With the advent of the digital age and the rapid development of AI technology, many aspire to leverage AI to develop more advanced and rapid business strategies, especially in the field of online marketing, no longer solely focusing on traditional SEO and traffic studies.
i2i partner team, i4i , is hosting an expert seminar this week (4/25) at the Linkou Startup Terrace, inviting Zheng Jin-cong, Chairman of Song Yan Internet Marketing Co., Ltd., angel investor, and online marketing expert, to host the seminar. Zheng will share the experiences of entrepreneurs who have succeeded through online marketing, leading the audience to explore the possibilities of combining AI applications with online marketing to help new startups expand their business, strategize, and discover potential customers.
Seminar Topics:
Shortcut to Success for Startups: How AI Can Quickly Help You: Finding Customers, Closing Deals, Selling Products
Course Focus:
The content focuses on the "Three Essentials for Entrepreneurial Success": good projects, finding target customers, and being able to sell goods, helping new startups and entrepreneurs grasp the key elements of entrepreneurship, including:
How to determine the current market and competitors' situation and choose the correct direction for entrepreneurship and product development.
Effective means of online marketing and techniques to improve conversion rates.
Application methods of AI tools combined with online marketing.
I. Good Projects
"The most important thing for entrepreneurship is to choose the right projects first."
In markets with high demand and intense competition, only large enterprises with abundant resources are suitable. True "good entrepreneurial projects" are found in industries that "did not exist in the past," i.e., new ideas and technologies.
Generally, they possess the following conditions:
Validated in foreign markets with a certain market demand scale.
Have successful case templates to convince potential investors.
Align with the expertise of the entrepreneur.
Have been validated by the market and competitors to possess competitiveness. Entrepreneurs may believe their products are competitive, but there is a difference between their perspective and the needs of customers. Customers typically consider the "comparative advantages of the product compared to other market brands."
"Failure to find investment for good projects is often due to insufficient publicity."
In the early stages of entrepreneurship, resources are limited, and costs should not be spread across all projects but focused on the most proficient and effective ones.
Assuming a startup possesses three skills, including search marketing (SEO, blogging, website creation, etc.), social media marketing (Facebook, Instagram, podcasts, etc.), and digital advertising (FB Ads, Youtube Ads, etc.), they should not scatter their efforts but focus on the most suitable project for the current stage. How should one choose?
"Any traffic = cost = customer acquisition cost," so "don't think about branding right from the start!"
Zheng explains that entrepreneurs must consider the funds and cost-effectiveness of the startup when choosing the appropriate promotion strategy.
Physical Stores: The location of the store usually determines the rental price, which is the cost of customer traffic.
Self-media/Social Media Marketing: Many entrepreneurs attempt to "build a brand" from self-media, thinking it's cost-free, but the threshold is very high. It actually is a high-cost option! To turn traffic into revenue, one must have the funds to organize a professional team. Self-media takes longer to recoup costs, and the traffic is unstable. It is suggested that entrepreneurs "build a brand after earning the first money."
SEO/Search Marketing: Most companies use SEO for their official website. It provides stable and long-lasting traffic, making it the most suitable long-term approach, albeit slow in growth and requiring time to ferment.
Advertising Marketing: It's the most suitable practice for early-stage startups, with features like quick returns, having income before incurring costs, and immediate traffic. Zheng further adds that understanding trends and choosing the right advertising channels are crucial. For example, in recent years, Facebook advertising costs have risen several times, while the effectiveness of YouTube advertising has gradually surpassed Facebook.
"Influencers create traffic, bosses utilize traffic."
Zheng states that marketing should focus on increasing conversion rates and finding genuine potential customers. When conducting online marketing, one should not mimic influencers who only consider entertaining content for "content that netizens like." Instead, bosses should consider "problems and pain points that customers want to solve" and release powerful sales messages.
Although this may make "precise customers comfortable and non-potential customers uncomfortable," it can genuinely sell products and achieve effective traffic, thereby increasing conversion rates.
"Many companies think about outsourcing directly, but advertising is the less you invest, the more precise it becomes!"
Zheng explains that many entrepreneurs want to outsource social media or advertising, thinking that finding experts saves time and money. However, outsourcing companies lack the entrepreneur's professional knowledge and cannot truly understand the company's positioning and product characteristics, resulting in "spending a lot of money with no effect."
"The most important thing in online marketing is : you must calculate the conversion rate at each stage."
The correct approach is to initially invest a few thousand dollars in small-scale advertising, establish immediate traffic, and create your "sales funnel." Through quantified data, you can observe the conversion rates at each stage (node), accurately identify problems to improve, and find genuine potential customers.
