The Three Marketing Plan Keys

Marketing Plan, Marketing Strategy and Marketing Tactics

Before we start working on a marketing plan it’s important to understand some basic concepts of marketing. Most people make the mistake of creating a marketing mix of some fundamental marketing concepts. This mistake can lead a business plan towards failure.

Business owners often have no idea why their marketing plan failed, because they have a lack of understanding of the key concepts of making a marketing plan. The concepts I am talking about are:

Marketing Plan
Marketing Strategies
Marketing Tactics

This does not mean that these are the only three things we need to understand about a marketing plan, but we will focus on these three concepts in this article.

Marketing Plans

Marketing plans are a set of actions required to implement a successful marketing strategy. A plan consists of a drawn out document of the steps to be taken by your business over a few years time. Usually small businesses draw up a one year business plan because it is difficult for them to project more than a year ahead.

Marketing Strategies

Marketing strategies are related to your business objectives. You need to devise your strategy according to your business goals. Strategies are dependent on many external factors like: your business type, budget, demographics, and other external factors related to your business. Strategies are not stand alone independent rules. You can make changes in your business strategy to suit your business goals. Strategies are the means for you to reach your goals.

Some strategies include:

• product differentiation
• innovation
• horizontal integration
• diversification
• many others

Marketing Tactics

Tactics are the execution level and are dependent on your strategy. Tactics are affected by external factors to your business. You can change your tactics based on testing and results. Many businesses use tactics in place of principles which can limit their longevity.

The reason many online businesses fail is due to following a tactic without any business foundations or principles. Tactics are based on your level of expertise and directly related to understanding broader marketing plans, strategies and principles. Your business budget and most importantly your time to execute those tactics are critical.

Do not simply buy into any tactic from another marketer because their time, funding and expertise level is different than yours. If a tactic is based on a foundation of principles, plans, and strategies to make it operable then and only then does it make sense. But more importantly it needs to appeal to you.

These three marketing keys are simply a founding principle of marketing and are permanent and evergreen to your success. If you are running an internet or brick and mortar business or if you run a digital information store online or a pet shop in a mall these keys apply. It does not matter what your business budget or marketing mix are these principles will be the same for any business owner.

We will show you how to use a marketing plan blueprint, marketing strategies and marketing tactics as this blog progresses. Stay tuned.

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

Online Marketing Can Make Sense

The Three Marketing Plan Keys is a post from: Traffic Era Blog | Internet Marketing Can Make Sense

Managing Marketing Plans With A Smaller Budget

How To Increase Your ROI With Less

Now everyone knows we are going through a major economic problem right now. Marketing companies and marketing divisions have more pressure on them now to create with limited and mostly shrinking budgets this year. It is more important than ever to manage which tasks are making us the most return on our money in our market. Our budgets are crucial and our ability to show  forecasts on which marketing efforts are producing will be a must in this climate.

Your business plan and strategic marketing plan will probably no longer be to speculate as much on things that look profitable and may be to focus more on the things which are already profitable. You will also want to be doing the things which can make you a lot more money for the same basic amount your budget allows right now. These decisions may not be yours to make. In this case you will be doing more with fewer resources and much more pressure; therefor it is time to maximize your efforts and allow easier decisions for clients and managers based on ROI and efficiency.

Web marketing channels such as: email, media buys, social media, pay per click and others are only as good as the systems which are measuring their effectiveness. When the chips are down you must make decisions based on what has worked in the past, how much it costs to run, and if you can accurately measure campaign effectiveness. This makes online methods very attractive because they can be more easily measured for multiple variables much more rapidly. That doesn’t mean online ads are better. They are more rapidly measurable and low-cost to test using methods such as pay per click advertising. They also enable you to test and track results in real time making adjustments as you go.

If you are marketing using any of these channels online, you are definitely using some kind of tracking tool like Google analytics or a tool you have become comfortable with to view visitor stats to your web property. You may also be using supporting marketing feeders to your main web site such as: blogs, Hub pages, Squidoo lenses, link building, and social marketing accounts of various types. You may be using pay per click in tandem with SEO to gain new insights on your market and both strategies to build on each other.

You can have very integrated advertising strategies or not, but at this moment it’s so crucial to know how well each channel is producing. You need to be agile and reallocate marketing dollars accurately and quickly. You may not get another chance if you take too long. This type of pressure will tempt you to go with your best guess strategy, instead of fact based decisions.

