What Percentage of Discretionary Spending is Spent by Expats? Answer:

We just recently got a French luxury travel website as a new client. They are opening a Seoul, Korea based sales force and targeting Koreans with disposable discretionary income. When they came to us, they were dead set on only advertising through Naver — NOT Google.

I find that most clients who speak with our Sparkah Asia team come to us with the same mind set. They look at the naver media kit and sure enough, the numbers don’t lie:

Only 1.8 Percent of the Population in Seoul Korea and the rest of the Country does NOT use Naver.

In other words, only 1.8 % of Koreans exclusively use Google.

So it would be a logical choice to solely focus on web marketing via Naver. But you’d be wrong.

Everybody is thinking along the same lines. All your competitors are also targeting that same 98.2% of the pie. Every industry and every business is competing for the limited disposable discretionary income of that 98.2% of the pie. So you see our argument: You should seriously consider targeting that 1.8% of the Korean population.

WAIT.

Before you laugh and walk away at the seemingly insignificant market size we’re advising you to focus your marketing and business strategy on, do you know who that 1.8% is? If you tighten the geography and ask what percent of the people just in the city of Seoul, not all of Korea, exclusively use Google, that number almost quadruples to 5.7%.

Why You Should Target Expats and Foreigners with Google – Not Naver

The people who make up that 1.8% of Korea are mostly all in Seoul. And they make up 5.7% of Seoul. They are Expats and Foreigners.

Their culture, their buying habits, their spending habits (totally different than buying habits), and disposable income is completely different than that of native Koreans. Native Koreans, especially Seoulites are aggressive savers. Its common for a mid 20′s Korean female to have over 100,000 USD in liquid savings. Westerners, especially Americans, can only survive for about 6 weeks if they lose their job. And they are typically about $40,000 in credit card debt.

So here’s the multi billion dollar question (literally): What percentage of the discretionary spending in Seoul Korea do you think expats and foreigners command? What percent of the luxury hand bags, movie tickets, Ferraris, and bottles of Soju is purchased by NON-Korean Expats? What is the expat spending in seoul korea?

You’ll have to watch the video: Google SEO Expert Consultant in Seoul Korea Reveals Expat Spending in Korea and How to Get to Page One of Google.

Public relations just aren’t relating well to the public any more. So how do you get your message out to the masses?

If you were around when the first remote controls came out, you remember how nauseating it was to sit next to the person with the remote. Every commercial advert was an opportunity to flip through the channels fast enough to produce the illusion of watching three programs in parallel.

That was the beginning of the end of major networks’ hold on your mind. The media is now dead.

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s annual State of the News Media report, cable news viewership for CNN, MSNBC and Fox News fell substantially in 2010 — 13.7 percent in aggregate for a sharper decline than any other sector. Broadcast news, which has experienced declining viewership for years, was down another 3.4 percent in 2010

Just up until this moment, you had butts in seats and heads in beds. All you had to do is persuade a news editor or broadcaster to cover your story and you’d. And to do that, all you had to do was know someone who knew a journalist or broadcaster. That person was the PR man. The public relations man made it his duty to know who’s Nielsen ratings were going up and what that anchor’s favorite libation was.

When’s the last time you heard the word “Nielsen?”

And you’re still looking for a public relations firm?

Now, instead of a simple plastic remote, everyone’s got the newest iphone and android. They are tweeting, facebooking, google+ ing, and watching hulu all at the same time while watching TV if at all. In other words, you don’t necessarily need press or news coverage anymore. Telling your story in a blog is even more convincing. After all, your market has already met the bloggers at some Tweetup. When’s the last time you met and shook hands with a news anchor?

To be fair, PR firms, good PR firms can indeed still get you out to the masses. They can take your company and craft a public interest story around it and get that story out to the people who would be your customers. And good PR firms are probably the best suited for this task.

Alternately, you can look for a so called’ “social media marketing firm.” And maybe they know all the ins and out of conversion rates and CTRs of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc… But let’s be honest here. Reaching into the hearts and minds of the masses is much harder than learning how to install a “Like Button” in WordPress.

So PR firms will get you ink in a newspaper that nobody will read and Social Media Marketing Firms will get you in front of millions of “eyeballs” in a way that fades from memory in a blink. So how do you get your message out to the masses?

Truth is, the media landscape is changing so fast that there’s really not even a classification of a kind of firm that would reliably get you out there in the media. So instead of looking for a kind of company, look for a company that does the kinds of things that will:

1. Get you on page one of Google (without SEO — because SEO is DEAD)

2. Consistently and daily build your contact database
a. Facebook page likes
b. Twitter followers
c. Youtube subscribers (this is a huge missed opportunity for most companies)
d. Google group email subscribers (there’s a reason we don’t recommend Constant Contact or other email blasting software)
e. Blogger alliances so you build your own grass roots syndication… ummm… syndicate.

