How to use your billing process to introduce your customers to new products and services

If you invoice your customers, and those who receive your invoice are purchasing decision makers, you can promote your business at the same time for little or no cost. Furthermore, you are promoting to people who already trust you, and with whom you have an existing relationship.

This works well when your customers include small business owners, consultants and individual purchasers. These people are highly likely to review all invoices themselves. They also makes the purchasing decisions, unlike the accounting assistants in larger business who process the bills independently of the people who decide what products and services get purchased.

Why not tell your customers about the other products or services you offer? It can be as simple as placing a photocopy of an article into the same envelope as your invoice. Articles or how-to information works better than overt advertisements. You could include a simple note on a business card or Post-it that says something like: "Interesting article. We should discuss." or "This may be if interest to you or a friend - enjoy."

Here are some examples:

• A legal firm could include an article on labor contracts or intellectual property issues when they bill a client for reviewing a purchase agreement. The articles or notes let the client know that there are other areas that may need legal attention.
  
  
• An accounting firm could remind clients about changes in the tax law that their client might take advantage of if they act soon enough. They can also remind clients that they offer personal finance advice as well as corporate advice.
  
  
• A gardening service might include tips on landscaping to give their clients ideas. The gardener could offer to install the new irrigation. Similarly, they could remind customers that their trees should be pruned at certain times and that they offer this service for an additional fee.

These types of promotions do not have to be elaborate. If fact, they often work best when the customer feels you are including the information just for them. If your material was too fancy, they would know it was mass produced. If you bill monthly, you just need 12 articles -- $1.20 per client per year, assuming you pay 10-cents per photocopied page. It is not much or a burden to add an extra page to the envelope along with the invoice.

You should also take the opportunity to ask for referrals. Include some extra business cards. You might also offer an incentive, but it is often not necessary.

You can widen your promotions beyond your own customer base by partnering with another business that offers complementary products or services. You mention them to your clients and they mention you to theirs.

http://www.marketingsurvivalkit.com/billing.htm

Advertising Secrets I Learned From The Kirby Vacuum Cleaner Man

I was just sitting here at my computer (as usual) when my husband walked in and announced, "There's a man here to see you". What? I wasn't expecting anyone. "Who is it", I asked. "Some guy who wants to speak with my wife." OK, my husband was home so I knew I was safe. I ventured outside to see who it was.

I was promptly met on my porch by a smiling face who presented me with a free box of laundry detergent. This seemingly nice young man told me he was in the neighborhood and wanted to give me this free gift. Being the skeptic I am, my first thought was, "Oh yeah... and what kind of sales pitch?"

He proceeded to walk to his truck, then turned and asked if I had a minute. "Yep, here it comes", I thought. I said I was a little busy but asked what he wanted. The smile came back to his face as he said, "I want to make your life easier."

(Secret #1 - Give your customers something absolutely free of charge. This makes them appreciative and brings about a feeling of good will. It can be free useful articles, a free ebook, a sample or trial... anything free.)

He began to pull box after box from the back of his SUV. As he approached my door, loaded for bear, he asked if I would allow him to vacuum and clean my carpets... all free, of course. At first I was going to turn him down cold. I wasn't in the vacuum or carpet cleaner buying mood. But then I wondered if I might be able to learn something from this representative of one of the most successful vacuum cleaner companies in America. I decided to give in and allow the demonstration, hoping to glean some "secrets" I could use in my copywriting.

As he walked into the living room, he began to set up the vacuum. Small talk followed. He complimented me on the interior design of my house, asked what brand of vacuum I used, how I liked it, how old it was, if I had considered buying a new vacuum, if anyone in my family suffered from allergies and how much time I spent cleaning house.

(Secret #2 - Get to know your customers. By collecting this information, the salesman was mentally tailoring his "pitch" to suit me. He was making notes to include the elements of his presentation that would appeal to me personally, and leave out those that would not.)

Next, the Kirby man (who I'll call Roger), began to ask me questions that I would obviously have to say "yes" to. This is reminiscent of the Dale Carnegie style. Roger asked, "Would you like to be able to spend less time cleaning with better results?" He asked, "Would you like to know that the allergens AND the dirt are taken out of your upholstery and carpeting?" And finally, he asked, "Would you like for your new carpet to last twice as long?" Needless-to-say, the answer to all three was "yes".

(Secret #3 - Get them in the habit of saying "yes". Dale Carnegie made a point of this in his book How To Win Friends and Influence People. If you get someone in the habit of saying "yes", they are going to be more likely to agree with you when it comes to other questions (like, "are you ready to buy a new vacuum"!)

Roger asked me to get my old vacuum from the closet. I did. He asked me to bring him a box of salt. (Yes, I saw it coming but I did it anyway.) He began to pour the salt onto my carpet. Then (as expected) he ground it in with his foot. He took my old vacuum and asked me to let him know when I thought it had sucked up all the salt. On came the vacuum and the challenge began!

After about 15 passes, I instructed Roger to stop. He did. Then he reached behind him and rolled over the Kirby G6 - Limited Edition. He opened the latch where the bag goes and placed a black, thin pad over it. Next, he flipped on the "onboard transmission", put the vacuum into "drive" and began the first part of his demonstration.

Just 6 passes later, he stopped the Kirby, opened the bag latch and pulled out the black pad. It was covered with salt! It was also covered with dirt, sand, lint and hair. It was extremely gross, not to mention embarrassing!

(Secret #4 - Prove your point. Just telling someone that your product or service works means nothing. You have to prove that you can and will do what you say. If you can't offer an online demonstration; use testimonials, offer references that tell about before and after results. Or give a free trial period so the customer can check it out themselves.)

"I know you're busy, ma'am, but I just wanted to show you that. I'll finish vacuuming now and then clean your living room", said Roger. I knew Roger and I weren't finished yet, but I went back to my computer like a good little prospect and let him do his work.

Sure enough, about 10 minutes later, Roger asked where he would find our trashcan. I walked around the corner to see what needed to be thrown away and was immediately horrified! He had used those little pads while vacuuming the entire room! There were disks all over my living room just covered with hair, lint, fibers, dust, sand and who knows what else. The fear of creepy- crawly things in my house started to rise up within me. All this junk was in my carpet? How disgusting! My house wasn't as clean as I thought it was. "I'm sorry for the mess, ma'am, but we are only allowed to use these demonstration pads to vacuum with. I'll throw them away if you'll show me to your garbage can."

(Secret #5 - Play on emotion. By leaving all those little demonstration pads around the room, Roger was subtly telling me that my house wasn't very clean. He was reminding me of the initial conversation we had about allergens and getting my house cleaner in less time. It was working, too. I began to think about all the mess deep down inside my carpet, and drapes, and rugs, and upholstery.)

"Can I try to get these stains out for you", was the cry from the living room. "Sure, go ahead", I replied. Roger continued to work, as did I. A few minutes later he asked if I would come see if the stains were still noticeable. They weren't! I'd tried to get the stains out before but had no luck. "Good", Roger smiled, "I'll clean the rest for you now".

I continued banging on my keyboard until I heard the whirring of the motor stop. Roger peeked around the corner and told me it would take an hour or so for the carpet to dry enough to walk on. "Do you mind if I get my gear together in here?" I agreed.

As he was putting up hoses and attachments, he began to explain the extreme versatility of the Kirby G6 - Limited Edition. The package he had with him that day came with a base vacuum which offered an "onboard transmission" so the motor wouldn't wear out. It also allowed the vacuum to be easier to push. It offered the ability to blow as well as pull suction. This, as Roger explained, was useful for blowing up pool toys or inflatable balls - and for deflating air mattresses, etc. so they would lie completely flat for storage. The carpet cleaner attachment would... Well, you get the idea.

(Secret #6 - Focus on benefits, not features. We've all heard the phrase before, however most don't apply it. I wouldn't care anything in the world about a vacuum with "onboard transmission" because I don't have a clue what it is or what it does for me. Once explained, however, I love the idea of a vacuum that "drives itself".)

Lastly, after the full tour of how easy the vacuum was to operate, how much cleaner my house would be with less effort, and how versatile the vacuum/carpet cleaner was... we got to the price.