Different types of advertising platforms can take longer to assess like email might take longer than pay per click or SEO will take longer than banner ads. You cannot adjust for things if the ROI has not been measured yet. This information is not easily knowable by normal means although most businesses believe that it is easily chartable. It is of course knowable if something did well or not, but the trick is knowing “why” and not mistakenly thinking you know all the reasons when in fact you don’t.

Marketers and business owners think that because they know how something ended they know why it ended the way it did. This is absolute vanity and shows a person’s inability to expand their grasp on knowing their market. Many times marketers need to ask their Search Engine Expert to go into their site log files and report full metrics, statistics and analytics. You will want to know things like: The number of site visitors to specific pages from various sources, how many emails were sent on a specific piece and how many subscribers opened and clicked through.

If you can get quick access to that type of data you still must understand how to make sense of it and analyzing data from multiple channels is mostly very tricky and takes forever. If you are like most marketers I have known you will take the easy way out and find one or two data points to take action on. An example would be if you make decisions on promoting your ad on one keyword versus another based on faulty statistical data. This happens every day with web site owners and they often suffer for their poor decision which is not much better than tossing a coin.

What an online business needs is a platform which can measure all marketing channel effectiveness from one central system. Being able to view all of your business metrics in one location over time and even in the short run can allow the business owner to make rapid maneuvers when necessary. In 2009 it is fully necessary to do so and if you are not using conversion improvement methods properly your business is not firing on all cylinders.

There is no greater method to improve your company ROI than by simply converting a higher percent of your existing ad budget (think existing prospects) into sales. An integrated system saves you a mountain of time and also gives you a much higher confidence level, because you can make decisions based on proper measurement and analysis. It will be much easier to defend your reasons for spending advertising on specific channels to the business parties involved in the advertising spending decisions.

As I have said before most companies view the marketing division as the first thing that is burdening their company with bloated spending. You can turn this view point on its head for them by applying proper statistical data which is centrally measurable and accurate. Their will be no arguing with facts and then your conversion proof really will be the decider above anyone’s opinion about where money will be spent. This is good for you as the owner or the consultant, because either way you win more and you won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

Managing Marketing Plans Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

Managing Marketing Plans With A Smaller Budget is a post from: Traffic Era Blog | Internet Marketing Can Make Sense

A Startup Marketing Plan Example 2

Build Infrastructure – Build Strategy – Segment Strategy

In the previous article I showed typical MBA sample business plans and strategies which acknowledge broad goals, product considerations, market entrance strategies, and long and short term forecasting. While this type of free marketing plan example can be very useful it is only a template which should be considered in addition to my original plan blueprint.

This MBA type strategic plan shows us what pitfalls we might want to consider before entering a market and various important considerations. It isn’t enough to go on however and my plan blueprint addresses all of the components you will need to build your business infrastructure. So then my plan considers the components more and the MBA plan considers the strategy more deeply.

What is needed at this point then is to dig deeply into the areas proposed for my infrastructure blueprint and to create strategies and systems for each one of those areas. If this all seems overwhelming do not let this confuse you in the least. This planning stage is the most important and the more thoroughly you write up these plans the easier the building of your business will be. These three models will give you a paint by numbers system for growing your business over time. They will make your daily tasks and mid and longer term goals crystal clear.

Let’s look then at the third type of strategy which is needed on our overall blueprint. It is simple really; all we need to do is break each area of my original blueprint down into a strategy for each one of the areas outlined. Marketing mindset might mean that once you have a basic background in mindset or even if you don’t that you set aside a half an hour or more a day to gain mental clarity. You can read something which benefits your overall disposition about business and your self such as my occasional post in friend feed from Hay House.

Create a market research strategy and one which continues over the growth of your business. You will need to do initial market research when studying your market in order to target your product possibilities, and learn more about your prospects. After you have done market research this doesn’t mean all your research is done. Create a plan which includes time to do continuous research as time goes on. Surveying your existing market and/or tangent areas of your market are examples of this.

You will also want to improve your knowledge about marketing strategies over time as well so you will set aside some time daily or weekly to update yourself on new and better strategic plans. Make sure to evaluate your existing plans when you do this as your business will need to adapt to any new strategies you implement. You can always add to or eliminate any existing plans or tactics in your business. In fact it is necessary many times in order to remain fluid in your market.

