Everybody is familiar with search engines such as Google & Yahoo. Search Engines have radically changed the Internet. Radically! Over 50% of all consumer purchases of all business purchases are now pursued by searches. That’s what was said months ago and it is obviously going higher. So the majority of people Worldwide who now are on computers, the first place they go to is a Search Engine to find information, for what they are looking for.

The Search Engine technology is now based and what Search Engine is trying to do as they are trying to put out in front of their searchers, the most current relative information possible. Google knows that what it can give you is exactly what you want to see and it’s relative to the current & it’s timely. And you are going to come back to Google over, over and over again.

Why all those Bloggers out there for years have been making a lot of money and how they are promoting for free, and how they getting free publicity and generating MASS traffic to their sites? Because Bloggers took advantage of what Google had determined was the secret to the Internet right now. A WEB SITE THAT CHANGES A LOT GETS MORE RATING WITH A SEARCH ENGINE. So if your website is changing a lot and adjusting a lot and is current, Google will push you up on the rating. That means you are getting closer, closer and closer to the first page. And this is extremely important, particularly if you know how to what is called “games the system.

What those Bloggers do – they “game the system”. And here is how they game the system: They went out and found the websites that have the absolute most change going on in a web site every single day, every single hour, every single minute, and every single second. They are powerful websites that have constant change, constant upgrading going on every minute of every day. Theses website are called “Article Hubs”. These web sites grow out of the whole change in how Search Engines work because people realized that the more websites change, the more powerful website are in searches, they realized there better be constant change. This is particularly true in Media sites & this is particularly true with Bloggers, because they began to figure out that if they have more constant change on their sites every day their Blogs will lift on the searches. And I am going to show you one of those hugs sites. It is an extremely powerful site, 5000-7000 writers, authors, reporters & Bloggers place their articles in this site every day.

Do you understand that that site is not just visited by tens of thousands of writers and author’s who have submitted articles everyday? Do you realize this site is visited by over a million unique visitors every single day? So these sites, these Article Hubs are incredibly potent. And when you put one article in one of these sites, guess what you start to do? You start to dominate keywords. And if you can get on the first page of any major keyword you have hit a Gold Mine! One article! One keyword! Traffic, traffic, traffic! There is one example “Religion and online marketing”, this article was written two years ago and guess where they are.

Do you know when you put a keyword in worldwide there are over 35 millions places on the web that have this constant in here with Religion and Online Marketing? And this article is still having a first result, first page. That was written TWO YEARS AGO! He has been getting traffic every single day for almost 800 days for this article. One Article! One keyword! Traffic, Traffic, Traffic! And if you go page after page, after page you are going to see that article over and over and over … That Company continues to get traffic to this very day.

You can get a lot of website traffic without having to spend a lot of money. If you want to develop a busy and profitable website for your online business, there are a lot of techniques for getting website traffic without it being expensive. Some of these cheap website traffic techniques include article directories, SEO, blog posting and even forum posting.

Among these methods, one of the most practical and most effective is submitting articles to article directories. These articles should contain a link or two back to your own site, which can help you increase your site traffic from readers who may be interested in seeing more of what you’re offering. There are already several excellent article directories available for your submissions. As long as your articles remain in the directories you submitted them to, this method will be one of the best and cheapest ways to pull in traffic.

Using SEO, or search engine optimization, is another inexpensive yet very effective way for getting traffic to your website. By using proper search engine optimization, your articles and your website’s overall content will become more search engine friendly, as well as your website. Include your keyword in the domain name of the website that hosts your articles. Also include keywords in the first paragraphs of your pages, as well as the title of the page itself. These SEO techniques will help your site get better exposure with search engines, and your articles will rank higher on search results.

Blogging is now becoming more popular than ever before, and you should take full advantage of it. More and more online businessmen are using blogs to promote their products and services, and it just makes perfect sense to follow suit. There are several good blogging sites on the Internet that allow people to sign up and create a blogging account with them for free, such as Blogger or WordPress. Create your blog and link your home page to it. Updating your blog regularly will allow it to become more relevant to search engines, and as a result, it will help to drive more traffic to your site. It would help a lot if your articles and posts contain the appropriate keywords.

Another inexpensive website traffic technique that you can use is to join and participate in forums. Finding a forum that is related to your website’s content is even better. You can then easily post discussions, answers, and even start threads that can be useful to other forum members. You can pull in traffic by making entertaining or informative posts, since you’ll develop a reputation for being an authority on certain subjects. And don’t forget to have a link to your site in your signature file or your member profile.