Needless-to-say, with Kirby's reputation, I was expecting to pay and arm and a leg. However, Roger simply said, "All this can be yours for just $3.00 per day". That didn't sound so bad. "For how many days", my cynical self asked. Roger laughed and pulled out his pricing sheet. To answer the question that you've had since the beginning of the article... Yes, I bought the vacuum.

(Secret #7 - Save the price for last. Get them to love your product or service and then - if possible - break the price out into as small an increment as you can. This saves the prospective customer from suffering "sticker shock" and makes the item appear more affordable.)

Was it worth it? Yes and yes. It was worth my time to find out how one of the most successful vacuum cleaner companies in America does it's sales magic; and it was worth the price of the vacuum, too. I learned a lot from the Kirby vacuum cleaner man, and my house looks great!

http://www.marketingsurvivalkit.com/advertising-sales-strategy.htm

Make More Sales by Counteracting Fear

Possibly one of the biggest obstacles to making a sale or increasing your client list is your prospects' fear: their fear of making the wrong decision, fear of being ripped off, or just the nagging fear of getting lousy service after the sale. Two things fuel that fear: personal experience and news headlines.

Case in point: A couple years ago, I tried out a new dentist based on a full-page ad in the yellow pages and the credentials listed on his web site. To make a long story short: After a couple visits, I decided I was extremely dissatisfied with every aspect of my experience as a patient of his, so I asked his office staff to forward my records to a different dentist that was recommended to me. The upshot is that about a year later, I saw a newspaper article about this first dentist saying that he was sentenced to five years of felony probation after pleading guilty to bilking dozens of patients out of almost 100 grand!

Another case in point: The state Attorney General’s office is now building a case against a contractor with whom I had some major service-related problems. Apparently, he has created a long trail of disgruntled customers over the years and it’s catching up to him. For the time being, however, his display ads in the local Penny Saver newspaper keep luring new, unsuspecting customers in.

The purpose of these two stories is this: Lots of people have been burned and many other people have heard news reports and stories about fraud, dishonesty, or just plain bad service. That’s one of the reasons it’s more important than ever to convey to your prospective customers and clients that you’re an ethical, respected, and service-oriented business person.


It’s All in How You Communicate

Similar to an integrated marketing strategy, one should pursue a combined approach to portraying themselves as an ethical, customer-centric individual or company. One way is to develop a mission statement, a values statement, and/or a vision statement that you can include, in some form, on your web site, brochures, press releases, newsletters, and other modes of communication. Those statements should convey a strong emphasis on client satisfaction and customer service.

Developing and maintaining a stellar reputation for excellent quality and value-added service is the foundation for gaining people’s trust and generating valuable word-of-mouth advertising. The more positive ways the public hears about you, the more receptive they’ll generally be to becoming your client, customer, or patient.

What a lot of professionals fail to do – and this is costing them clients and income – is to ask for referrals, especially at the moment when their client is at their optimal level of enthusiasm. Each situation is different, and everyone has to be their own judge of what’s appropriate, but one of the best times to ask for a referral is when a client has just profusely thanked you for the great service you’ve provided. The opposite side of that same coin is to give them a few of your business cards and ask them to selectively hand them out to friends, co-workers, or family members who might be in the market for your services.

Whether you’re talking about Internet marketing or traditional marketing, the more 'hooks' or 'nets' you have in the water, the greater your catch is going to be.

http://www.marketingsurvivalkit.com/make-more-sales.htm

The Mental Process of Achieving Financial and Personal Success

The amazing paradox of success is that everybody knows the ‘secret’ of how to achieve it, but few are willing to apply the principles that virtually guarantee the attainment of almost anything you want. It’s no mystery that if you identify a goal, write down a plan for reaching it, and follow that plan with persistence, determination, and focus, you stand a good chance of realizing your dream or, at the very least, creating an outcome that puts you in a much better place than you were before making the attempt.

Why doesn’t everybody make a plan, take continuous action, and pursue their dreams? Why do so many people settle for a measly paycheck, an unsatisfying life, and a humdrum existence? In our society, there’s a rampant epidemic of undeveloped potential. The solution will continue to elude the masses because it’s not something that can be seen, touched, or measured. If you’re not producing the results you desire in your life, the problem could stem from concentrating too much on the ‘here-and-now’ instead of what could be.

The ticket to a higher standard of living and a more fulfilling lifestyle is available to anyone willing to cultivate the states of mind known as faith, hope, and belief. Focusing on the concrete aspects of life rather than the invisible resources that our five senses can’t perceive is what 90% of the world does on a day-to-day basis. Obviously it’s the other 10% (or less) who have faith in themselves, believe in their dreams, and have hope that their actions will propel them to a more prosperous and joyful future.

On the journey to success or happiness, the biggest obstacles are not in the concrete world, but rather in the inner world of thought and imagination. Having your plans and aspirations obscured by self doubt, fear of failure, and the negativity of those around you is a surefire roadmap for going nowhere fast.

So can we blame our parents and teachers for telling us not to be dreamers and not to waste our time on what they viewed as unrealistic pipe dreams? Well, we could, but it would be a lot more productive to take responsibility for our own lives and focus on taking deliberate, consistent, daily action toward the realization of our goals.

A woman who cut my hair several months ago said she was tired of working three jobs for low pay, and was interested in starting an Internet business as I had. I emailed her a few step-by-step instructions for getting started, and, although I never heard back from her, I’d be willing to bet she never followed through with the information I gave her. My guess is that she didn’t have the courage to embark on something outside her comfort zone of cutting hair and waiting tables. She sounded intelligent and had even taken some computer classes, but her negative inner dialogue probably talked her out of it. What she may not have realized is that when you start moving forward and taking positive action toward a goal, new doors open up and guidance is provided.

Your life is not set in stone; it’s a continual work in progress. Change begins with a conscious decision, and is implemented one step at a time. ‘Comfort Zone’ is another way of saying ‘self-imposed limitations’. Unless you make yourself a little uncomfortable by expanding the boundaries of what currently feels safe and comfortable, your accomplishments will be unremarkable and your personal growth will stagnate.

http://www.marketingsurvivalkit.com/achieve-success.htm

Positive Thinking and Effective Marketing Go Hand in Hand

Successful sales and marketing requires persistence, continuous improvement, and the expectation of a positive outcome. If one doesn’t approach every aspect of marketing with enthusiasm, creativity, and a positive mental attitude, then it’s like embarking on schooner race with no wind in your sails. You’ll have no momentum or direction, and the competition is guaranteed to overtake you.

Attitude has an insidious way of infiltrating everything we do; and it can lift us up to great heights or pull us down to the depths of failure. It can energize us to do and say all the right things at the right time, or it can undermine our motivation and cause us to sabotage our own best laid plans.

The bottom line is this: either we own our attitude or our attitude owns us. Every now and then, it’s necessary to make a conscious decision to take charge of our thoughts, attitudes, and habits. An unfocused effort, whether it involves marketing or any other aspect of business, is sure to produce inferior results.

Allowing negative thoughts to infect your mind creates a cascading effect of self-defeating behavior. In direct sales, one needs to have a winning attitude and a magnetic personality to influence and persuade prospects to become customers. That’s only the tip of the iceberg, though, because a successful salesperson also needs to have the finesse and people skills to win back lost customers, negotiate the best deal, ask for and get sales referrals, inspire teamwork, and have the energy and optimism to overcome setbacks and keep moving forward in the face of temporary failure. Without a positive mental attitude, none of that is going to happen.

Cultivating a positive attitude also feeds the creativity and optimism necessary for nearly every other aspect of marketing ranging from sending out press releases and sales letters to placing ads or launching a web site. If you don’t believe it’s going to work, either you’re not going to try at all—or your efforts will be weakened and half-hearted. In both cases, you’re doomed to failure before you even get out of the starting gate.

On the other hand, if you make up your mind to be an ‘eternal optimist’, you’ll be willing to take calculated risks and put your best foot forward. Getting there may involve an integrated program of reading motivational books, listening to self-improvement CDs, making a concerted effort to identify and avoid (or filter out) a lot of the negativity in your environment, and establishing daily habits that will tend to attract beneficial people and circumstances into your life.