A Business, Like a Market needs to adapt and adjust to the ever changing market climate it might find itself in. This does not mean that you reinvent the wheel or stop using wheels. The basic foundation of your business should remain intact mostly and the governing principles of marketing don’t change.

Your business formation will not usually change unless you add a partner or restructure your company completely. Make sure you choose the best company formation out of the gate which protects you the most and serves your accounting needs.

You begin with a product or several to launch your company, but product development does not stop. You will undoubtedly think of new things to sell your market as you progress. Remember there are three main ways a business increases net profits: increased client base, sell more frequently, sell higher end products. These are known as the three business drivers. Don’t forget that you can increase your product and sales of it by adding more features and benefits to it. Product development can also mean improvement.

Website development and business automation will also continue as you build your business out over time. It will be necessary to add to or change your site design in order to test which design elements convert more sales and when you add a new product or offer to your site. Your business automation will undoubtedly change as well if you find a preferred tool or software to manage things. Automation can also change as you add new products and services to your company.

Continue with the rest of the segments of my marketing plan blueprint and consider how to act upon it in a scheduled way over time. If you use a project management system it becomes much easier to act on your plans. This will be covered at length when I get into how to use business automation to make yourself much more effective over time. I will fuse these three marketing blueprints together in my soon to be released e-book. Keep an eye out for it.

A Startup Marketing Plan Example Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

A Startup Marketing Plan Example 2 is a post from: Traffic Era Blog | Internet Marketing Can Make Sense

A Startup Marketing Plan Example

What Old School MBA Marketing Proposes

What you learn about marketing when you endeavor a marketing degree of any kind teaches you how to begin a business plan from a strategic and theoretical perspective which is a good place to begin. This Blueprint will help you to consider many possible areas of market influence that should not be over looked. This is only a  starting point and highly objective, but doesn’t even begin to account for the many real world details and considerations that can come into play. Here is a typical old school or MBA marketing plan which I will compare with a real world plan in my next article.

I) Controlling Summary
A global view summary of your marketing plan.

II) Your Goals
A description of your product to market and sales figures and strategic goals.

III) Entrance Analysis

A) Company Analysis
Goals, Focus, Culture, Strengths, Weaknesses, Market share
B) Customer Analysis
Number, Type, Value drivers, Decision process, Concentration of customer base for particular products
C) Competitor Analysis
Market position, Strengths, Weaknesses, Market shares, Collaborators, Subsidiaries, joint ventures, and distributors, etc.
D) Environmental Analysis
PEST analysis: Political and legal environment, Economic environment, Social and cultural environment, Technological environment
SWOT Analysis (organizes the environmental factors into: company internal characteristics can be strengths or weaknesses, and the external environment creates opportunity and threats).

IV) Market Segmentation
Segmentation of your market looks like this:
Segment 1 (Description, Percent of sales, What they want, How they use product, Support requirements, How to reach them, Price sensitivity).
Segment 2, Segment 3, and so on.

V) Proposed Marketing Strategies
List and discuss alternative proposals considered before reaching your main strategy.

VI) Chosen Marketing Strategy
Why did you select your chosen strategy? How did the marketing mix (4 P’s) of product, price, place (distribution), and promotion affect your decision?

A) Product strategy includes a product’s advantages and how to leverage them. These include: Brand name, Quality, Scope of product line, Warranty, and Packaging.
B) Price strategy includes expected volumes, and choices on these pricing variables: List price, Discounts, Bundling, Payment terms and financing options, Leasing options.
C) Distribution (Place) strategy include: Distribution channels (direct, retail, distributors & intermediates), Channel Motivation (distributor margins for example), Distributor evaluation criteria, Locations, Logistics (transportation, warehousing, and order fulfillment).
D) Promotion Strategies include: Advertising (how much and which media channels), Public relations, Promotional programs, Budget (know your break-even point additional spending), Forecast promotional program results.

VII) Short & Long-Term Forecast
Your strategy’s immediate results, long-term result forecast, and anything needed to complete them. You can include revenue and expense forecasts and the results of a breaking-even.

VIII) Plan Conclusion: Summarize your whole business plan.

IX) Appendix Charts and Graphs
Show how you determined your market size, net profit potential level, break-even analyses, etc.
This is a great start for your business plan, but as you will see does not mention certain things. We will explore those in the next post.