See? You can get a lot of website traffic without spending a lot of money, just by following these techniques. Remember, effective usage of relevant keywords in your posts and articles, proper SEO methods, article submissions, blogging, and forum posting can all become invaluable but inexpensive tools for driving traffic to your website.

I’ve been testing the Google pay per click advertising system for a while, with much success. These tips will help you create ads that generate higher click through rates, and lower cost per click.

1. Target The Right Audience

Target the right audience by selecting the language and countries that you want to target. For example, I exclude all countries where English is not understood by a large percentage of the population.

2. Refine Your Keywords

Use square brackets “[...]” around your keyword/s.

For example:

[google]
[google adwords]

Your ad will only show when the search is for the exact keyword phrase you have included within the brackets.

The ad will not show for searches that include other keywords. In our example, this would be for searches such as “google search,” or “google news.”

3. Test Multiple Ads Simultaneously

Always test 2 (or more) ads simultaneously. This is what is known in the print industry as an A/B split test.

Find out which one produces the higher click through ratio. Then replace the weaker performing ad with a new one.

Continue this process in your never-ending quest to get the highest click through ratio possible.

4. Track The Return-On-Investment Of Each Ad

Google tracks the click through ratio of each ad. But it doesn’t track the conversion ratio.

Use a special tracking link in each ad to track its conversion ratio. For example, you could attach each ad with an affiliate tracking system link. Make sure each ad produces a return-on-investment.

5. Include Targeted Keywords In Your Ad

Include the targeted keywords in the headline and the description of the ad. Google will highlight searched keywords in bold in the ad.

When people scan search results, they look for the keywords they have entered. Searched keywords highlighted in bold certainly help to catch the user’s attention. For this reason, ads with searched keywords usually perform better than ones without.

6. Sell The Benefits

Spell out one or more major benefit in your ad. For example, make more money, stay younger looking, lose weight, get healthier, live happier, etc.

7. Include Attention Grabbing Words In Your Ad

Start your headline with an attention grabbing word. For example, “Free:, New:, Sale:, etc.” Make sure you stay within Google’s editorial guidelines.

8. Use Words That Provoke Emotion & Enthusiasm

Use power words or call-to-action phrases that provoke emotion, enthusiasm and a response.

Here are some examples of power words:

free, cheap, sale, special offer, time limited offer, tricks, you, tips, enhance, discover, fact, learn, at last, free shipping, etc.

Here are some examples of call-to-action phrases:

* Buy Today – Save 50%
* Download Free Trial Now
* Sale Ends Tomorrow

Make sure the phrase specific to your business, otherwise Google may reject the phrase.

9. Sell Your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)

What makes your product or service better, or different, from the competition? Spell them out in your ad.

For example, one of Amazon.com’s first taglines was “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore.” That’s a powerful USP!

10. Link To Relevant Landing Pages

If an ad is for a specific product or service, create a landing page for the ad. Include relevant and useful information to convert the customer. Generally, a well designed landing page will almost always convert more visitors than if you simply sent the visitor to the home page.

11. Remove Common Words

Remove common words, such as “a, an, in, on, it, of, etc.” Remove every word that does not absolutely need to be in the ad. Make every word count.

12. Deter Freebie Hunters

Deter freebie hunters by including the price of the product or service at the end of the ad. This will improve your overall conversion ratio and lower your average customer acquisition cost.

This may reduce your click through ratio, but that’s OK. After all, you’re not trying to target every body, only potential customers. In most cases, freebie hunters will never become paying customers.

Conclusion

Remember that advertising is a never-ending series of tests. Always track your ads. Never stop testing different keywords and ads to improve your conversion ratio and lower your customer acquisition cost.

Advertising in the Google AdWords advertising system works. It may not necessarily produce as many visitors as Overture, but the click through cost is usually lower.

Whether you realize it or not, if you’ve been on the Internet today, you have encountered affiliate marketing. If you have ever “clicked thru” one site to order something from another, the first site probably received a portion of the sale. For instance, independent booksellers have limited shelf space for books. But they can offer their customers an almost unlimited inventory of titles by affiliating with companies like Amazon or Powell’s. The more orders, the bigger the affiliate percentage.

