Tag Archives: marketing

Marketing your BPO Outsourcing Firm from A to Z

May 22, 2016 by 123outsource
Categories: BPO, Marketing, Outsource Marketing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Do you run a call center, BPO, software outsourcing company, or want to? If you are good at what you do, you just might be able to expand into a real business! You’ll need management experience and solid skills, some cash, and some understanding of marketing — but, you can do it! But, where do you start?

Websites — Outsourcing companies need a website. Most people look for services online. So, making yourself easy to find with a website is paramount. However, having “a” website is just not enough. It needs to be well organized, have a services page where you have a long list of services you offer and notes about your expertise in those services. You need “About Us” information so people will get a sense of who you are. A good contact page is essential too with email addresses, a choice of phone numbers and an online form. Make sure your site is attractive, loads quickly, and does not have spelling mistakes, etc.

You might also like:
How to get more clients for your BPO (compilation)
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/08/20/how-to-get-more-clients-for-your-bpo-or-call-center-compilation/

Good Sign Bad Sign: What to look for in newly hired workers
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/01/13/outsource-blog-good-sign-bad-sign-what-to-look-for-in-newly-hired-workers/

Email — Many companies market by email, but do it wrong. Marketing by email should be personal. You should try to learn what the company’s needs are and cater to them. Additionally, emails that do not state the NAME of the recipient are impersonal and get ignored close to 100% of the time. Email marketing is powerful, but only when it is customized to the reader, and having a previous connection to the reader helps so they will know who you are. Otherwise, you are just another nuissance spammer. If you email decision makers in thousands of companies, find a way to ask them what their needs are, and get some dialogue going, you are in luck.

Phone — Phone calls from strangers are an annoyance. But, at least you can learn who the contact person is and gain their attention. Remember, step one is not to sell, but to learn people’s names, positions, and find out what types of services they use. Focus on getting information and find out what they need, what they like and dislike about their current service, and what improvements they would like to see in their service if they lived in a perfect world (which you will of course create for them.) Don’t call businesses unless they are very targetted otherwise you are wasting their time. Additionally, have someone considerate who has good English skills make the call instead of a bumbling nitwit who will lose your prospect’s interest the minute he opens his mouth.

Network — There are dozens of ways to network. You can go to networking meetings in your home country or the country where you are seeking clients. You can network with other companies in your industry to handle their OVERFLOW which is a serious problem. If you can be reliable about handling overflow, you might just become popular.

Freelancer Sites — Several years ago freelance sites were not that big a deal. Now, they are the standard way of getting anything done. Hiring BPO companies is a headache, but hiring a freelancer has never been easier. You can advertise your company as a freelancer, or freelance company on any site that will take you and watch the jobs come in. Yes, you will lose a percentage to the site, but you will also gain some long term clients who will refer you if you do a good job.

Linked In — We used to recommend Linked In more highly. But, since August of 2015 they made it hard to contact people using their medium without really paying. Linked In might change their rules in the future, but as of now, you can find people on Linked In, but you need to contact them using email or social media other than on Linked In. You can still try Linked In, but it is not as efficient or user-friendly as before which is a shame.

Advertise — There are sites like Craigslist where you can advertise. You can also advertise in industry specific publications. Track your sales that you got from your advertisements so you can keep the winning ads and get rid of the duds. You can advertise on 123outsource.net which specializes in promoting outsourcing companies on the web. We have a category for each type of outsourcing service as well, so your ad will be highly targetted.

Adwords PPC — PPC can be expensive, but you can geo-target where you want your ads to be shown and how much you want to pay. If you get a good return from adwords you can build a business fast. I built my Notary directory using adwords when it first started back in 2005 and got a bargain on it. I was paying 5 cents per click before others caught on. Boy was I at the right place at the right time. You can advertise specials that are displayed on your website using PPC .

Outsource Marketing — Who says that you should do your marketing yourself? Marketing is a specialty that might be better left to a specialist assuming they do a good job. But, many in marketing do not do a good job and don’t even care. So, be careful who you pick and offer results based compensation otherwise you won’t get any results!

Understand What the Client Wants — In India, business people are in a hurry to talk non-stop without listening. This is horrible. To do well in business you need to be gentle, smart, and listen. Your job is not to over-talk, but to be a detective and find out what the customer really wants. They might not tell you, so you have to figure it out. Understanding what clients want is similar to men understanding how women feel. If you hire a guy who has far too many girlfriends and keeps them all satisfied, he might be the right guy for the job (although he might come to work from a different direction each day.)

