Blue Oasis, Online Marketing Greenery

Build a business the conventional way. Invest RM 100,000 to buy equipments, rent a shop, renovate, hire staffs, setup Wifi, buy furniture, install CCTV, and the list goes on and on… When it’s done, the business is finally up and running. So here comes the headache. You need sales and you don’t have any. Now you have to do something to attract customers. So you invest another RM 10,000 for marketing campaign to do promotion, print flyers and promotional coupons and all that… and yet the sales is still not building up to your expectation… the investment ratio is 10 : 1.

Maybe you should try, building business the sales-driven way. Why not you just, clear a room in your house, setup internet, fax machine, phone line, and there you go. Your business is ready to rock! Having less headaches, you manage to put in more effort and time in brainstorming and tweaking your business ideas. The stress is less, you can afford more out of the box ideas to communicate with your clients, take time understanding what they want and deliver it at your best. The best part is, you have less bills to pay every month, breakeven period is shorter, and the most important thing is that you spent so much time on your client that they’re happy of you and things that you’ve got to offer.

So when we’re talking about online business, to have traffic first ( and then convert them into sales ), or to have a full blown eCommerce website first? In my personal experience, most clients just don’t understand that online business is not anything near to conventional way of building a business. Why invest on a full blown eCommerce website which doesn’t promise anything when you can have a blog that can test the market resond and tweak your business direction which can cut your cost while maximize your profit at the same time? What’s better than making your clients happy and turn them into a neutral loud speaker that spread the good about your products every where they go?

One of Seth Godin’s article, Flipping the Funnel, explains that most people tend to feed resources into a funnel ( A funnel is a pipe with a wide, often conical mouth and a narrow stem. It is used to channel liquid or fine-grained substances into containers with a small opening. Without a funnel, much spillage would occur. - wikipedia ) and settle for little results.

Why settle for little results when we can actually flip it upside down and start feeding less resources while expect bigger result?

To sell or not to sell, that’s the real question.