Archive for June, 2009

How to Benefit From Market Research

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

If you conduct effective market research what are the things you can learn?

Know your customers – Market research will help you better understand your customers in a number of ways including demographic information such as their age, gender and geographic spread. The better you know your customer the easier it is to target your marketing and fine tune your product or service.

Know your target market - Who exactly are your existing customers and where do they live? What age group does your product or service appeal to? Do you know who your potential customers are and where they live?

Know your competitionMarket Research will help you measure your service compared to others. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your business and are you improving in the areas that customers demand?

Products and services - Do you have the products or services that people want? Are your products and services value for money? How do your services and products compare to that of your competitors? Can you deliver, do you deliver, should you deliver?

Ease of doing business – Do your customers find it easy to deal with you and when they visit your store and/or website do they find what they want? Is there sufficient advice and assistance on hand? Do you make it easy for your customers to buy? Are all your employees properly trained, knowledgeable, helpful and available?

Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. Which are the most effective and which are the least effective marketing channels?

Do people correctly understand your marketing message? Does your marketing properly represent your brand? Are the right channels being used to advertise? Are you reaching the right people?

With the power of the Internet it is now very easy to conduct market research using one of the many online survey software sites that make conducting surveys and collating good market research intelligence quick, easy and extremely cost effective.

Niche Marketing - A Case Study

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

A well-known recipe for success is “Find a need and fill it”. In today’s anything-goes business environment, this is better advice than ever. Proactive businesses are persistently looking for effective marketing tools. A recent example is bottled water with customized labels. These days, bottled water with customized labeling is available as an advertising or marketing device on many websites on the Internet; let’s see how it happened. Carbonated water is also available flavored with aromas for sparkling water.

Water originating in an underground spring and flowing to the surface is considered natural spring water. Spring water retains all of its natural minerals. Bottled spring water is better for your body’s hydration, which is important for good health. in this water you will not find the sugar, salt, flavors, impurities and toxins found in most water.

The human body is over 70% water, affecting all of our bodily functions. It regulates temperature, and also dissolves and rids your body of multipled impurities and toxins.Nothing else you drink cleans and hydrates your body like pure spring water. It’s the most important fluid you can drink.

Far too many unhealthy conditions and illnesses have been linked to forms of mineral accumulation in the body. These include many potential problems from simple arthritis to life-threatening kidney failure. It has been ascertained that many of these problems are solved by removing these minerals and then flushing them out of the body.

This has led to the biggest new fad– indeed, a whole new industry– that of bottled water. Predictably, the first two pages of any Google search on bottled water lists multiple websites promoting water from pure springs all over the United States, each claiming to be the purest and best tasting.

This then leads to the newest and most popular way to get your brand, logo and slogan out before the public. It’s bottled natural spring water– with your company’s logo or trade mark on custom made labels. This type of marketing is promoted as private labeling.

This is a fun, clever, affordable way to market your company name, logo, or message to your customers. There is always something new and creative in the marketing industry and custom labeled bottled waters or
sparkling waters is very innovative especially with the new health fad of always carrying drinking water with you.

An increasingly popular form of branding I discovered is private label bottled water for wedding guests. Custom labels can be made for weddings, cocktail parties, engagement parties and outdoor events, all with private labels with the name of the bride and groom and the wedding date.The label can be designed to match the other items commonly ordered for weddings, such as napkins. You can even make private labels instantly for free at freelabelmaker.

I guess you could even use this device to announce the birth of your first child– private label bottled water named after the baby.I am sure if I sit here long enough, I can think of a million more or funnier ways to use private labeled bottled water, but I believe you get the idea from what I have already written.

A Casual Look at Network Marketing and Associated Issues.

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

Network marketing, also known as multi-level marketing, is the business model of profits moving downwards in a stream from the company owner to those who sell the products, either directly or indirectly.

In essence, it is the small companies or individuals who make most of the sales and have all of the contact with customers and do most of the advertising for the products. However, it is the parent company which is responsible for getting the product to the buyer. This tiered structure of network marketing is a business model that is in place for many large companies and is growing more common.

Their services and products are advertised by smaller companies and buyers are recruited by them. The smaller companies are a kind of middleman between the client and the parent company, removing a lot of work from the hands of the parent company and hopefully making a decent income for themselves. MLM companies eliminate wholesalers, high cost of advertising, having employees, and they deliver product or service to the end consumer. This greatly reduces the expense of getting the product or service to the marketplace. MLM has paved the way for people to have their own business. MLM has been around for over forty years now and started as a part time business opportunity. However by the mid eighties many people were earning substantial incomes and were beginning to operate their business full time.