Visitors to your site are interested in lots of things that may or may not be related to your product. But when you know your customers well, it’s simply a matter of affiliating yourself with sites that offer what they want. What you receive is just a small percentage of the sale, but it adds up, especially when you consider that all it costs you is a link on your web page. And usually, the more sales your affiliate makes from your “click thru” traffic, the bigger your percentage will be.

The key to success in affiliate marketing is being able to track referred customers. As an affiliate manager, you want a system that reliably tracks what you want, with minimal effort on your part, and without affecting the performance of your site or server. Over the last few years a variety of technologies and strategies have been developed in an attempt to improve accuracy, convenience, and flexibility.

There are at least half a dozen methods, but by far the most preferred method is Cookie Tracking. It’s popular because it makes tracking affiliate-referred sales so convenient, without negatively impacting your site. This system writes a small text file, called a “cookie,” to a user’s browser when they click on an affiliate link. When you are the referring affiliate, the cookie holds your ID, so that at the merchant’s order page, you get credit for referring the sale. One drawback is that many computer users disable cookies, although most choose not to, since their favorite sites require them. One bonus is that the merchant can save the information, so that even if a customer buys long after clicking through your site, you still get credit for the sale.

Affiliate marketing, at its best, is a win-win scenario. It’s an easy way to offer your customers more of what they want, while you benefit, both in terms of building goodwill and making money.

You have an interview scheduled. This means so much to you because you have been without a job for too long. You have a family and whatever money you had saved for emergencies like this is almost at an end.

On the morning of the interview you ready yourself and dress in your best clothes. You sit in the waiting room and pretend to read a magazine while you hope you don’t sweat too much. You pretend to be mildly interrupted when your name is called. You lay the magazine down and will forget what magazine it was.

The person interviewing you has your resume sitting front of them. They invite you to have a seat while they continue to pour over the contents of your file…

You feel like screaming, but you manage to hold the stress in as you hear the steady tick of the clock.

“So,” the interviewer begins, “what can you bring to this position that would qualify you more than any other candidate?”

“Well, I like football and playing video games with my kids,” you begin. The interviewer looks confused, but you hurry on, “On Saturdays I like to wash my car, except of course when it rains, which of course it always does in April.”

“But we’re here to talk about the possibility of you working for our firm. Why should we hire you?” the interviewer redirects the question.

“I hate vegetables and my favorite color is blue,” you say with a smile. “Is there anything else you need to know?”

, Marin said he saw four houses on a ridge a quarter of miles above his house goes up in flames.The smoke was so thick he could see only about 300 feet in front of him. .
I hope you found this illustration disturbingly strange. It makes no sense for a person who really needs a job to go into the interview and talk about anything other than what the interviewer wants to know. That potential hire will do their best to address every question and answer every concern. Why? They want a job and their words mean something.

Since this is true why do so many email-marketing campaigns follow the same course as our hypothetical interviewee?

Many email marketing campaigns are disjointed and off target. I think sometimes the originator of the message is hoping to develop friendships with potential customers by telling jokes or expressing personal opinions about issues that have little to no relevance to the product they are pitching.

We should take a cue from quality interview preparation techniques.

1) Value other people. No one has to read your email marketing pitch so keep it simple.

2) Stay on target. You are using the email to market a product or business. Don’t stray from that objective.

3) Know who’s in control. The email recipient can easily hit the delete key so work to impress them with the clarity of message and quality of product.

4) Invite feedback. Allow the potential customer to let you know what they think. This may not always be positive, but it does convey that you are interested in a two-sided conversation.

Email marketing can be an effective tool that has the potential of making your product appealing to potential customers – as long as you stay on target.

There are three important, proven steps in building a reliable solid opt in list. When applied to your business you will see that your opt in list will expand faster than a college freshman’s pants size.

The first step to apply is building a trustworthy relationship with your customers and getting them to trust your product. Take the time to write articles on your product, and put yourself in the driver’s seat of expert on the subject. Join forums to post your expert advice, and put a forum on your own site where your customers know they can post and receive information. By doing this you can find out what your customers want and need, and you can meet those needs.

Once you feel that people trust you as an expert in your field, you can then start you r opt in list .

The second step is to find a product that people want or need. You want to find that special product that people are in need of and even desire more so. You will want to do your research, and learn all you can about the product you choose, putting yourself in the position of expert. Remember to provide your list members with promotional material to quip their interest and share with friends.