Marketing Plan Examples Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

A Startup Marketing Plan Example is a post from: Traffic Era Blog | Internet Marketing Can Make Sense

A Great Marketing Plan Strategy

Serial Publication – The Original “Content Marketing”

Charles Dickens was not just a great author he was an inventor of a very powerful strategic marketing plan known as serial publication. Dickens wrote: A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, and A Christmas Carol. His novels were almost all written and sold in installments. You bought one chapter and if you enjoyed it you would most likely buy the next chapter when it was published.

We can learn two methods from this marketing planning strategy Dickens used. Firstly the continued conversation he created with subscribers by using serial publishing is very similar to the use of an auto responder series today. Secondly the use of valuable content to create continuity with his readers and more chances to advertise to them.

Dickens published serially as well as wrote serially. He planned every chapter out and wrote each one after the last was published. This is a concept I use mostly as I write these articles as I find it helps heighten my sense of awareness and my drive to produce something interesting. Please don’t think I am in any way comparing my drivel to the great Dickens. You can learn something that may be valuable here however. It works well for me and worked extremely well for Dickens.

I find that the need to continue conversations and content of value keeps me honest and under pressure to perform a bit. It helps me to stay focused and not waste too much time. If you are a lazy creature of habit like I am it can also really help you to focus on what is in front of you at the given moment and get it done. This is a great idea for people like me, mostly because it will keep them scheduled to write at specific times.

Dickens considered the structure of each chapter carefully and thought both of his serial readers and of people who would eventually read his novels when they were published as completed works. He and I have a content strategy of considering each post as well as the long term client relationship impact. The way you do this is to create something valuable for each post or chapter of the topic being focused on as it fits into a larger company plan blueprint.

I laid out a strategic marketing plan blueprint in previous articles and I guess it is a good method to use since I found out Charles Dickens actually used it. (pat pat pat…my arm is sore). The point of this method is you can create content for your market today and keep it totally focused on your short term information goal while keeping it totally relevant to your overall big picture blueprint.

Dickens published his serial writings as part of weekly and monthly magazines, much the same as I do with this blog. These magazines published material by other authors too as I will also be doing as the site grows. The difference being I will hand pick marketers in specific categories who are very knowledgeable in that area. I will also advertise specific products related to each market segment which are mine or I promote as an affiliate. This will be a marketing strategy choice you will have to make as well when you market with content or if you use simple direct marketing methods.

Serial or content publication has several advantages. The subscriber can read free valuable information or pay for it monthly as part of a membership site. This lowers the initial cost for customers and they are more likely to pay for your information. This method allows you to market anything you want such as: e-courses, e-books, software, widgets, and services and customers don’t have to pay a larger price for a product or service all up front.

Being a publisher of a content site expands your market especially if you involve content from multiple and wide ranging professionals in your niche. This allows you complete market coverage if your niche is not too large or you want to tackle the giant. People will come in and buy various products and services from the many expert areas of advice in your holistic site.

Serial publishing also allows price point coverage in multiple formats which different levels of clients can afford. This is a great platform for advertising along side your very valuable and informative content. Just make sure to make free content valuable so people don’t feel as if they just get a pitch fest and no value. People are more likely to buy something once you have demonstrated you know what you are writing about and that you have even better solutions and answers for them.

Being the author on a content site creates intimacy with an audience and allows you to get feedback by surveying your audience. Dickens in fact used feedback or what marketers call market surveys. What may have made Dickens so great as a writer as well as a marketer was that he was in touch with his niche. I accidentally learned this strategy on my journey and you should too.

The final chapters of his novels were double length and included illustrations, a cover, an engraved title page, a preface, a table of contents, and a list of illustrations. Dickens piled the bonuses on after he spent time building rapport and great content, then the publisher charged double for the final chapters. This was the publisher’s up sell sales method. Their back end sales method  included placing advertisements at the end of each article.

The final back end sales method was allowing clients with more money, after purchasing their last installment to take all the chapters to a bookbinder, and have them bound into a new book. This is how you can segment your audience by interest and willingness to spend.

We can learn a lot from the example of Charles Dickens and realize a good plan is often nothing more than thinking about different ways to sell to your market, how to increase value, and reaching people at various price points. All very solid strategies and guess what? These are principles which have been around a long time.

