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  • Strategy & Marketing

    Posted: April 30, 2011, 3:45 pm by Kelvin

    In this video, Joe Hayashi covers mobile app product strategy and marketing from a business perspective. The video is a lecture given at Stanford University. Although the video is supposed to be about marketing and strategy as regards mobile applications, it has enough goodness to be generally applicable to any business. Many, many lessons in strategy and marketing. Watch:

    Click here to view the embedded video.

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  • Another Way to Withdraw Money From PayPal in Kenya

    Posted: April 28, 2011, 4:36 pm by Kelvin

    Following our recent article on how to withdraw cash from PayPal via Liberty Reserve, we found another much easier way. This is thanks to bonchisdecha.


    Babawatoto.com
    BabaWatoto.com have an innovative service which they call “Tuma Pesa“. This is tailored for Kenyans in the diaspora who want to send money back home. However, nothing restricts you from using the service to send money to yourself – ama?

    Babawatoto.com will let you send money to anyone in Kenya and he will receive it on his mobile phone. The useful thing is that Babawatoto.com will let you pay via PayPal. This means one could easily send, say Kshs 20,000/-, through Babawatoto.com to his own mobile number and pay via PayPal. This will effectively mean that you have transferred money from your PayPal account into your mobile phone – ready to use locally!

    You just need to visit this page to get started.

    Kudos to Babawatoto.com for providing such a needed service.

    Update 17 May 2011 – The above method does NOT work from within Kenya. Learn more. Similar Posts:


  • How to Withdraw Money From PayPal in Kenya

    Posted: April 26, 2011, 12:56 pm by wham


    Update 20 May 2011: It has been reported that www.exeauto.com is a scam. Proceed at your own risk.

    Some time last year PayPal did us a favour and made it possible to maintain a PayPal balance with a “Kenyan” PayPal account. This meant that we could finally receive money via PayPal in Kenya. However, withdrawing that money turned out to be a whole other story. Why? Because PayPal has no relationship (currently) with local banks. They need this in order to allow “Kenyan” PayPal accounts the ability to withdraw to a local, Kenyan, bank account. In plain English, this means that you can have money in PayPal but you cannot take it out.

    The only way to take it out – and this is what PayPal themselves recommend – is to withdraw to a US bank account. Unfortunately, not many Kenyans have one so this is a very real and very serious problem when it comes to dealing with PayPal from Kenya.

    Fortunately, there is another way.

    Liberty Reserve
    Liberty Reserve is a digital currency and online payment system with similarity to Paypal, E-Gold, Pecunix, E-Bullion and other E-Currency services. You can send or receive money to or from anyone in the world.

    How do you use it to get money from your PayPal account? It is simple, actually. This is what you need to do:

    1. Create an account at LibertyReserve. It is free.
    2. Once your account is up, then you need to move your money from PayPal into your new LibertyReserve account. The different ways of doing this are listed here. At this moment in time, the one that will accept money from PayPal is this: www.exeauto.com
    3. Once the money is in your LibertyReserve account, you can withdraw it in a lot of different ways. You can, for instance withdraw straight to your bank account, via Western Union, AlertPay etc.

    Please note that getting money into or out of LibertyReserve is done via the third parties listed here.

    Easy enough? I have not tested this method (will be doing so shortly) so if anyone can quickly vouch for it wqe would all be happy.

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  • “How much can I get away with?”

    Posted: April 21, 2011, 7:01 pm by tranx

    There are two ways to look at that question.

    Seth Godin writes:

    The usual way is, “How little can I do and not get caught?” Variations include, “Can we do less service? Cut our costs? Put less cereal in the box? Charge more?” In short: “How little can I get away with?”

    The other way, the more effective way: “How much can we afford to give away? How much service can we pile on top of what we’re selling without seeming like we’re out of our minds? How big a portion can we give and still stay in business? How fast can we get this order filled?”

    In an era in which the middle is rapidly emptying out, both edges are competitive. Hint: The overdelivery edge is an easier place to make a name for yourself.

    Are you looking at how much you can give your customer and still be in business, or how little you can give them without them noticing? Which side of the divide do you fall on?

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  • Interesting Kenyan Sites #23

    Posted: April 17, 2011, 9:57 pm by Kelvin

    Ni Kuhama – of course this site is by Airtel as a way to market themselves. The thing that really makes it interesting for me is the quickness of execution in purchasing a whole other domain (nikuhama.com) instead of using something like airtel.com/nikuhama. Kudos.

    mamamealsonwheels a website that lets you order meals from a number of restaurants and then they deliver to your home or office; they also allow you to send shopping lists to them and they can do your shopping for you. First off, I must say that the design is spot on! Really well done. The business idea here is a good one and I hope and pray that these guys get the success they deserve.

    natakanyumba – as the name says, these guys assist you in finding the nyumba that you want. It is often said that a website to help Kenya find real estate online is a massive opportunity that has not been adequately addressed. I personally do not like natakanyumba.com’s choice of colours but that is just an opinion. All in all the website is pretty well done. Let’s hope the execution to capture this market is just as good.