The third step to a successful opt in list is to make friends with opt in list users. If you find someone who has a successful opt in list you can learn from someone else’s experience. You can read all of the articles you like about opt in list, but talking to someone who has actually been through the process is a grade ‘A’ teacher. Experienced opt in list users will be able to guide you through the trials and tribulations that a cost new opt in list users.

As your list grows, work to maintain the quality of your list. By keeping it organized and manageable you will be able to guarantee your subscribers satisfied and continually willing to buy from you. A satisfied subscriber will be more likely to bring friends on board and help expand your list. As your list grows so will your reputation and soon you will find that your are the list user everyone wants to know, and get advice from.

About 95% of what executives in competing companies do is pretty much the same all around. This is good management. If you are CEO’ing a wireless communication services provider, you strive to put up an advanced technological infrastructure with a promising future, cool end-user phones, other devices and accessories, a great service system and competitive prices. Well, this is precisely where your competitors put their efforts as well. The 5% (give or take) that you do differently constitutes your strategy. The CEO of Southwest Airlines, the revolutionary domestic American airline, most of the time does exactly what her colleagues do. But her firm offers Ticketless travel, and serves meals in the airport during waits, and not on the plane.

Doing well what you are supposed to be doing – is a prerequisite for competing. It is definitely not a strategy. Being better – is a deserving effort, yet it is not a strategy either, especially not in the long run. How, then, are you supposed to compete? Well, you could offer your clients more than what your competition offers, for a higher price, for the same price, for a lower price, or – offer them less value for a lower price. All of these options can give you an edge, but usually not for long.

You could also offer something different than what your competition does. You can cater to a need not formerly satisfied by your category. Nokia, for example, did just that when it decided to treat cellphones as fashion accessories and later as entertainment devices. Even this approach could not be considered as an insurance policy. There are no insurance policies in the world of business. But, if it is difficult or impossible to imitate, or it is something not likely to be imitated by your competition – then you might just have created for yourself a mini-monopoly of your own. Well, this is surely an accomplishment that should not be underestimated in a competitive market.

So, what really is a strategy? By definition, a strategy is the way by which you are planning to obtain your goals. In a competitive environment, your goal is that the consumer will prefer you to your competition. That is why the strategy is, in fact, the way by which you plan to achieve an advantage over your rivals – in the eyes of your consumers. Almost always, preference can be achieved only by differentiation, by either doing something other than what your competitors are doing or by doing things in a markedly dissimilar manner.

There are three types of differentiations and only one of them constitutes a strategy (or strategic differentiation). The transient differentiation is often achieved by promotional activities, such as a big sale. The circumstantial differentiation consists of things like a historical monopoly, or some kind of personal connection between the consumer and someone in the firm, or a convenient store location etc’. However, the differentiation we want to focus on is the strategic differentiation, such that provides a long lasting, circumstance-crossing advantage.

Is differentiation absolutely necessary? In any case where the consumer must choose between options – the answer is definitely yes. Why? Because the consumer chooses between alternatives on the basis of the differences as he or she perceives. Zoom-in on that sentence for a second. Do not fall into the most common trap of all: the consumer makes choices according to his perception of differences between alternatives, and not on the basis of what he values most in a product of that kind.

Competitive strategy is always a simultaneous answer to two questions.

The first one is: in which consumer group do you identify a potential for buying your product? By ‘group’ I do not mean necessarily shared socio-economic and demographic characteristics or even a similarity in personality or life style. What I mean is that they have in common some factor, enabling you to make them an offer, which will be more attractive to them than the options they already have, or at least a refreshingly new one. The second question is: what could you offer them that would help you realize that potential?

The goal is not to reach a consensus, nor is it to be OK by everyone. Experience has taught us that the key is to make a specific group of consumers, even a small one, think that you are irreplaceable. They will act as your success engine, even amongst consumers who are not as definite in their attitudes. BMW fans do not believe that Mercedes is a bad car; it’s just that it is not a BMW. For them, Mercedes is simply incomparable to BMW. That’s how Apple fans feel about IBM.

What has all this to do with branding? A brand is the consumer’s anticipation for a unique and defined experience, or for a certain unique benefit obtainable solely through consuming/owning a specific product/service manufactured/offered by a specific company. Thus, the anticipation from a trip to Paris would be to experience a romantic vacation. The anticipation from Ikea would be “state of the art design at a reasonable price”. It is fair to say that a brand is really a brand only when there exists, among its consumers, such anticipation. If this anticipation is both exclusive and attractive, you might say that it is a strong brand. A familiar name or logo – do not suffice to make for a strong brand.