Network marketing is not for the persons who easily become tired of waiting. The very nature of this business requires a lot of patience. Network marketing is NOT about taking advantage of your friends and relatives. Only a few years ago, this meant retailing to, and sponsoring people from, your “warm list” of prospects. Network Marketing is a familiar marketing strategy that involves direct recruitment of salespeople, who sell the product and recruit more salespeople, (their downline) building an extensive network. It is similar to other multi-level marketing approaches such as affiliate marketing.

Building an organization must come first. More people fail than succeed by trying to do it the other way around.They try to build the organization by emphasizing selling. It is important point to remember. Your sales must come as the natural result of building an organization.

This is an excellent way to earn extra money without compromising what you are currently doing. Network marketing is sharing information that results in product sales.

People involve themselves because they want to finally be compensated for what they consider their efforts are really worth. Network Marketing is all a numbers game. By numbers game I mean that the more people you contact or email, the more articles you write, the more videos you post, then the more leads and sales you will receive.

This is the actual sale of products, services, or information to others within a cohesive and strongly built team environment. To break it down simply, however, Network Marketing is a process in which you share information while developing contacts. It is about recruitment because in a way by far the most important thing to do is to build a marketing team. People join your team to learn how they can become successful too.

Network Marketing is a proven business system, which has been in existence since the 1940’s. Income is generated in two ways - through personal sales and bonus earned from team building. Network Marketing is particularly suited to people with family commitments as it offers them an opportunity to start a business on a part time basis with very little capital.

The opportunity now exists for enterprising people to use their talents and skills to build businesses based both on selling and on finding and supporting the efforts of others. It is one of the best places where you can find the opportunity to develop a winning mindset. But only those who are willing to learn can hope to benefit from this opportunity.

Network Marketing is advancing through the same growing pains that the franchise industry went through in the past. Because it relies on developing and keeping trusted relationships, the product quality and service is often much higher than standard retail brands.

Internet prospecting is a tool that enables you to identify people who have an interest in a home business. It will still be up to you to personally contact these people and help them.Internet and network marketing are similar, in that you want your message to be seen by those who are interested in your offering. This is nowadays the strategy to build your internet home based business. The Internet allows you to build a larger marketing network that you will be able to use more effectively. The network marketing strategy still needs to be created for the online marketing network.

Success is based on following very basic principles and remembering that this is a serious business for serious people. Some people make a great deal of money through their respective businesses, but only a small number at the very top have managed to pull a significant income. Success requires a business owner to build a large network of people who buy and sell products/services and recruit others who’ll do the same. The internet now enables network marketers to build national and international businesses from the comfort of their home.Therefore the opportunity is available to you too.

Low-Cost Marketing Strategies Suitable For Small Businesses

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

When you are stuck in a position where your business budget do not allow you to splurge on a huge marketing campaign, you need to think big within small dimensions. One of the pillars of business is marketing, getting the word out and educating the market on your products and services so that consumers can start spending their dollars on you. The most important thing to all businesses is profit and as a result of today’s consumer capitalism, it is essential to conduct marketing no matter the nature of your business. A long time ago, it meant having huge a&p budgets, below and above the line marketing, designing collaterals, sales copy, the pitch.

Packaging everything into a 5 minute broadcast or a two page brochure cost money, especially if the product is designed for the masses. But fret not, here are some principles to ensure that you do not need to spend so much on your marketing campaign. They will allow you to save money and utilise every inch of advertising real estate to your advantage. One of the things you need to find out is your market. No product is designed to reach out to everybody, so you need to understand the demographics of your market before you start your campaign. A marketing campaign for a specific target market is not only more effective but also cheaper. Throwing money into something vague and general is almost always a hit and miss solution.

Think about the characteristics of your product or service. Who are the people most likely to use it? Identity your target market’s age range, the interest groups they are in, their purchasing power and more importantly; where they will pay the most attention to. What medium do they use, what places do they go to, what do they watch on television, what do they like, what sparks their interest? Once you can answer these questions, then you can design a marketing campaign to fit them to the T. Building a campaign for 100, 000 people is alot cheaper than doing it for a few million. You can choose which magazine, where to place a specific billboard, how best to reach out to them. Then and only then will you be able to build a small scale business marketing campaign that can gain momentum and see some growth in time to come.

