, only companies with big and deep pockets that goes into millions are able to have both departments in their business to grow the business, this is where the newly start-ups and small medium businesses are unable to compete due to lack of financial ability where they are up against the big boys.

But with search engine marketing, the use of of paid and free search engine listings offers all businesses regardless, big, small, medium or even new/yet to be established businesses an equal opportunity to achieve the same results on the internet using search engine marketing strategies.

Using Google helps business succeed faster than smaller search engines, due to the difference in market share, the amount of exposure it gives to the business both locally and globally at the same time without over spending. At the same time collect specific data and information from clients that traditional offline businesses may even have difficulty collecting feed-backs from their clients.

Search engine marketing results page are actually divided into two categories, which are known only to internet marketers, business owners who are paying money to advertise online, that is unknown to the general public.

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is actually what we considered to be of a advertising and promotion campaign, while Search engine optimization (SEO) is considered to be a branding campaign.

PPC is a campaign that gives immediate results that as business owners, investors and retails can easily measure and determine if the returns on investment is worthy and should they continue to advertise on search engines, results given helps businesses determine where their markets are, age group, demographics, race, age group, what kind of browser, user/client search behavior etc.

It gives business a detail report of what exactly are clients searching, and as professional PPC consultants, service providers, it is up to the consultants to provide quality, valuable information to help businesses refine their ads and improve on the conversion so as to help businesses target the right clients. But there are so many self-proclaimed experts online i still are able to see and point out their mistakes with a simple search and look at their paid ad on search engines if they are implementing the correct strategies or not.

SEO on the other hand is a sales and marketing campaign. One that helps business build creditability, value over time in the form of an intangible asset as known in accountants when it comes to balance sheet reporting. It is meant to provider viewers, searchers relevant information related to their immediate words that they are searching for. Google has done an excellent job in refining their algorithm over the past few years, giving us marketers a much more easier life at providing quality content without having to fight for positions in the search engines against those marketers using black hat seo strategies.

Since it is a marketing, branding campaign, it should be, and rightfully be more expensive than the cost of engaging a PPC consultant or service provider, but the irony is that, I see local companies doing the reverse. PPC services are much more expensive than SEO services, such a business landscape and pricing reflects the low level of professional understanding of what search engine marketing is actually about.

Neither do the businesses providing such services care about these things, a point that I observe over the past few years. They just take the clients money, show results, but did not provide suggestions on how they can better improve and help clients earn more money by identifying untapped markets, a skill that as professional consultant or service provider should do, yet there is very little search engine marketers doing what is actually recommended, in fact it is considered a best practice, that many business providers are not offering at this moment.

Should any businesses plan to scale their business locally and globally, they should consider hiring only professionals, and test them in terms of their knowledge, and not based on their clients profile, as clients, they don’t know what they are getting is good or bad.

So the next time if you need help determining if you or your business is in safe hands of a professional, just refer back to this blog entry and test them. You will be surprised that they might not even know these facts. This information is what I took over the years to compare the difference between traditional and online business models, before coming to such a conclusion.

I hope this piece of information helps you in one way or another.

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Battle to many is nothing but a combat between two or more parties fighting over something ranging from assets, to land to property rights, anything that’s related to money.

It is actually more of like a marketing campaign if you were to look at more in depth.

The difference is what makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. The stronger, well equipped depending on the type of battle always wins. It is this simple idea and difference in thinking that draws and divide the line between being rich, or poor, successful individuals or failures in life.

Just think, would you pay to watch people fight? There are so many types of pay to watch fights all over. Wrestling, boxing racing and even war..all competitors are in a race to fight to the end with hopes to emerge as the winner. The experienced past winners always have a higher chance of winning.

Both the organizer and participants are rewarded for being part of the battle. The audience however may either lose or win depending on the bets he or she made.

The battle although they are both winners and losers, yet both are considered winners, for publicity is already made, awareness created, engrave inside people’s mind, becoming the talk over the next few days until the next fight comes along.

The audience on the other hand, stands to gain very little if not almost close to zero unless they win at betting. Sports during competition are considered as a battle, while daily routine and practice is part of the competition to increase their competitive edge against themselves, and their partners (team-mates) and competitors to avoid being replaced or eliminated with a stronger competitor when the contract expires.

The rich makes lots of money from a simple battle, while the poor lost lots of money in a battle for they fight to harm themselves without getting any reward in return nor do they get any recognition nor awareness out of which. The only thing they get is negative publicity which ruins their future creditability, a black negative record to their track record that only worsen they ability to succeed in future.

Having said my point, the next time if you are being challenged into a battle or a fight, think twice if not trice, if you stand to gain something or not. Should you get injured, at what price, if you make any profit over the injuries in the process and if that same injury can increase your odds of winning to create more publicity (in-direct future profit) in the long term.

Don’t get into a fight, competition or battle if you stand to lose from that activity.

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Learning is a process.

It is a continuous process. Once you stop learning, you put yourself at risk of being eliminated.

To avoid elimination, is to learn the survival skills and use it to the fullest and show coupled with wisdom, intellectual use of strategies to expand territory or niche and grow wealth.

It is the root of all success. It’s like a plant, without water, the plant will withered, and die off slowly and in a ugly state slowly rotting, decomposing into the soil as fertilizer for the others. Put this plant in a forest, and it becomes the nutrition for other plants, insects etc.

Just like the forest, or in the ocean, there is a ecosystem. Where everything, birth, growth and even death helps the ecosystem to live better and brighter with nothing but beauty.Even in the world of modern cilivlizations, it remains the same like anywhere else on earth. There’s an system and order on how we live.

