There is a difference between marketing to a business and marketing to a consumer, believe it or not. Although you are still selling a product to a person experience shows that the difference between these two types of markets runs deep.
When you market to a B2B you will realize these businesses work hard to streamline the buying process in order to save time and money. This often explains why a B2B purchase is based more on...
8/22/2010
What is a Marketing Plan?
Think of a your marketing plan as a roadmap. Your marketing plan outlines specific actions that you will take to market your product or service potential customers. These actions work to persuade these potential customers to purchase your products or services.
Your marketing plan does not need to be long and it doesn't have to cost a lot of money to complete. Marketing plans can be a part of your overall business plan or as a...
How To Write a Slogan that Sticks
When you think of slogans, what comes to mind? What brand can you recite a slogan for immediately?
Take for example the following slogans that have made their way into the memory of thousands:
* Just Do It - Nike
* This Buds for You - Budweiser
* Have it Your Way! - Burger King
* We Bring Good Things to Light - GE
* We'll Leave the Light on For Ya! - Motel 6
* Zoom! Zoom! - Mazda
Use the six components...
Quantifying Your Marketing Efforts
It's true we spend marketing dollars to display at trade shows, to attend events, to hold conferences, and to produce marketing material for campaigns. How do we know what we are getting in return? How can we quantify the results to make sure they are worth the revenue spent?
This may seem like an easy question, however it's one that I am asked often. I have seen companies that don't even quantify their marketing efforts. Let...
Create a 90-Day Marketing Plan
Create a 90-Day Marketing Plan
It's that time of year where we begin to evaluate how well we did and start to develop new plans for the upcoming year. This year I'd like to suggest that you try something new, rather than creating a one-year marketing plan or a five-year marketing plan, why not try creating a 90-day plan?
While it's important to always monitoring your marketing it is vital in this economy to be diligent and watch...
Understanding the Media Buying Process Step-by-Step
Media buying, sounds complicated doesn't it? Are you ready to learn how to conduct media buying by completing five steps?
Step 1 - Identify your target market.
Who are you trying to reach? Who is your target market? Create a profile that reflects the consumer you are trying to reach. Questions you may want to ask yourself: What is their age? Are they male or female? What's their average income? The answers to these questions...
How To Develop a Marketing Strategy in 5 Easy Steps
The benefits of a planned marketing strategy are numerous. Business owners often rely solely on their intuition to make business decisions. While this informal knowledge is important in the decision making process, it may not provide you with all the facts you need to achieve marketing results. A marketing strategy will help you in defining business goals and develop activities to achieve them. Difficulty: AverageTime Required:...
Turning Your Services into a Product
One of the biggest challenges in selling professional services is that what you are offering is intangible. Your product can't be seen, touched, or tasted. Until your prospective clients experience what you do, they have no way of knowing if it will turn out, whether they will like it, and how well it will work in their situation. To make a buying decision, the client must first trust that your work will produce the result...
Time To Move Up From the Worn-Out Sales Brochure
I got another one of those calls the other day. . ."Can you make me a brochure?" Many business owners have been sold on the notion that they need a tri-fold brochure or they are not in business. Forget it...everybody's got one and no one uses it.
Your potential clients need an education. They need to know how you are different. (The typical tri-fold brochure simply confirms that you are the same.)
Every small business should...
What to Do When Your Marketing Campaign Fails?
Unfortunately it happens. You plan, you research, you launch and the campaign fails. What could you have missed? What do you do now?
The first thing you want to do is step back. Breathe. Yes, breathe. The worst thing you could do at this point is think you are the only one this has happened to. You're not.
You are probably questioning whether you have the knowledge to work in marketing. You are overwhelmed with disappointment....
Marketing Along the Path of Least Resistance
Marketing is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. You have to find your own unique path, the one that works best for you and your business. To make marketing easy, that path needs to be the one where you will encounter the least resistance -- both from the marketplace and from inside yourself.
Here are six steps to put you on the road to effortless marketing:
Be willing to let go of struggle. You may believe you want marketing...
An Action Step is Worth a Thousand Words
We self-employed professionals spend a great deal of our marketing effort on searching for the right words. We read books, take classes, and hire consultants to help us write copy for our marketing materials. Writing sales letters, drafting brochures, and composing websites consumes hours or days of precious marketing time. But it appears that many professionals have mistaken all this wordsmithing for productive action....
Publish or Perish
When you place a call to a prospective client, does the person you are calling already know your name, even if you have never met? When new clients are referred to you, do they often say that they've heard of you from several different sources? Are you frequently contacted by people who are ready to work with you and don't question your qualifications? These are just some of the results you can expect when you make publishing...
Why Aren't You Earning More?
In a recent survey of independent professionals, almost 50% of the consultants, coaches, and other professionals declared that they were currently not earning enough to meet their expenses. This result shouldn't be surprising, since according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, more than half of all small businesses fail in the first year and 95% fail within the first five years. But it made me curious. How can that...
Defining Your Niche Market
In my 12 years of experience working with clients, one thing I've noticed is there are some business owners that have defined their niche market and have a clear picture of whom it is they are marketing to and there are others that tend to waiver or be unsure.