A Marketing Plan Strategy Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

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A Great Marketing Plan Strategy is a post from: Traffic Era Blog | Internet Marketing Can Make Sense

Three Keys to Permission Marketing

Your Consent Marketing Strategy Must Seduce Them

It is important that you prepare valuable marketing “give away” information for prospects. I have previously discussed that you need to prepare a real quality piece of information to offer for free. Don’t assume that since you are giving it away you can be less careful in preparing the “free” part of your  product. Remember this free product is the most important part of your sales process. This will create a good first impression of you in your subscribers’ minds and “the first impression is the last impression”.

I am not saying that you need to give away all your valuable information as a free resource to your subscribers but it should not be second rate information. After reading, a user shouldn’t feel that they just wasted their time on your free gift.

Your best marketing strategies are ones which reveal some really good information but not all of it. You should create a feeling in your subscriber that they found some really great marketing information and they need to learn more about it. You need to seduce them with your free product towards your paid product. Create a thirst for more….The beauty of this strategy is that you won’t have to “sell your product” but your subscriber will be asking you for more information with credit card in hand.

Build Consistent Behavior

You need to have a consistent behavior in marketing efforts to your prospect list. Make a realistic time schedule for your marketing campaigns and then stick to that. Once you set a pattern for marketing to subscribers they will be expecting something from you subconsciously.

For example if you set follow up messages to be delivered every three days and broadcast messages once a week then don’t disturb that cycle just to promote something unless you have something very important to announce. Exceptional cases will be acceptable to your subscribers but don’t make it a habit. Consistency is not only required in reference to time but you need to establish a behavioral consistency with consent marketing as well.

Make Them Friends

I know the philosophy preached by many marketing consultants. “You market to make money not to make friends”. I disagree with this. Yes, you are not here to only increase your circle of friendship, but what is the harm in establishing a friendly atmosphere with your subscribers?

If you write about products every time, you will send a message that all your sincere efforts to help them are because you only want their money. It’s true that you want to sell them your products, but being friendly and real will only help you to establish better communications with your subscribers. Now I am not saying that you need to send gifts and friendship cards to your subscribers or go way out of your way to help someone … but small gestures can make a big difference.

What you can do is send some occasional messages other than business follow ups. You can send some good quotes, a good joke or any interesting piece of information you found somewhere. Share some of your personal life with readers and some of your faults and discoveries. Do not pretend to know it all or be the master of the universe. “Be Real”…People will want to know you, like you, and trust you if you are real.

Unfortunately some marketers abuse this method as well. Never relate your personal issues with your business. For example don’t do this: “Tomorrow is my birthday and I am reducing my product to half price to celebrate it”. You will make some sales by doing this but some subscribers will think that it’s a cheap tactic or a lie and they are probably right. Don’t even offer something free with this tactic as it will work to some degree but lessens your position.

Good Marketing requires patience and will cost some money, for sure … but in the end, bad marketing will cost a whole lot more.

Permission Marketing Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

Three Keys to Permission Marketing is a post from: Traffic Era Blog | Internet Marketing Can Make Sense

The Reality of Permission Marketing

Free, Trust and Obligation Marketing Strategies

Which do you think is easier? Selling something or giving something away? So how about giving people something free and using an up sell marketing strategy to buy from you? Another mistake most people in Internet marketing make is they approach their marketing with a “Selling Attitude”. A Selling Attitude requires hype because without hype it isn’t possible to convince someone they really need your product.

The primary reason people use the Internet is to find information. The search engines were designed for finding information not for product sales pages. Is it logical to show people something they are not looking for? It’s true that people are buying on the Internet, but primarily they are looking for “information” and “solutions” to their problems. So if you provide them that “information” or “solution” they are then likely to buy from you.

Before going into actual monetization methods visualize that your primary job is providing information and solutions to people, and not selling. Most of the time you need to provide that Information for FREE. You are not a sales person. You are not a hawker shouting in the streets that you have something to sell.

>>>”Then How will I Make Money?”…You Ask<<<

Following this method and permission email marketing you need not worry about making money. Actually you also need to decide that making money is not your main objective. Your objective is to provide QUALITY information. Now don’t take this wrong. You will make money eventually but you will not have to chase money. Money will come to you as a result of providing what people are looking for. I will show you how to prepare information people are looking for and how to use that for your lead creation process and finally how it makes you money in return.