3. Build you a good-will base
a. Quality Youtube programming that demonstrates that you know what you’re talking about.
If you’re selling investment opportunities, become the authority on financial news. If you’re selling dietary supplements become the expert on health. Prove that you know more than your competitors.
b.  Blog enlightening and valuable epiphanies.
There are only two requirements for making a sale. If these two requirements are met, you’re guaranteed a sale. First, credibility. People don’t want to think. They want to know that if they stick with you, they can trust you to think for them. Demonstrate your superior thinking and understanding of your industry in your blog. Second, rapport. no matter how brilliant you are, people like to pay people they like. So make your blog entertaining. Make people feel warm, fuzzy, and happy you exist.

4. Measure, measure, measure.
a. At the end of every single message you put out there, you must have a “call to action.” Measure, measure, measure. You’d be in high hog heaven if you worked with a marketing firm that religiously measured each and all of your media outreach efforts like videos, blogs, and even tweets. And instead of the typical 1/3,000 click through rate, if you got 1/1,000 the next month then 1/500 the month after that, you’ve just increased your ROI by 600%!

5. Get you sales (or registrations or downloads).
But the trouble with #5 is that you just don’t know if a team you hire will get you sales or not. So the solution is simple. Don’t sign a long term contract until after the first 3-6 months. Give yourself plenty of time to get to know the web marketing and PR team you hire. Give them the time to build up your momentum. Date before going steady.

So where would you find a firm that can get you out to the masses? You already did. Call Bob Wan Kim at 310 598 1606 (or fill in http://sparkah.com/marketing.php ) and let’s talk about your goals and vision. If we can get you to find us, we can get your customers to find you… and in a way that’s not just memorable but flattering.

How much could you get accomplished if you could contact one million subscribers any time you wanted?

NEW! Part Two: Android / Iphone App Programmer Reveals How to Build Your App

The following is the collected wisdom from 5 iPhone app programmers from San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. You might find that it can save you a great deal of time, money, and heartache.

(NYC Apple Store — iPhone Apps) Back in the real estate boom days, lots and lots of my Bud Light drinking friends got rich. The went out and got themselves a contractor’s license and built homes. He quickly bought corvette ZR-1s (plurl), a yacht, played golf at Torrey Pines, and bought two weird looking cats.

Sam (real name) built houses faster than anyone else in the business. He was my gorgeous green-eyed blond girlfriend’s dad. The faster he built a home, the faster the buyer could stop paying rent on their interim housing, the more money he made. His buyers loved him. He loved his money.

Funny thing about it, just beneath the thickness of three coats of paint is where he hijacked his time. He took every shortcut in the book. Then, he wrote the sequel. Wiring wasn’t grounded, beams weren’t locked in, insulation wasn’t installed. None of this really made any practical impact on the active young couples who moved in and used their new San Diego home sparingly.

Would this guy pass for a general contractor? How about an iphone app programmer / developer?

The people Sam hurt were the elderly who moved into his Las Vegas and LA homes. Their heating and air-conditioning bills skyrocketed. Leaning on a wall made outlets catch fire.

It was also the elderly few who hurt Sam.

Journalists just couldn’t turn their back on their stories. Even if a dozen younger couples had complained, it was an elderly woman who commanded attention and started off a landslide of destruction in Sam’s life.

Eventually, after lurid tell-all court dates, Sam’s divorce from Linda, and his bankruptcy, Every single one of his properties were devalued. So in the end Sam’s shortcut mentality even hurt the younger active couples in Del Mar.

IPhone Apps and Ipad Apps are here to stay
I realize that there is a huge rush to stake out your marketshare in the virgin mobile world. And getting that market share fast means money. But just like Sam, if you build your app in a way that saves $1 but creates $100 liability later, you’re shooting yourself in the foot with one of those super slow-mo Matrix style bullets.

IPhone Apps and Android Apps are here to stay.  If you’re in a major met like NYC or LA, the sheer density of people around you can multiply the adoption of an app. Get yours out there immediately to capture your early adopter market share. But do it in a way that creates minimal liabilities. Here’s what to look out for under the third layer of paint:

1. Programmers Annotations
Every experienced and honest programmer places tags in his code that explain what any given lines of code actually do. This way, he can always go back with a “CNTRL-F” keyboard command and rapidly find the sections to modify. This also makes it simple for a new programmer to take over if you part ways. It takes a little bit more time in the first run to create annotations but if you come back with any changes (which we both KNOW you will) the changes will be quick.

Programmer Sam doesn’t do this. Sam thinks leaving annotations out or using his own proprietary code will give him job security. This is like your mate asking you to stay married because otherwise that one “video” will hit Facebook.

2. Experience Building Exactly the Same Components
The first and the very first, first thing you should do when interviewing a potential iPhone App developer is identify your mission critical functionality. If you’re going to build an app with audio, a “play button that plays” is mission critical.

I’ll give you a personal example. I’m building an invoicing app for contractors. I’ve had contractors at my house. The part I hate is having to spell my street and city name for them – twice. So I’m building a bidding and invoicing app that automatically fills in their invoice with my address. All they have to do is click a button that says, “USE THIS GPS LOCATION.”