Be a Partner — The BPO outsourcing companies I have worked with have not tried to be a partner. Many have asked for formal partnerships, but this is not what I am talking about. Be a partner WITHOUT the formality. Be there for your clients. Offer suggestions without them asking. Alert them if they have done something dumb with their business. If you care about them more than they care about themselves, you will be rewarded with loyalty and referrals. People will swear by you. I have never seen anyone be this good all the time, but I do have one “partner” who is like this part of the time.

Correct English — Most Indians don’t feel this is important. However, Americans won’t hire you if you can’t communicate in proper English. You won’t get respect or jobs. We judge you based on how good your English is. If you make spelling and punctuation mistakes, we might not hire you. If you sound garbled over the phone or put us on hold without permission, we will assume you offer horrible service. In my experience, those who communicate poorly always do pathetic work — and I work with thousands of people. So, hire a tutor, and get your skills in order otherwise you will be unemployed.

Customer Retention — Outsourcing companies do not think about customer retention. They think of wooing new clients while they neglect existing clients who will therefor shortly dump them. It is easier to give good service to an existing client than get a new client. So, spend more energy making sure all of your clients are getting what they need. You could even ask them if there are any issues with the service and you might be surprised or appalled at what you hear. Some people won’t tell you unless you ask.

Blogging — Many companies understand the importance of community building. If you run a blog, forum, or community of some sort, you attract people who get to know your writing over time. These people can become clients or share your articles on the web on their networks. Blogging is a powerful way to make meaningful connections with thousands of people. I blog daily and swear by it. I spend an average of ninety minutes per day blogging which says a lot.

Chat Support — Many people will come to your site, but if you offer online chat to visitors, you might annoy them or you might develop a dialogue which could turn them into a client. Chat services on your site are something to consider although that is more of an advanced technique than a basic one.

Free Services — My best marketing secret is to offer free services in order to maintain and develop new connections with new people. A free client can turn into a paid client after they get to know you. Free services are by definition limited and not labor intensive for you to maintain. However, if you talk to your free members after a few months, you might find that they are more open to buying from you now that they have gotten to know you. My entire business model revolves around free services and I swear by its effectiveness as 25% of my paying clients started as free members. The question is, what type of free services could you offer? Samples of your work, or some other web-based application that they could have access to online. Think long and hard about this as it could change your future.

You might also like:

Best Marketing Resources (compilation)
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2016/02/24/compilation-of-best-marketing-resources/

Why email sales promotions don’t work as well as cold calling
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/10/25/why-email-sales-promotions-dont-work-as-well-as-cold-calling/

Who are your best business connections? They are not who you think!
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/09/08/who-are-your-best-business-connections-they-are-not-who-you-think/

Create stories in your blog about the experience of your clients
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/07/18/create-stories-in-your-blog-about-the-experience-of-your-clients/

Compilation of best marketing resources

February 24, 2016 by 123outsource
Categories: Compilations, Marketing | Tagged | Leave a comment

How to get more business for your BPO or Call Center (compilation)
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/08/20/how-to-get-more-clients-for-your-bpo-or-call-center-compilation/

6 strategies for growing your outsourcing business fast
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/10/16/6-strategies-for-growing-your-outsourcing-business-fast/

The mystery of the Chinese bamboo tree and your business
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2012/08/11/the-mystery-of-the-chinese-bamboo-tree-your-business/

7 habits of successful salespeople
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/12/01/7-habits-of-successful-salespeople/

If you invested in training your BPO employees, what types of skills would you teach them?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/03/28/if-you-invested-in-training-your-bpo-employees-what-types-of-skills-would-you-teach-them/

Types of tweets that win the game
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/08/15/types-of-tweets-that-win-the-game/

Most BPO blogs use cheap looking pics
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/03/11/most-bpo-blogs-use-cheap-looking-pics/

How often do you contact old prospects?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/05/19/how-often-do-you-contact-old-prospects/

Create stories in your blog about the experience of your clients
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/07/18/create-stories-in-your-blog-about-the-experience-of-your-clients/

Social media and promoting your products with humor & information
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/05/28/social-media-promoting-your-products-with-humor-information/

Developing your sales force of novices
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2012/09/11/developing-your-sales-force-of-novices/

How to be a better outsourcing company and attract more clients
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/08/03/how-to-be-a-better-outsourcing-company-so-youll-attract-more-clients/

You lose 90% of your blog traffic by requiring membership
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/06/24/you-lose-90-of-your-blog-traffic-by-requiring-membership/