Trust Building vs Money Making

Before you make money from this process you must gain people’s trust. Trust is a synonym for success in web marketing. Remember you are offering something free to people which they were looking for. This will place your name in their good book and eventually they will pay you back many times over.

If you follow the other route and try to sell them upfront by using some sales pitch and hype in your advertisement you might make some short term money but what will your end result be? Sure, there will be people who bought from you because of your sales pitch and hype, but you will need to continue chasing the money with ongoing hype and sales pitches if you want to keep making money.

Furthermore, once your product doesn’t meet the expectations created by the hype and the sales pitch you will lose all your credibility in the eyes of that customer. The story does not end here. That customer will go to different forums and product review sites and complain to people about the quality of your product.

Once you get a bad name the game is over for you. People will be reluctant to buy anything from you in the future no matter how good a product you market. “Your name is your brand”. The respect for your name in your market should be your top priority. Never sacrifice the credibility of your name for short term money. You can make money anytime, but you can’t make your name once it’s ruined.

Make Them Obliged

When you give something valuable for free your prospect normally feels obliged. This is human nature that you feel a sense of obligation when you take something from someone. You will feel a sense of obligation due to the marketer’s good will. This psychology works and once you give something free to your prospects you create a sense of obligation in their subconscious. This will at least gain you their attention in future communications and a better chance for sales.

Obligation plus trust and respect in your name is what makes your subscribers loyal to you. An unhappy customer can ruin your name and can run you out of business and a loyal customer can take you to the next level of success. Loyal customers are also mouth pieces for you and will market for you without any incentive from you. They will do this from a sense of obligation you created in their minds.

The book “Customer Satisfaction Is Worthless, Customer Loyalty Is Priceless” by Jeffrey Gitomer sure hits a home run on accurately assessing the state of business in the United States and in all countries for that matter. A loyal customer is worth gold. A satisfied customer won’t talk bad about you, but has no reason to either return or recommend you.

Permission Marketing Strategies Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

The Reality of Permission Marketing is a post from: Traffic Era Blog | Internet Marketing Can Make Sense

Interruption Marketing and Permission Marketing

The Best Relationship Marketing Method

Where do you think more money is made?

• A sales approach trying to convince a site visitor to buy something by explaining the value of a product which was not targeted to their search. An example would be a person using paid advertising that is totally non-targeted and trying to sell something to everyone who runs across that ad.

Or

• A person needs a solution or desires a product and goes online to find the product and get more information about the product from a sales and information site. An example of this would be people searching Google for how to make candles who arrive at a site about different candle making methods.

• A person who is receiving a spam email about something they may or may not have an interest in. A person seeing an ad which is popping up on their web browser which is interrupting their searching.

Or

• A person who has opted in to an permission email marketing list to receive information about their area of interest.

Obviously more money is made in the second scenario in both cases. The only time the first scenario out pulls the second is if you have a massive media advertising campaign and this is still targeted to niches and categories and other limiters which make it fairly targeted.

Permission marketing is requested and wanted versus interruption marketing; which is purely unrequested distraction to internet users.  Interruption marketing is unanticipated, impersonal, and mostly  not targeted. Permission based marketing on the other hand  is about getting the prospect to agree to receive information about the area of interest before going forward. It is also about giving a market what it wants versus what you think it wants.

There are mainly two types of marketing strategies. In the first strategy you are targeting a list of prospects who are interested in your product and want to know more about the product. In the second marketing strategy you are presenting your product to people regardless of their interest.

The salesman will throw a new product to people hoping some will be in need of that. This strategy is followed by many marketers and you need to convince your prospect that he/she needs your product. You will usually also have to utilize hype tactics to sell your product when it is not targeted.

I recommend following the first strategy where your market is already asking for information about your products. You might think that you can’t create enough leads and sales with so much targeting and focus, but don’t worry with a “lead segmentation” strategy you will have big lists but divided into smaller targeted sections.

Quality prospects are what you want because quantity doesn’t matter if no one is responsive and buying anything. You also need to be patient to build trust if you are emailing or contacting prospects, because it is rare to see sales on the first or second exposure of your product. Quality subscribers will buy if you give them quality information and expose them to it over time.

You may not realize the advantage web marketing gives you. Most people have an off line business sense from working in the non-Internet world they don’t realize that some mechanics of the game have been changed in Internet marketing and more importantly the change is in their favor. So lets see what potential we have on the Internet.