Being an entrepreneur and running your own business is an intrinsically risky endeavor. If an expensive marketing campaign falls flat or a major client signs on with the competition, you might find yourself scrambling to make up for the loss. A positive state of mind not only helps you be creative, resourceful, and energized, but it also enhances your ability to anticipate, adapt, and regroup.

While many aspects of marketing are considered a gamble by anyone’s estimation, the best way to hedge your bets is by adopting a focused, optimistic, and positive mental attitude

http://www.marketingsurvivalkit.com/positive-thinking-marketing.htm

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http://www.ideamarketers.com/library/article.cfm?articleid=155937

Product & Brand Failures: A Marketing Perspective

Overview

Product and brand failures occur on an ongoing basis to varying degrees within most product-based organizations. This is the negative aspect of the development and marketing process. In most cases, this “failure rate” syndrome ends up being a numbers game. There must be some ratio of successful products to each one that ends up being a failure. When this does not happen, the organization is likely to fail, or at least experience financial difficulties that prohibit it from meeting profitability objectives. The primary goal is to learn from product and brand failures so that future product development, design, strategy and implementation will be more successful.

Studying product failures allows those in the planning and implementation process to learn from the mistakes of other product and brand failures. Each product failure can be investigated from the perspective of what, if anything, might have been done differently to produce and market a successful product rather than one that failed. The ability to identify key signs in the product development process can be critical. If the product should make it this far, assessing risk before the product is marketed can save an organization’s budget, and avoid the intangible costs of exposing their failure to the market.

Defining Product and Brand Failures
A product is a failure when its presence in the market leads to:

• The withdrawal of the product from the market for any reason;
• The inability of a product to realize the required market share to sustain its presence in the market;
• The inability of a product to achieve the anticipated life cycle as defined by the organization due to any reason; or,
• The ultimate failure of a product to achieve profitability.

Failures are not necessarily the result of substandard engineering, design or marketing. Based on critic’s definitions, there are hundreds of “bad” movies that have reached “cult status” and financial success while many “good” movies have been box office bombs. Other premier products fail because of competitive actions. Sony’s Beta format was a clearly superior product to VHS, but their decision to not enable the format to be standardized negatively impacted distribution and availability, which resulted in a product failure. The “Tucker” was a superior vehicle compared to what was on the market at the time. This failure was due to General Motors burying the fledging organization in the courts to eliminate a future competitor with a well designed product posing a potential threat to their market share. Apple has experienced a series of product failures, with consistent repetition as they continue to fight for market share.

Product failures are not necessarily financial failures, although bankruptcy may be the final result. Many financially successful products were later found to pose health and safety risks. These products were financial and market share successes:

• Asbestos-based building materials now recognized as a carcinogenic—Insulation, floor tile and “popcorn” ceiling materials produced by a number of manufacturers.
• Baby formula that provided insufficient nutrients for infants resulting in retardation—Nestle’s.
• The diet medication cocktail of Pondimin and Redux called “Fen Phen” that resulted in heart value complications—American Home Products

What successful products may be next? Frequent and high dosages of Advil are suspected to correlate with liver damage. Extended use of electric blankets are suspected by some to increase the chance of cancer. The over-the-counter availability and high use of Sudafed is feared by some physicians and is currently under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Product Failures and the Product Life Cycle
Most products experience some form of the product life cycle where they create that familiar—or a variant—form of the product life cycle based on time and sales volume or revenue. Most products experience the recognized life cycle stages including:

1. Introduction
2. Growth
3. Maturity (or saturation)
4. Decline

In some cases, product categories seem to be continuously in demand, while other products never find their niche. These products lack the recognized product life cycle curve.

Failure, Fad, Fashion or Style?
It is important to distinguish a product failure from a product fad, style or a fashion cycle. The most radical product life cycle is that of a fad. Fads have a naturally short life cycle and in fact, are often predicted to experience rapid gain and rapid loss over a short period of time—a few years, months, or even weeks with online fads. One music critique expected “The Bay City Rollers” to rival the Beatles.

Do you know who they are? And the pet rock lasted longer than it should have, making millions for its founders.

A “fashion” is what describes the accepted emulation of trends in several areas, such as clothing and home furnishings. The product life cycle of a “style” also appears in clothing as well as art, architecture, cars and other esthetic-based products. The “end” of these product life cycles does not denote failures, but marks the conclusion of an expected cycle that will be replaced and repeated by variations of other products that meet the same needs and perform the same functions.

The Benefits of Studying Failures
Gaining a better understanding of product failures is important to help prevent future failures. Studying the history of product failures may generate some insight into the reason for those failures and create a list of factors that may increase the opportunity for success, but there are no guarantees.

Examples of Product Failures
The following is an abbreviated list of product failures that may provide insight that will help to identify product and brand success factors:

Automotive and Transportation

• Cadillac Cimarron
• Pontiac Fiero
• Chevrolet Corvair
• Ford Edsel
• The DeLorean
• Crosley
• The Tucker
• The Gremlin, the Javelin and a complete line of other models by American Motors
• GM's passenger diesel engine
• Mazda’s Wankel rotary engine
• Firestone 500 tire
• Goodyear tires used on the Ford Explorer
• Concorde—supersonic airliner

Computer Industry

• IBM's PCjr—introduced in March 1985
• Apple’s Newton
• Apple's Lisa
• Coleco's Adam
• Percon’s Pocketreader—hand held scanner, now operating under the company name PSC
• Bumble Bee’s software version of the book “What Color is Your Parachute”

Entertainment

• Quadraphonic audio equipment
• World Football League
• Women’s National Basketball Association
• World League of American Football
• United States Football League
• “He and She,” “Berrengers,” every spinoff done by the former cast of “Seinfeld,” and dozens of other television shows each year.
• “Of God’s and Generals,” “Heavens Gate,” “Water World,” “The Postman” and other movies—with a disproportionately high number produced by Kevin Costner.

Food and Beverage

• Burger King's veal parmesan
• Burger King's pita salad
• McRib—and still being tested and tried
• Nestle's New Cookery—but a successor, Lean Cuisine, is a big hit
• Gerber's Singles—dinners in jars, for adults—early '70s
• Chelsea—“baby beer”

Photographic and Video

• Polaroid instant home movies
• SX-70 (Polaroid instant camera)
• RCA Computers (Spectra-70)
• Video-disc players
• DIVX variant on DVD

U.S. Currency

• Susan B. Anthony Dollar coin—niche in San Francisco, Las Vegas
• Two-dollar bill
• Twenty-cent piece

Other Products

• DuPont’s CORFAM —synthetic leather
• Mattel’s Aquarius
• Timex's Sinclair
• Clairol's Touch of Yogurt Shampoo (1979)
• Sparq portable mass storage
• Rely tampons
• Relax-a-cizor—vibrating chair
• Louisiana World Exposition—and its gondola

Common Reasons for Product Failures
In addition to a faulty concept or product design, some of the most common reasons for product failures typically fall into one or more of these categories:

• High level executive push of an idea that does not fit the targeted market.
• Overestimated market size.
• Incorrectly positioned product.
• Ineffective promotion, including packaging message, which may have used misleading or confusing marketing message about the product, its features, or its use.
• Not understanding the target market segment and the branding process that would provide the most value for that segment.
• Incorrectly priced—too high and too low.
• Excessive research and/or product development costs.
• Underestimating or not correctly understanding competitive activity or retaliatory response.
• Poor timing of distribution.
• Misleading market research that did not accurately reflect the actual consumer’s behavior for the targeted segment.
• Conducted marketing research and ignored those findings.
• Key channel partners were not involved, informed, or both.
• Lower than anticipated margins.

Using these potential causes of a product or brand failure may help to avoid committing those same errors. Learning from these “lessons” can be beneficial to avoid some of these pitfalls and increase the chance for success when you launch that next product or brand.

http://www.bplans.com/ma/article.cfm/147

Porter’s Five Forces

Understanding the dynamics of competitors within an industry is critical for several reasons. First, it can help to assess the potential opportunities for your venture, particularly important if you are entering this industry as a new player. It can also be a critical step to better differentiate yourself from others that offer similar products and services. One of the most respected models to assist with this analysis is Porter’s Five Forces Model. This model, created by Michael E. Porter and described in the book “Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors”, has proven to be a useful tool for both business and marketing-based planning.

