3 Marketing Myths that are Stopping you Succeed
These 3 marketing myths can cause you to lose sales if you base your marketing decisions on them. We’ve given you some marketing tips to blast each myth and boost your sales.
Myth 1: People buy a product at the cheapest price they can find.
That is not true – if it was then companies like Rolex and would not exist – Timex would have put them out of business a long time ago. Despite the ease of research that the internet affords – buyers are generally lazy and don’t undertake full research. Even on eBay where it is far easier to check the relative prices of a product – people often buy a product at a higher price than they could. So what causes people to buy? These are called buying triggers – the most common are:
• Confidence in the seller • A high perceived value • Recommendations • Ease of purchase
Blasting Myth 1: Establish your credentials – for example we have over 20 years of business consultancy experience – so we know what works and what does not work in a business.
Find ways of enhancing the perceived value of your product or service by adding extras or clearly demonstrating the value of it’s purchase.
Ensure that you include some actual recommendations within your sales letter. Make it easy to purchase and receive your product by not introducing any barriers to purchase such as extra forms, obscure or complex payment methods.
Myth 2: Offering your customers numerous different options will boost your sales
When confronted with several options, most customers have difficulty making a decision. They often react by procrastinating – and going to a seller who offers a clearer product. Now by this we don’t say add extras or up sells, just clearly state what is included in the product and don’t offer options that not only confuse but making your selling and processing more difficult.
The human mind works better when offered the two options “buy”, “don’t buy”.
Blasting Myth 2: Only offer one product – or product package per page. You can have a clear (and short) menu on each page to encourage multiple purchases. If you have more than one option for a product or service – then give them different names and present them each separately. For example you can call them “silver service”, “gold service”, “opal service” etc. This is what we did with our various marketing services and it works quite well.
You should always aim at a small, easily understood product or service range. You should be able to explain each of your products in one or two sentences. If you can’t do this – how do you expect your potential buyers to understand what they are buying?
Myth 3: Everybody Needs My Product or Service
Unfortunately, most people don’t believe that they do need a particular service of product. Obviously with items such as Ipods – your teenager will try and tell you they really, really, really need one, but this is peer pressure that has been built up with millions of dollars. Much of this was spent on research into what there market wanted – and they got it right!
If you believe this myth then you also believe that you can succeed without doing much marketing or selling. Unfortunately, despite what some marketers tell you – it does not happen that way. Undoubtedly there some very successful marketers around, but they will all admit that a great deal of market research, testing and reviewing of their offerings – happened before they became successful.
Building a successful business is hard work – most of it devoted to finding potential customers and then matching them with your products and services. Even if most people can use your product or service, you still need a marketing strategy to reach them and a persuasive sales message to close sales – because you can bet your last dollar – that where there a lots of potential customers – there are just as many sellers.
Blasting Myth 3: • Do your homework – find out where your potential customers are, what particular needs and desires they have and what they are seeking to solve these. • Look for a narrowly defined niche market where your product or service will solve a unique need of the customers. • Design your product or service to meet these needs. • Test, Change, Test, Refine, Test and obtain customer feedback.
Unless you are one of the millionaire marketers around – you will find many myths that you follow and potentially lose money on. Hopefully the ones above have helped you.
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© Copyright 2006 Biz Guru LLC Lee Lister, writes as The Biz Guru, for a number of web sites including her own www.BizGuru.us and www.clikks.com where she sells her informational products. With over 20 year’s management and business consultancy experience with businesses large and small as well as being a serial entrepreneur, she now helps others set up, develop and market their businesses.
You might like to join our: Clikks Ezine: – aimed at the small businesses – click or brick with a web site presence. We provide business strategy and internet marketing assistance and products. clikks_ezine@aweber.com
This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
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3 Things You Never Knew About Viral Marketing
Viral marketing has been used to “spread the word” for companies over the years. It is a great way to become well known and seen as an expert online. Here are three important aspects that should be taken into perspective.
1) Creativity
This is one aspect a site must possess to lead the race in the gutless competition in the internet based business industry. With so much competition and rivalry going on, every method of marketing must be employed and utilized.
It does not really matter if you have a killer product or a fantastically designed website. If people do not know that you exist, it will not matter; therefore you will make it big. Your business could end up dying due to lack of activity.