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  • The Gift That Keeps On Giving

    Posted: April 14, 2011, 11:02 am by tranx

    Have you ever given thought to the idea of giving free gifts to your customer? How can this help your business? We aren’t talking about just any other gift, but gifts that are of real value to your customer. For example, what if you give your customers a complimentary iPod? Let’s se how this will work for you:

    As everyone knows, the iPod is probably the hottest consumer product of the last few years. They are just cool to have. And because they are relatively expensive, they become an even more valuable item. It’s not like getting something that costs Kshs 100 – this is a pretty nice item that you’re not going to get every day.

    You could give any product away but when you give an iPod away, you’re taking advantage of the product’s marketing power.

    You could just give away Kshs 5,000, but that’s not as special to someone. If you giveKshs 5,000 back, it feels to them like they’re saving money, which is good, but not as fun. But if you give away an iPod, that person feels like they’re getting your product AND an iPod. They’re getting an iPod for free.

    If you had given them Kshs 5,000 back, they’re not going to spend that Kshs 5,000 on something fun or anything that they’ll remember in a couple of months. But if you give away an iPod, it’s something that they’ll remember for the years that they have it.

    The Gift that Keeps on Giving
    There’s one more indirect advantage of giving away an iPod – you’ll get some free marketing. When someone gets an iPod it’s usually a story. A Dad tells his friend that he’s now just as cool as his kids because he has an iPod just like them. And now that story is going to include your company. When someone asks Dad why he finally got around to getting an iPod, he’ll brag how he got it for free… from your company.

    So that’s good and it might help bring you some new clients but there’s a way to really help your clients, who will become your biggest advocates.

    Let’s say that you sold some sort of marketing service to dentists. For every new client that your service brings in for the dentist, you will give that dentist an iPod to give to the patient.

    Now the kid who got braces from your dentist is bragging to his friends at school how Dr. X gives away iPods to his new patients. All of a sudden, you created a brand new marketing and sales program for your client. You only had to give away that one iPod to his client and he can continue to give away other iPods. But you created a real incentive for that dentist so that kids who wouldn’t normally want to get braces, would be excited because Dr. X gives away iPods.

    Just Give Something Away

    While iPods are one of the best products to give away, you can use this type of strategy with a lot of different products or services. If you’re worried about the price, you’ll probably make up the difference with increased sales. If that still doesn’t satisfy you, just increase your prices a bit to cover it.

    Sometimes you have to give to receive and giving away iPods is a great way to receive a lot more clients.

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  • The “Kenyan App” Market?

    Posted: April 11, 2011, 2:36 pm by Kelvin

    It seems that the Android operating system is getting to be really popular in Kenya. Reportedly, over 60,000 Huwaei IDEOS phones have been sold in Kenya in just a few months. The Huwaei IDEOS is the primary Android-powered device in Kenya. It is rumoured that Safaricom has ordered for 200,000 of these phones.

    Think about it. That is 60,000 people and may rise to over 250,000 if Safaricom have its way.

    In other countries, one of the”side effects” of the widespread use of Smart Phones has been the business of selling applications (“apps”) for these smart phones. This business is set to grow into a $12 billion industry by next year. That is, an industry that generates Kshs 1,020 Billion every year.

    Obviously, Kenyan entrepreneurs should think hard about making apps and try to cut a niche for themselves in this huge, huge market.

    What about the local “app industry”? How large is it? I would argue that it is nearly insignificant at this moment in time. But, as I said earlier, we shall soon have a quarter of a million Kenyans owning Smart Phones. Let’s analyse this:

    • Most, if not all of the people will be using apps made elsewhere and targetted at other markets, not Kenyans
    • The mobile phone is still the primary method through which the vast majority of Kenyans “use a computer“, or access the web
    • We are a distinct market and while we may appreciate and use apps made for other markets, we undoubtedly have needs that cannot be met by apps made for other markets

    What does this mean? Well, if you ask me, there is an opportunity for smart Kenyan entrepreneurs to pioneer an industry that shall grow to be significantly large. Yes, I am saying that an opportunity exists for someone to make and sell “Kenyan apps” in the local market.

    What do you think?

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  • Using PR to Attract Customers

    Posted: April 7, 2011, 9:07 am by Kelvin

    The following is a very interesting video of how the founder of inDinero.com used PR to get 6,000 customers.

    Are you launching a new business? How about more customers? You can learn from this:

    Click here to view the embedded video.