While there’s an abundance of educational institutes both locally and globally, not many individuals will be able to utilize all the skills, knowledge taught to them in their lives. Having said that, how many Masters, Doctorates of different universities actually make it to become a Professor respected, and using the skills, knowldge for the good of man-kind in invention and research of better medicine, cure for illnesses etc. Not many to be precise.

But I can say that much of what is required for basic living, the skills needed for survival is simply what’s taught in elementary schools and colleges. Anything beyond that are considered bonuses.

To live, survive and grow out wealth, we only need to learn what’s needed to bring in money, that means the ability to sell and market products and services, growing a business. Bringing food to the table and supporting a family. It is a rather simple idea, while many choose not to learn the art of selling and marketing, they themselves are denying themselves of money and potential wealth that comes only after they have mastered the basics of selling and differentiating it from marketing.

Selling is the process, a transaction made over an exchange of product, service in exchange for money.

Marketing on the other hand is to offer value, benefits for instant, and future growth. Both directly and indirectly contributing to more money income which means wealth.

Wealth is money that grows over time despite factoring in inflation. Money is simply a note that depreciates with time and has no actual value as it is at risk of inflation, dependent on external economic factors and country’s bank, gold reserves.

While we all start learning, how many people out there really understand why do they need to learn, get educated? No many even asked, yet just go through the motion, in short copying what the seniors/elders taught them. As it is a genetic trait of all living beings, from organisms, to plants, insects, animals inclusive of hunans.

But with our advanced, developed brain, not much have being put to proper use. Most are still very much the same like the apes in the jungle or forest, learning how to survive, bring food back to the family, working to own a property for shelter and give birth to off-springs that’s considered an natural ecosystem.

While only those who seek wealth, actually utilize their brains and put it to good use. Learning what grows wealth, build on success, portfoilos, to diplomatically increase their assets (territory) both locally and globally. Without copying apes, to fight it out in the jungle for food and space, by offering mutually beneficial agreements and exchange thus growing without limits.

That’s what learning should be about, and not like the ordinary education system, teaching man to be employees. I can’t help but wonder as I watch more documentaries. Why do we even need to study all the way up to universities these days when all it can provide us with is a job that brings in money.

Yet money is what every one can start earning the moment they know how to trade their services for money as young as 5 years old to 15yrs old depending on different countries acceptance to entrepreneurship.

Are apes smarter, with only un-developed brain who are our grand ancestors, what we are doing now, study, work and die is just the same like apes. So who’s smarter? Why get into debts just to be employees trapped in a rats’ race?

Only those who understand, learned and master the art of sales and marketing knows how to utilize the brain to grow wealth and help other man-kind to improve their living conditions.

Employment is an excellent way of learning the ropes of business, the only way out for success. Learn, observe and ask, build diplomatic ties, relationships and don’t burn your bridges by being nasty to your colleagues to lay a good future ahead. Yet not many realized that entrepreneurship starts from employment and individuals must have a clear understanding of what they must learn, what should be learn to improve the business, before leaving to start their own business elsewhere without poaching your mentor’s clients to allow oneself to grow up stronger with respect from their peers.

In a nut-shell, it is to learn to respect the cycle of life, example of how important water is to all living beings. The same applies to food, for survival and learning to improve our living conditions, not to follow what’s already in place. Else what’s the point of education? Ain’t it meant to make us intelligent, yet many are getting stupider without putting on their thinking cap..

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Selling is the process of persuading someone to buy a product or service in exchange for a sale, commission and profit. It is done by a sales person who exchange the time in engaging a person in exchange for a single sale. This is usually done over the counter in shopping malls and centers.

Marketing on the other hand is the process of offering value and selling in bulk converting to more sales, profit and commission for the company and the salesperson and at the same time helping the client to save money. In order to generate that high sales volume, it boils down to relationship building, value creation and unique selling proposition of the products and services which a business or an individual can offer to a potential client who may turn out to be their potential joint venture partner in future.

Selling is a job, an employment; marketing is strictly business and nothing else. The income or salary between a salesperson and a marketeer commands a great difference. Business owners make lots of money, wealth because they are marketers themselves, as compared to sales people.

If you are reading this blog entry right now, and is thinking of becoming a marketer, you can either leave a comment or contact me directly from my site to have your questions answered.

You can learn all those skills but find a right coach as a mentor and advise you accordingly, don’t pay for people who are not marketers.

Learn to identify the difference between sellers and marketeers.

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Marketing is a form of selling without selling. It is the advance selling strategy which businesses and super salesmen/women use in business.

It involves not only the product, but included as well in the sales pitch is the benefits, value, efficiency, productivity and how much unnecessary expenses a product can help the business or a client save in the process with just a single purchase of a product. From a single marketing sales pitch, it not only is selling the product, also together is the brand, value of the actual worth, building brand royalty, relationship and opening another option to allow customers to get updates of the latest products launch if there is a system put in place.

Marketing is a deep advanced selling strategy which only a minority of the sales people uses. People who use marketing instead of selling are people who do their own businesses, and thus employees most often will not be bothered to sell the brand with the exception if they are working for a premier brand.

It involves branding, positioning, customer service, relationship building, value creation, royalty relationship building and most importantly, looking at the clients interest at heart. All these are needed to be shared during a short sales pitch.

Marketing tactics can be learned but it is not a simple task to begin with. It starts with education with the right intention. All these can be learn from work but without proper guidance, and spotting the mistake during the sales pitching/presentation, it makes a whole lot difference between selling and marketing.

Are you marketing or are your selling yourself?

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