Ten Unbearable Sins For Any Business Using Online Marketing

December 13, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Marketing

Assassin Marketing asked:


You are probably very excited about the idea of starting to market your business online. In fact, you may have a lot of things running through your mind right now. You may be thinking of your web page’s color, design and everything else. You simply cannot contain your excitement. But sometimes you may fail to realize the most important things about marketing your business online; thus committing some of the top ten sins in the world of online marketing of you business and the next thing you know you’ll wake up one day flat broke with nothing to show for your efforts.

It is therefore important that you educate yourself with these common mistakes that businesses often make when using online marketing so that you don’t loose your shirt.

1. Poor Planning

It is not enough that you have the resources and have the willingness to succeed when it comes to marketing your business online. The most important thing is actually your marketing strategy. How are you going to put your site in the limelight? How are you going to advertise what you have? How will you sustain your web page?

Basically, everything starts with planning. The reason why many businesses fail with online marketing is because they never planned. They’ve been too excited and they forgot to build the foundation of their online business plan. At first, everything went well, but when the point of frustrations came, they packed up and ran home ******* their thumb because they were never prepared for such circumstances.

2. A Lifeless Site

If you were a visitor and you came across a site that was dull, plain text and no life at all, would you even spend a minute to go over the page? Probably not. The design of your page is very crucial in attracting visitors to stay at your site. A common mistake of businesses is that they often cut costs so much that they neglect even the physical features of their site. Remember, people usually look at the appearance first before they delve into the content. You can also show pictures and videos just to make your site realistic. If you don’t capture visitors’ attention, how can you expect to capture their sales.

3. No Defined Product Services

Knowing your products’ edge from your competitor’s is very vital. You can never sell what you have when you can’t even compare its advantages to other similar products from your competitors. Businesses fail because they are very general when they market their creations. What happens is, visitors feel that what you have is the same as what other businesses offer and so, you lose sale.

4. No Identity

As much as possible, most businesses always want to save money. So we choose to have our business in a free web space rather than having our own domain. The result is, when buyers type in the keywords for the product or service they want, your site won’t even be recognized because you don’t have your own web address. The probability of online marketing failure is then very evident because without anyone visiting your site, how can you even sell your product or service ?

5. No Target Audience

Focus is very important in any business. When you lose your focus, you end up a loser. The common mistake of the business owners when it comes to online marketing is that they lack concentration and they cannot think of the most specific technique to get their consumers’ attention. In other words, if you sell women’s products, then focus your attention in reaching out to women. Don’t beat around the bush because it will do you nothing but loose you money. If you know your target audience and you know how to approach them, then get ready to fill up the money train!

6. Poor Customer Handling

Relationship with customers determines the life of any business. Many businesses assume that once a consumer buys from them, that’s the end of it, which is undoubtedly wrong. Many businesses die because they do not know how to keep their visitors coming back. Just by interactive communication, you can build your trust and have the favor of your customers. However, if your mindset is purely on profit, then you probably won’t survive.

7. Vintage Information

How would you like to read a newspaper article from six months ago? Online marketing doesn’t work well unless you continually update your website because no visitor wants to visit a site that is not updated and is stale with old news. People love to be a part of a trend, so if you have outdated content on your site, just don’t expect to gain many new visitors.

8. Wrong Marketing Strategy

We tend to think that if we have more advertisements, we win the game. We spend our money for ads, we hire a lot of people to optimize our site, and we do everything and spend everything we have too quickly. This is the reason why businesses often fail. Because we don’t know what a good strategy is. We keep on spending money without even thinking if it will be effective for our business. In the end, we will learn that if there’s no more money, there’s no more business. This can be very frustrating.

9. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow Style

If you were a customer and you went to a website that you could view today but was gone tomorrow, would you close a deal with that site? Of course not. Online marketing is something that should be paid attention to by the business owner. It is not enough that you have your site; you must maintain it and you should not allow even a single day for your site to be unavailable for customers. If this happens, you will lose the trust of your buyers.

10. Spamming

This is the downfall of many businesses who use online marketing to build their business. Sometimes, we are in a hurry to generate income. Sometimes, we’re very eager to earn money that we opt to do business the wrong way. Many businesses are already banned by search engines such as Google simply because they spam using unverified email addresses they bought from brokers. When caught, kiss your online business goodbye!