While there are so many methods and schemes used by many websites today, there are still some of those that can help you with an extra boost in the popularity ratings. One of these is the method called viral marketing.
2) Viral Marketing Overview
Viral marketing is a marketing technique used to build the public awareness of someone’s product or company. They use many forms of media to reach out to the public without actually promoting the product by riding on in other forms of addictive means that could get a person hooked and be obliged or amused to actually pass it on, with the product or company advertisement along with it.
To be brief, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to others. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flashy hip game, funny video, or amusing story. One may pass on to another with the company brand or logo to help promote the company and its product.
Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pass on the product.
Many companies even offer incentives such as discounts and rebates when they help in spreading their viral marketing campaign. They rely on the number of recipients a viral marketer gets from one person in determining the amount or number of incentive they can be attributed with.
3) Using Viral Marketing to your advantage
The main and foremost advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. You get to generate a flow of traffic containing many potential customers. With a little more detail, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.
Almost all websites and companies are catching on to the power of viral marketing. If you do not use this method, it can likely destroy your business. Along with other schemes and methods in promoting your site viral marketing could easily push you ahead in the rating games. Stop wasting time and get started.
Copyright 2007 Donald Mckenzie Jr
How To Make More Money With Email Marketing
The number one rule in effective email marketing is to ALWAYS capture every email address of every possible prospect. Here is the way to get started building a large customer list to promote your products and make more money in the process.
First you will need to sign up for a paid membership at a respected autoresponder service. This is not very expensive. It usually costs no more than $20 per month. Either Aweber.com or Getresponse.com are two good recommended autoresponder services. Here is the outline for using your autoresponder to create campaigns that will sell products for you consistently.
Tip #1. Place a sign-up box on every website you own to capture email addresses from your prospects.
Offer them a FREE report or eBook for signing up to your new newsletter.
You will use this newsletter to ‘broadcast’ news, special offers, discounts and clearance sales to your ‘active’ list of prospects at different times as needed. A good tip is to keep your prospect audience ‘on the hook’ and always receptive to your email messages. Build good rapport with your subscribers.
By capturing as many email addresses as you can and broadcasting a newsletter to your customers on a frequent basis (once every 2 to 3 weeks is O.K. for most businesses), you will increase your sales and profits.
Tip #2. When sending out a broadcast, give your prospective customers a FREE offer that complements the product or service that you are promoting in the email.
This could be a FREE eBook or report that might make them more interested in the product that you are selling. Include in the free eBook or report a hyperlink to your product sales page just in case they decide to go ahead and buy your product after reading the FREE eBook or report. You always want to make it as easy as possible for your customers to read, review and purchase your product.
Tip #3. Then in the same email broadcast, give your customers a “preview” of your next email offer. Also include a line or two about the next FREE bonus offer that will accompany your upcoming email to interest them and set up your next product mailing.
It all comes down to meeting the expectations of your customers. They will know what is coming to their inbox next. Who knows, your customer might already be sold on the next offer as soon as it arrives!
Tip #4. When advertising your product in ezine ads, always give the people that are reading your ad the opportunity to get on your mailing list.
In fact, you should be advertising your product for the purpose of capturing the prospect’s email address. You are going to make your sales and profits on the back-end. Avoid trying to sell your product from the ad itself.
To do this, you offer them FREE information, and MORE DETAILS about the product that you are promoting in your ad. Then have the prospect send a blank email to your autoresponder. Follow-up using your autoresponder with a message of your choice that includes the promised information. Also add these prospects to your newsletter mailing list.
Refer to the instructions at your autoresponder service on how to make the hyperlink to your autoresponder and how to organize your new email addresses.
Email marketing makes you more money when it is done right. Follow the tips above and cash in on your company’s new email marketing strategies with ease.
Now you have a way to get people to see your offers at a minimal cost. And you have built up a high level of trust and loyalty with your subscribers. Plus in the eyes of your customers, you always overdeliver. That’s a triple winning combination for your marketing mix. And you did it all automatically!
7 Small Business Marketing Tips
Here are 7 low-cost but highly effective marketing tips to help any small business find customers and generate sales quickly.
1. Don’t Advertise Like a Big Business
Big businesses advertise to create name recognition and future sales. A small business can’t afford to do that. Instead, design your advertising to produce sales …now. One way to accomplish this is to always include an offer in your advertising – and an easy way for prospective customers to respond to it.