This consumer anticipation is evoked and upheld by the marketer’s consistent execution of a business concept providing the consumer with a unique benefit or with a unique/novel way to deliver a benefit. This concept is the brand strategy, its promise and its commitment to its target consumers. The “third place”, the neighborhood place you frequent in between work and home offered by Starbucks – is a brand strategy. But, wait a minute! It is also the differentiation – the competitive strategy itself! These ARE the 5% that executives do differently in order to gain an advantage. This is why the brand IS the strategy. Or more accurately, the brand strategy is the translation of the competitive strategy into a language of promises made to the consumer.

The brand’s role in the realm of marketing has changed dramatically during the past decade. Today, brand building no longer constitutes a mere manipulation of the consumer’s perceptions and desires, but it is a creation of a system that on the one-hand makes promises and arouses anticipations, while on the other-hand it delivers and realizes the promises that it makes.

It takes a lot of hard work to start a business on a limited budget, but never fear; most companies are started with less than optimum funding. When small businesses begin, so many fail within a year or two, because they simply overlook a few certain things that will help boost and promote them. If you don’t promote yourself, how will people know about your business? Business failures are tragic because there are many simple and cost effective ways to boost your image. If you have the right plans, your small business can appear BIG to the public, and that in turn will make your ‘micro’ business a smashing success.

1. IMAGE

Small businesses need to relay a very strong message to the world to develop public relations and a strong customer base. Your image and logo are vital to establish name recognition and inspire your customers trust. A logo is a representation of your business and it creates brand awareness.
Look at the most recognized brands today; they don’t always produce the best products. But what they have done is excel in brand awareness. Your logo and business name should easily distinguish you from a crowd of competitors. Even though you won’t have the millions in advertising budgets that the big boys have it, is still just as important to convey professional image and to promote brand awareness. If you are trying to project a professional image, using a free piece of clipart is not going to do the job. There are so many online companies that specialize in logo design and creation that if you know what you want your company to symbolize, they can make something unique just for you. If you are on a really tight budget, visit your local university graphic arts students. They will be happy to attain the work experience, and it will be a lot cheaper. Keep in mind that whatever logo you choose needs to state clearly what you are and it needs to be able to be easily branded on items for promotion such as baseball caps, pens, letterhead etc.
Another good idea to have is a tagline for your company. A tagline may consist of only 3 words, but it will illustrate what you offer to your clients. Generally they inspire a visionary concept of the company. Make a tagline personal to the customers, and show them that YOU are there for them.

2. WEBSITE
The internet is an ever-growing part of our society. A website in today’s world is essential for a small business to expand. You must create a web presence whether your business is high tech, a local delivery service, or anything in-between. There are plenty of web hosting, domain companies out there providing a cheap service. This may work well if you do not have a lot of traffic to your site. But avoid build it yourself websites. These can cost you money in the long run from not allowing customers onto your site once a certain traffic quota has been reached per month. Small companies with websites should employ methods to improve the quality of the design. Even a tiny budget will substantially improve a site’s business value. As for developing a website and its content, take a look at your competitor’s websites and make note on the following things.

• Why do people visit this site?
• Why should you buy from them?
• Why should you trust them as a company? Are they legitimate?
• What is the overall presentation?
• Is the site informative and easy to use?

If you can answer these questions, they have a good marketing site. These are the key issues that you need to put forward on your site to encourage your customers that your company is the right one for them to do business with. People like to know about who they are doing business with. The ‘about us’ section is an ideal place to promote yourself and your company’s’ expertise! Another great quality to have on your website is an online chat system. You can get these for free from many companies. How many times have you visited a website and wanted info right then? Your customers will think the same way. One online company that offers free services is boldchatplus.com They are easy to use and it is simple to set up an account with them. Provide your customers with excellent service all day long.