Often business owners view a niche market as narrowing their sales or cutting into a profit margin, so they fear it. The truth is, a niche market could be defined...
Make Yourself an Expert!
Can I let you in on a little marketing secret? If you are lacking exposure or the kind of public relations you would love to have, it's time to start showing yourself as an expert.
This isn't a fake it until you make it speech, it's simply teaching you how to become an expert that can be found. Have you ever wondered how people get picked for magazine interviews or how news channels find experts for certain segments of...
Marketing: Surviving the Economic Downturn
It is true, we are now being faced with difficult economic times. This means it's even harder to get the attention of your consumer.
This week alone there were three advertising companies within my area that laid off workers. Is it because a major client pulled their marketing budget? Perhaps clients were not getting the results they desired. Fact is it's difficult in today's economy to come out ahead.
Whether you...
Marketing a Service: Do It Effectively
When it comes to marketing a service it can at times be more challenging than marketing a product. You are not selling something that is tangible; you are in fact selling the invisible.
When selling a service the customer experience is extremely important to closing the deal and marketing effectively. The experience has an impact on the perceived value of the service.
Services also tend to have the reputation built on...
Evaluate and Create Your Call to Action
Do you have a call to action in your marketing materials?
Go ahead take a look. In your marketing materials do you tell them what to do next?
Let's consider that your potential customer has picked up a piece of your marketing collateral, perhaps it's that fantastic brochure you just had designed. They begin to read it and as they flip through the brochure they realize hey might be able to use your services, but they get...
Why Consumers Buy What They Buy
Recently I received an email from John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, asking me what will be the key in the upcoming year when it comes to small businesses. If you don't know John I must say you may be missing out on one the most influential small business gurus there is. I've had the opportunity to sit across from John and share a cup of coffee, review his material on referral marketing and evaluate his marketing plan...
Understanding the Role of Social Media in Marketing
What the heck is social media and what role does it play in my marketing? This is probably a question I wouldn't have received two years ago, but yet today it's the most common question that enters my inbox.
First off, let's talk about what social media is. Social media represents low-cost tools that are used to combine technology and social interaction with the use of words. These tools are typically internet or mobile...
Four Small Business Marketing Steps You Need to Put Into Check
Ohhhh la la pretty graphics, wonderful colors and everything aesthetic, but do your potential customers know what you are trying to say?
I think the biggest mistake we make in marketing is making everything so difficult for consumers to understand that they don't get it. Literally. And if they don’t get it, they usually don’t feel compelled to act, buy, etc. ... you see where I’m going with this.
Marketing is about informing...
Content Marketing - Understanding the Why and How
What is content marketing? Content marketing is using relevant and valuable information to attract potential customers to you. This information will not only attract but, if done correctly, will engage your target audience and drive profitable action to your business.
I'm always amazed at the looks and responses I get when I'm speaking to a client and I explain to them they need more content. I'm then almost always questioned...
Take Care of Your Hearing Health at the Gym Too
Americans always seem to be concerned about their health, but about their waste line in particular. Even as far back as 100 years ago, Americans were creating work out machines, though they weren't nearly as useful as the ones that exist today are. It's incredibly important that Americans stay committed to their physical health because the country's current obesity epidemic has spun wildly out of control. Unfortunately though,...
How Can I Stop the Ringing in My Ears – 5 Natural Ways to Get Tinnitus Relief
Tinnitus – The Problem
The constant ringing and rustling noises that were sounding in my ears were absolutely driving me insane. About five years ago, these ear noises began during a trip I took and sought medical attention as soon as I got home. I didn't know it at the time, but I had tinnitus.
Over the course of the next couple of years...
The Untold Secrets of Curing Tinnitus - Learn How to Stop That Ringing In The Ears
Are you experiencing that awful ringing in the ears? Is it something you wish you could simply get rid of fast? Well if you do not already know that ringing sound in your ears is known as tinnitus. And it is something which can only get worse if you do not do anything about it. And keep in mind that it will not heal itself on its own. So what you need to do is start following a few simple tips which will help you get that...
Sacramento Residents Shed Light on Hearing Loss
Many Californians flock from all over the state to live in Sacramento. Sure, most Americans think that San Francisco and Los Angeles are the only cities in the state where big things are happening, but Sacramento is the political hub of the state. That's why the city is always growing. The only problem is, that all of the growth Sacramento experiences leads to more noisy construction projects, which can cause hearing loss...
How to Take Care of Your Hearing Aid ?
In the United States, most people with hearing aids have to pay significant copayments that can make the essential devices quite expensive. But hearing aids are not something one can just go without – they are hardly an excess. In fact, without them, people who have suffered hearing loss due to traumatic events, genetics or diseases, or simply due to the natural processes of old age will be unable to fully participate in everyday...
Hello World Tutorial
The following examples show different ways of writing the C# Hello World program.
Example 1
// Hello1.cs
public class Hello1
{
public static void Main()
{
System.Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!");
}
}
Output
Hello, World!
Code Discussion
* Every Main method must be contained inside a class (Hello1 in this case).
* The System.Console class contains a WriteLine method that can be used to display a string to the...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)