Background
The pure competition model does not present a viable tool to assess an industry. Porter’s Five Forces attempts to realistically assess potential levels of profitability, opportunity and risk based on five key factors within an industry. This model may be used as a tool to better develop a strategic advantage over competing firms within an industry in a competitive and healthy environment. It identifies five forces that determine the long-run profitability of a market or market segment.

• Suppliers
• Buyers
• Entry/Exit Barriers
• Substitutes
• Rivalry

Supplier Power

• Supplier concentration
• Importance of volume to supplier
• Differentiation of inputs
• Impact of inputs on cost or differentiation
• Switching costs of firms in the industry
• Presence of substitute inputs
• Threat of forward integration
• Cost relative to total purchases in industry

Buyer Power

• Bargaining leverage
• Buyer volume
• Buyer information
• Brand identity
• Price sensitivity
• Threat of backward integration
• Product differentiation
• Buyer concentration vs. industry
• Substitutes available
• Buyers' incentives

Entry/Exit Barriers

• Absolute cost advantages
• Proprietary learning curve
• Access to inputs
• Government or other binding policy
• Economies of scale
• Capital requirements
• Brand identity
• Switching costs
• Access to distribution
• Expected retaliation
• Proprietary products

Substitutes

• Switching costs
• Buyer inclination to find alternatives
• Price-performance
• Trade-off of the available substitute products or services

Rivalry

• Exit barriers
• Industry concentration
• Fixed costs
• Perceived value add
• Industry growth
• Overcapacity status
• Product differences
• Switching costs
• Brand identity
• Diversity of rivals
• Corporate stakes

Service

• Level of service compared to others
• Added value perceptions
• Dynamics with other attributes

Power of Suppliers
An industry that produces goods requires raw materials. This leads to buyer-supplier relationships between the industry and the firms that provide the raw materials. Depending on where the power lies, suppliers may be able to exert an influence on the producing industry. They may be able to dictate price and influence availability. A segment is unattractive when an organization’s suppliers have the ability to:

• Increase prices without suffering from a decrease in volume
• Reduce the quantity supplied
• Organize in a formal or informal manner
• Compete in an environment with relatively few substitutes
• Provide a product/material that is a critical part of the end product or service
• Impose switching costs on their customers when they depart
• Integrate downstream by purchasing or controlling the distribution channels.

One example of this is DeBeers ability to wield influence within the diamond industry. DeBeers’ high level of control over some of the most productive diamond mines in the world gives them extreme power within the industry.

The best defense in mitigating the power of suppliers is to build win–win relationships with suppliers or arrange to use multiple suppliers.

Power of Buyers
The power of buyers describes the impact customers have on an industry. When buyer power is strong, the relationship to the producing industry becomes closer to what economists term a monopsony. A Monopsony is a market where there are many suppliers and one buyer. Under these market conditions, the buyer has the most influence in determining the price. Few pure monopsonies actually exist, but there is often a connection between an industry and buyers that determines where power lies.

The bargaining power of buyers increases when they have the ability to:

• Be “organized” in some form with others providing similar products and services
• Purchase a product that represents a significant fraction of the buyer’s costs
• Buy a product that is undifferentiated
• Incur low switching costs when they change vendors
• Be price sensitive, with other options available
• Integrate upstream, to purchase the providers of the goods.

To mitigate the power of buyers, sellers can seek to select buyers with less power to negotiate, switch suppliers, or develop superior offers that strong buyers cannot refuse.

Barriers to Entry/Exit
The possibility of new firms entering the industry impacts competition. A key is to assess how easy it is for a new player to enter an industry. The most attractive segment has high entry barriers and low exit barriers. Although any firm should be able to enter and exit a market, each industry often presents varying levels of difficulty, commonly driven by economics. Manufacturing-based industries are more difficult to enter than many service-based industries. The definable characteristics of each industry protect profitable areas for firms and inhibit additional rivals from entering the market. These inhibitive characteristics are referred to as barriers to entry.

Barriers to entry are more than the expected ebb and flow that markets typically experience. For example, when industry profits increase, one would expect firms to enter the market to take advantage of the high profit levels, which will eventually result in reducing profits.

Conversely, when profits decrease, we would expect some firms to exit. Other factors that will deter new entrants are falling prices, actions that keep prices artificially low, expectations that future prices will fall, large or unpredictable start-up expenditures, and other extreme uncertainties.

Barriers to entry are unique characteristics to each industry. They reduce the rate of entry of new firms and, therefore, maintain a level of profits for current industry competitors. Barriers to entry can be created or exploited to enhance a firm's competitive advantage.

Barriers to entry arise from several sources:

• Patents and proprietary knowledge
• Asset specificity – (Specialized technology or infrastructure)
• Economies of scale
• Government.

Barriers to exit work similarly to barriers to entry. Exit barriers limit the ability of a firm to leave the market and can exacerbate rivalry – unable to leave the industry, a firm must compete. Some of an industry's entry and exit barriers can be summarized as follows: Profitability potential is high when both entry and exit barriers are high. In this situation, firms do face more risk because poorer-performing ones tend to continue to produce regardless of profitability and, therefore, continue to add to the supply.

Substitute Products Porter's Five Forces model refers to “substitute products” as those products that are available in other industries that meet an identical or similar need for the end user. As more substitutes become available and affordable, the demand becomes more elastic since customers have more alternatives. Substitute products may limit the ability of firms within an industry to raise prices and improve margins.

For example, the price of aluminum cans is constrained by the price of glass bottles, steel cans, and plastic containers. These containers are substitutes, yet they are not rivals in the same industries. A substitute product to the services offered by a CPA firm is accounting or tax-based software – two very different industries that offer some of the same consumer benefits.

The treat of substitutes often impacts price-based competition. There are other concerns in assessing the threat of substitutes relating to technology. New technologies contribute to competition though substitute products and services. Think of the impact wireless technologies have had on traditional telephone service. Except in remote areas it is unlikely that cable TV could compete with free broadcast TV from an antenna without the greater diversity of entertainment that it affords the customer.

Again, a segment is unattractive when there are actual or potential substitutes for a product.

Rivalry
Firms strive to secure a competitive advantage over their rivals. The intensity of rivalry varies within each industry and these differences can be important in the development of strategy.

Industries that are “concentrated,” versus “fragmented,” often display the highest level of rivalry. Many, including The US Bureau of Census, recognize industry concentration and measure it by the “concentration ratio” (CR). The Census Bureau reports the CR by Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Code and it indicates the percent of market share held by the four largest firms. A high concentration ratio indicates that a majority of market share is controlled by the largest firms. If a few firms hold a large market share, the competitive landscape is less competitive as it nears that of a monopoly. A low CR indicates that the industry has many rivals, none with significant market share. These fragmented markets are said to be competitive.

In pursuing an advantage over its rivals, a firm can choose from several competitive moves:

• Changing prices
• Improving product differentiation
• Creatively using channels of distribution
• Exploiting relationships with suppliers.

For example, the intensity of rivalry is increased by the following industry characteristics:

• Numerous competitors that are particularly strong or aggressive that are competing for the same customers and resources
• Declining sales revenues and volumes resulting in slow market growth, creating the need to actively fight for market share
• High fixed costs result in an economy of scale effect
• High storage costs or highly perishable products
• Plant capacity is being added, over and above what is needed to meet demand
• Low switching costs for buyers
• Low levels of product differentiation
• Strategic stakes are high when a firm is losing market position or has potential for great gains
• High exit barriers place a significant cost on abandoning the product
• A diversity of rivals with different cultures, histories, and philosophies
• An industry shakeout
• When a rival acts in a way that elicits a counter-response by other firms
• Competitors have high stakes – economic and other – and will battle to remain as a player within the segment.

These conditions will make competing within the industry more challenging, commonly leading to frequent price wars, advertising battles, and the addition of new products.