3. TELEPHONE TECHNOLOGY
Communication is a cornerstone to providing excellent service and presence to all potential customers. As a small business you should definitely consider setting up a first-class voicemail system. Get a toll-free number. These are very inexpensive and easy to set up with your local provider and will show that not only you care about customers, but are also larger than you are. You should also hire an answering system. For approx $10-20 per month, you can have a professional menu of options for your clients. With this option, you can also let your customers know your online website address and state if you provide real-time chat for assistance. Whether it is with an answering system or an employee answering the phone for you, I will not be able to stress this enough… Your phones must be answered professionally! Another great product to have is VOIP. Most VOIP companies today offer pbx systems and voice conferencing. These are also inexpensive and a great outreach tool. Try looking at www.packet8.com to see what they can offer you. VOIP is a must have tool for national or international business to business operation. This can also help to reduce travel expenses, which in turn could provide you that saved money to perhaps pay for a better logo and website development.

4. MARKETING TOOLS

The way you market your business and present yourself is the key to success in any small business. Using marketing tools such as business cards, invoicing systems, brochures and letterheads can all make your company appear larger and more reputable. Marketing paraphernalia can be your best friend or a liability it’s all up to you. Many times not much thought is taken when the design of these items are made. This is a very dreadful mistake that can cost your business lost contacts and sales. With a logo and your company image in hand, it is time to choose a printing service. A few key points to remember is, choose a good designer, avoid small printers and always make sure to see their work. Simplicity is very important, but the more information you can put on the cards, brochures, and invoices, the better off you are. Just don’t over crowd it or make it hard to read. Color can also be one of your most valuable friends as they can get your card seen quickly.
When deciding what paper to use, keep it generic and classic. No matter what kind of company you have, never use the invoice and billing slips you can buy from your local office supply store. Make sure you use a print version with all of the clients’ information on it. They will appreciate it, and you will too when it comes time to go through your yearly taxes. Brochures can really make your business seem professional and ready to work. The copy needs to be precise and easily read. Don’t throw fancy wording into it. Keep it basic and to the point. If you are not great with designing a brochure, you might think to hire a copywriter. Generally, they are not too expensive and can get the words you want to say to your clients out in the fashion you need it to be. Whatever you do get printed; make sure it has your URL on it, including your letterheads, invoices, forms, business cards, and so forth. Another thing to always have on hand is fact sheets, and press kits if applicable give to prospective clients. These might include such things as your general rates, any specialized contact information and examples of your work or where to obtain recommendations. Printing your marketing tools can be very affordable. For under $1,000 you can have great printing work and that will project you to be the big name you want to be.

5. INCORPORATE YOUR BUSINESS
You can incorporate any business. Why not incorporate yours? There are so many advantages to having this done, and it does not take a lot of effort to do. Once you make the decision to incorporate your small business, the process is fairly straight forward as long as and family members will own all stock and none will be sold to the public. You will be charged a registration fee which runs between $200 and $1,000, depending on the state.You also need to write your Corporate Bylaws. The purpose of these is to put down in writing such details as when annual shareholder meetings will be held, who can vote and the manner in which shareholders will be notified if there is need for a special meeting. As long as you have not sold stock to the public, conducting corporate business is primarily recording key corporate decisions and holding an annual stockholders’ meeting.

The benefits to having an incorporated business are enormous. First off, it shows consumers and customers that you are not a one man show, but rather a company that cares for its clients, and meets all legal requirements to run as a proper business. Even if you are running a one-person show, use “we” instead of “I” to offer your services. Secondly, people generally trust businesses with the ‘inc.’ attached to the end of their name for one simple reason, they appear to be more established. Lastly, the benefits to you as owner of the company is simple. It will protect you legally and financially. An incorporated business is its own identity. You are not reliable as an individual. So, if anything catastrophic does happen and the business has to fold or be held liable for something, it is the company, and not you personally. This can be especially helpful for new businesses just starting out. On top of all of this, give yourself the well deserved title of President, or Director for your company. Customers who see that will automatically be driven to your company.

Other ideas to help your small business be the giant you want the public to think it is, are to send out send out press releases. Press releases are free publicity. When your releases appear somewhere, include them in your marketing material. This will make the clients look at you in a different light. Also, dress the part. Looking smart whether you have a cleaning business or you are starting the next computer technology company, will make anyone think you are professional and better yet, successful.

Being a micro-business can be really rough! But, if you start applying these few very easy ways to promote yourself and your company, before you know it, you will have many new customers knocking at your door!

This is how we, marketers, usually think: “Find out what they want, give it to them nicely wrapped and with a big shiny smile, and let the surveys show that they are satisfied.” Good old Satisfying Marketing, right? Well, not any more. Consistent data from all over the globe indicates that even the most satisfied customers tend to keep an open mind towards other offers.