2. Offer a Cheaper Version
Some prospective customers are not willing to pay the asking price for your product or service. Others are more interested in paying a low price than in getting the best quality. You can avoid losing sales to many of these customers by offering a smaller or stripped down version of your product or service at a lower price.
3. Offer a Premium Version
Not all customers are looking for a cheap price. Many are willing to pay a higher price to get a premium product or service. You can boost your average size sale and your total revenue by offering a more comprehensive product or service …or by combining several products or services in a special premium package offer for a higher price.
4. Try Some Unusual Marketing Methods
Look for some unconventional marketing methods your competitors are overlooking. You may discover some highly profitable ways to generate sales and avoid competition. For example, print your best small ad on a postcard and mail it to prospects in your targeted market. A small ad on a postcard can drive a high volume of traffic to your website or generate a flood of sales leads for a very small cost.
5. Trim Your Ads
Reduce the size of your ads so you can run more ads for the same cost. You may even be surprised to find that some of your short ads generate a better response than their longer versions.
6. Set up Joint Promotions with Other Small Businesses
Contact some non-competing small businesses serving customers in your market. Offer to publicize their products or services to your customers in exchange for their publicizing your services to their customers. This usually produces a large number of sales for a very low cost.
7. Take Advantage of Your Customers
Your customers already know and trust you. It’s easier to get more business from them than to get any business from somebody who never bought from you. Take advantage of this by creating some special deals just for your existing customers …and announce new products and services to them before you announce them to the general market.
Also, convert your customers into publicity agents for your business. Develop an incentive for them to tell associates and friends about the value of your products or services. An endorsement from them is more effective than any amount of advertising – and it is much cheaper.
Each of these 7 marketing tips provides a simple, low-cost way for any small business to find customers and generate sales quickly.
How To Make Internet Marketing Paid Membership Sites Work For You
There was a time when setting up paid membership sites on the Internet — where you have a site only people who pay you an ongoing fee can access — was all the rage.
Lately it seems this isn’t as popular as it was. Mostly because so many of them fail. In fact, in many cases, it seems people drop out of paid membership web sites as soon as they sign up.
Even so, there are a few smart Internet marketers who have been able to make it work well.
And one of those ways to make paid membership sites work is to simply offer content people simply cannot get anywhere else.
In other words, you’re probably not going to get them to pay you an ongoing fee to access your content unless you offer them something that’s just not possible to get online or offline anywhere else but from you and your site.
Yes, that sounds simple, but that’s really what it all boils down to.
The whole key to making paid membership sites work is giving people something unique, valuable, proprietary to you, and that you, and only you, can provide.
For example, there is a marketer named Matt Furey. He has a monthly membership site and he gives away a ton of material to people who sign up for a year. Not material people can download online somewhere else, but real, valuable books, CDs, and even personal assistance with members’ questions.
These are all things you can’t get anywhere else but through him and so his membership deal thrives and grows. You can do the same thing.
It doesn’t take a whole lot of sophistication or technological savvy, either. Just follow the model above with what you’re selling and you will be fine.
Copyright 2006 Michael Senoff
How To Classify Your Network Marketing Prospect List Part 1
Are you new to Network Marketing?
If you are, then one of the first things your sponsor or upline has probably already told you is that you will need to create a prospect list. I explain the reasons why you need to create a list of at least 100 names in another article I’ve written, called “Your #1 Secret Weapon”.
Once you have written your prospect list, it’s time to start approaching the people on your list with your business opportunity. Many people feel that you should just start calling the names on your list.
I have a different point of view. In my experience, I have found that once you have created your prospect list, it’s time to do some “classifying.”
It’s important to understand that by classifying your prospect list, I am not talking about pre-judging, or pre-qualifying people for your business opportunity.
You should not prejudge people, as there is no way you can predict who is going to seize your network marketing business opportunity and use it to transform their lives for the better and who is going to do absolutely nothing with it, despite having shown all the signs of being a potential “hot” prospect.
Also, do not pre-qualify the people on your list. This happens AFTER you have presented them your business opportunity. People will then qualify themselves “in” or “out” of your business. Your job is simply to present them with information, then allow them to make an informed decision as to whether your business opportunity is right for them or not.
