AAR & Company

Your revenue, profit, cash flow, market share and brand reputation in 2025 will directly depend on how capable your marketing team is in creating opportunities. It will also depend on their capabilities in generating sustainable leads too. Are they deliver? Answer it by taking this assessment now.

"Try before you buy" has emerged as a powerful strategy for businesses seeking to transform strangers into paid customers. Thanks to abundant choices out there, decision-making has become a difficult thing to do for the people hunting for real value. To us, we believe this “try before you buy” tactic can be an effective way to overcome the challenge—allowing potential customers to experience a product or service firsthand before committing to a purchase. This approach minimises perceived risk, fosters confidence, and ultimately encourages conversions. In our case, as a marketing advisory firm, our Experience It program allows businesses to experience our expertise and personalised approach before engaging our services for a full project.

In a Forbes article by Megan Poinski published months ago, which we read only last month, it's highlighted that many businesses are overlooking a significant opportunity in local digital marketing. SOCi's Local Visibility Index 2024 revealed that the average brand isn't present in 75 per cent of local directory sources, neglects half of its online reviews, and fails to address 90 per cent of customer inquiries. FYI SOCi is a digital multi-location marketing provider.

You know, watching businesses approach marketing is like watching a friend set off on a long road trip. There's excitement, surprises, and the joy of reaching the goal can be seen from afar. But what I personally love most is seeing how different businesses approach this journey. The ones who really shine and make less expensive mistakes are those who start with curiosity and a good strategy before anything else. Because they know that executing it too early may cost them a lot of money.

Let us answer this for you—yes.

It's alarming to see how many Malaysian businesses like yours, treat marketing as an afterthought. You seem to believe you can just appoint anyone to lead their marketing efforts, regardless of their actual expertise. We've physically met with numerous "Heads of Marketing" or "Marketing Directors" who were simply transferred from other departments with no real understanding of marketing—let alone a marketing strategy. While it’s good to get views from an outsider, this one is completely a nutjob.

Get the answers to those marketing questions you have in hand, now. We will answer them. Having the right information to feed your 2025 strategy is crucial to ensure effective executions. Go ahead, ask away. It's free.

How about having your own CMO to lead your marketing team for only MYR1,800 per month? That's right, the nett 'salary' doesn't even hit MYR2,000 per month. Yet, you will enjoy having a senior leader to hand-hold the team to score a better result this 2025. Let's talk.

"Try before you buy" has emerged as a powerful strategy for businesses seeking to transform strangers into paid customers. Thanks to abundant choices out there, decision-making has become a difficult thing to do for the people hunting for real value. To us, we believe this “try before you buy” tactic can be an effective way to overcome the challenge—allowing potential customers to experience a product or service firsthand before committing to a purchase. This approach minimises perceived risk, fosters confidence, and ultimately encourages conversions. In our case, as a marketing advisory firm, our Experience It program allows businesses to experience our expertise and personalised approach before engaging our services for a full project. This not only allows them to assess the firm's capabilities but also provides the firm with an opportunity to understand the client's specific needs and tailor their services as early as possible before the actual engagement starts.

In the previous article, we wrote about referrals. We noticed that referral marketing is one of the most effective ways to generate leads quickly, better than personal branding and content production. There’s no harm in building trust but the process is just too freaking slow. From our own experience in creating the referral program and pushing the strategy through, we generated 2 leads in October which both of them are now with us as customers. That’s not bad, really. Another highly effective method, and potentially even faster than referrals, is establishing strategic partnerships. If you must know, this is even faster than a referral. Do both in parallel and don’t do either or. The way you should approach partnership is like this. Run research, find the first batch of 5 businesses that you can complement them with. The best way to select those businesses is to find those that already have existing customers.