Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Tips To Building Up Your Internet Business

To obtain more local customers for your business, consider expanding your local business through the Internet. If you want to know a sure-fire, almost 100% fool proof secret that will keep your Internet marketing business alive and thriving for years into the future, then this article will show you how. Strategic Internet marketing is going to be the basis for any online Internet business being a success and earning you money.

Finally, niche marketing while not unknown to the offline world, is taken to new heights online where automated internet tools allow an internet business owner to target these highly targeted online niches and exploits them. Firstly, an internet business that sells an online service like service that can be highly automated can potentially outperform an offline business. The benefits of operating an internet home business include enormous profit potential, easy access to highly successful affiliate programs, and an effective means of advertising your service or product.

The key point in building up your internet business, and effective money generating business website is to know who are your potential consumers, or will be; to clearly understand their needs, and turn them into loyal and paying customers who provide the basis of your business survival, let alone thriving. The more you know and understand about your potential customers, the more you are to focus in building your business website to cater for their needs, thus the more successful your business as it goes in the long run. Word of mouth tell all your friends about your website you never know they may tell someone who tells someone who purchases something from you or decides that they too want to get into the internet business and they may join you in building your down line and sign up for one or two of your programs.

In conclusion, participating in internet business or internet marketing forums and helping others along is a good thing. No matter what product or service you sell, developing a support system is critical to the success of your internet home business.

Should Cut Back on Marketing During Tough Times?

If you have a business that sells products, you need to get the word out about your product to as many people in your target market as possible. Everything you do should start with getting customers. If you have no customers, you have no business. It is an unfortunate situation that most business owners cut back on their marketing and advertising budget when sales go down. That is exactly the worst approach you can take. Marketing is both a short-term and a long-term investment in the survivability of your company. Saving money on marketing when dollars are scarce may seem like a logical way to cut expenses. But, while you may see a short-term benefit, over the long haul, you may be slowly killing your business.

When consumers are scrutinizing each purchase carefully before they commit their dollars, you must keep on top of their mind why they need to purchase your product. You must keep reminding them that you are still in business and they need what you are selling. It is likely that your competitors are going through the same cost-benefit analysis in which you are engaged and that many of them have decided that they are not willing to spend their dollars on advertising or other forms of marketing. That’s great news. That is how you get to dominate your market. When others are pulling back, you push forward. You fill the vacuum left by your competitors’ trying to save money.

Similarly, if your business is a service business, you still need to market and create new referral sources and nurture the ones that you already have. This is the time to let your referral sources know that you are still in business and how much they mean to you. This is the time to spend on forming new relationships with movers and shakers who can bring you new clients. Keep up with those lunches and dinners, tickets to sports and other events, or however you used to develop new referral sources.

You may want to change your message a bit to acknowledge that times are different. If you are lucky, your product or service is even more needed, now that people are facing hard times and cutting their spending.

Don’t neglect using the free or cheaper forms of marketing that are out there. You can use social media to get your message out for free, you can hire independent contractors for each marketing project (check with your lawyer to make sure that you are not hiring an employee and classifying someone as an independent contractor), you can offer internships to college students to get some help instead of hiring employees (do this through the colleges that are near your office). There are many ways to market on the cheap if you need to economize. But don’t stop marketing. By consistently getting your marketing message out to your existing customers and to your target market for new customers, you are doing the most you can to ride out the hard times and still be in business when the good times return.

Forrester: Why Most Marketers Should Forgo Foursquare

Marketers, hold off on Foursquare — for now. That’s the verdict of Forrester Research on location-based start-ups, which, despite their reputation as the hot new media, are still too small for major marketers. The research firm finds that these heavily-hyped apps currently make sense mainly for brands seeking male influencers.

In a study out today, Forrester finds that only 4% of U.S. online adults have ever used location-based mobile apps such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt. Only 1% update these services more than once per week. What’s more, 84% of respondents said they are not familiar with such apps, leaving the vast majority of Americans online still in the dark about location-based apps, which have had the marketing world obsessing over them in recent months.

The report could also be a wake-up call for social media on mobile phones, especially when comparing the location services to the last social-media darling, Twitter. The micro-blogging service reports 35% of its 125 million registered users are in the U.S. and only a fraction of that number access Twitter via mobile. In April, Twitter said 37% of its usage comes via mobile clients. Apply that percentage to U.S. tweeters — we must extrapolate because the company does not break out U.S. users via mobile specifically — and the 16 million Americans using Twitter via mobile is about comparable to the location-apps audience in total.

Almost 80% of location-based service users are male. Close to 70% of them are between the ages of 19 and 35, and 70% have college degrees or higher. Forrester also found these location-app users to be influential (the report finds they’re 38% more likely to say friends and family ask their opinions before a purchase) and they are especially receptive to mobile coupons and offers. This set is up to 20% more likely to consult their phones before a purchase, and are far more likely to research products and services and read customer reviews.

This small audience is still attractive to some marketers. Forrester recommends that gaming, consumer electronics and sportswear marketers lead the way with testing these apps. Location apps have already proved they’re not only for male-oriented brands. PepsiCo, Starbucks, Oil of Olay, Bravo and, most recently, Campbell’s Soup have all launched campaigns with location apps.

Forrester analyst Melissa Parrish believes that male-oriented brands should forge the way and other marketers should hang back until these apps get bigger audiences. To date, Foursquare has more than 2 million users; Loopt 4 million and MyTown 2.5 million. Scale could come to the category if digital behemoths such as Facebook, Google and Twitter, which have already made moves toward location services, develop their own products.

by Kunur Patel,  July 26, 2010
AdAge

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