Service
Service can also play a part in the industry’s dynamics. Those competitors that provide superior service may bring an advantage to their competitive position if the industry/customer places value on this attribute. This is another point of differentiation and can be a key strategic element to consider. If a competitor has a service component that is difficult to replicate, it will prove to offer a strategic advantage.

The Result
We can look at several industries and see how Porter’s Five Forces would depict them; the entertainment industry is in flux, telecommunications companies are volatile, computer firms are merging, utility industries are down, the housing market is up. Porter’s Five Forces can assist us to better understand these dynamics in a more objective manner and hopefully make better strategic decisions as a result.

http://www.bplans.com/ma/article.cfm/156

5 Unique Ways To Get FREE Advertising

1. Give Testimonials: When you purchase a product or service and it exceeds your expectations e-mail the business a testimonial. Tell them in the testimonial the benefits you got from the product or service. Give them permission to publish the testimonial on the web site if they include your sig file at the end.

2. Leave A Message: When you visit a web site with a discussion board leave a message. You could post a question, interesting content or a compliment about their web site. Include your signature file at the end of the message. Some discussion boards let you post your banner ad or text link.

3. Sign Guest Books: When you visit a well designed web site leave a compliment on their guest book. You could give them a compliment on their content, ease of navigation, graphics etc. When you post your compliment include your sig file so other people will see it when they sign the guest book.

4. Write A Review: When you visit a web site you enjoyed a lot write a review for the web site Write about the benefits you gain from the site, the web site design, interesting online services it offers etc. E-mail the review to the web site. Tell them they can publish it on their web site if they include your resource box at the end.

5. Send An E-mail To The Editor: When you read a good article or enjoy a certain e-zine, e-mail a compliment to the editor. Give the editor permission to publish the compliment in their e-zine if they include your signature file at the end. The editor may post it on his or her web site.

Get a Competitive Marketing Edge with PR Techniques

One of the least understood, most underutilized marketing techniques in the business world is public relations. That fact represents an opportunity for small business owners and managers who are willing to devote a little time to cultivating relationships with reporters and editors in their community.

Advertising is the obvious approach to self-promotion, so a lot of your competition is doing it. Generating free or inexpensive publicity through press releases and media relations is not as commonplace, so it offers a much more uncluttered arena for gaining visibility and name recognition. The 'cost of admission' consists of a newsworthy story and a little insight into how the process works.

Potential Pitfalls and Opportunities

The bad news is that editors, radio news directors, and other media gatekeepers receive dozens of press releases every day, and that's just in the small towns! Releases get tossed in the circular file for three primary reasons:

1) They look unprofessional, 2) They're an ad masquerading as a news story, or 3) They have little or no news value.

Three other fatal flaws in a news release are: a failure to get to the point right away, an abysmal absence of formatting, and glaring typographical mistakes and grammatical neglect.

Although it may sound like there are 101 ways you can go wrong (so why even try?), it's actually more a matter of common sense, persistence, and following a few basic guidelines. It might take a little experimentation to discover whether you get better results working directly with specific reporters, instead of editors (and using email vs snail mail), but as you fine tune your approach and make yourself known to local media people, your success rate should rise significantly. You may ultimately find that public relations is the missing link in an otherwise lackluster media campaign.


Cardinal Rules of Press Release Writing

As in any type of marketing, presentation and image can make a big difference in the quality of the results produced. Here are a dozen guidelines for putting your best foot forward with the media.

1) In the headline and the body of the release, emphasize the news value of your story. If it fails to catch an editor's attention or sounds remotely like an ad, the odds of it being published or broadcast are slim.
2) It will have more of an impact if the first paragraph contains the most important information, with the rest of the material arranged in order of descending importance.
3) One simple, but useful guideline for writing a press release is the old journalism standard of focusing on the five "W's", namely: Who? What? When? Where? Why? and sometimes, How?
4) Write it from the perspective of an objective observer, not from the point of view of a business owner or manager
5) Use short sentences and double spacing between paragraphs.
6) The last paragraph should be reserved for a brief bio or a few boilerplate sentences about your company. Journalists know to look there for that information.
7) One page is the ideal length for a press release. The media will call or email you if they have questions or want to interview you.
8) Formatting elements: After the headline at the top, the following information is generally inserted: the words "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE", one or two contact names and phone numbers, and, right before the first sentence of the release, the location and date of the news story.
9) Maintain an up-to-date mailing list of reporters and editors, and get to know them, whenever possible. Jot down a few notes about each one.
10) Suggest article ideas, occasionally, and let it be known that you're available for interviews. IDEA: One way to establish a reputation as a valuable resource for the media is by preparing for them a printed list of experts, spokespeople, and authorities on topics related to your profession or industry.
11) Emailing tip: Reporters and editors intensely dislike email attachments, as a rule. Get around that by including the press release in the body of the email.
12) Perhaps the most important consideration when working with the media is that they're always under an impending deadline, especially at daily newspapers and broadcast news departments. Among the worst violations of media etiquette is not returning phone calls promptly and requesting the chance to review articles prior to publication.


Opportunities to Send Press Releases

Countless opportunities to send out press releases and receive valuable, free publicity get missed every day. There are literally dozens of newsworthy opportunities for getting positive media exposure, including mergers, acquisitions, partnerships, office expansions, new employees, awards, workshops, speaking engagements, fund-raising campaigns, lobbying activities, the launch of a new web site, announcing survey results, sponsorships, or taking a public position on an industry-related issue. Business milestones are often a good reason to issue a press release, such as the grand opening of a new office or announcing a business's 25th anniversary.

The bottom line is that being written about (or broadcast) in the media conveys more credibility than messages communicated through paid advertising; and it can be a vital element of any integrated marketing campaign. Although 'Familiarity breeds contempt', according to Aesop, the ancient Greek fabulist, one area in which that usually doesn't hold true is modern public relations and marketing. With few exceptions, the more ways people hear about you, the better.

Proven Techniques for Writing Persuasive Ads & Letters

Whether you're writing a marketing message to one person or a million, your chances of having an impact on them really takes off when you understand what makes them tick. You're then in a strong position to tailor your message directly to their interests, problems, needs, and aspirations. Easier said than done, but that's where market research, asking clients the right questions, personal observation, and marketing plans fit into the picture.

A marketing plan, even an abbreviated one, can be an invaluable starting point in the development of an effective ad, commercial, promotional brochure, or sales letter. Doing an analysis of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) associated with your business or the services you offer can serve as an excellent launching pad for writing persuasive advertising and sales messages.

Laying the Groundwork

In addition to a dash of writing talent and marketing knowledge, creating effective ads and letters require a clear focus. Knowing exactly what outcome you're aiming for before you begin writing is comparable to mapping out your travel route before embarking on a cross country drive. For example, if your goal is to generate leads or to qualify prospects, your strategy might be radically different than if you were trying to make immediate sales or simply attract visitors to your web site.

Sell The Sizzle! (not the steak)

The copywriting process tends to flow a lot more smoothly if you have in front of you three lists consisting of benefits, features, and competitive advantages. Organizing them on one page in a column format is the easiest, most efficient way to manage the information. F.Y.I.: There may seem to be a thin, if not invisible, line between "features" and "benefits", but understanding the distinction can make all the difference in your marketing success. Features are important and need to be mentioned, but benefits are the selling points that clients and prospects can relate to and identify with. Basically, benefits are features that have been personalized, elaborated on, and projected into the future. It answers the questions "What's in it for me?"..."Why should I care?"...or "How will my life be enhanced by buying your product or service?"


Crafting the Message

Catching people's attention and arousing interest can sometimes be as simple as incorporating your strongest selling point into the headline or the first sentence of your ad or letter. Several tried-and-proven headline devices for drawing people into your message include asking an intriguing question, making a thought-provoking statement, or beginning the headline with the words "How To". Headlines that convey a sense of urgency, contain a short testimonial of a satisfied client, or have the feel of a news announcement also have been shown to get people to stop and read.

