Marketing 101

  Brainstorming The Questions You Are Asked Everyday And that’s what you need to do, for your business or your company. Being in the manufacturing environment for so long ( 30 years ) it did not occur to me that I had to do this diligently. So, late one night, I sat down and listed down all the questions that my department and I have received over the years ( as far as I can remember), As you can imagine the writing was fast, after all, I have been working in the manufacturing line for so many years and I have heard questions from the marketing personnel, from salespersons and from customers every day, so the idea of simply recalling these questions was by no means difficult. After about an hour, I had at least 50 questions listed on the paper. Here are some tools to help you get ahead in your online business. And what happened next is where things became a little interesting. From the questions that I have listed, over the coming weeks, I, along with some of my colleagues in the m...

  Finding Your Real Story Have you ever seen a company portraying a totally different personality, different from what is on their website, from their brochures, or from their commercials? The reality is, that many companies have got marketing materials that have been created over time, often by many different people and these materials have not been updated to keep up with the current identity. Some companies seem to go from strategy to strategy, never investing enough time to allow any single approach to take root and pay off. And customers become confused because the company doesn’t seem to know its own identity. Even worse, this seems to portray the company as insincere and even untrustworthy. The internet complicates this more because it’s easier now for the prospects to hop from site to site, and if your company’s image seems to change between your website, blog, online articles, and social media sites, your prospects will start to wonder who the “real” you is. One of the eas...

  How To Stay Positive With Your Online Business (Even though You Are Down…) How to stay positive always, with your online business is something all online marketers must learn to do. I am still new to this, have been working online now for around 10 months and during this period, I have developed some skills and daily rituals that have helped me stay positive and stay focused even when I feel like the world is against me. Stop Pitying Stop saying things like ‘I’m the most unfortunate person in the world. My life is meaningless. I can’t do anything right with my life. You will get nowhere with this kind of attitude. You may be too busy feeling sorry for yourself and not knowing great opportunities may have already passed you by. If I was having a bad day, with no sales, I used to give myself a good talking to remind myself that we all have good days and bad days and that tomorrow is another day and will be much better than today. End All Complaining When times get tough, usually, t...

  Why Most Marketing Fails? Marketing horror stories. I have heard some of them myself. There are stories about how someone tried a marketing technique, sent out a press release, or ran an ad, and “nothing happened”, “it didn’t work”. In my 30 years of working in a manufacturing environment, I have heard many of these stories. As with most urban legends, there is usually more to the story than meets the eye. Take heart because marketing isn’t all mysterious and once you understand how to put the pieces together, you'll be in a better position to market your products or to oversee someone to handle the marketing for you. Let’s begin by looking at the seven most common reasons that marketing fails: Lack Of Planning or No Planning Most marketing efforts fail because there is no link between the marketing actions and the bottom-line business plan that drives revenue. This usually happens because those who are making decisions get caught up with a creative idea that isn’t doing much to ...

If You Don’t Have A List, You Don’t Have A Business If you have been marketing online for a while, I am sure you have heard of this mantra “the money is in the list” You’ve probably wondered what this means. It’s referring to your email list building and how it affects the amount of money and success you have online. Everybody always gets caught up in how many people are joining their online business and how much money they are making at that exact moment in time. What are lists? Lists are nothing but contacts and emails of potential customers, who have bought products and services by visiting links that are given, for example, on your blog. Apart from existing clients, these lists also have names and numbers of clients who have shown interest in your blog writings but may not have made any purchases of products due to varied reasons. Many marketers, often fail to look to the future and understand how important list building is. There are many online secrets that the gurus don’t like t...