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Today's marketplace is crowded with smart and talented business owners. If you want to hook your business on to the fast track, your first step would be to increase the exposure of your business to the market. Let's just agree that without exposure, your market wouldn't even notice that you're there among the other smart and talented business owners. So how is it possible to get yourself spotted? The answer is -
Be Remarkable!
Have you wonder how can you become remarkable?
Be A Sore Thumb
Sticking out like a sore thumb is one of the ways, just take a leaf out of William Hung's book. He is definitely one hell of a sore thumb and everyone was scouring the Net just to find more video clips of him, be it spoofs or interviews. He was not expecting any fame from the American Idol but it did gather him the most popularity votes among the other misfits. I would say that his fame is fueled by his remarkability because most people have the habit of sharing the latest interesting news with their friends. His remarkability travelled by words of mouth and the media decided to feature him to boost their own rating. In the end, the man had enough exposure to shoot him to fame. He had received marriage proposals from strangers around the world, he was cast in a Hong Kong movie and he had his own music video with gorgeous babes dancing around him.
You would want that for your business, don't you? Note: I am talking about the exposure.
So how can you add a touch of 'remarkability' to your business and be 100% sure that everyone will glance at your business at least once?
Here's how one guy became remarkable in his own way:
The One Million Dollar Man
I can still remember a particular Monday night when my partners and I attended a networking session for online marketeers. The entire social event was a frenzy session of exchanging business cards with as many people as we can say 'Hi' to, but one man distinguished himself among the rest by handing out black-white copies of US$1,000,000. He went around giving out 'cash' freely and extending his well-wishes to everyone. You can expect everybody to welcome his 'gifts' with open arms. Best of all, they are cheaper than conventional business cards and yet they are more remarkable. In fact, they are so remarkable that I even see people willingly introduce their friends to him!
When you are remarkable, words about you will naturally spread and your amount of exposure becomes viral. The Million Dollar man has so much attention that he stood out among the rest of us, just like a sore thumb. People just had to see what was the buzz around him.
Another way of generating remarkability is to boost your presence in your market. In other words, your name should be synonymous with your targeted market.
Get A Bigger Slice Of The Mindshare Pie
In the past, businesses built this presence by buying advertisements spaces on the magazines, newspaper, billboards, etc. These media were deeply rooted in the daily life of consumers for they were the popular places where consumers look for solutions, education and entertainments. So, when they were facing some problems, they would turn to the advertising companies as they were the most prominent then - remember that the companies had been advertised in the major media. The media had helped companies to capture a large mindshare of their targeted market. The companies brand had become remarkable in the eyes of their market.
However, the mindsh
are landscape has started to change. More and more people are searching for their solutions, entertainment, alternative income, education and even groceries from the Internet. But our focus should be on the social networks such as Facebook which has over 66 millions of active users and online forums, or anywhere else where people seek for answers everyday. Instead of the companies using the media to spread their names, they used existing social network to do the same! Netizens who find the companies' products to be interesting and remarkable will be very likely to spread the words to their friends. Likewise, their friends will introduce the same products to their own networks of friends.
This is also known as web 2.0 marketing, where buzzworthy news are spread like wildfire among groups of friends with similar interest. Every business owner would want this kind of viral exposure, it lends remarkability to their businesses.
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 actually refers to the current trend of the Internet. It basically means the proliferation of user-generated contents, compared to contents from authoritative sources such as universities. The use of web 2.0 marketing is a very cost effective way to generate the remarkability for your business.
For example, when a company wants to sell high-end cameras, they can easily find their targeted market in online photography forums and social networking groups. They just need to create a buzz in those particular areas and will start seeing potential customers discussing about it in the forum. These potentials will multiply when the discussion is carried on into other forums too. In other words, instead of paying a huge cost to get your products in front of TV viewers, you can spend a tiny fraction of the same cost to create a buzz in web 2.0 and see how the exposure for your products grows!
The Internet has already become an integral part of modern life and it has garnered an even larger mindshare than conventional media. If you are serious about growing your business, there is no doubt that you should start to consider building your business presence on the Internet and be nothing less than 'Remarkable' in your targeted market.
In fact, these companies and organization have already done it and had seen great feedback:
Ogilvy & Mather - Used Facebook to promote the Motorola Q mobile phone last December. They said 'much more money' would be needed to achieve the same level of consumer awareness and interest using traditional media.
Mediaedge:cia - Used MSN Spaces to promote Canon digital SLR cameras. They said 'The campaign exceeded expectations with over 3,030,000 comments in just two months'.
Paramount Pictures - Used Facebook and MySpace to promote the monster film, Cloverfield.
The buzz that these promotions had seen is a testimony to how low-cost advertising using Web 2.0 can deliver huge exposure to your targeted market and boost your online presence. You can start learning the ropes immediately by googling 'Viral Marketing' and 'Social bookmarking'.
If you own a business and really want to distinguish yourself from everyone else, you have to be remarkable in your very own way. You can either stick out like a really sore thumb that attract attentions everyway you go - which is a good thing for business - or you can start building your online presence with web 2.0 and attract global attention right in your home sweet home. Which is a better way to gain exposure? You choose.
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