Part 4 of 9
Good Day to You, My Business Builder Friend,
I want you to know even though we haven’t met and I may not know your name, I know something important about you. I know you’re one of the few smarter managers in Singapore and you’re staying with me because you realize I’m teaching something valuable that can help you have more business soon and into the future.
I’m thankful for you reading these daily news installments. We were about to go into this discussion at the end of the last (3rd) installment. In the next 5-minutes, you’ll understand much more.
What Advertising Really Is, and
Why Should You Use It
(Advertising is and should be “selling in print.” The only real legitimate purpose for advertising is to inform, and sell something. If we’re not selling we’re wasting money.) “Branding” is for getting your name before the entire world. It’s for huge corporations like Coca-Cola. It’s not for you. The advertising I’m doing within Singapore, will “brand” you for Singaporeans. That is all that is necessary. But even if no one paid me to write for them, and if you only had a fair web PAGE in the right place, you would bring in more customers. If you’re seen in Singapore Shopper, just appearing in that “medium” will help you have more traffic. I’ll explain why.
Within Singapore, we know nearly 76% of Singaporeans are Chinese. Chinese people tend to eat Chinese food and do business with more Chinese people. (If the CCP continues operating as they are, that number is destined to grow!)
Chinese people study diligently, seek excellence, and become industrious and successful earners. That is part of modern Chinese culture. This culture wants the better things life can offer, and why not? You work for it and you can earn and should enjoy it!
Sometimes buying a big dinner or holding a lavish affair (like a wedding for example) is a way to earn appreciation and respect in the community. (This is common to nearly all affluent cultures.)
If you have a page seen in the Chinese community, even if it is only showing photos of your food and saying for example, “I specialize in Cantonese food,” that is enough to get many Chinese people to decide to visit and try your meals and then continue coming to you.
This may be the first time they have heard of you. If you got only 20 new customers in a year from the advertisement, it probably will earn more for you than the cost of the advertising because it leads to more people referring friends, or bringing them along for a dinner. (With my offer you’re going to see many more than 20-new customers each year!)
Good Advertising doesn’t cost, It Pays and it can, and should pay you a handsome profit! BUT WAIT, there’s something else to cover. It should enlarge your regular crowd and your reliable monthly average income. The advertising I write + Exciting Dining Weekend Edition + the new Sales and Specials page causes that to happen automatically!
On the other hand, if you sell a different ethnic food style, that’s good! Some days that can be just right for anyone who wants a change. But to whom should they go and what style should they try? I can help sway their decision so they decide to visit YOU. I CAN write advertising-copy for you, but you are welcome to write for yourself and I, unless you object, may make minor improvements in spelling, grammar, and sentence structure, and publish it. (If you want it written in a Chinese dialect you must write it, and send me a jpg photo of what you wrote via email. I can install that photo into your ad landing page and if it’s not very long also into your pointer ads! You can take that photo with your cell phone.)
(It’s your choice about my corrections. A few small corrections will cost you nothing. Bigger work is paid work. I recommend you allow me to clean up spelling, grammar, and sentence structure at least. English is a difficult second language! Most writers who don’t make their living writing need help sometimes.)
Just remember, simply appearing with photos and your name in the Singapore Shopper guide will bring you more customer traffic. We know that from years of surveys in the telephone directory business.
If potential customers don’t know you exist, that’s the “kiss of death.” If they never have heard of you, you’re in trouble! Every new “eatery” will draw away some of your potential customers. That’s another reason why you must advertise! You must continually market yourself and your business. In this present economic climate marketing and advertising will save your business!
Years ago a young assistant to a famous business operator on a train ride observed, “Sir, we are the exclusive producer of this product, so why do we continue to advertise?” The older man replied,
“Marketing and advertising are the engines that pull the train forward.” That was spoken by J. Paul Getty, the man who created Getty Oil Corporation. Mr. Getty became the world’s wealthiest man in 1967.
If you’re not advertising you’re sending your potential customers to someone else! Mr. Getty wouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t either!
Of course, nowadays you need more income and more customers because with the state of the world’s economy and the obvious “New Normal” changes coming on, you want a list of customers coming to you regularly. Without them, you won’t be able to know your average monthly income. Without that “average income” number, your life goes into financial disorganization!
You can be angry at the world, or angry about the state of the economy, angry about politics, angry that “the competition” is getting your customers. Whatever it is, the way to win in this game is to let people know what you and I already know.
The word from those who research cafes and restaurants is that your food is excellent. ( I don’t write to everyone. I write to the best!) Your service is pleasant and quick. Customers really like you. That’s why I write to you and not just anyone! I am sending this letter to the owners of cafes and restaurants written up in local publications and considered to be the best that Singapore can offer!
For this moment I’m asking you to simply stay with me and go through every word of these installments because it’s not for everyone. It’s for the city’s most excellent cafes and restaurants. You deserve to be included!
Your decision can place you into Singapore Shopper Magazine. This guide is like nothing else available in Singapore. It is destined to be the most popular and often referred to café/restaurant guide in the city! That’s why you need to stay with this offer because it’s going to help you maintain stability in your life while many of the others in town are (sadly) drowning in financial trouble!
