Vietnamese Lien Thi Doãn is only 28 years old, yet she still manages to look younger than her age. She has a 13 year old son and a 5 year old daughter, kind eyes and she smiles frequently. As the breadwinner for her family (her husband is not well), she works every day – weather permitting – making coal blocks. She sells each block for around 2 cents USD.

Lien is an entrepreneur and is funded by the charity Kiva.org to help get her venture off the ground. The charity loan her 1,626,900 VND (£55) to help start her business and she has already repaid the loan.

Kiva.org was setup 42 months ago, allowing us western folk to back entrepreneurs like Lien in developing nations. The charity uses the web to connect the donor directly with the project they are backing. Using the web the donor gets updates on the project success and can donate more or transfer the repaid donation to another project.

The charity has a repayment rate of 98%, has funded 221,971 entrepreneurs 82% are women. In its short existence it has raised over $90,000,000 using the web. Because of the web, Kiva have been able to create a game changing charity. Their donation and feedback model challenges how charities should be marketing. It’s becoming more evident that charities can no longer keep knocking on a donor’s inbox and asking for more money. Kiva has shown a game changing approach to marketing their charity through technology.

Amazon’s game changer was to show how infinite shelf space could change shopping habits. Google has changed the game of advertising by only connecting the searcher with the ad for the product or service they were seeking.

Game changing marketing doesn’t have to always be so dramatic. Local firm www.propertypal.com is chasing the might of Independent News and Media’s site www.propertynews.com by implementing better technology long before the media group. The change is small but significant enough to affect the status quo.

Having a game changer makes online marketing easier. Your game changer is the differentiator, the talking point that will get you retweeted or blogged, it is your buzz generator. The most successful online marketing strategies we have been involved in have always started with a mini game changer. So what’s yours?