Lastly, if your company is a new start up, you have to acknowledge the importance of spending your capital on marketing. Do not waste your money on inconsequential things like rent. Yes, the digital real estate market is there for a reason. Why would you want to spend large amount of money setting up a physical office when your business has not even built momentum? Virtual offices are the answer to cutting cost and pumping more money into marketing. Once you have a strong customer base, then you can think about going physical. Until then, for small business marketing, think of saving every penny you have.

Cheap and Quick Marketing Ideas

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

This article will discuss about 3 quick and dirty marketing ideas for suitable for start up companies. Not every company has enough capital for the advertising and promotion budget, hence introducing a new product or service to the market is not as easy as it sounds. Above the line and below the line advertising and marketing ideas can sometimes cost a lot of money, and we need guerrilla tactics and cheap and easy ways to get the message out to people.

Fortunately, since the internet was introduced, it has evolved into an effective marketing platform and many individuals as well as businesses have been using it as an efficient way to market products and services. Hence, following those who have been using the internet for affiliate or direct marketing, you should also make use of the internet to your advantage. This does not mean that you should emulate and condone spam, instead, it means that you should make the most of all the back channels of the internet to achieve your marketing objectives. These can include blogs, social networking sites like FaceBook and MySpace, forums, newsgroups, e-zines, instant messaging services and email. These are just some of the examples of the sites and zones on the internet you can use to blast your message across and with a daily log in of more than 6 million people at any given one time, you have access to the largest and most comprehensive emporium of marketing and advertising known to man.

In addition, you can also “borrow” the popularity of some blogs and websites and get your banners in them. It is cheap and usually you can strike a deal with the owner of the websites, like pay per click or profit sharing, based on how many referrals you get from them. Of course, there is affiliate marketing, which is one of the most effective ways for anyone to get the word out. The only problem is that there will be a certain limited profit because you have to share the spoils with those who are doing most of the work. One of the best ways to market your product and service is to do so from a virtual office as well. Save plenty of money and have a base of operations situated within cyberspace.

You get a premium address, telephony, fax, internet services and even a receptionist to handle your day to day calls. This way, you can market your services and still have a ‘physical office’ which lends credibility to your campaign. Nothing damages a marketing campaign more than a free email address or a website from a popular host or a home address. To make people believe in what you are selling, you need to make use of a virtual office. Well, these are 3 quick and ‘dirty’ marketing ideas for start ups to get their campaign off the ground.

Business full-fledged in all fields!

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

We all know that these days the Business is spanning its hands in all the spheres, be it commercial tasks or educational tasks. Business is expanding and thriving as well. Analysing the profits fetched by the businessmen, numerous people are being attracted to initiate and start the business. People who can afford to own and run a business are definitely choosing it as an option to earn their livelihood. Business gives several opportunities. There are several distinct options for a person to be in a business. The chain of the business is hierarchical. Beginning from producers and manufacturers, it passes on from wholesalers to the retailers. From these retailers, it actually comes into the market where the customers can actually acquire various products and commodities. Being in a business is not easy as it comprises vast competition and challenges. But, those who have the courage and can afford it as well, could definitely try their hands because the market is occupied with numerous lucrative opportunities. These lucrative options is definitely owed to the customers. To exemplify, the Arlington Heights Plumbers and Cicero Electricians, who have already gained an expertise in their job, are now ready to try their hands at business. They are planning to puchase the products in bulks at fewer prices and then distribute it to various retailers at some profit. This margin would facilitate them in earning enormous money. The products that they will buy would certainly be of great quality as they have lots of experience in this field. Hinckley Roofers (Need one? click here!), on the other hand, too are getting fascinated to run a business. The opportunity for them includes buying and distributing the products in mass. They can go for products such as cement, concrete, glues and fixtures. This they can then distribute to the retailers or the builders directly. This is really a nice career option for them as this will fetch them huge profits and that too without much hassle.

Bryan Ellis on the Explosion In Virtual Real Estate Investing

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Bryan Ellis is widely recognized as an expert in the fields of real estate investing and internet marketing, so it’s no wonder he’s regarded as a founding thinker of the new phenomenon of Virtual Real Estate Investing. I recently spoke with him about this topic:

Landlords, rehabbers and foreclosure investors, take notice - you may soon be focused on the new concepts of Virtual Real Estate Investing. Everything from using the internet as an avenue to make more money in real estate to online games such as SecondLife seem to be included in the popular definition of this term. And the pure financial potential is staggering.