So my mission critical functionality is the ability to *extract and enter GPS address data into a field.*

I asked 12 people I’m hiring for my inhouse iPhone App developer team if they could fulfill this requirement. All of them said yes. Only one showed me an app where he worked with GPS. I’m considering hiring him as a part of my internal team. Nobody else ever worked with GPS. Nobody else quickly extracted GPS data and filled in an address field with it.

Work with people who already have experience building exactly what you need. Otherwise, you’re money will end up paying for a developer to watch Youtube tutorials.

3. Make the NDA Unnecessary
No, don’t skip the NDA, just make it unnecessary. If you break down your iPhone app into abstract “mission critical functionalities” you can technically hire three different groups of programmers around the world to each build pieces of the app. Then hire one more person to put it all together. If you do this, your risk of intellectual property theft is zero. Again, it’s about keeping your liabilities minimal.

Or work with an established publically known firm. If you chose to hire a team like ours to develop your iPhone App, we’ve worked so hard to build a strong reputation, that NDAs, while welcome, are really unnecessary. Our team reputation is too valuable to leave you anything less than 100% happy.

4. Ask for a Discount in Trade for Equity
Get a bid. Then ask for a discount based on a reasonable equity stake. This is important. If the programmer says no, this means that he has no faith in the long term success of your iPhone App. With that kind of attitude, how could he possibly do a good job?

5. Don’t Work with Anyone Who Quotes You a Rate and Cost Without a “Requirements Map.”
If you don’t have a detailed (free) conversation about your iPhone app’s requirements, any cost of time estimate is a guess. People who play the lottery guess. A professional will not offer an estimate until he totally understands your vision. And your vision must include the “Click Map” for every user.

If You’re Building an iPhone App and you want an experienced developer, call us at (310) 598-1606. Or email bob.wan.kim@gmail. We’d love to hear your vision and see how we can help you build your app. Even if we don’t work together, a conversation with our experienced team may just help speed up your time to total world domination.

For a free cost estimate, see: http://sparkah.com/apps.php

Then Call Bob Wan Kim at
(310) 598 1606

LA: (310) 598 1606 | NYC: (347) 767 6775

Whether you have an MBA from Wharton or Harvard, work in the Los Angeles Biz, or NYC’s hipster industries, the landscape of marketing is changing so quickly that if you don’t keep up with the latest developments, you could just be putting up billboards in a ghost town. Without any exaggeration, every single magazine and newspaper is struggling to pay for paper. Even Rolling Stone decided to run their General McChrystal article in print only as a last hoorah that mirrored the General’s.

This means that everything you know about print advertising and marketing is out dated. But the same is true for Web Marketing. Jason Ting, developer of a iPhone 4 app, reported a 11.8% CTR in iAds. He made $1,300 in one day. This is because iAds are brand new and people are clicking out of curiosity – not pursuasion. This too will change. ( boygeniusreport.com/2010/07/08/apple-developer-boasting-of-1400-in-revenue-from-iads-in-one-day/ )

In fact, Google just announced that they are changing their display ad system. The days when Google Adwords cost you pennies per click are gone since major corporations are competing for the same spot now. But also gone are the high CTRs. People actually thought that the top result in a search, the sponsored ad, was the #1 top organic result for about 2 years during the mid 2000′s. Those days are gone. Everything you know about adwords has changed.

What about viral marketing? That’s changed too. Have you ever seen that one “Evolution of Dance” video? It got zillions of views. If that video was uploaded today, would it get any? Do you know what a cricket sounds like? When Youtube first hit the mainstream, there was no content. Now, users world wide are uploading about 26 hours of video footage every minute.

Not only will anything you upload to youtube get buried, nobody is going to watch your amateur production when they’ve got Hulu. Viral Marketing has changed.

Is all this to say that web marketing is useless? Not at all. Web marketing can still be viral. But with Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Ning, and more all competing for attention, the key is to plan your marketing across platforms – according to each of their strengths and weaknesses. It’s really not as simple as just putting up a video on Youtube anymore (unless you’re that organic cat food manufacturer who just films their cute cats – you’re life is golden).

To help you stay on top of these shifts, use the following questions as a checklist:

1. Given the same investment, which platform will give you the highest CTR?
Facebook
Twitter
Google Organic
Adwords
Youtube

2. What is the goal of my conversion?
Should I attempt to create a sale?
Should I attempt to capture a network subscription to broaden the relationship BEFORE attempting to generate a sale?
- email subscription
- youtube subscription
- facebook pages “Like”
- twitter follow
- etc…

3. Do I know the population of my target demographic in each of the major social networks?
twitter
facebook
ning
smaller forums

4. Do I know which keywords in Google search will target my demographic?

5. Do I know if the targeted Google seeker will convert based on that search?
For example, if you sell widgets, do you know how many of the people who Google “widgets” are actually buyers? How many are “enthusiasts?” And how many are your competitors?

6 How much time does your typical target demographic Twitter user spend on Twitter?

7. Facebook?

8. Youtube? – per day.

9. Does the network they found you on effect their likelihood of conversion? (YES, by the way.)

NEXT: The Viral Marketing DNA. The formula for making your messaging self-replicate