So, there we have it. These are top ten sins that can lead your business’ online marketing into a dead end. Nobody would want to see his business bankrupt right? So it’s important that you heed these things as you start your online marketing, especially these ten. But, if you are able to do good job with your online marketing, then business success is within your reach!



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Mjh Group: Marketing Strategy & Marketing Management

October 18, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Software

Marketing Answers asked:


 

How much should I spend on marketing?

This is a common question that marketing consultants gets asked on a regular basis.

The simple answer is that there is no hard a fast rule – it depends on the competitive environment, the stage of business development, the product or service category and the balance of advertising designed to promote the brand vs advertising designed to generate a specific response.

As a result of these factors, marketing budgets are best set based on careful analysis of a number of factors as part of a Marketing Strategy not via the often used % of sales method.

If you are looking to develop a deeper understanding of your marketing budget then there are two good places to start.



Brand Awareness- Analysing the level of advertising that is appropriate to reach your target markets with appropriate levels of frequency and credibility





Specific Response – Analysing the response and conversion rates you are achieving from various forms of advertising



Brand awareness is a direct product of the  Marketing Strategy – by identifying the key target markets and having an understanding of the competitive environment it is possible to establish a picture of the level and types of “brand” advertising required to generate awareness of the brand for new customers and reinforce the message with existing consumers.

Planning the elements of the campaign designed to generate a specific response is more closely aligned with the sales budgets and requires analysis of the response and conversion rates you are achieving from various forms of advertising.

Using response and conversion rates as a starting point allows MJH Group to determine the expected result for a particular level of spend in a particular area and plan the marketing strategy accordingly. This is correlated to the sales budget to help plan the necessary mix of advertising required to drive the response to deliver the sales result.



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Small Business Marketing: – Enjoy Clear Direction & Peace of Mind

September 30, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Marketing Tips

smallbusinessMarketing Answers asked:

The return on investment for the engagement of MJH Group for Small business marketing is based on the following;

Business Growth

• Increased sales and profit from effective strategy and campaign outcomes

Marketing Strategy

• The insight and direction provided by our strategic recommendations

• Provision of a documented strategic marketing plan which acts as the blue print for the successful marketing of your business

• Allowing you to proceed with confidence

• A planned and structured approach to marketing success

Campaign Outcomes

• Effective communication of your brand and offer

• Generate awareness in the market to achieve

• New customer acquisition

• A greater share of wallet from existing customers

• Increased sales and business growth

Commercialisation

• Assess the viability of new products or services

• Develop and implement strategies for the introduction or relaunch of products and services to provide commercial success

Direct Bottom Line Savings

• Direct Bottom Line Savings due to effective marketing management

• Measuring the ROI of promotions and campaigns to determine effectiveness

• Customer focus reducing the risk of ineffective promotion or campaigns

• Redirection of marketing investment into areas with the greatest return

Effective Brand Management

• Long term business growth through the ongoing and positive development of your brand in the marketplace

Effective Positioning

• Identifying the positioning strategy and building a strong market position to insulate against competition and the threat of new entrants

• Maintaining the desired position of your business in the market place

Communication

• Effective communication via regular meetings and easy to follow project plans to ensure you are kept informed and up to date on the progress of activities throughout the life of the program

Peace of Mind

• Experienced marketing professionals providing peace of mind that the marketing program is taken care of: you have one less thing to worry about

• MJH Group is transparent in our selection of clients to ensure no conflict of interest during engagements

• A marketing resource dedicated to the growth and development of your business.

For more details visit our site:

www.marketinganswers.com.au/

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Search Marketing

July 6, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Fiction

Search Marketing asked:


Search Marketing: Points Which Can Work With You Or Work Against You When Dealing With Search Marketing





Search Marketing is crucial for the effectiveness or weakness of your site. The principal intention behind an on line effort is to be found, to be accepted and be kept up in high regard by visitors and customers. To achieve this, on line visitors should locate you easily when writing, on search engines, special keywords which effectively portray your company, services and products.

The objective of an efficient Search Marketing campaign is to get you on the top five positions in search engine results, to ensure that any searcher who writes the key words will spot you and click on you right away.