By the way, one of the most powerful and successful advertising headlines of all time, which was also the title of a best-selling book written in 1936, is "How to Win Friends and Influence People", by Dale Carnegie. The title/headline is filled with benefits, it contains the words "How To", and it speaks directly to everyone's strong desire to be well liked, to be in control of their lives, and to feel important. Another popular book Carnegie wrote tapped into that same formula. It's entitled "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living." Apparently, that double-barreled approach was especially effective for him.

Many well-intended ads, brochures, and letters start out with a good head of steam, but peter out as they approach the moment of truth, namely: the call for action! If you don't make it 100% clear exactly what you want the prospect to do after hearing/seeing your message, and if you don't give them a compelling reason to do so, there's a good chance you'll lose them.

As the acronym AIDA suggests, a response-producing ad or letter must first grab the Attention of the target audience, arouse Interest, trigger Desire, and then prompt Action. Without all four of those "cylinders" firing at the appropriate time, that delicate sequence of events could quickly come to a grinding halt.

Positive Thinking and Effective Marketing Go Hand in Hand

Successful sales and marketing requires persistence, continuous improvement, and the expectation of a positive outcome. If one doesn’t approach every aspect of marketing with enthusiasm, creativity, and a positive mental attitude, then it’s like embarking on schooner race with no wind in your sails. You’ll have no momentum or direction, and the competition is guaranteed to overtake you.

Attitude has an insidious way of infiltrating everything we do; and it can lift us up to great heights or pull us down to the depths of failure. It can energize us to do and say all the right things at the right time, or it can undermine our motivation and cause us to sabotage our own best laid plans.

The bottom line is this: either we own our attitude or our attitude owns us. Every now and then, it’s necessary to make a conscious decision to take charge of our thoughts, attitudes, and habits. An unfocused effort, whether it involves marketing or any other aspect of business, is sure to produce inferior results.

Allowing negative thoughts to infect your mind creates a cascading effect of self-defeating behavior. In direct sales, one needs to have a winning attitude and a magnetic personality to influence and persuade prospects to become customers. That’s only the tip of the iceberg, though, because a successful salesperson also needs to have the finesse and people skills to win back lost customers, negotiate the best deal, ask for and get sales referrals, inspire teamwork, and have the energy and optimism to overcome setbacks and keep moving forward in the face of temporary failure. Without a positive mental attitude, none of that is going to happen.

Cultivating a positive attitude also feeds the creativity and optimism necessary for nearly every other aspect of marketing ranging from sending out press releases and sales letters to placing ads or launching a web site. If you don’t believe it’s going to work, either you’re not going to try at all—or your efforts will be weakened and half-hearted. In both cases, you’re doomed to failure before you even get out of the starting gate.

On the other hand, if you make up your mind to be an ‘eternal optimist’, you’ll be willing to take calculated risks and put your best foot forward. Getting there may involve an integrated program of reading motivational books, listening to self-improvement CDs, making a concerted effort to identify and avoid (or filter out) a lot of the negativity in your environment, and establishing daily habits that will tend to attract beneficial people and circumstances into your life.

Being an entrepreneur and running your own business is an intrinsically risky endeavor. If an expensive marketing campaign falls flat or a major client signs on with the competition, you might find yourself scrambling to make up for the loss. A positive state of mind not only helps you be creative, resourceful, and energized, but it also enhances your ability to anticipate, adapt, and regroup.

While many aspects of marketing are considered a gamble by anyone’s estimation, the best way to hedge your bets is by adopting a focused, optimistic, and positive mental attitude

Vital Component to Marketing Success: Establishing Credibility

As a salesperson or the owner of a small business, do you consider yourself to be qualified, experienced, and dependable? More importantly, have 95% of your customers had a satisfying experience doing business with you or your company? If your answer is ‘yes’ to all those questions, then your services or products have the potential to be in high demand. The trick is effectively communicating that information to your target market.

Let’s assume that you have what your prospective customers are looking for: excellent service, high ethical and quality standards, a near-perfect track record in living up to promises and producing desired results, and the skills or knowledge to help your clients achieve their goals or solve their problems. Think about it. You are exactly what people are scouring the Internet or Yellow Pages for and spending countless hours researching. If you’re not in demand now, then you ought to be!


What’s Standing in the Way?

In all likelihood, your phone isn’t ringing off the hook because you haven’t convinced your prospects that you can offer them all these desirable qualities and benefits. That’s where marketing strategy comes in!

Whether or not people ask you these questions, you can be sure it’s almost always on their minds: "How long have you been in business? What are your credentials? Are there people who can vouch for your dependability (provide references)? Why should I feel secure choosing you over the competition for this important project/need/solution?

Strategies for Establishing Credibility & Trust

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a minute and try to think like someone who’s in the market for your services. At some level, they’re thinking, “Why should I put my faith in this person or business?”

One good way to project an image of reliability is to join the Better Business Bureau and display their logo in your ads, stationery, brochures, and web site. According to their web site, “members of local BBBs are businesses and firms which meet tough BBB membership standards, agree to follow the highest principles of business ethics and voluntary self-regulation, and have a proven record of marketplace honesty and integrity.”

Another approach to making a good impression is to join professional organizations and display that affiliation, wherever space allows, in your ads, letters, and marketing literature. Someone who’s a member of a professional or industry organization usually cares about ethical standards, working cooperatively with others, and keeping their training up to date. It also conveys the impression that they take their profession seriously and that they’re not a ‘fly by night’ operation. Membership in Chambers of Commerce can also be an image-enhancing investment.

Some other ways to establish credibility and trust include being active in the community, earning professional credentials, appearing in the media as an organizational or industry spokesperson, conducting seminars, teaching classes, writing a newspaper column, and speaking at public events and meetings. Having a well-designed, up-to-date website (that’s not ‘under construction’), professional-looking business cards, and an impeccable reputation are also important facets of branding you and your company as a dependable and quality-conscious source of products and services.

http://www.marketingsurvivalkit.com/marketing-credibility.htm

Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization: Any difference?

For many casual internet users, the terms SEM and SEO rarely enter their minds when they are busy jumping from one website to another. However, it is these terms that determine much of what comes out on the results page whenever we type in a word in the search tab of any accessible search engine. These terms are also responsible for all those advertisements and pop-ups that link us to even more websites, whether they may be connected to our original search or not. So just what are SEM and SEO?

In the simplest way possible, SEM and SEO are tools which website creators, especially those who are promoting and selling a certain service or product, use in order to gain a lot of exposure and better ranking for their website. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, the simplicity ends there.

To make it a tad bit complex, SEM and SEO are not the same. As suggested by the names, SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, deals more with how a website is marketed to gain exposure in the different search engines available on the internet, while SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, deals with how the web creators develop and re-develop the content, quality and structure of their entire websites so that whenever an internet user types in a particular word in the search tab, their websites have a better chance of appearing on the first few search engine results pages (SERPS).

Now, to make it even more complex, although the functions of SEM and SEO seem different, they are more effective when used together. Since the main function of SEM is to gain more exposure for a website, the more common means for attraction are online advertisements, blogs, internet articles, partner and sponsored websites, and anything that can catch the eye of the internet user. SEM also makes use of PPC (pay-per-click) and paid inclusion to further push a website’s visibility. Lastly, it is also an important process in SEM to submit the name and URL of a website to different search engines and web directories if only to inform them of the website’s existence. All this is carried out to ensure the popularity of a website.

So how does SEO come together with SEM? Well, despite having all the advertisements provided by SEM, it is truly the SEO that allows the internet user to easily and conveniently find what he is looking for. Since the function of SEO is to gain a better ranking in the SERPS, the web creator has to constantly optimize his website in order to cater to the needs of the internet user and to make it easier for spiders or web crawlers to judge whether the website’s content is relevant to the word/s being searched. Optimization is not a simple and easy task. It involves having to restructure the website regularly (by editing the html code and meta tags, changing content, reorganizing the site map, developing an easier navigational structure, etc.) so as to adapt to the rapidly changing demands of the internet user. Still, when done properly, not only does SEO help a website become more useful and therefore, more often visited by the internet user, it also helps gain more exposure since it increases the website’s chances of gaining a better rank in the SERPS.

