About

Hi, my name is Franz. I’m a marketer, food enthusiast and someone whose part of his life is the Internet. I currently work at Elioe.com, a small and humble Internet marketing company based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Sometimes, I get dirty and handle all the coding myself.

You can find me on Twitter which I’m always at. I’m not all about work, though. I have a life =).

Let me talk a little about Malaysia.

Elioe.com

Elioe.com performs mostly marketing on the Internet, or generally some call it Internet marketing. Other than just SEO (search engine optimization), we also deal with advertising, marketing conceptualization, business marketing strategy planning, events planning, campaign optimization, reputation management, credibility checks, copywriting and various other Marketing works.

No, we do not design websites or code our own applications for our clients – We send them to a trustable business partners.

Soft Intro

The Marketing & Advertising industry is a huge multi-billion Ringgit industry – And Elioe.com is one of the thousands of companies in Malaysia who’s making it possible for small to big brands to sell their products & services.

From the very beginning, I’ve realized from some experience and various other failed experiments that Malaysia itself is not ‘mentally’ ready for a lot of ‘bang’ from Western countries and cultures. There are many things the Malaysian market isn’t ready for, but have already been introduced to certain groups. A very good example of this statement is actually information mediums that are available around the network of Malaysian websites.

Internet & Search in 1998

Search services back in 1998 was pain in the buttocks and would probably fail – And among some of the very new search industry starters in Malaysia include Catcha, Mesra, Jaring and Cari. Malaysia, having only less than 1.5 million Internet users; 405,000 subscribers and 6.8% Internet penetration rate in 1998 certainly makes commercial search services not viable and profitable. See the proof (PDF).

What more Internet marketing services? Before the dotCom bust in ‘01/’02 where we see Web 1.0 mediums around the world and in Malaysia, websites are only meant for business profiling – A egoistic show of competence, advancement and introduction of technological breakthroughs that a business could use. Definitely, any business owner would be proud to have a website.

Of course with proper financing, lower benchmarks and higher financial thresholds it could be a lucrative venture 10 years later.

Periodically after the dotCom bust, Web 2.0 begin to be introduced into Western countries – And the ’social’ idea of bringing end users online and providing more ‘free’ items through the net chomped in business owners’ minds. And which brings us here today – “Web 2.0″

Malaysia & Web 2.0

Up until today in 2009, Web 2.0 has received a lot of hype and strong usage in Malaysia. General perceptions about 8 years of soft introduction of Web 2.0 should bring significance at least to an acceptable number of Internet users. Its application in their daily Internet lives should be partial, if not whole.

Unfortunately, this is not the case if you take a step back and look at Malaysian demographics & markets in a larger picture. From executives in the Advertising/Marketing field to end-users utilizing the Internet every other day agree to this point to a certain extent – That a large majority of the paying Malaysian market is still quite far away from entrusting the Web in terms of purchases, proper search marketing, targeted advertising and socializing.

The infamous trend-wave of ‘Information Acquisition’ that’s so populated in Malaysia (and heavily marketed by the government and mass media) for so many years created personalized cultural-induced mindsets about the Internet to many. Until today, there are still a very huge number of Internet users in Malaysia who are still not aware of what the Web can do for them.

Business Injections to target the Malaysian market

There’s no reason why foreign investors could heavily doubt Malaysia to be a very lucrative venture for them – Our currency (Ringgit) is weak, political problems are affecting a lot of businesses, our demographic’s mindsets are still very immature when it comes to proper usage and understanding of the Internet and information mediums (and small supporting businesses such as technological SMEs’) aren’t strong enough to provide leverage to the Malaysian Internet market at whole.

At best, Malaysia could be the avenue for ‘extremely good staff‘ around South East Asia – We speak English, can converse in different languages, majority of our kids go to school and finish with a Diploma/Degree, our culture encourages us to be polite and Malaysian minds go wilder more than other demographics such as Philippines.

Contact me

If you need more information, insights or initial marketing consulting directly from me, you can always request it here.