Do you know how to communicate what is better about your company?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/08/02/do-you-know-how-to-communicate-what-is-better-about-your-company/

What if your outsourcing company spent double on customer service?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/05/09/what-if-your-outsourcing-company-spent-double-on-customer-service/

Do you invest in the customer experience?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/01/27/do-you-invest-in-the-customer-experience/

Getting work for your company by advertising on 123outsource.net
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/09/04/getting-work-for-your-company-on-123outsource-net/

If someone doesn’t need your services today…
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/10/15/if-someone-doesnt-need-your-services-today/

Ann Handley’s writing style and why it works
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/12/05/ann-handleys-writing-style-and-why-it-works/

Do you help the people you sell to? You should!
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/11/19/do-you-help-the-people-you-sell-to-you-should/

Why email sales promotions don’t work as well as cold calling
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/10/25/why-email-sales-promotions-dont-work-as-well-as-cold-calling/

What separates A quality marketers from the flock
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/01/16/what-separates-a-quality-marketers-from-the-flock/

Who are your best business connections? They are not who you think they are!
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/09/08/who-are-your-best-business-connections-they-are-not-who-you-think/

Marketing is just like being a pirate lad…
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2016/02/01/how-marketing-is-just-like-being-a-pirate-lad/

Is Kim Kardashian just another face, or can you learn about business from her?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/01/11/is-kim-kardashian-just-another-face-or-can-you-learn-about-business-from-her/

Magic words in business / marketing
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/08/06/magic-words-in-business/

Thinking outside the croissant — a guide to better business decisions
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/01/10/thinking-outside-the-croissant-a-guide-to-making-better-business-decisions/

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Can you use groupons to market an outsourcing company?

February 20, 2016 by 123outsource
Categories: Marketing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

I always tell people in business — if you want to get clients fast, offer them a cut rate to begin with. That way they will be likely to try you out. If you do a good job, they will be likely to keep you. But, what if you offered coupons?

What if you offer 50% off for your first project of 10-20 hours of labor? I have a better idea. Offer a groupon. That way if someone has a friend, they can try your service together at a cut rate. That way you are in a sense networking. Or, you could offer groupons to existing clients for specials, so they could drag their friends into being your client.

Groupons grew in popularity with American restaurants several years ago. Instead of offering a discount for a single person, restaurants saw they could get more clients — a lot more clients by getting groups to come in at cut rates. Your outsourcing BPO could do the same. Would it work? It doesn’t hurt to try, and it’s such a fun idea too.

Or you could offer coupons to people to try new services that you offer. If someone is hiring you to do Linked In outreach for them, you could offer them a coupon to try your email newsletter service or some other service.

Remember, with sign up specials, you always lose in the short run, but you might get a client that you keep for five or ten years which will much more than cover for your loss! Think big and think long term!

How marketing is just like being a pirate lad…

February 1, 2016 by 123outsource
Categories: Marketing | Tagged | Leave a comment

In another blog entry, I wrote about a lad in the 1700’s whose elders decided was best suited to be a pirate. That lad was reborn and went to one of the best Chinese hacking schools that existed. Then, he learned the art of market disruption and did startups for a while. After a few years of failed startups, he had his first success — but, the venture capitalists took everything he made. The boy was angry because after all — he was the one who was supposed to be the pirate. But, I guess there is no honor among thieves.

After that, the young man decided that what he really liked was trying to do the modern equivalent of being a pirate like what he was in the 1700’s. He would shoot at other people’s boats. Swing over to their boat on a rope, fight them with swords, tie them up, plunder their gold and other valuables, and then set the ship on fire and watch it burn! His favorite part was waiting til the fire hit the powder kegs and watching the entire ship explode! Arr laddie! Twas a sight to be seen!

So, the man quit the startup business and went into mergers. He drank rum, sang pirate songs and coordinated mergers where the managers of the firm being bought out would all be fired and would go down with the ship. He went a step farther to hire a graphic designer to create graphics of the managers going down with a ship with a flag of their company. He enjoyed this career immensely. Then, he went into marketing for a while and enjoyed finding artful ways to steal the clients from particular businesses and watch them go bankrupt. Arr — the pleasure can’t be beat, even with two pints of rum!