Both SEM and SEO success rely heavily on the words or context which Internet users type in whenever they search for something on the internet. Take PPC under SEM, for example. PPC is an ad that is triggered by a particular word or context used by an internet user. Once a particular word or context is searched, a corresponding PPC ad for a website comes out. SEO works in the same way. The web creator inputs a particular Meta tag (or keyword) in his html that he believes many internet users will use when searching for information, information which the web creator’s website may contain.

Although all of these processes involving SEM and SEO are tedious and time-consuming, it all boils down to knowing and serving the target audience. A web creator must be discerning enough to know what the internet users need and want, and at the same time he must have the real passion to inform and provide the internet users with the right service and product.

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_3685.shtml

The Most Powerful Tool A Marketer Can Have

In the Internet Marketing there are many tools that you can use in order to build your business or increase your income, you can find lot of software, books, videos, but you have to know how to use them.

Before you begin to use them you need to have clear many things, but there is a tool maybe you don't know well, and it is the most powerful tool that we all have, it is the mind.

Nothing can compete with your mind then you have to use it well. With your mind you'll be able to control everything. Did you know that Yoga experts can stop the beats of the heart or to have a surgery without anesthesia? Maybe someone doesn't believe it but it is true and in Internet Marketing is the same, If you are using your mind in the right way you'll get good results and you'll have a high percent to be successful.

In order to achieve your goals you need to be concentrated and have a clear vision of all the way you'll have to travel. You have to create the conditions for a good concentration removing all marginal distractions possible and ignoring others.

It's important to prepare a long term plan and divide it into levels and each level into a step by step process. Once you get level one you go to level two and so on. In all this system your mind plays a fundamental role because there is not software able to build your system, you are the only one that can build it, because you know what you want and where you want to go and this is the point, your mind is your guide it controls the whole process and it's stronger than any other tool you can have.

The essential thing is to maintain an attitude of mental activity, and to avoid anything that will reduce this and make you passive. Thinking and applying systematically will help you to grow, you'll discover the power of your mind. Train your mind.

Don't be afraid to make a mistake. Remember nobody learns from the mistakes of the others, you have to try and believe in you. Such fears should be put at rest. You only have to think, think and think and in this way you'll learn how to act and how to do everything right.

It's obvious that you'll have to face some problems traveling for your road, then your mind will come to help you and you'll find the solution in a short period of time. A powerful mind accomplishes results in the shortest time and with least waste motion.

In order to be successful in Internet Marketing you have to focus your niche and to pay close attention to it. Ask yourself, what am I looking for? Keep it in the background of your mind and search for the answer. Knowing everything about you and about what you want, will help you to develop your business.

Keep your mind free, keep a sharp lookout, at every point, to see that you build into the foundation only those materials and that workmanship which will support a masterly structure.

Everyone has difficulty in the concentration of attention, workers in business and industry, students and even professors, complain of the same difficulty. Attention seems in some way to be at the very core of mental activity.Therefore paying attention to your niche and working only in this direction is crucial.

Using your mind as a tool is the most effective factor to be successful.

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_3686.shtml

How To Get Higher Converting MLM Leads For Less

If you are involved in an mlm or network marketing business then you probably have tried to find the best ways online as well as offline to get qualified people either to your website or to the companies website. There are many different ways to find qualified people who are actually looking right now at starting a home based business.

The thing that you first need to realize is that most people who are looking for a home based business are not actually realizing what it is they are looking for and for the most part are simply getting some answers. These types of people are the non targeted leads that you will find being sold by countless mlm lead companies online.

These types of mlm leads for one have a terrible conversion rate and also end up putting your excited mood into one that makes you start second guessing yourself and possibly the opportunity you are marketing. What is needs to not only help you build a successful mlm business as well as the right mindset to succeed is actual quality mlm leads from an actually mlm leads company with proven results.

If you were looking to compare mlm lead companies odds are you would start possibly with your sponsor or upline in the business you are currently marketing and this method is actually not the best method at all. What will end up happening is your upline simply trying to get a commission or a bonus off of you by sending them to one of the low converting mlm lead companies.

You may take the above statement as being rude or labeling all sponsors but in all honesty most people in mlm and network marketing companies are following the same pack of people barely making any real income. What you need to do is set yourself apart from the pack and become a leader in your company.

If your sponsor in your company and or business is trying his or her best to teach you the correct methods on building your business but has not actually seen any real success themselves then you need to find a new method in which to build your business. Mlm is mainly duplication of a proven method and if your sponsor is not seeing the large monthly income then that is something that I personally would not try and duplicate.

With all the many different ways to get mlm leads which can be done with pay per click accounts and even door to door methods there is one truly proven method that has the highest conversion ratio as long as it is done correctly.

You need to find a mlm lead company that not only has proven results but also offers you a residual income that will actually end up paying for your leads as your downline signs up under you for the leads also. There are only a small handful of mlm lead companies that are even worth comparing and sometimes they can be hard to sift through. Most mlm lead companies are selling leads that have been sold 1,000 times already and will not convert for nothing.

What you should do if you are actually looking to build a solid mlm business is to research and compare mlm lead companies. You need to look for a company that allows you to buy at minimum 72 hour fresh leads. Along with being extremely fresh you also need to find a mlm lead company that actually offers a monthly residual income plan. Having a matrix payout plan attached to a solid mlm lead company can actually end up paying out more then your mlm company is paying you.

Remember also when researching and checking the many mlm lead companies out there that you will most usually get what you pay for. Any company offering you 1,000 fresh leads a day for $20 is nothing but a scam style company and will end up giving you a very bad name in the mlm community. Find a company that has been proven successful and has mlm leads that are actually converting into real mlm sign ups and sales.

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_3688.shtml

Direct Mail - the Deadly Sin Of Not Testing

If there's one thing that makes direct mail a reliable method of drumming up new business, then that would have to be the ability to test if different version of a pack achieve a better return on investment. Having processed many mailings over the years, I can attest that clients rarely take full advantage of this feature. In fact, more often than not, clients don't test at all.

Not testing is commercial suicide. In today's competitive climate, if there is anything that can be done to reduce the cost of acquiring a customer, then it must be done. It's a no brainer. Research shows that in times of depression, those that continue to advertise are those that do well. It also shows that those that continue to advertise also make efforts to stretch their budget even further.

You decrease your direct mail costs by application of a little commonsense and by testing which produces the best response. We'll take the example of direct mail pack that comprises five parts in all.

The parts of the pack are as follows:

1) Envelope
2) Personalised letter
3) Brochure
4) Leaflet/Order form
5) Business reply Envelope

Looking at this you would think that this it, but we've forgotten the most important part of all:

6) The data

So, there's enough there now to get your message out.

Experience shows that the most important part of the mailing is the data, so we must test this part. A badly produced but well targeted letter will almost certainly produce a better return than a well written badly targeted letter.

You may have a particular target audience already decided, for example, lawyers. You will be able to get lists of lawyers from more than one source, that can be tested. Equally you'll have the option of mailing to a named individual, or to a job title, so you can test that too. So far that's at least four permutations provided you use 2 data suppliers. It would be 6 if you used 3 suppliers. If you hadn't narrowed your field to one sector, then the choice of tests to run could be massively increased, but it's not practical to take it to the extreme.

Targeting is everything, you must get that right, and you can only find that out if you test.

Looking at the envelope, you have a huge number of choice here too. You can send plain with a stamp, or printed with a message. You could make the material from an unusual paper, print in full colour, use different sizes. You could print different designs, use different taglines and the like.

Depending on how your envelope is made you may be able to run multiple designs for a minimal charge. The nature of some jobs is that they are printed 2 or 3 or up on a sheet, so you will be able to produce equal quantities of more than one design. Even if it's not free, chances are that it won't be hat expensive for a plate change.

For the letterhead, you can change the material. Studies by paper merchants have shown a 20% increase in response just by changing to a textured paper. The copy itself on the letter can be changed, offers can be changed. The number of options to test here is almost limitless.

Moving on to the leaflet, the same applies here as did for the letterhead. Copy, material, imagery; they're all fair game.

Last but not least we move on to the BRE. There's not a huge amount you could do here. White or manila envelopes perhaps? Maybe even a coloured BRE? if it isn't going to cost a lot, why not try it.