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  • What KFC never told you about Colonel Sanders’ Secret Recipe

    Posted: April 6, 2011, 8:19 am by tranx

    Maybe you’ve heard the story of 1000 restaurant owners who rejected Colonel Sanders’ Fried Chicken proposal,and Prospect #1001 who finally said “yes.”

    BUT… did you ever hear the story behind the story?

    This is a good one. An old photocopier salesman, who called on Colonel Sanders back in the 60′s, passed this along to me.

    The real story is:
    The Colonel had a restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky, which had been doing very well. A new interstate highway was planned to bypass the town of Corbin. Seeing that his business was about to dry up, the Colonel auctioned off his operations. After paying his bills, he had nothing to live on except his $105 Social Security checks.

    In 1952, confident of his chicken recipe, he began crisscrossing the country in his car, making an offer to restaurant owners: He would walk into a restaurant, announce to the owner,”I bet my chicken recipe is better than yours” and propose a cook-off.

    (The chicken provided by the restaurants he visited, using his recipe, was part of his plan for feeding himself during those lean days.)

    If the owner was favorable, he would “franchise” his chicken recipe to them at 5 cents per chicken.

    In all, just over 1000 restaurants turned him down, without one successful deal.

    Then one day he was having his daily cooking duel with a bar owner, who said to him, “Sir, I’m trying to sell beer, not chicken. This stuff needs to be a whole lot saltier so customers will get thirsty and buy beer!”

    So he grabbed the salt shaker, poured some salt on, and took another bite. “Now THIS is GREAT,” he said. “If you’ll add salt to this recipe, I’m a taker!”

    The Colonel took a bite and spit it out! it was terrible!

    But Colonel Sanders had been on a NO SALT DIET for 30 years, so his tastes were obviously different than everyone else’s.

    The Colonel wasn’t stupid! He might not like the salt, but it was better than poverty. Thus began the Colonel’s enormously successful Kentucky Fried Chicken legacy.

    Here’s the kicker: At one time, if you bought a box of Kentucky Fried Chicken, here’s what it said on the side: “When Colonel Sanders added the 11th spice, he instantly knew it was the best chicken he’d ever had.”

    Of course they didn’t tell you what spice it was.

    This is so instructive.

    First of all, Colonel Sanders could have made 1000 MORE presentations, driven his car until the transmission fell out, spent every dime of those $105 Social Security checks, prayed for success and recited positive affirmations every morning in front of the mirror. But he still would have come up empty handed, had he not been willing to change his recipe!

    Secondly, although the recipe he so passionately believed in was the best recipe for HIS taste buds, it was not the recipe that his customers really wanted. Without a recipe that the customers wanted, no amount of effort or persistence would make it work.

    With the right recipe, he was unstoppable.

    Third, the recipe he had before he added salt was ALMOST right. It was VERY, VERY CLOSE to what it needed to be. Adding salt to a lousy recipe wouldn’t have helped much. So all the effort he expended developing the original recipe was worthwhile.

    Fourth: Persistence DID pay off, but not the way we might expect it to. Sometimes we’re looking for the magical day when our persistence, and the sheer number of people we talk to, leads us to the RIGHT person who will say “Yes” and open wide the doors to success.

    But for Colonel Sanders, playing the “Numbers Game” was not the key. The real key was bumping into someone with the audacity to suggest something different, and for the Colonel to be eager enough for a breakthrough to change his recipe.

    Fifth, the magical ingredient was ordinary table salt. Salt, all by itself, is worthless as a food item. Chicken, all by itself, is pretty bland, and may not even do the trick with 10 other perfectly good spices. Put them together, though, and you’ve got a real winner!

    Never overlook the possibility of combining very ordinary things to create something “entirely new.”

    Finally, motivation and hard work alone are rarely (if ever) enough to accomplish a challenging goal. Innovation, flexibility, careful listening, endless experimentation, and the setting aside of egos and old paradigms are all equally important.

    In my own case, I worked for several years in both corporate and direct selling. I had essentially two priorities in mind: motivation and people skills. I was enamored with these two virtues, and spent the majority of my working time pounding the phone, making cold calls, working very hard to get in front of anyone who could fog a mirror, and all that other drudgery that entry-level salespeople normally deal with.

    Despite all of the effort, the motivational tapes and the people skills books, there were still too many days of heroic effort and no reward. My wallet was still, inexplicably, full of hungry moths.

    But then things started to dramatically turn around. It was the result of two things:

    1. I started to learn how to use marketing, low cost advertising and the web to assist my sales efforts;
    2. I found some people who were more able and willing to support my efforts from a “customer service” point of view, than the group I was working for previously.

    Great marketing almost always includes the addition of some 11th spice. An ordinary ingredient that makes everything come together.

    It’s right under your nose, waiting to be discovered and shared with the world.

    The whole of this article is based on an email received from Perry Marshal.

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Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes

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