Classifying the people on your prospect list is different. You are looking for people that you believe are worth approaching first, because you instinctively feel that they make a great contribution to the growth of your network marketing team.
You will want to classify the people on your prospect list in terms of criteria such as:
Location – Can you drive out to meet them within, say, 45 mins to one hour? Or do they live interstate or overseas?
Character – Are they positive and open to new ideas? Are they coachable and can they follow a system? Are they people who take immediate action when they recognize an opportunity? Do they have a large circle of influence? Asking these questions will help you identify potentially good business partners.
Remember that, as the CEO of your own organization, you will want to recruit the very best team you possibly can find. Classifying your contact list will help you identify other individuals who share your values. I recommend building your “dream” network marketing team with people who have the qualities that you strive for and admire.
Other Criteria – Are there people in your prospect list who are currently involved in another Network Marketing company, or who have previous experience building a multi-level marketing business? This can either be a good thing, as they may already be open to the concept of Network Marketing, or not so good, if they received poor training and experienced lack of upline support in the past and now are carrying some negative feelings or misconceptions about the Network Marketing industry.
The same thing applies to approaching professional salespeople. Some sales-trained professionals may be open to the idea of Network Marketing once they realize that multi-level marketing organizations create their sales volume based on a lot of people using and recommending a little bit of product each, and some may not get the point of Network Marketing at all, preferring instead to continue earning sales commissions through the addition of their individual sales, instead of via the multiplication and leverage of a team of people working together!
To read the rest of this article and learn more ways to classify your prospect list, visit my business training website: http://www.networkmarketingpro.net/classifying_your_network_marketing_prospect_list.html
19 Viral Marketing Techniques
With the onslaught of marketing campaigns geared towards Internet users, viral marketing has paved the way and has become one of the top methods used in advertising.
The principle behind the success of viral marketing is the number of users reached through the campaign. There are several viral marketing techniques that can be applied for an advertising campaign to succeed. Take a look at the following:
1. Creating viral marketing awards.
Creating viral marketing awards help both the companies and users by creating even more users. Awards in viral marketing help innovate the industry more and bring out more effective marketing techniques.
2. Distributing free software.
Anything useful and free gets an instant “fan base” on the Internet. Provide online users with any software that they need for free – even for a limited time – and they will surely grab it.
When using a free software, you can run the program to suit any application, check the flow of the program to learn how it works, make improvisations and have the right to distribute the software for free.
3. Providing free email account.
This is what Microsoft did to initially launch Hotmail. They put in a “teaser” at the end of the free e-mail messages that they send out providing a link for users to sign-up for a free and private e-mail account.
The word “free” has sparked the interest of online users, as well as the fact that this is something that online users really need. Soon, almost all Microsoft users signed up for a free Hotmail account. This started the viral marketing fever.
4. Providing free web space.
Personal web logs have become all the buzz on the Internet.
There are companies now who are competing like crazy just to offer customers the lowest cost on directory listing and have the biggest space allotments.
This competition will benefit the users in such a way that they get their pick from a host of web space providers and have the greatest deal.
5. Creating top 100 site.
Online users often need a list of web sites relating to the topic that they need. Creating a top 100 list is one way to build your list and increase your customer base.
6. Offering free e-cards.
Egreetings.com is one company which provide teasers for online users to send electronic greetings cards. They are animated and personalized, so most users take advantage of the offer.
7. Offering free graphics, banners, templates.
Just like the marketing of regular consumer products, anything that is free and useful will catch the attention of a lot of people. Banners, graphics, templates and other items that online users can use is a welcome addition to their list of freebies and will infuse the viral marketing fever.
8. Offering free consultation.
Most online users do not know exactly where to go for consultations about web services or other services in various fields.
Free online consultation web sites require you to enter your name, e-mail address and other pertinent information and this would help add up to your subscribers and customer base.
9. Offering specialized link directory.
Specialized links directory help build a more specific clientele, as the users who need this service can be classified. This technique yields more accurate results.
10. Free newsletter with bonuses.
An online shopping company might use this viral marketing technique. Offering catalogs with free online gift certificates will generate a huge customer base.
11. Free redirect service.
Redirect services gives out the new contact information of a web site that changed hosts or servers, as well as re-directing users to a new or personalized domain name. This is an alternative to the much longer and complicated URL’s offered by most web hosts.