Using these methods over time you can increase the effectiveness of your mailings. Always test, even when you think you have the perfect pack, continue to run a test campaign against it, even if the difference between the two is really quite small. If you continue to do this, your costs to acquire a customer should fall and fall.

Overall, the point is that there an almost infinitely large and almost limitless opportunity for testing. Maybe it's this huge scope for testing that puts people off, but I don't think it is. I think it's just a lack of awareness of what you can do. You don't need to complicate things, you can just run two packs with one difference between them and see how it goes.

Whatever you do though, don't commit commercial suicide and fail to test.

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/marketing/article_3689.shtml

Make Your PR Stand for Perfect Resource

When you think of public relations or publicity, what comes to mind? For some people (even for some PR types), it may mean hounding or even badgering the media to get them to generate a story about you, your product or your business. Sometimes that works, but often it doesn't. As a PR professional, I realize the media has very little need for PR in the traditional sense. What the media does need is their own meaning of PR -- Perfect Resources.

MAKE THE MEDIA COME TO YOU!

Put together a brief bit of information highlighting your expertise for the media outlet's easy reference. I have even gone so far as to compile information labels for clients and simply attached them to the back of a business card or a Rolodex card that the media can then put in the "future file." Simply mention that you would be happy to share your expertise with them when a "newsworthy need" arises. And believe me, the need will arise sooner than you or the media think it will.

Once you are established as a Perfect Resource in your area of expertise, media outlets will turn to you when a newsworthy issue that relates to your industry comes to light. For instance, when the stock market soars or tumbles, what do media outlets immediately do? As a former TV news reporter/producer, I know what I did. Reactively, we tried to dig up a Perfect Resource financial planner or stockbroker to get a reaction or to localize the story. The resources we used in the interviews were more than likely those who had done some proactive PR—Perfect Resource—homework. BINGO! Instant, FREE publicity and the related consumer response; once the interview was printed or aired, the source would invariably see an increase in business and/or calls.

This type of PR may not lead to immediate media interest or exposure. To generate some immediate response..

spoon-feed those hungry media mongrels! Turn breaking news into your news. If a story that pertains to your area of expertise breaks or is about to break, whether it is local or national, make a quick phone call or fax that says, "I can help your readers/ viewers/ listeners understand what this means and how to react." Many reporters will interview you on the spot.

Your expertise doesn't have to be restricted to quips and quotes in your local newspaper or on the local airwaves. Start locally, and then move regionally, then nationally and maybe even internationally depending on your scope of expertise. If you truly have a product, information, research or expertise in a particular industry or medium...swim with the big fish. Consult with a PR professional who can help you research your applicable media market on a national scale. Compile a list of those media outlets that are not only able, but also willing to give you a platform to share your expertise. Many of the national news programs on networks like CNN and MSNBC are always on the lookout for articulate interview sources for their shows—but you have to know how to make yourself presentable to them. In the past few months, I have landed a number of clients on CNN and CNNfn and have others scheduled for national shows in the coming months. We used the PR—Perfect Resource—platform and created our own news.

Remember, these programs have to generate enough information to fill five shows a week. And as much as they hate to admit it, they secretly love us PR types... especially those of us who can make that editor's, reporter's or producer's job a lot easier with a little PR gift: you as the Perfect Resource. What will that gift mean for you? As one great ad slogan once chimed... "It's the gift that keeps on giving."

http://www.bplans.com/ma/article.cfm/131

The Increasing Power of Publicity

The call came into my office and the voice on the other end was very energetic, almost giddy: "I have finalized my marketing budget and need your help launching an advertising campaign for my new product," he breathed. "Congratulations," I replied, "but before we implement an ad campaign, I want to make sure you have explored potential PUBLICITY opportunities that could generate some cost-efficient media exposure first." Then, silence. "I never thought about that," he sighed. "Frankly, I don't know much about it."

He is not alone. It's a common conversation. Although many entrepreneurs or business people know a bit about publicity or media exposure, the majority of them simply don't understand the full benefits of "publicity placements" or how to go about generating them successfully. Publicity placements have always been a cost-efficient way to market a product/business and generate clients or customers, but because of lack of knowledge or a misunderstanding of what publicity is and does, many entrepreneurs don't take full advantage of publicity opportunities -- and that can lead to missed marketing chances.

I recently surveyed a few dozen business owners and entrepreneurs in newsgroups and business chat rooms about their knowledge of "publicity placements" in the media. I found that only 37% knew that a simple "product profile" in a magazine was generated as a result of publicity efforts. Most thought the company had paid the media outlet to run the feature, much like an ad. And of that 37%, less than half of them knew HOW to generate a similar placement.

Another interesting fact, because of the recent slowdown in the economy, expensive advertising budgets have been slashed. As a result, many businesses, like your competitors, are turning to publicity/PR campaigns as a more affordable means of marketing to compete with other companies. Here are some ways to use publicity placements to help your business:

Editorial Placements/Media Notification:

What some entrepreneurs might not realize is that we see editorial placements from publicity efforts everyday in the media: product profiles, feature articles and contributed by-lined articles in magazines, newspapers, trade industry newsletters, or on TV/radio/cable newscasts and shows. This is not advertising, this is "EDITORIAL Placement" or "Media Notification" of a product, business or industry expert. Notify the appropriate media that your newsworthy product is on the market or your business is offering a unique new service and let them run a feature placement that will spread that message to your consumer market. These placements can detail your product or business very effectively, giving consumers some objective, pertinent information that may well entice them to become future customers.

These editorial placements are looked upon much more credibly than ad placements. That is not a slam on advertising. Paying for advertising placements is indeed an effective way to market your product. But the fact is, a positive editorial placement such as a product profile in a magazine or a newspaper can be much more persuasive than a glossy, over-hyped advertisement -- and a fraction of the cost. My point is that editorial placements are an overlooked marketing vehicle for a business, and that entrepreneurs should understand the full benefits of these placements to make the most of their marketing efforts.

Editorial placements are a wonderfully reciprocal way for you and the media to work together for the betterment of your business.

The media needs to fill its pages and airtime with interesting information -- and you need to get the word out to your market. Research the media market to find those media outlets and editorial contacts with which you can forge that mutually beneficial relationship. But you have to do your part and do it right, or the media will forge that relationship with your competitor. Make sure your media message is solid, contains newsworthy angles and isn't disguised as overly commercialized ad copy. Have high-quality photos and media samples available and do all you can to make the media's job of featuring your product as simple as possible. It also helps to have some sort of clipping service in place to track your placements and get you copies so you can use them in your secondary marketing programs.

Expert Branding:

This type of publicity placement generating takes advantage of the expert knowledge within a particular business. It is an effective tool for entrepreneurs whose businesses are more service related, like consultants or specialists. Expert branding basically treats the expert like a product. Alert the media as to your expertise on a specific topic and avail yourself to serve as an expert interview resource for future articles or news feature segments. Additionally, the expert should write a few brief articles on a specialized topic and make them available to editors for review and possible publication. The challenge of this type of publicity placement is the tedious task of finding out which outlets accept "expert editorial contributions" or contributed by-lined articles in their publications. Again, it comes down to meticulously researching your media market to find those media outlets that may be in need of the editorial content that you can provide them.

With some creativity, expert branding can be effective for product-based businesses as well. One client of mine runs a fresh wild salmon distribution business in the Pacific Northwest and was looking to increase consumer awareness of his products. Based on his more than 20 years of experience in the wild salmon harvesting business, we are expert branding him as a viable interview resource to health/food editors for features detailing the differences and benefits of wild salmon over farm-raised fish, as well as other related topics. In this case, my client (the expert) is identified and quoted in features and the name of the business and even a link to a website are often included for consumers to check out. This is great credibility building exposure at little or no cost.

Overall, when using the media to help market your product or business, take advantage of as many FREE media opportunities as you can. If you lack the expertise or time, a PR agency or publicist can generate the editorial placements for you. The fee you pay them is a FRACTION of what it would cost you to buy similar sized ad placements. And those publicity placements typically lead to a much better consumer response right out of the gate -- which is just what you need to boost your business to the next level.

http://www.bplans.com/ma/article.cfm/155