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Build Next Year's Success on the Lessons Learned This
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When You Can Spend Time or Money
Strategic Internet Marketing - 5 Basic Keys to
Online Business Success
7 Small Business Marketing Tips
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Strategic Internet Marketing - 5 Basic Keys to Online Business Success
If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. Laurence J. Peter US educator & writer (1919 - 1988)...
When you think about starting your online business, success depends on the value of your strategic Internet marketing plan. It acts like a roadmap to guide you from one milestone to the next along your business journey.
What's Strategic Internet Marketing Plan?
There's an old saying that goes like that, "Success depends on planning your work, and then working your plan."
In the most successful business, the strategic Internet marketing plan is a fundamental written document which crafts a business idea in terms of goals, objectives, time lines, financial declarations, marketing consequences, competitive positions, directorial factors and goes on to show how the business owner will realize those goals, including a detailed marketing strategy. A complete business plan also contains a formal break-even analysis and a profit-and-loss projection analysis designed to give you an idea about the business's profitability, growth and cash flow.
Your plan must clearly define each step in the process. Be accurate and honest. Identify time lags and non-value-adding steps. Identify responsibility for each step. Brainstorm For problems in the process. Each step should illustrate an action in specific, clear and measurable terms. Keep your business plan flexible and simple so that you can quickly make changes as necessary. More importantly, your employees need to read and understand your company's goals, the activities required to achieve them, the timetable for accomplishing assigned tasks and each individual's responsibilities as part of the team.
The people most successful are those who have clear, specific goals and a timeframe; and they have an internal mechanism for monitoring the progress of business. They have been passionate about their business and eager to find ways to improve their own performance continuously in the search for excellence. These people dedicate themselves to learning everything they need to know about the business to achieve their dreams. They have exceptional knowledge of creating, managing, marketing and running their business with integrity and responsibility. And they pursue their dreams with persistence, passion and a continual confidence that they will succeed at any cost.
Is the importance of creating a personal plan before starting a business sounds dull? Miss this step and you'll almost certainly fail in whatever you try and accomplish. If you still doubt why I stress the importance of planning, go throw the web and ask any one you come across and you will learn in practical terms what happened to most of them in the creation of any project.
The reason behind the MOST online failures is that people believe in the hype they heard from unethical marketers. They believe in “give me your money seat back doing no thing and you will start making $12.000.00 by the next month scheme”. If it’s that ease why they need your money!
If all people understand there is no sweet thing without hard work, we would be seeing many more online success stories and fewer online failures.
Remember, you need 5 basic keys to be successful:
1 - You need a strategic Internet marketing plan (even if you are starting
small business and you are not going to lean money).
2 - The need skills to run manage and market your business.
3 - You need the right tools to crate a system that works on autopilot.
4 - You need to invest time and money (investing time is a must but investing
money is up to you).
5 - You need to be passionate and self disciplined.
If your online marketing plan consists only of a Website, you are not using all the channels the Internet has to offer. Strategic Internet Marketing plan opens multiple channels and exponentially more opportunities to help you achieve your business and marketing objectives.
Here you will discover exactly how to draw up a highly potent action plan that will focus your mind and help you achieve your goals in a reasonable time.
Why Strategic Internet Marketing Plan Is a MUST?
As a small business owner, you do not have infinite resources to compete with the big guys. You need to prioritize how you spend your money to build and market your business during tough time. By following the step-by-step strategic Internet marketing plan, you can create your very own home-based Internet business and position it in the right place at the right time and with less risk.
Your strategic Internet marketing plan must uncovers the following:
- Get the needed skills to build your business.
- Search your market well before you decide you are ready. Find out what
your targeted market wants and needs. Analyze your competitor’s strength
and weakness.
- Find a product to sell: Create your product, buy reseller rights of
hot product, find an affiliate program, use Google ad sense.... etc
- Select the most effective, low cost marketing tools and strategies that
fit your business needs and budget.
- Analyze information before; during and after you implement the Strategic
Internet Marketing plan.
- Continuously revise your plan as you learn what works and what doesn’t.