12. Free screensavers.
You cannot browse through the Internet and not find popup advertisements about free screensavers. This is one way of getting the user’s e-mail address for a company to start building a solid customer base.
Getting online users to take advantage of free screensavers, as well as emoticons or other downloadables that they can use on their computers is one of the most effective techniques used in viral marketing.
13. Free autoresponder service.
Autoresponder services add up to your company’s sales by using follow-up e-mail messages in marketing.
14. Free email course.
You cannot believe the wealth of information that you can gain from free e-mail courses. Most publishers of free e-books want to share their knowledge to other online users and this is a good way to entice users to your web site.
15. Writing articles and distributing them for reprint with resource box.
When writing articles for free download, make sure to have them reprinted with the resource box.
A resource box is a box on one side of the web page where you got the article, and it shows the complete contact information of the author of a particular article.
16. Using forums and discussion boards which uses signatures.
The users of discussion boards and forums have the same interests. By getting their signatures on message boards, you can have a very wide array of potential buyers from a specific target market.
17. Starting your own affiliate program.
This is one of the best methods to generate traffic and sales to your site. Here, a specialized link is provided for your affiliates so that users can be veered towards your web site.
18. Providing free guestbook.
A guestbook makes a list of all your online visitors. After a user visits your website, you would have their contact information for future marketing and mailing purposes.
19. Providing free forums.
Online forums have a lot of participants which can be a very useful viral marketing technique.
By applying these viral marketing techniques to promote your products and services, you will surely generate traffic to your web site, build a huge and solid customer base, add to your sales and contribute towards the success of your company.
Note: This article may be freely reproduced as long as the AUTHOR’S resource box at the bottom of this article is included and all links must be Active/Linkable with no syntax changes.
How Blogging Affects Mainstream Marketing
here has been a lot of buzz around blogging lately, and for good reason. Weblogs, or blogs for short, are changing the way people market themselves and their businesses.
If you aren’t familiar with blogging, the concept is relatively easy to grasp. Blogs first began as a shared online journal. A blogger posted diary-like entries about his or her daily life for others to read.
Recently though, blogging has evolved into a new form of business writing and advertising. Many business owners now use blogs to promote their goods and services. Others use blogs to promote their website and get higher search engine rankings. Some politicians even use blogs to reach voters.
The typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media that is somehow related to the blog topic. Though most blogs focus on textual contant, a blogger may include videos, pictures, and even audio in blog posts. A blog comprised of videos is called a vlog and a blog that uses pictures is called a photoblog.
The Benefits of Blogging By adding blogging to their marketing campaigns, business owners are able to market their product with virtually no out of pocket expense. In some cases, bloggers may even be able to make large sums of money with their published blog. For example, a blogger who employs the Google Ad Sense program can make money from blog readers. The more readers a blogger has, the more money can be made from the Google ad.
A blogger can also be a guide for shoppers who are looking for specific products and services. This makes blogging an excellent tool for retailers or affiliate marketers. Blogs can also be a source of valuable information and niche industry news.
Because there are virtually limitless possibilities provided by blogging, it is easy to see why blogs have begun to have a significant impact on mainstream marketing practices. Many companies have noticed this and have chosen to hire a blogger to write and post up to date information for customers, shareholders, and employees.
Some blogs now get millions of readers every single day. There are so many blog readers out there, that experts speculate that the world of blogging is rivaling the mainstream media. New blog search engines are also being created to make searching for a blog easier than ever before.
If you have not yet established a blog for your business, you may want to consider doing so as soon as possible. Keep in mind though that it will take work to attract readers to your blog. It must be interesting or valuable to them in some way. A blogger must also concentrate on creating informative pieces that are as honest and up to date as possible. Blogging is serious business and if you make a mistake, it will not go unnoticed by your readership.
If you need help developing your blog, there are many different browser-based software programs on the market that can help you get a start. Blogs can also be hosted by dedicated blogging services or regular web hosting services.
Last, but not least, a blogger must remember to optimize blog writing for search engines. Blogging is an Internet medium and needs to be approached with Internet principles in mind.
Blogging Example A typical blog entry includes a title or headline, a body of text, a permalink or URL for another web page, and a post date, which indicates the date and time that the post was published. A blogger may also choose to include a link at the bottom to allow readers to post comments on the blog.