Help Stefan CampaignCeltnet WebInfo eZine
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
In This Issue
- Window on the Web
- Featured Article:
Are you Marketing Brilliantly? - Classified Ad Board
- Comment
- Business Tip
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Window on the Web
I'm writing this editorial outsite on the patio with the laptop sitting on a small table beside my steaming mug of black coffee — isn't wireless technology wonderful? The air is chilly but sunny and the garden is filled with late daffodils and crocuses; each promising the renewal that comes with spring. This is the time of regeneration where consumer spending starts to pick-up before the doldrums of summer. Now is the time to take a critical look at your website, to tidy it up and to add new content and to make new affiliate relationships. Take this time also to look at your current affiliate partnerships and see which ones are making you money and which ones are not.
Is there a pattern in your sales? Are some ads making you more money than others? Are there some products that you simply can't shift from your website? If you don't have these statistics at your fingertips, then you really should. Ditch all those affiliate relationships that aren't bringing in any money and replace them with more of the things that are earning you money. Is there a pattern to the kinds of links that your visitors are clicking? If there is then it's these kind of links that you need more of. Optimize your website and earn more money.
Dyfed
Editor/Publisher
Email me @ editor@celtnet.org.uk
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Feature Article
Are You Marketing Brilliantly?
by Alex Barrington
BRILLIANT MARKETING... sounds great, but what is it?
Is it the marketing idea that results in the mailman ringing your doorbell, signaling in a caravan of postal workers with mounds of letters - all in response to your latest advertisement? Is it the idea that brings a 35% response rate on a direct mail campaign... or the one that sends gigabytes of good news in the form of PayPal payment receipt notifications? Surely all of these ideas would be considered brilliant marketing ideas...right?
Well, maybe... it depends on the cost of generating the response. If the cost of marketing is greater than the income generated, it doesnt matter how great the response, its not the result of brilliant marketing idea!
So what is a brilliant marketing idea? Simple: a brilliant marketing idea is one that brings in profits far greater than the marketing costs associated with generating those profits. Simple in concept, but not so simple in application... unless your marketing focuses on those key elements that make the difference between disappointing marketing results and brilliant marketing results.
Marketing brilliantly means:
Creating Rapport All of your messages, materials, and tactics must be based on creating rapport with your prospects and customers. Eighty-seven percent (87%) of all business transactions take place because of sense of rapport a statistic that just cant be ignored. For example, use phrases like For Your Convenience or Questions Welcome.
Using the Principals of Psychology — There is a lot of information readily available that tells us what makes prospects buy... incorporating this knowledge in your marketing is critical.
For example, did you know that the majority of response from a direct mail campaign comes after the seventh mailing? Why? Because the repetitive exposure finally gets through that part of your prospects brain that tries to ignore all of the noise coming at it every day.
Affordability — Marketing brilliantly is all about developing materials and tactics to be as inexpensive as possible. This is vital for most small businesses (most of which have a nearly non-existent marketing budget).
As simple as this sounds, most businesses focus on designing materials that focus on ego-gratification... after all, its more impressive to see a four color ad in print than it is to see one in black and white.
BUT... did you know it costs less to print the black and white ad and it actually generates greater response rates than a larger ad (or a four color ad) if it is designed using design tricks like a THICK black border.
Marketing brilliantly means knowing these tricks of the trade and using them to decrease costs while increasing response rates.
Maximizing Everything — Maximizing everything you do as a part of your daily business operations activity so that it becomes a marketing activity also is critical to marketing brilliantly. It also means maximizing every element of your marketing materials and activities to bring maximum response.
For example, if you are sending our invoices (or any other customer communication for that matter), be sure to include marketing messages or materials in that routine mailing.
Creating Enthusiasm — Every one of your marketing materials must focus on the benefits (and supporting features) of your products and services; this is the most inexpensive and highly effective way to create the energy, enthusiasm, and emotion your prospect must feel in order to buy.
People rarely buy because they need something... they buy because they WANT it. For example, just using exclamation points can create enthusiasm and energy in your prospects mind!
Being Totally Comprehensive — There are many different ways to market your business and you need to take advantage of every applicable avenue. This includes using business communications to market your business as well as advertising, direct mail, internet marketing, networking, public relations, and customer development tactics.