Traffic = cost → Sales Funnel = Explanation and Persuasion Process → Conversion Rate = Improvable Node → Transaction = Profit
II. Finding Target Customers
"Do you have the confidence to sell the product within three minutes of introduction?"
After understanding the selection of good projects and promotion strategies, the next step is to find "precise customers." Zheng explains that the "three critical minutes" are crucial; customers usually browse a company's products within three minutes, and it's necessary to:
Prompt unfamiliar customers to leave contact information.
Encourage those who already know you to make transactions.
E-commerce or official websites, how should startups choose?
Precise traffic equals precise customer sources, and different products are suitable for different sales platforms. Should you choose e-commerce or establish a brand's official website? Zheng explains that you can use the "Product Dichotomy" to decide:
E-commerce Platforms: Suitable for products that don't require much explanation, usually involving procurement and sales, a large market, and needing a certain scale, with intense sales competition.
Official Websites: Suitable for products that require explanatory sales, usually solutions-based products or services, with high unit prices and strong brand ownership. Examples include interior design, web design, advertising marketing, software systems, etc.
It can be seen that establishing a brand's official website is generally more suitable for startups because targeting precise customers is not about price but about "explanatory persuasive ability," i.e., the conversion rate of the sales funnel. The steps are as follows:
Direct advertising traffic to landing pages.
Limit and simplify screen options, guiding viewers to click on targets (e.g., product purchase buttons).
Provide incentives to attract viewers (e.g., free trial for a limited time).
Showcase positive customer feedback.
III. Being Able to Sell Goods
After finding precise customers, one should enhance the transaction rate through effective sales methods. Zheng proposes specific process recommendations and explains the reasons for failures in online marketing and the direction of success.
"Understand the problem before presenting the product."
This is a common mistake made by entrepreneurs early on—they cannot effectively grasp the "three critical minutes." The correct process is:
Understand the customer's problems and pain points.
Provide products or services accordingly.
Assist customers in simplifying options, avoiding providing too many choices at once, making it easier for customers to make decisions.
Provide incentive activities to attract customers, such as giving a five-star rating for free product shipping, etc.
"Why isn't your online marketing effective?"
The most common reason is an incomplete sales funnel for the product, or a lack of research into the pros and cons of conversion rates, resulting in marketing costs not generating corresponding returns.
Secondly, entrepreneurs lack an understanding of online marketing and directly outsource advertising to agencies, or spread costs across various self-media platforms, resulting in less traffic and an inability to find precise customers.
The success direction of online marketing, summarized from the key points of the seminar, can be summarized into a process:
Design the basic sales funnel for the company's products.
Invest in small-scale advertising to find precise traffic and precise customers, experiment with the conversion rate of the sales funnel nodes.
Identify and optimize nodes with low conversion rates.
Deploy proven effective large-scale advertising.
Achieve sales profitability (ROI).
Design better products and more complete processes, continuously improve.
IV. Enhancing Online Marketing Strategy with AI Tools
Knowing how to use AI tools to ask the right questions can enhance online marketing strategies and identify overlooked key points. At the end of the seminar, Zheng shares some tips for enhancing online marketing strategies using AI tools, sharing the structured questioning model he uses:
Target audience.
Problems, pain points, challenges faced.
Products and services provided by the company.
SWOT analysis of the product (including data, cases).
Team's past professional backgrounds, past product success cases.
Experience incentives provided to customers (e.g., free courses, trials, consultations, additional value after experience).
Speaker Information:
Zheng Jin-cong
Chairman of Song Yan Internet Marketing Co., Ltd., Chairman of Angel Commerce Co., Ltd., author of the bestselling book "Internet Money Printing," known as the "Millionaire Internet Marketing Mentor," is Taiwan's first lecturer invited to the World Internet Conference. He is also Taiwan's earliest entrepreneur to achieve over a hundred million in business using internet marketing. He is also an active angel investor, having created the largest LINE@ account in Taiwan with 920,000 friends, and founded W70,000 Business School, W70,000 Alliance, W70,000 Customer Collection, and Angel Commerce (angel investment), helping many students become outstanding entrepreneurs.
Zheng shares his own experience of coming from a low-income family with only a high school education, no siblings, and parents unable to work due to health reasons, being the sole economic source for the family. Eventually, he turned his life around using internet marketing, providing corporate education training, consulting services, helping to create brand websites, transition to automated marketing, and recommending matchmaking investment opportunities.