In any case, this is a silly article, but hope you had fun reading it. It’s fun to think about what people would do if they were reincarnated into another time. I was actually a warrior in many of my earlier lives, but I evolved into a healer. From killing people to healing people — what a transition in my soul’s evolution. I no longer do Native American healing like I did in my shaman past lives. But, I do healing on myself. However, the warrior past lives from way back — several thousand years back in many cases seem to help me out in my business career. Business is like war. It’s hard to keep the troops together. So, defeating the enemy is one goal, but keeping your troops loyal these days is an even harder goal.

Ann Handley’s writing style and why it works

December 5, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Marketing | Tagged | Leave a comment

If you have ever visited marketingprofs.com, you will quickly realize that they make masterful marketing simple and understandable to the masses. Marketingprofs handles a wide variety of popular marketing and social media topics that concern us all such as: How to write a better title for our sales emails or ways for marketers to be more data driven.

One of the aspects of the writing style which I like the most is that it is easy to digest. The writing is in clear English and no decyphering is necessary. Another thing that is cute is the constant integration of themes about puppies, kitties, snacks, desserts, childhood, or other relatable themes. It is much more pleasant to read an article that has themes you can not only relate to, but that make you feel good.

Additionally, there are many graphics, charts, and other visual aids that make the reading experience more three-dimensional. Right now, I’m reading a chart about how people express laughter online. Haha wins the game with 51.4% of the total laughter while lol only is getting 1.9%? Could this really be true? Of course emoji’s often follow the verbalization of the laughter. Next, the age of the laughers was analyze in yet another chart. As a marketer I find all of this analysis very interesting — and that is no joke — lol-not!

I’m reading another article about how to woo bloggers into long term relationships to promote your brand. What I’m seeing in this article is something I saw a long time ago — subheaders. The subheaders here all have a very simple type of grammar which I have found tends to make it easier for readers to stick on the page mentally. People who spend too much time online get mentally frazzled and have some degree of ADD. Here are some of the subheaders used:

1. Identify your audience
2. Find the right bloggers
3. Create a real relationship
4. Help bloggers to grow
5. Understand what motivates each blogger
6. Show respect
7. Live up to your commitments

As you can see, each subheader starts with a simple verb in the imperative conjugation. Then, a unique continuation of the sentence fragment follows. Not all of the verbs are calls for aggressive action. Some are more introspective like understanding and some are more philosophical or philanthropical like helping others to grow. I particularly like the point about living up to your commitments as many people in social media do not publish links on time (me included although I always do it) and many others are in such a hurry to get their link that they will disrespect you (point 7 on the list) if the link doesn’t go up in lightening speed even if the link wasn’t spelled out clearly in the text of the email.

What I don’t like about marketingprofs is that they password protect their blog. If you don’t login you can only see half of the text of each article — the top half which omits the bottom line (haha.) I have so many passwords for different accounts I had to use the password retrieval feature today just to get in. Also, their focus is very narrow. It is completely focused on marketing while I would prefer a small amount of diversion into the world of business, entrepreneurship, startups, and other types of business articles that I love so much to read.

But, in any case. Marketingprofs can take you to a deeper level of understanding about online marketing and social media and especially content creation. They create content in a fun and relatable way. I hope you visit their blog and enjoy it. Anyway, thanks for reading my article — hehe☺☺

Why email sales promotions don’t work as well as cold calling

October 25, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Marketing | Tagged | Leave a comment

As a marketer, I try all different ways of having promotions. I have tried cold calling, email newsletter marketing, auto-calling, having assistants call for me, and more. Each method of contacting people has its benefits. However, certain types of contacts are best made on particular mediums.

In August 2015, I called a few thousand people about upgrade specials on our directory. We were basically selling advertising. Roughly 5% of the people I talked to upgraded. I felt so happy that I was able to make more than seven dozen sales. Then, I decided to take advantage of the automated technology that I am paying for. After I sent out my newsletter blast which reached about 4500 people, I got a few dozen inquiries for quotes. I spent an hour giving quotes, but only three bought something. My automated system actually cost me a lot of time doing quotes, but without a result.

Cold calling got me 4x the new sales per lead compared to emailing quotes…

I also recall that a month ago, my assistant called a bunch of people for me. They wanted quotes too. I gave ten quotes by email to people who claimed they were interested and only one of them bought something. The lesson I am learning is that when a client actually talks to a salesperson who knows the product well, they are more likely to buy. When I talked to clients personally by phone I was able to sell to about 40% of them. However, the purchase rate of clients who got an email quote from us was only 10%.