Errors are part of the process. Don't try to avoid them. When a strategy fails, view it as part of trial-and-error that you can learn from.
If you are truly passionate about your business success, build your business with your customers in mind. In other words you must think about:
- How to attract targeted visitors to your website.
- How to entice them to take action (Either they buy your product or they
subscribe to your email list)
- How to make them enthusiastic about the quality of your product and/
or service
- How to build relationship to convert them to loyal customers
- How to bring them back to your website.
- How to continuously add fresh subscribers to your list.
Conclusion: To make good money online you need an opt in email list. To build an opt in email list you need to build your business with your customers in mind. After you build your list then and only then look for ways on how to make money from your list. Once you find the combination that works for you the sky is your limit.
Here's your chance to 'short-cut' the learning faze and follow a step-by-step blueprint to success by going through these steps.
Quarterly Smile
My boss was complaining in a staff meeting the other day that he wasn't getting any respect. Later that morning he went out and got a small sign that read, "I'm the Boss."
He then taped it to his office door.
Later that day when he returned from lunch, he found that someone had taped a note to the sign that said. "Your wife called; she wants her sign back!"
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.
Copyright 2005 Bob Leduc http://BobLeduc.com
Microsoft Word Is Great But I Wish I Could
Microsoft Word is all singing, all dancing. Truly a great product which has made the lives of professional writers and students vastly more productive.Most of us however are not professional writers. We only use Word to type an occasional missive or and article now and then. We don't need or use 90% of the bells and whistles. Unfortunately, some of these built in bells and whistles are designed to impose themselves and often like to blow loudly in our ears whether we asked for it or not.
Research shows there are three common pet hate 'features' that most average users would rather turn off if only they knew how. This is a cheat sheet for such users.
A. How do I stop Word from helping me type?
Word checks spelling and grammar as you type. When these features are on, spelling and grammar that Word does not recognize are underlined sternly with wavy red and green lines.
To turn off Word's various automatic checking features:
1. From the Tools menu, pick 'AutoCorrect' (or AutoCorrect Options).
Then click on the 'AutoCorrect' tab.
2. Uncheck the boxes for the AutoCorrect items that you want to disable.
3. Do the same on the 'AutoFormat As You Type' tab.
4. On the 'AutoText' tab, uncheck the 'Show AutoComplete tip' box.
5. From the Tools menu, pick 'Options' then click on the tabs and uncheck
any boxes for features that you want to disable.
B. How do I tell the Office Assistant to go take a walk?
1. Click on the Office Assistant, then click on 'Options'.
2. Uncheck the 'Use Office Assistant' box.
You can also customize the behavior of the Office Assistant by checking or clearing the checkboxes on the 'Options' tab.
If you later decide that you rather miss the lovable Assistant, you can easily bring him back by choosing 'Show the Office Assistant' from the Help menu.
C. How do I turn off the automatic URLs?
Word likes to convert all URLs and email addresses in your document into active hyperlinks. If you'd rather not, then here's how to turn off that feature:
1. From the Tools menu, Choose 'AutoCorrect' (or AutoCorrect Options).
2. Click on 'AutoFormat As You Type' tab.
3. Under 'Replace As You Type', uncheck the 'Internet and network paths
with hyperlink' box.
Note that this setting only applies to what you subsequently type. If
you forgot to turn off AutoCorrect before you started and you end up with
a document full of hyperlinks that you don't want, you can disable them,
either one at a time, or all at once. To turn a link off, right-click
on the link, select 'Hyperlink' from the pop-up menu, and then select
'Remove Hyperlink'. To remove all links from the document, choose Select
All from the Edit menu or press [Ctrl]+[A], and then press [Ctrl]+[6]
to remove all hyperlinks.
Most Word features can be turned off or on from the 'Tools' menu. From this menu, the 'Options' command brings up a screen with several tabs where you can make all sorts of changes to Word's behavior. The 'Customize' command lets you to change Word's menus and toolbars.
The 'View' menu also has some great options for changing the look of the Word screen.
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Build Next Year's Success on the Lessons Learned This Year
As we embark on a brand new year, full of hope and ambition, let us not forget the lessons taught to us by 2005; whether good or bad. The noted poet and philosopher, George Santayana, told us: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This is no less true for entrepreneurs.