Any Search Marketing campaign has many elements and actions you should care for in order to make it useful and powerful. When facing Search Marketing, any fact counts! It works for your clients, it tells you to {respect|honor|reward] them and cherish them to assure they make you rich, so, take note.

1_Make your site attractive, get rid of Flash introductions, these only torment clients.

2_Check that all website\’s pages load quickly. Do everything you need to do to turn them quicker.

3_Assure all links get somewhere. Try them on a regular basis; there is nothing more exasperating than hitting on a disabled link.

4_Download proper tools, like Google Webmaster Tools or Yahoo! Site Explorer, to assist you watch the website\’s functioning inside search engines and what might be weakening it.

5_Write instructive error pages, get rid of imprecise content on errors 404 and 500 and set up an XML sitemap.

6_Place Google analytics on the site; there are several, but this one is efficient. By neglecting this, every Search Marketing strategy you develop will be difficult. You must be capable of continuously follow conversions related to what you wish visitors to do when detecting your site.

7_Locate the HackerSafe or ScanAlert logos on the site. A secured website is more appealing for clients and search engines.

8_Add confidence by distinctly presenting all your contact data in every page.

9_Choose important and outstanding keywords to depict your products or services, later, get the principal sites employing those keywords; identify who links to these websites and go after those links for your site. Just get important links.

10_Pick relevant, high quality tags that enhance your probabilities of being noticed by possible customers. Tags must be unique and profound for every page, or, you will be marked as a spammer, for duplicating content.

11_Build intelligent and enhancing relations by accessing blogs in the field and commenting on them. Use Google reader and subscribe to every major marketing blog.

12_Communicate positive news monthly, show off, in an intelligent way, how much you are accomplishing and savoring it.

13_Guarantee your contact data is up to date in Google, Yahoo and Live\’s local search tools.

14Encourage visitors to subscribe to the email list and make it easy to achieve.

15_Diligently answer email concerns or questions.

16_Create a serious landing page, containing two or three headlines, seductive body text and a pair of meaningful images.

There are several other facts to consider but, fundamentally, put yourself in the customers\’ shoes and feel how they feel. Only then will you be able to give them uniqueness, that will turn them loyal to you and in this point you may brag that you understand Search Marketing

www.Mr-Seo.com



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Blog Marketing: The #1 Source Of New Content For Business Blogs

May 5, 2009 by admin  
Filed under Marketing

Assassin Marketing asked:


Blog marketing or Blog advertising describes internet marketing using web blogs. Blogs have become the next generation marketing tool. Marketing blogs are basically websites that allow you to instantly publish content and act as a news source for prospects.

Blogging has grown exponentially in the last few years. New Media Lab in Austin, Texas reports that 356,000,000 people worldwide read blogs and 77% of active web users read blogs. Can you see the potential?

Blogging is the act of publishing content on your marketing blog, but publishing content with a blog and publishing with your regular website are as different as night and day because blogs are dynamic and allow two-way communication between you and your prospects. That’s why blog marketing and blog advertising should be completed on a regular basis and with a specific marketing strategy.

While no one knows what’s included in a search engine’s algorithms, everyone can agree that a site needs to have quality content in order to rank high; and one of the easiest ways to add that quality content on a consistent basis is by starting a marketing blog.

With the recent advancements and the growing popularity of social media sites, as well as the importance of back links to your website for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, adding your social media profile links to your blog will also increase its popularity. Two of the most popular social media sites for businesses are Facebook and Twitter (visit our page on social media marketing here).

You may be asking yourself, “How can I constantly come up with new content for my blog…It’s going to take a lot of work.” Don’t worry, here’s a quick list to get you going:

- Create a top 10 list about your industry: Thanks to David Letterman, people love top 10 lists. They capture the readers attention and hold their interest..

- Ask a question and solve the problem: You know your prospects biggest problems, so ask it in a question form and answer it with good content.

- Take a poll: Polls are always a good source for unique and interesting content

- Post about growing trends in your industry: Prospects interested in your industry will most certainly be interested in new and emerging trends, so this is a great source of new content.

Blog marketing can be very difficult to set up, but very exciting at the same time. You should be committed to adding new and fresh content at least weekly, but the more you can blog, the better. It’s just like being on a diet, if you’re consistent, it’s less difficult. But if you take a break and stop blogging for a week or so, you’ll lose your momentum and often your followers.



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