So, what is the moral to this story? The best system I had for sales was to have my assistant sit in the same room with me and filter through the list of prospects. Every time she got one who was interested, she would have me call them immediately. I closed a lot of sales very efficiently this way and made a lot of money. The personal touch is critical in marketing. These days it is so hard to actually get to talk to someone knowledgeable by phone. People often appreciate being able to talk to a critical higher level person at a company. So, leverage that time that you spend with people and use it the right way.

Many higher level business people want a lower level assistant to do all of their busy-work for them. This is a mistake. The lower level people are good for filtering and busy-work, not for handling the critical aspects of a business conversation. Even if they know the right answers, they don’t have the special energy or mojo to give the client the satisfaction that they crave — the satisfaction of talking to a high energy higher level manager or executive for about ten minutes. Make each minute count and use it the most efficient way!

To wrap up the various contact methods, email marketing is good for general reminders and links to new articles in your blog, but not for sales (at least not in my business). Auto-calling is also good for more critical reminders as many people have emails that filter out critical messages. Cold Calling (or warm calling if your clients know you) is much better if you need to actually change a business relationship. In advertising it is common to renew your existing level of advertising. Contacting people for a renewal can be done through auto-call or email marketing. However, contacting them to change or upgrade their plan should ideally be done using a very specialized and targetted list and done by hand.

Using Linked In to network for your BPO or Call Center

September 29, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Call Center, Marketing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

It is not easy to promote your call center and gain clients. You can cold call companies, promote a web site or use social media. There are so many social media sites out there it is hard to know which one is the right one. For business, LinkedIn has some definitive advantages.

The average LinkedIn member has an average yearly household income of $109,000
50% of LinkedIn members have decision-making authority for their companies.

But, how do you use LinkedIn for your call centers?

Create a profile
You need to create a LinkedIn company page. Make sure you fill the page in very completely with all of your background professional information and every pertinent fact about your company.

Post regular updates
You can post regular updates on your profile about what you are working on at the moment.

Connect by Networking
One way to gain new contacts on LinkedIn is to contact relevant people who follow your contacts. It’s easier to make a new contact if you have some common ground.

Participate in Groups
You can join up to fifty LinkedIn groups and participate in call center discussions. You can also provide good answers to other people’s questions. Being regularly seen helps, but being seen as a reliable source of intelligent commentary and knowledge helps even more.

LinkedIn Advertising
We tried LinkedIn Advertising for my discussion group. We did get new followers, but the cost was not cheap. It was $2 per click and we got a new follower for every $12-14 we spent which was not terrible, but not really cost effective.

Paid Memberships
LinkedIn limits the quantity of professionals that you can contact in a month. So, unless you have twenty profiles you use together, you can’t contact that many people. Paid memberships let you contact more people to network with.

Start a Group
In outsourcing, most of the groups have job postings. Our LinkedIn group has a lot of interesting outsourcing and business discussions.

What is a follower on LinkedIn worth comparatively?
I run 17 social media campaigns and I am constantly trying to figure out what a follower is worth. I can measure click patterns and see how many of them like particular blog articles. However, the actual human beings doing the clicks from LinkedIn are much more influential and hence could be considered to be of a higher value than perhaps a Twitter click to my site. How much more valuable is a LinkedIn click than a Twitter or Facebook click? I would tend to say more, but how much more is hard to say. If you compare various social networks, compare the costs of developing a group that will give you 1000 clicks a month to your blog or site. It might take a much higher quantity of followers to get the same result on Twitter, but might be easier to attain those followers. The math is complicated. But, if you want to get ahead in networking, you need to be able to identify the most time effective methods and avenues of promoting your call centers!

LinkedIn is not big on outsourcing
Keep in mind that there are not many outsourcers using LinkedIn and they are not at all interactive. To market your call center or BPO you need to find regular business owners who could be in any field that might need your services. Get to know them and see if they have an interest in trying you out.

Who are your best business connections? They are not who you think!

September 8, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Marketing, Popular on Twitter | Tagged , | Leave a comment

I am sitting here doing my monthly article reading. I pour through dozens of interesting (and a few not so interesting) business articles to find interesting content to write about. Well, here on Harvard Business Review I’m reading about how dangerous it is to assume your career is safe. I think it is dangerous to assume anything is safe. In this world, nothing is constant except change — and my Guru says we have to wait for change!

But, your best business contacts may not be who you think they are. Your family, close friends, schoolmates, and close associates at work might not be your best contacts. In a sense it is unpredictable who your best contacts are, and one may be great at one point in your career while another might be good at another time.