We live in the “post customer loyalty era” and guess what? Customers simply do not want to be loyal any more. Forsaking all other options – is no longer an option. So yes, it is important to keep them satisfied (otherwise they will be gone in a split second) but do not expect them to be loyal.

So, what do you do? Get an alternative thinking cap. Electrifying Marketing is the new marketing philosophy I want to offer you. Its roots stem from the realization that marketing today is no longer about satisfying unsatisfied needs. More often than not, it is about re-satisfying already satisfied needs – with better, more exciting solutions. The major idea is that you are not here to “please” anyone, but rather to tap on your target consumers’ needs in a new and surprising way which is geared to eventually become their future desires, while gaining a competitive advantage as a result.

The next question you will probably ask is: how? Following you will find an outline of central principles of Electrifying Marketing, that constitute different ways to implement this new marketing approach.

Do Not Mess with Quality

First and foremost, you need a high quality product and service. Nothing in the world will change this necessity. No marketing or branding “hocus pocus” will cover for a poor product.

Play Hard to Get

Put deliberate and challenging limitations on availability or accessibility of your product:

* A limited number: the “now-or-never” factor
* A limited time, for example a special summer edition, or event-tied
* The “don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you” approach. Some brands never give out their contact information. If you want to talk to them you must first surrender your own!

Play and Have Fun

Playfully incorporate elements of fun and entertainment. When you do so, do not take yourself too seriously, do not be heavy, and remember that, hey, this is only marketing after all.

Be Delightfully Devious

Play around with your consumers – mislead them in some positive way (funny and inoffensive), manipulate them, play a joke on them, do something which appears to be one thing at first, but turns out to be something else.

Give them Something to Talk About

Use a “viral” element: a Cool, a Twist or a Wow!, giving your consumers conversation openers, scripts and lingos – starring your brand.

Your third question, I’m guessing, will be: When? My answer is: definitely now. Satisfying marketing is no longer a charged enough course of action to bring you the results you need in order to gain market leadership. From now on don’t satisfy your customers – electrify them – results will follow!

Email marketing works because there are opportunities to personalize messages to each person on your list. It also works because it’s possible to set up an auto-responder so that the messages that you want your prospects to receive is sent out at specified intervals (you didn’t really think that all of the email that you receive from online marketers was written personally, right?).

Are you interested in using email marketing to enhance the traffic and sales of your website? It can be a confusing process if you don’t know where to start. You will need to establish your goals before you send the first email. What are you hoping to accomplish? Make sure these goals are clear and realistic.
This will help you measure the success of the email marketing campaign. This is a great way to learn what works and what doesn’t for future email marketing campaigns. While your particular goals will vary, some common ones include increasing sales, getting more traffic to the website; improve awareness of about your company and what products or services you offer, and building a solid relationship with your customers.

As you start measuring the success of your email marketing campaign, make sure you are comparing the data only against your own information not that of the industry. For example did your
sales increase by 10% and traffic to your site increase by 25% after your email marketing campaign rather than discovering the rate that sales and traffic increased for the entire industry you are in.

Make sure you take the time to update your email listings.

Some businesses like to use an email marketing template. Don’t get too comfortable with a successful marketing campaign though! his is because customers become bored easily with the same
format. You need to keep their interest by mixing things up a bit in future email marketing campaigns. Opt in email marketing software collects email addresses from your website. This is a great method that is simple for getting you a data base started. As your data base grows you can choose to send your future email marketing campaigns to everyone on the list or just a select target group based on their purchasing history.

You will need to design your email marketing campaign very well. It needs to be attractive to hold the attention of the consumer long enough for them to decide it is worth reading. You don’t want your efforts to be mistaken for common spam or junk mail right? Make sure all the content is spelled correctly. Keep the text short and to the point. You want them to open it, be captivated, and read it.
The first sentences need to identify your company and what you are offering. Place the important information first. Give them a sense of urgency for responding by clearing stating the day the promotional offers expire.

Email marketing is an effective tool if you take the time to use it properly. It is anticipated to be the most used method of advertising on the internet by 2008. While this means you will have lots of opportunity to market your business, it also means there is going to be a great deal of competition trying to get consumers to look at their business. You will have to be creative and work hard to develop effective email marketing campaigns that are attractive, informative, and encourage the
consumer to take action.