(Customer development includes the more familiar category of customer service but it goes beyond that... incorporating strategies specifically for developing customers into better, repeat customers.)
Using Self-Sustaining Strategies — Operations are the life-blood of every small business; marketing brilliantly means your marketing almost operates on auto-pilot and takes minimal time away from operations.
For example, every marketing material you create should be used as many times, as many ways, as possible. Forget the prominent mentality that says every time you need to market something that you need to create from scratch. Not only is it more expensive, but it takes valuable time away from business operations.
Okay, so there you have it: simple, logical, and amazingly powerful techniques for marketing brilliantly.
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About the author:
Alex Barrington, creator of The Brilliant Marketing!™ System is the micro-business marketing pioneer of our time. As a degreed consultant, speaker, author, and regular radio talk show guest, Alex has worked with thousands of micro businesses over the last 15 years developing.
The Brilliant Marketing!™ System is Alex's innovative, fresh approach to micro-business marketing. Following this brilliantly simple, step-by-step system results in a custom Living Marketing Manual -- a marketing tool that focuses on using only low-or-no-cost ideas to successfully market a small business... and its so revolutionary that it virtually makes marketing plans obsolete. Complete information on The Brilliant Marketing!™ System and how you can create your own Living Marketing Manual (as well as info on Alex's books) is available at http://www.brilliant-marketing-for-small-business.com/ebooks.html (And while youre there don't forget to get your FREE copy of Alexs quick-read eBook, Brilliant Marketing!™
Classified Ad Board
Is your ad out yet? Subscriber and co-op ads are listed on the Classified Ad Board. The board is refreshed every issue with a new batch of ads.
Comment
Being an Internet 'Merchant'
If you've ever thought that making money and selling products on the internet is simply a matter of slapping-up a website and then waiting for the money to roll in, then you're completely wrong and bound to fail. The old Internet adage of 'Content, Content, Content' remains just as true of web marketing sites as it is of any other website. If you don't have content that distinguishes you from the rest of the pack then your site will not be sufficiently different for users to want to use it as a resource. Also, if you have no real content then your site is unlikely to be picked-up by the indexing systems and will definitely not rank well. Moreover, without unique content other websites will not link to your pages and your ranking in the various search engines will not increase because of these links either.
There is also your role as a 'merchant'. The truth is that human beings are social animals. We all build relationships with other people and this is why small merchants survive in the time of the superstore as with the small merchant you form a rappor with the merchant. They are there as an inividual and if you like and trust them then you will trust their wares as well. Indeed, part of the reason why the superchains are begining to lose market share is their very anonymity. Now, you might well think that this also applies equally to internet marketing. But there you'd be wrong. In setting-up our websites we all create 'copy'; which in effect is text that speaks directly to our site's visitors. Anyone coming to a website will 'hear' the voice of that copy's author and in this respect you're talking directly to your visitors.
eZines such as this one can be even more powerful in creating a rappor with your site's visitors as you're talking directly to them. This is a technique that newspaper editors have been using for centuries. This is a forum where you can talk to your subscribers directly, where you can inform and entertain them. Where they can hear your voice clearly and can come to trust you as an individual. If they trust you then they will trust your website and are more likely to trust the products and services that you're presenting to them. But this is also where the contract needs to go both ways. Make sure that if you're presenting your users with services, products or opportunities make sure that you trust the companies that you're bringing to your visitors' attention, as it can take months to build a good reputation but a bad reputation can be created in an instant.
Business Tip
Blogs as Marketing Tools
Along with your website, your e-mail list and your eZine another important component in your marketing arsenal is your Blog. Most current research suggests that publishing your Blog twice a week is about the optimum level, keeping people interested without overlaoding them. Blogs also keep your website fresh in peoples minds and the various components of the Blogs can point to articles and products on your website and help in the deeper indexing of your website.
There are plenty of blogging applications on the web, or you can use free blog creators such as Blogger.com that allows the blogs to be published to your own web space. You can also use free tools such as pingoat to ping blog repositories with information that your blog has been updated. This allows the dissemination of information about your Blog and aids in its quick indexing by the search engines. Blogs can also create an income directly for you in that you can add affiliate links and ads to your content and you can write reviews and critiques as part of your Blog's content.