It is often the case that your best business contacts are people who you have known for years, but with weak ties. Maybe a customer who you had slightly longer and more interesting conversations with, or a vendor’s assistant who was a little more knowledgeable or interesting. That winning connection could be anyone. Perhaps it pays to keep a database of your interesting connections and try to develop slightly less weak ties with them. You never know what could happen. I met some of the most interesting industry related people I know on Twitter. Unfortunately, they were anti-social and the relationships didn’t last. Maybe I should go back to hanging around at coffee houses — those coffee house types never get tired of yapping with me!

You might also like:

My favorite business dream was about lions and giraffes
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2016/01/23/the-best-business-dream-i-ever-had-was-about-lions-giraffes/

Steve Jobs Principle — the more people you network with outside your field
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/08/28/outsource-steve-jobs-principle-the-more-people-you-network-w-outside-your-field/

You don’t get to the next level in business by being in a hurry
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/11/13/you-dont-get-to-the-next-level-in-business-by-being-in-a-hurry/

Is Kim Kardashian just another face, or can you learn about business from her?

January 11, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Marketing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

There are personal brands and corporate brands.
In the end, a successful brand makes a personal connection. Some people say that Kim Kardashian leveraged her family connections to gain fame and get a foot in the door to have a media presence. Her father’s prestige as a well connected Attorney who was involved with the most famous law suit in American history (OJ Simpson’s case) really helped plant a seed that flourished over the years.

Kim wanted to build her personal brand by getting the attention of the media.
Having a sex tape with a celebrity got her in the tabloids and general media. With one simple tape, she elevated her status from just another pretty face to a potential celebrity. After this bold and decisive claim to fame, she decided to make a name for herself as a trend setter and built this reputation on her various social media accounts. Kim spent a lot of time connecting and engaging with her followers which is absolutely essential in social media.

Using celebrity status to engage the media even more.
Once Kim had attained celebrity status, she built more of a presence with it by having her own show on television. She also posed “au natural” for several magazines to create more controversy and gain more attention. In the media, you can be fun, or you can be interesting, but nothing gains more attention than controversy.

Summary
Additionally, it should be said that Kim understands the entire trademark process. She knows the legal aspects of what to brand, how to brand it, and when, etc.

Finally, Kim partnered with very successful people to create brands. She was part of Shoedazzle, Bell Noel jewelry,a video game app deal, and more. Basically she leveraged the name she created for herself to market products.

To sum it up, Kim is a master of building a success on another success. She used family connections and a sex tape to gain fame. Then, she used it to build even more fame, and brand products using her name. Her innate and natural beauty is also critical to the process as she has a very unique and stunning look.

What can your business learn from Kim’s success?
First of all many businesses are on social media. Most social media accounts are dreadfully dull. You can learn from Kim how to jazz up your social media. Her Twitter account is very visual with lots of sexy and stunning photos. As a business, you will need more meat to captivate your audience, but the dazzle always helps. Your business can also learn to engage with people via social media. However, in general, a successful business is successful because you connect with people in a meaningful way and help them in substantial ways. And if all else fails, you can urge your corporate president to make a sex tape with a celebrity. Sure, it is not an ethical or moral thing to do — but, it’s all part of maintaining an image (not necessarily the one you want though.)

Marketing Your Outsourcing Company

November 24, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsource Marketing, Semi-Popular | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Marketing your outsourcing company – Basics
 
Introduction
If you run a company that provides outsourced services or wishes to do so, it is critical that you know how to market your services effectively.  There are many different types of products and services that are typically outsourced.  123outsource.net is familiar with services only, and specializes in promoting a dozen or so professional categories with their respective sub-categories.  There are many facets for marketing your business involving online promotion, public relations, customer service, and quality of service.  All of these aspects are critical and must be perfected if you intend to gain market share.  Being Visable helps you attract clients, but giving clients positive experience helps you keep them and get referrals.
 
Why listen to us?
123outsource.net is owned by the same individual who owns 123notary.com which has been around since 2000 and is the prime venue for effectively marketing notaries public in the United States.  When it comes to internet marketing, we are experienced.  We have been outsourcing programming and other tasks for years and have some basic common sense ideas for what effectively helps a company function more efficiently and provide more desireable service to clients. 
 
Online Promotion
If clients can’t find your company, it doesn’t matter how good you are.  A good web presence makes you accessible to the public, but is only the seed in growing your business.  The truth is that most companies worldwide get most of their business from word of mouth, regardless of how sophisticated the technology they use is.  A small restaurant or a large international high-tech company get noticed primarily because of word of mouth.  If you have a base of satisfied customers, that base can grow with referrals and repeat customers to result in a much larger customer base.  But, to get your INITIAL clientele you need a good online presence as well as a comprehensive marketing mix appropriate for your company and industry.  This outsourcing blog intends to be very general in its approach, so please use a consultant for specific marketing tips.
 