Get in as soon as you can because I’m planning on a modest number of advertisers (some restaurants and cafes, and some other shops) and those slots are going to disappear fast! I don’t want you to miss your place in this café/restaurant guide. You shouldn’t want to miss your place in it either! For a very reasonable price, you will have the best advertising and marketing for the dining-out crowd in the city!
Your food may be as good as what is served in a big hotel restaurant. But if the reading public does not know you have a café or restaurant in town, they will never come to you. I have seen several cafés open and close. The food was great but there was no money invested in all the other things that make a lasting good impression, as for examples; good signage, a neat, clean exterior and interior, and good-looking menus. (I wonder how long Morrisons Restaurant could continue in business with a sign that looked like this! This negligence made such a bad impression it ended up in a magazine!)
Costs To Do It Yourself. Let’s assume you think you’ll write your own website and do all of this yourself. You’ll probably hire someone to write a website for you and he wants to justify a high price by building several pages. You’ll pay $6,000 for a web SITE, Add at least $300 per year for hosting and maintenance; But wait! There’s more. Now the question is, “How will I get people to see it?” That’s a very difficult and expensive question to answer.
You have paid a fortune for the website and hosting and now you might pay at least $200 per month to advertise the website. Add it all up. These expenses are killing you. But, that’s not the real cost. The real cost is, you’re losing customers you should be getting because your advertising is done wrong. Those customers are going to someone else! That makes for a huge loss!!!
When we reach this Techy Created Website the technician has your business name on one page and photos of food. Then there’s another page with more photos of the empty restaurant. An empty restaurant photo says to me “No one comes here. the food is terrible.”
I like photos of a busy restaurant full of happy patrons!
Then there is a different page explaining where you are and how to reach you, and a different location for how to order takeaway food, and another page telling your hours of operation, and another page to look for a map to find you. Finding a “Contact Us” page is often nearly impossible. This is ridiculously stupid! This describes a website built to repel potential customers. I have seen several of these in Singapore. The website builder was justifying his high price with more pages, but as an advertiser, he’s incompetent and should not be hired!
<“Customers are an interruption to my day.”
Many of these brilliant website developers hide the “contact us” page so completely I have had to spend 15-minutes hunting for a contact address!
Putting yourself into Facebook is no better! My issue is not that Facebook is bad. It’s alright. It does the messaging job neatly for friends. But it’s not an advertising medium.
My point is, finding your contact information should be very easy. If it is not, this is like saying, “I don’t want to talk to customers. I don’t want your money. Don’t write to me.”
Particularly in hotels, potential customers/guests want to reach the restaurant. Many hotels will not display a restaurant’s email address. Apparently they don’t want their restaurants to be reached by the restaurant’s customers! It’s infuriating and I guarantee, an infuriated prospective customer is going somewhere else. That prospective customer intends to rent a room in a hotel with one or more good restaurants. If he can’t reach the restaurant he is likely to reserve a room elsewhere! The hotel pushes potential customers away by banning restaurant contact email addresses!
“I’m a businessman. I have no time to receive mail from customers.” Spoken by a man who aims to shoot his foot.
Actually the purpose of going to work every day is to serve customers. That’s why I’m here writing to you and presumably that is why you open your doors each morning too.
Whether you do business with me or not, my advice for many good reasons is to make your regular email address prominent on your website or web page, or even on your free Facebook page. But many people cannot reach you via a Facebook or Instagram Messinger address:
I strongly recommend for you to set up an email address at Gmail through Google, or Yahoo or Proton Mail or some other local service you like. Make that address prominently seen on your web page or your free Facebook page, and of course, on any landing page I build for you.
Never make Facebook your only internet address. It’s too likely that you’ll never be found or someone will tamper with your Facebook account and your page will be lost. Computer data is fragile. Many things can happen. That is why I prominently display my Gmail address. I have addresses for the website and they forward to Gmail anyway! A forwarding address is another potential trouble spot. Same with forms. All those cute pop-up forms that annoy us feed through an address that sometimes might stop working! I want to be directly reachable so you can write to me at Gmail and feel assured I’ll receive your note.
Own a real email address. I can develop a well-done web page/Landing Page hosted within the magazine. I can make that available to you at a reasonable price and with more potential dining-out customer reach than anyone else in Singapore. If you’re buying an advertisement with me, I’m presently building the landing pages as part of the package. You’re paying for a continuous run of your advertising in the magazine. I’m building the landing page (which is most of my labor) for free! And you must approve of it or advise me of changes you want before I consider the job finished and bill you for it!
Thanks for reading and learning. We’re getting closer to you completely understanding how to survive the economic changes happening now and into the future. This is a serious “big deal.” You’ve worked years to have your business and now we want to be sure you continue in business! That’s why I’m writing to you. In the next installment, I’ll discuss why I think What has been going on across the Internet Is Absolutely Crazy! (….And how I can make sanity for you on all advertising you run with me!) You should receive a link to that page tomorrow. Thanks again for reading.
You can read ahead using these links or wait for the rest to arrive daily. or download all of it now as a PDF
9) Bonus Thought: Your Life Is Based On Comparison