The more research and investigation one does into their proposed endeavor, the less they will be caught off guard. This is an important part of becoming a successful entrepreneur. It is for this reason that financial institutions, angel investors and other backers require a well-thought out business plan before considering investing in a new enterprise. Yet, there will still be those little, and sometimes not-so-little, things that one must discover on their entrepreneurial journey. It is these lessons which we must learn well, using them to improve our blueprint for success for the next week, month, or year.
The approach of a new year makes us dig down deep and decide what we want, both professionally, and personally, but in order to achieve the success that we want in the coming year, we must be sure to include the lessons which we have learned from the past year. What did you learn about your industry, your workers, or associates, and yourself this year? How can you put this information to work, in order to achieve your goals?
For instance, did you discover that your services or products are considerably under priced? Does the past payment record of some of your clients require that you draft and execute payment policies and late fees for the upcoming year? Have you discovered that to get the best work out of a certain employee or associate, you must allow more time on the project? Did you discover that you are a notorious procrastinator, or that a lack of organization makes it difficult for you to stay on task? If so, you have discovered important information which can greatly contribute to your increased success in the upcoming year.
How will you use the important business and personal lessons that you have learned over the past year? It is entirely up to you. However, your ability to achieve your goals for 2006 may very well depend upon how well you learned the lessons of 2005.
Best wishes for a successful new year.
Time Management for the Self-Employed - 8 Situations When You Can Spend Time or Money
It is tempting when running your own business to avoid spending money wherever possible, but this may lead to piling more commitments into an already overloaded diary. Here are some common situations where the time-money conundrum needs some thought:1. You might be able to tinker on the computer and come up with a logo and some marketing literature, but how long will that take and will the results justify it? Paying a designer might be a good move.
2. Business these days is wrapped around with bureaucracy and you must comply with all kinds of government agencies. Is it better to do all your accounts, wages and admin work yourself or would an employee or virtual assistant do it better and quicker?
3. Selling is an essential part of any business and one loathed by many. You can either spend hours on the phone working through directories, or hire professionals to do your cold calling and set up appointments.
4. Running business systems efficiently can be time-consuming and repetitive. There are software programs available which reduce the monotony, but they cost money. Another choice!
5. If you need to travel some distance for work, consider the respective merits of driving yourself or taking a plane or train. A plane or train ticket may be expensive but you might be able to do some work while you travel and still arrive in good shape.
6. You are probably constantly receiving invitations to attend conferences, seminars and workshops. These are often held in expensive hotels and can be pricey. It is tempting to think you can save both time and money by not attending! But you can meet some valuable contacts this way who will refer you work, thus saving your marketing time and costs. At the same time, you may well be inspired with some new ideas to transform your business growth.
7. Personal development – when you are working for yourself and have no employer to pay for these on your behalf, training and executive coaching looks very expensive and you may barely even consider it. My own personal experience and that of many of my clients shows that the spurt in growth which comes about when you commit to personal development can move you further and faster than you ever dreamt.
8. Holidays and breaks – it is so easy to feel that we cannot stop working or everything will start to crumble. The descent from enthusiasm and motivation to worry and stress is an insidious one, which we may not even notice, and which has a profound impact on our time management. Give yourself the gift of some time away from your desk, however, and you will return feeling newly inspired and be so much more productive.
All statements made in this newsletter are strictly opinions and suggestions of the writers at S.O.H.O Quarterly. Office on Demand does not offer endorsement of any products or services presented in this newsletter – ensure to use due diligence before purchasing any products or services online
All articles contained in each issue of S.O.H.O. Quarterly are the copyrighted property of the individual author. You may not reproduce or republish these articles without first obtaining written permission from the author of the article."We respect the privacy of our subscribers. We will never intentionally distribute subscribers contact information. If you are receiving this message in error, or for removal from our mailing list, please send an email to newsletter@canadianvirtualassistant.com with “Remove” in the subject line. (Be sure to send your email from the account that receives the email.)" We respect the privacy of our subscribers.
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