Components of an Online Presence
A well designed, easy to use, informative website is where every company needs to start.  Websites get outdated in content and design every several years, so don’t be afraid to devote part of your budget to periodic or a regular schedule for renovations.  Typical characteristics of an old style website are pictures with faded colors, broken links, information that was from many years ago, and design styles that were popular in the 90’s.  Sites today use brighter colors, high definition photos, and cutting edge web design. 
 
Optimizing Your Website
Regardless of the quality of your site, you will not get noticed without a good optimization campaign.  Optimization is generally complicated and expensive.  Please  visit our SEO page to learn the basics of optimization so you will understand what SEO professionals are talking about when you contact them.   The basics are that certain pages need to emphasize certain keywords, and that internal pages need to be linked to each other in a way that emphasizes keyword similarities and user-friendly functionality.  Additionally, having supporting content from blogs, facebook, twitter, forums, and other social media is actually magical in terms of search engine performance.
 
Public Relations Outreach
One way a company can market themselves is to contact specific companies that could use their services.  Email campaigns are common ways for SEO and web design companies to do outreach.  However, emails normally get discarded if the sender is not known, especially with promotional emails.  Calling companies manually by phone can be an excellent way to attract new business.  If the employee making the call is polite and helpful, but not pushy, new clients can be obtained.  If you are serious about gaining a new client through outreach, its more effective to offer the prospective client something substantial for free.  A few hundred dollars worth of free services is a great way to woo a serious potential client.  Make sure they intend on spending at least a $500 per month for at least a year before you give them anything for free.
 
Customer Service
If your company offers a pleasant experience to your clients, you are more likely to accumulate long term customers.  Good customer service is critical.  The people who answer the phone should speak well, and emails should be returned quickly. Internal management should make sure that all job tasks are explained clearly to the workers, and that the output of the workers is scrutinized BEFORE it gets back to the client.  Make life easy for your clients even if it costs you a lot more.  They will remember you for this.
 
Quality Work
Doing good work is critical.  The speed and accuracy of your work makes or breaks your business regardless of how good your promotional stengths are.  All of the facets of a good marketing mix need to be balanced. If you are good at work but lousy at internet presence, you are compromising yourself. But, if you can be fairly good at all of the components mentioned in this quick outsource blog entry, then you stand a good chance of succeeding in the outsourcing world. 
 
Please see our other related blog entries to read more about customer service, double checking work, and more!

Tweets:
(1) If clients can’t find you, it doesn’t matter how good you are. A good web presence makes all the difference.
(2) Get your initial clients from the web & then get clients from word of mouth! (or word of mouse)
(3) Marketing your outsourcing company from A to Z

You might also like:

Most BPO blogs use cheap looking pics
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/03/11/most-bpo-blogs-use-cheap-looking-pics/

Creating a vacuum in business
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/02/28/creating-a-vacuum-in-business/

123outsource.net’s online presence

November 24, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Outsource Marketing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

123outsource.net – Online Presence
 
Introduction
123outsource.net is a relatively new outsourcing directory for outsourcing companies.  Due to the owners extensive experience in internet marketing over the last decade, we have been able to have a very successful and fast start marketing our site.  We used all of the basic techniques that we wrote about in our SEO section.  We optimized each page for certain related and important keywords, and then created an internal link structure to strengthen those pages.  Additionally, our new social media campaign has worked magic to gain us immediate results on google. 
 
Keywords
We now show up on google on roughly four hundred keywords, and get excellent placement under many of our most relevant and critical keywords, especially:  outsourcing directory, outsource directory, bpo directory, kpo directory, call center directory, lpo directory, etc.  We are currently working on optimizing for roughly twenty other critical keywords.
 
Take Social Media, Mix With Water, Get Results!
The results of our social media campaign were so good, it reminds me of this joke by Yacov Smirnoff in the 1980’s.  I don’t remember his exact verbiage, but here is what I remember.
 
When I first came to America, I went to a supermarket.  It was so huge, much larger than small grocery stores in Russia.  Then I went to Aisle 1 and saw milk powder… mix with water… get milk.  Wow!!  Then I went to Aisle 2 and saw orange juice powder… mix with water and get orange juice.   Everything is so convenient in this country.   Then, I went to Aisle 3 and saw BABY POWDER and said, what a country!  I make big family today!
 