The most important difference in normal business and Internet business is that in normal business you can’t achieve 100% profitability on each cost factor of your product. But on the Internet this is possible. How is this possible?

internet-product-profitability

In a brick and mortar business we can’t imagine anything like 100% profitability on each cost factor of our product and we cant reduce the cost to zero on each cost factor of our product. Lets say we make children’s toys. We will need: raw material, work space, labor, machinery, and storage. Once the product is created we will need: A distributor, whole seller, reseller, shop keeper etc….At every step your cost for the individual item is increasing and your ultimate profit will be calculated by subtracting all the costs from the end price.

In this scenario offering some thing free with your product will add to your cost and decrease your profit. On the Internet it’s quite easy to offer free bonuses. This will help you understand your potential of offering something to your subscribers. Even if you have a physical product (which has cost involved) you can easily offer something free with your product.

On the Internet all it takes is a server to host your information product. You can give away unlimited copies of your digital product without any cost on your end. Your customer will receive a download link for that product. An average server will cost you only $10-$20/month. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to handle servers and setup your product for downloading. I will cover all these steps in detail.

Permission Marketing Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

Interruption Marketing and Permission Marketing is a post from: Traffic Era Blog | Internet Marketing Can Make Sense

Relationship Marketing Online

The Evergreen Marketing History

These are very changing moments in Internet marketing. It’s very important to understand these changes so that we can not only save ourselves from being the victim of hype marketing, but also to build a real firm foundation for our Internet Business.

In the early days of Internet marketing it was way too easy to make money in comparison to today. Email marketing was very simple and very rewarding. In the absence of Spam laws one could make huge mailing lists ethically or unethically. The Internet community was also less aware of Spam.

Due to the immaturity of the Internet community the common Internet user was easy prey to fall into the net of marketers. A new era was emerging and with it a new romance. You may remember those days when you were ready to buy every thing labeled as “Make easy money online” or “learn how I am making thousands of $$$$$”.

In the early days of web marketing a bunch of people assessed its potential and I give full credit to those people for being ahead of the crowd at that time. The people who had the vision of the future took advantage and made mailing lists of millions, and many made fortunes out of that opportunity. There was nothing wrong up to that point. There were no Spam laws so I can agree with the argument that it was legal to Spam at that time (though it was still unethical).

At that very moment it was also very easy to Spam the search engines. It was very easy to trick the search engines and get high rankings by gaming the search engines using methods like link farming. Many people took full advantage of technical loop holes in search engines and established so called “Virtual Real Estate” sites. A few people made millions of dollars by doing this.

Once that time was over it became harder to make money on the Internet. The kind of money made in those early days is more difficult to make today and requires more work. Technology advancements in search engines and email means it’s not easy to game the Internet. There are laws on Spam now and above all the overall maturity level of the Internet community is growing daily and even an Internet virgin can sense what is valuable and what is garbage more quickly.

It became harder to sell garbage and make insane amounts of money by selling low quality products, because internet users could determine what was more valuable and search engines knocked sites out of the top positions for not providing relevant valuable content. Then the era of “selling marketing secrets” started.

Marketers who were failing in product markets or having their sites lose rank position decided to make money by selling their “secrets”. To accomplish this they used the money they made in those easy days. They fooled people by showing screen shots and videos of their checks many of which could be doctored with graphics or programming.

Marketers showed people how much money they “made” and promised to reveal the techniques which made them money. But they didn’t point out that those marketing techniques are not effective anymore or that they are of no use for most marketers. Hype marketing was the phenomena of this particular time period.

This period lasted for some time and people soon realized that they were being trapped by this hype. The maturity of the Internet community is upon us and is a great opportunity for mature online marketers not hype creators. You may have heard that in marketing “The Money Is In The List”, but that’s not an entirely true statement because your money is made in the value you give to your subscribers.

Relationship marketing is nothing more than relationship building. This point is very important to understand. Don’t treat your prospects as a tool to make money. They are your potential customers so take care of their needs and satisfy them by giving them solutions they are looking for. Don’t follow up with them in the intention of making sales with every mailing.