In order to figure out the truth of the matter, I sought out Bryan Ellis whose experience in the fledgling industry is truly impressive.

“I began using the term ‘virtual real estate investing’ in the late 1990’s when I realized the clear similiarities in profit strategies, regardless of whether the real estate in question is ‘virtual’ or ‘physical’” said Ellis.

One example of the parallels between virtual and physical real estate Bryan Ellis cites is the similarity between the monetization of domain names versus physical property. He points out that control of a domain name or even a specific web page is much like controlling a real estate property: “those assets can be monetized in similar ways: By selling them for a profit, by leasing them, by offering advertising, etc. It’s not even necessary to own a website in order to profit from it.”

Bryan Ellis points to the example of websites like HubPages, Squidoo, Google Knol, etc. “Each of these services allows any person to write an article or create other type of content, and then allows the author to share in the revenue generated on that page. It’s almost as if you’re renting retail space in a highly desirable shopping district, only you get the benefit of a ‘great address’ in the form of a well-known domain host like Google.com but without paying a single penny in rental fees. It’s a win-win scenario.”

I must admit: Its easy to see the parallels. For example, if you’re the owner of a desirable property, its desirability is (in a business context) largely due to its being in a location that is of interest to others. Similarly, ownership of a desirable domain name is valuable for the same reasons. Regardless of the type of asset, you can sell or lease or use any number of strategies to turn the assets into cash.

In our next installment of this series on virtual real estate investing, Bryan Ellis will share the internet analogies to the physical concept of real estate development.

SEO Training Can Be Affordable and Convenient

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

There are many benefits to Search Engine Optimization. Increased search engine rankings offer financial rewards and increased net worth for your business. This is something many business owners do not realize. They know that having their business websites ranking on page one of Google will increase their website income. They do not realize that increased website rankings are also a significant asset to their business. Increased web visibility has tremendous value in a variety of ways. Like most things of value, there is usually an investment involved.

Search Engine Optimization is generally a service provided by a professional SEO company or agency. The cost of these services can run from $50.00 to $300.00 an hour for hundreds of hours a month depending on the size of the business. This can total several thousand dollars a month for very large online operations, $500.00 to $2,000.00 a month for many “small businesses” doing business online. The service is expensive but the results are worth the cost.
However, there is a much more affordable option.

A growing trend with many small business owners is to learn Search Engine Optimization. Both classroom training and online SEO training is not only very affordable compared to the SEO companies but a solid investment into any businesses future revenue growth. Considering the very high cost of outsourcing your website’s search engines rankings, learning SEO offers a very smart option.

Contracting with a SEO agency may get you the results you want, as long as the agency can deliver the expected results. Learning SEO can provide many years of website optimization with just one affordable payment. For most businesses, this is the only option that makes good sense. All small business owners know a great value when presented with one. Many big business owners also understand the benefits of having a well trained and search savvy staff onboard to provide and bring continuous search engine rankings to the bottom line of their operations.

Learning SEO makes that a reality. Learning Search Engine Optimization can be a reality for you and those who rely on your businesses revenue. Don’t wait any longer, learn SEO today.

Discover How “New Marketing” is Required to Survive and Thrive in Today’s Economy

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

For the past 100 years businesses have been extremely successful in marketing their products and services with traditional methods that had been tried and true. Methods such as TV advertising, Radio, Newspaper, Direct Mail just to name a few were (and unfortunately still are) the mainstay for most businesses. Throw enough money at advertising to the masses through these media options and you would see great results.

 

But what has recently been discovered is that with the explosion of media that thrives on the use of technology, business owners no longer reap the lucrative rewards of success through these Old Marketing methods. They find that their old idea of marketing of attempting to “interrupt” the masses and convince them to buy their products and services no longer work and have become a tremendous drain on their budget. TV, Radio, Yellow Pages, Newspaper, Telemarketing and Direct mail are all in trouble because of the realization that we are in an age that demands marketing through New Marketing channels.

In his great book “Meatball Sundae”, Seth Godin describes New Marketing as:

Fourteen trends that no marketer can afford to ignore. It explains about what to do about the increasing power of stories, not facts; about shorter and shorter attention spans; and about the new math that says five thousand people who want to hear your message are more valuable than five million who don’t”.