Social media including Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and forums improved our search results on every site we used it on.  But, the results were quick and only took a few weeks which is amazing.  Take social media, mix with water, get results! Its actually time consuming and complicated, not to mention expensive, but the results don’t take long to come.  Google places a heavy emphasis on social media because it shows that you are not only serious, but want to interact with the world around you.
 
Pay-Per-Click
We created an extensive pay-per-click account with google.  We are now visable under 400 keywords in various countries.  Our pay-per-click network gets us over one thousand visitors today, not to mention the traffic from our organic search results which are not excellent under many of our top twenty keywords.
 
Link Building
We are engaged in a link exchange program where we offer free listings on our outsourcing directory in exchange for a link to our site.  We are rapidly gaining more and more incoming links which strengthens our search results on google as well as incoming traffic.

Trick-or-Treater wearing Ann Handley costume knocks on my door

September 12, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: Humor | Tagged , | Leave a comment

This entry is purely fictional as nobody in my neighborhood goes trick or treating except to units advertising that they are “open” for Halloween.

It was a dark and windy night. Little kids kept coming to our door with expectant faces longing for an endless acquisition of candy. It all seemed so obsessive compulsive, and all at such a tender young age. A few witches, goblins, skeletons, cowboys, and others who looked like miniature members of “The Village People” came knocking. It was all so typical. I had seen it for so many decades. Nothing seemed to change.

Then a few minutes later, a girl came in very distinctive, tell-tale black glasses — the same exact kind Ann Handley wears in her pictures and uses in her graphics for social media posts. The girl was wearing the same shawl that Ann Handley wore in pictures too. What was this? Was this an eighth grader’s idea of a costume?

ME: Young lady, aren’t you a little young to be an Ann Handley look-alike?

GIRL: Well, actually, in my age group, statistically 2.3% of the market segments of eighth graders from my parent’s income bracket in my town and similar towns in California are interested in marketing including sub-segments of Social Media Marketing, B2B, email marketing, and other marketing specialties.

ME: Well, you certainly know your metrics.

GIRL: Those are segments, not metrics. However, I learned that in this neighborhood, 43.2% of homes will open their doors for trick-or-treaters between the hours of 7pm and 8:45pm, but what we call the “bounce rate” starts rising gradually after that.

ME: I guess one of us did her homework! So, what’s your favorite neighborhood to go trick-or-treating, metrics aside?

GIRL: I like the neighborhood directly East of here. They are mostly Mexican and often offer SALSA & CHIPS to trick or treaters. Unfortunately, one played a trick on us and put some habanero sauce and mixed it in the salsa without warning us.

ME: Interesting. Well, I have asked you some questions. Would you like to ask me any?

GIRL: Yes, I have walked several blocks to get to your area. I’m tired, exhausted, and have lost my will to bang on doors anymore. Now that I am in your doorway, my only question is — WILL THERE BE SNACKS?– or treats?

ME: It is uncanny how similar you are to Ann Handley. Her two obsessions in life seem to be fun marketing articles that appeal to people’s emotions, that are fun, easy to read, and packed with meaningful marketing knowledge. Her other obsessions is asking, “Will there be snacks?”

GIRL: Well, you know us eighth graders, our teachers make us do a lot of reading.

ME: Interesting. Well, you will be very interested in the types of treats I have. Since I’m tired of young children who want a happy Halloween experience — since that is NOT what this holiday is supposed to be about: I have Habanero potato chips. Wanna bag?

GIRL: Hmm. Well, I lived through it once. I was thinking more along the lines of Snickers.

ME: Well, speaking of chocolate, not that you brought that to my attention, I had habanero dark chocolate from wine country. I was going to buy the cabernet chocolate, but I thought I’d get this instead to spice things up a little too much.

GIRL: You’re getting warmer.

ME: I also have wasabe chips and … oh look here. I do have a Snickers bar. It is in the pumpkin here on the table.

GIRL: Okay (reaching… )

A horrifying hand that is disfigured, oozing with ooze, and very bony with long fingernails sticks out of the pumpkin.

GIRL: (Shrieks) Ahhhhhhhh!

The girl bolted and ran so fast, that all that remained, was a pair of distinctive Ann Handley style black glasses on the ground. Miraculously, they were not broken. They survived this 14 year old marketing virtuoso, and the fall to the ground. And so ends my charming Halloween marketing tale. Until next time!