You might have been taught that using hype in your “subject line” is the most important factor in the open rate of your email campaigns. This is totally wrong. It is desperate to implement fear and scarcity psychological tactics to get a sale. Mostly these psychological tactics are based on hype. The first thing to learn is avoiding this, because people are getting wise to it after being ripped off again and again. “Next Big Thing” advertising is not gonna work any more.

Instead of that, focus on value and treat your prospects as valued customers rather than simply trying to make money off of them.  In the long run, this will provide a much greater return. You will no longer need to use sensational or deceptive subject lines like “You have got a payment”. Rather than focusing on the subject line you need to gain respect for your name. The most important factors affecting whether people listen to you are ‘believability’ and ‘trust’.

Establishing a trustworthy marketing relationship with prospects and clients is an evergreen marketing principle and how to have them waiting for your next contact via email or any other means. You can even forget a subject line and people will still respond to your contact.

Relationship Marketing Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

Relationship Marketing Online is a post from: Traffic Era Blog | Internet Marketing Can Make Sense

Want More Loyal Customers? Use Customer Service

Is Your Marketing Plan Missing This?

A great business is built on it’s ability to generate loyal customers and you don’t even have to have a back end product. Creating a marketing plan which focuses on customer service as one of it’s primary drivers is one of the smartest things a company owner can do. Referral and word of mouth alone can completely create your client base.

I know this to be the case as when I have marketed for companies in the past we saw a great deal of profits out of referral based clients. In fact when someone had been referred to us it was almost always due to a client’s customer service experience.

How do you create a loyal customer? It’s a simple answer which is hard to practice. You need to use the principles which you use in every aspect of life which build loyalty and loyalty is not given it is earned. There is a fortune made and lost in the customer service business so in order to get loyalty you need to give loyalty to your customers.

A satisfied client is not a big deal, but a loyal one will preach about your company. A satisfied client has no reason to return again or refer anyone to you, but a loyal one will actively promote your company. A satisfactory result is not what you want because it says you are doing the bare minimum to please the customer, but a loyal client will feel that you treated them so well that they almost owe you.

There are a specific ingredients to great customer service and the more of these you have the higher your level of client influence and loyalty will grow. Here are your ingredients to add to your company customer relationship management strategy:

• Friendliness
• Empathy
• Helpfulness
• Responsiveness
• Memorable

The friendlier you come across to your client and your prospects the more likely they are to use your service and the more likely they are to use it again. The friendlier you are to your clients the higher your customer satisfaction and more likely they are to recommend your company. This may not apply as much to some online businesses as it would to an off line business, but the site visitors perception of friendliness is all that matters.

This would indicate then that the images and pictures you use on your site should say: “Hi we are friendly”. Include pictures of you smiling rather than a deadpan look or anything which relates comfort and warmth. If you actually have to interact by phone with people then friendly goes to a whole new level.

<Tip>: Your prospect’s Perception of you is all that matters and not YOUR perception of you … go ahead and get feed back from people you know to see if your web site conveys “friendly”.

If your business model includes a help desk or technical support then friendliness and customer services are crucial.

Empathy is the most important thing you need to channel an upset or disturbed person towards you. When people are distressed or upset about something they need it is always best to defuse them on the phone by saying “That’s terrible … I understand why you must feel that way”. When you are trying to sell a product or get a conversion on your site; let people know you understand their problem and sympathize with it.

Empathy is one of the human needs we all have … we just want to feel like someone cares about us. When your clients feel you care they will let down their guard and listen to your offer. When they feel you care they will return again and recommend people to you.

Customer “service” should really be called client “help”, because that is what you want to be trying to do for them. A person comes to a website looking for help and answers. When someone feels you are trying to address their issue to help them they will be much more likely to open their wallet to you.

Responsiveness is also pivotal in keeping clients and gaining new ones. If a client has a question about something they purchased, try and respond in a timely manner as this will also show empathy. If a client or prospect has a complaint, try and be responsive to all. Client retention and alleviating worry are your job as a marketer.

Try and make your business memorable to the visitor in some way and in a positive versus negative way. Offer something which makes them feel special and valued. One example would be a free consultation session if they are willing to answer a couple qualifying questions. Another example would be offering something free and unique just for visiting or as a bonus for buying.

Anything you can do to distinguish your business as being unique, interesting or more of any good feeling will make it more memorable to clients and prospects.

Customer Service Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

Want More Loyal Customers? Use Customer Service is a post from: Traffic Era Blog | Internet Marketing Can Make Sense