 

New Marketing is taking the realization that a consumer does not want to be “sold” a product or service, they not only want to buy it on their own accord, they want to feel like they know, like and trust the people and organization behind them!

New Marketing uses tools such as: My Space, YouTube, Twitter, Squidoo, Blogs, TeleConferences and Webcasts and delivers a marketing message with techniques such as “Permission and Viral Marketing”.

 

As a Denver Marketing Consultant, I help Small Business Owners, you must embrace the fact that you no longer can learn a few “closing techniques” to sell your product or service to the masses. You must realize that when you determine what your target market and ideal client looks like, and then discover what their burning needs are, then and only then can you come in to solve their  needs with your product or service. You should not take the mind-set of selling what you have…you must make what you can sell!

This means that you discover and listen to your audience (clients and prospects) and craft your product or service to meet their needs….and if you cannot do that, you have the wrong audience! Here are some Small Business Marketing Tips:

 

  • New Marketing capitalizes on every single client and prospect interaction as a form of media and advertising.
  • New Marketing creates a warm and inviting environment around all your clients and prospects alike that allows them to communicate about your product and service.
  • New Marketing allows the audience to feel heard and appreciated which builds for you a powerful outcome called “Social Proof”. People buy when they realize that others have bought and received great results!
  • New Marketing is not just about the tools and technology to connect with an audience to sell your products and services, as much as it is a mind-set shift. It is thinking from the perspective of the audience, what they need, what problems they have, and then how you can effectively meet those needs with your products or services.

Marketing Online Stuff

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

 

A lot of different ways to spread the word about products online available online, and many ways can be also found offline. Marketing products over the internet is a kind of a business that can sky rocket your income, especially if you are promoting services, info products or systems as an affiliate, but first you have to equip your knowledge with basic toolsrequired and set up your online presence and develop it till you reach your target.

Below you will find some points I wanted to share in this post about promoting online, the below mentioned steps are effective in every product you’re promoting as it’s not dedicated toward one market.

Building Blogs

Starting a healthy-daily updated blog is obviously a good start and one of the easy starts that you can do. If you know this or not blogging the easiest most effective way of online marketing and maybe the cheapest one too. Bloging Activities are simply writing good articles relevant to your promos and posting them period. The money generating part is either ads or hyperlinks pointing to what the readers want to know or buy. Of course, you need to promote your blog too via Social networking and social bookmarking sites to make some targeted traffic.

Posting Youtube Videos

Easy? Yes. how to do it? Really simple just use a webcam to record video using your webcam software or any software better yet using a camcoder to record nice high quality videos or you can take screenshots to the software or service you are promoting, think of making a powerpoint presentation on your screen while recording your screen using a special software for this like (Camtasia) to make videos.

Then simply post the video you’ve recorded on youtube or any online video broadcasting services marketing and demonstrating your product, service or software to the audience.

Posting Informative Articles:

the difference between posting article content and posting content to your blod is that you have to register to article directories and submit your content then wait until the article directory approve it. This way you will have your content published on websites other than yours and you will get links to your pages from these directories for free and this is a good deal in my opinion. But remember unique content is the king here.

Another point here is that many bloggers use to pick article contents submitted to article directories and post it again in their blog keeping the reference of course to the author’s website and …bingo… , more readers to their blogs get you more visitors to your site once they click on the author’s name or link.

Put Ads on Classifieds:

Online classified ads and column ads are good options for product promotion especially for local services or products that can help locals. Many websites gives classified ads on their content pages and they have a lot of traffic checking these classified ads everyday looking for products of their interest and again local classified ads are the best in case you are targeting specified areas.

Use Adwords to promote

Also known as PPC and in my opinion PPC is one of the most effective ways of promotion but there is a trade off 1st it’s quite costly and 2nd it requires some optimization knowledge in order to keep and maintain the required return on investment. The key is to monitor your ppc campaigns closely and always keep an eye on cost and budget otherwise you will pay more than your profits.

Partnership

Partnerships creates synergy and it is a competitive advantage for those who join forces to advertise and its simply the easiest way to promote fast by allowing other people sell your products.

All the above mentioned ways requires tons of research that consume a lot of time in order not to get in a trial and error phase and reach a frustration before seeing any results.

Finally I would like to give you an advice, a lot of courses and couching programs available online that could really help you market your products and services and I usually write reviews for those programs that I personally use, more information about the latest one.

Delta Squadron Insider Review here.

Regards,

Ali Abdullah

Getreview.org