Category: Marketing

Internet Marketing People Buy From People They Trust And Like

You have seen the latest movie trailer of the Green Hornet on TV but you have mixed feelings about whether you would go to watch the movie in the cinema.

You find the acting too cheesy and the special effects too far-fetched. Are you going to spend your hard-earned twenty bucks to watch a movie that you might not like?

Probably not, but what if your brothers or sisters or you office colleague said that they have a wonderful time watching the attics of these actors and you would probably have changed your mind and go to queue for the tickets.

Lessons learnt here: it is not that you do not have the trust of these movie studios’ promotional ads in to getting you to see the movie, but you would rather hear it from your trusted friends’ review about the movie. The word of your friends does help to change your mind and made a decision. You have trusted him and everything he said holds weights. In other words you have related to him and you like him.

So, you see that when you write your sales copy, you do not have to use those powerful words or those sneaky words or have to use all the tricks by embedding those commands and phrases.

You do not need to be a snake-oil salesman to do magic for you. All you need to do is to get people to relate to you. You have to make friends with people, and make them feel like they trust you and like you.

So you have to start identifying what your market you want to be in. Get to know who will be your customer, get a visual image of what is it that they want and that would save you all the heart-ache later on whether you are selling the right product to the right people after all.

Definitely you will not get wrong if you know what your customers is taking about and what they want.

The common mistakes make by copy writers is that they are fast in putting on their sales man cap as soon as people are placed in front of them.

You know, people do not like to relate or feel comfortable to sales people. So do not put up a barrier so early in your relationship with your prospects.

If you would talk to your prospects like you are talking to your friends, they would disarm any barrier and eventually they will buy from you.

It is a matter of how you would talk to a friend, like how you would communicate when you are with them talking in a restaurant.

Knowing them and talking to them is like you have identified your market correctly. It is important to be friends to them in your copy.

People trust you before they like you, and they must like you before they start to buy from you.

Make The Most Of The Marketing Mix

Business administration involves the creation of a road map that outlines the specific goals that the business is working to achieve and targeted benchmarks for when those goals will be reached. By constructing a business and marketing plan companies develop strategies for reaching their goals in a timely manner. Experts in business recommend that ten percent of the budgeted operating expenses for the business be spent on marketing.

Because customers are the lifeblood of any business how the allocated dollars are spent on marketing can make a significant difference to the bottom line revenues that a company generates. Return on investment is essential for any business and finding marketing channels that will give returns above what is spent is the goal of the marketing department. The challenge for marketing directors comes in finding the right channel to put marketing dollars into and effectively creating a campaign for the selected channels that will give the highest returns.

The marketing mix is a term used to describe the combination of different channels that are to be used by the company to attract new business and increase customer retention. Within the marketing mix the director and his or her team divide the budget and make allocations for where, when and how the marketing dollars will be spent. Some channels may receive more money than others depending upon the cost of entry to the marketing channel and the effectiveness of that channel in returning dividends through sales to consumers.

A marketing mix might consist of print advertising in magazines and newspapers, direct mail, television commercials, radio spots and internet marketing. While traditional forms of media are dividing the budgets of big business smaller companies can also model a scaled version of a marketing mix down to fit their budget.

Where once the elements of traditional forms of media were incorporated into the marketing mix the online revolution has altered the perceptions and spending habits of many Americans. While some forms of media may still be included in the budget of a marketing mix directors of marketing departments are realizing that dollars spent on internet marketing are bringing the highest returns on investment.

While allocating a larger percentage of the budget to internet marketing on a macro level, executives are discovering that there are sub-channels within the internet marketing medium that require further study and division of the channels budget on a micro level. Search engine optimization, pay-per click campaigns and social network marketing are just a few of the options available to marketing departments that are focusing the core of their budgets on the cost effective and highly reachable consumers of their marketing dollars.

Digital Marketing Strategies That Can Grow Your Business

Taking your business digital is the need of the hour today and developing a digital marketing strategy is even more essential. Digital marketing seems like the best way to stay ahead in the race, especially because your potential customers and your competition is already online. Here are some basic digital marketing strategies to follow which will be instrumental in helping your business to grow.
Set a Goal
Whether you are looking to acquire more customers, to increase your visibility online or to stay ahead of your competition, either way, it helps to define your goals. Having a preset goal in your mind increases your chances of success and chalks out a path for you to follow. If you jump onto the digital marketing blindly, without setting goals for your business to achieve, you will be left confused. Having a goal gives you something to focus on.
Create a Marketing Funnel
A marketing funnel refers to the process of mapping out the journey of a customer from when they start off as a complete stranger to when they convert to a lead, and then assign strategies into place that will lead them effectively through this funnel of conversion. Some of the most successful businesses have marketing funnels in place to boost their digital marketing efforts. The different components of a marketing funnel are calls to action, lead magnets, offers and opt-ins.
Create an Effective Call-To-Action
A call-to-action is a an text or an image that encourages a user to perform a particle action, like view a webinar, subscribe to a newsletter, sign up to receive a product demo etc. effective CTAs lead users to landing pages where they can feed in their contact information in exchange for a marketing offer that they find valuable. When a CTA is effective, it will result in more conversions and leads for your website. The process of lead generation is illustrated to this journey from the click of a CTA to a landing page. Your digital marketing strategy and digital properties should be rife with appropriate and effective CTAs in order to increase visitor-to-lead conversion opportunities. These CTAs need to be evenly distributed and optimized. They should grab a users attention and lead them into your marketing funnel.
Create an Effective Lead Magnet
Your lead magnet can be used in tandem with your CTA or as a stand-alone product. It could be used within your marketing funnel or as a way to drive customers into your marketing funnel. While driving your potential customer into your marketing funnel, you can use your offers as a means of gathering more information about them. When you supply your potential customer with something of value, it makes them more likely to convert into a lead who will spend time and money interacting with your business. The main aim of a lead magnet is the trade of information. It could be in the form of a free download or a discount on a product in exchange for information about them.

Business Administration – Marketing At Centennial College Includes Courses That Are Vital to Career

At Centennial College, students can complete business marketing training that gives them an opportunity to learn theory and also to apply that theory in a number of ways. This is beneficial as today’s employers hire employees who are as comfortable with marketing concepts such as analyzing consumer needs and developing products and services to meet those needs; anticipating competitors’ actions and reacting swiftly to shifts in the environment; developing pricing and communications strategies; as well as interacting with suppliers, customers and the public; as they are with applying them to real world situations. Positions for those who have completed the Business Administration – Marketing program include: sales representatives, direct marketing coordinators, sales and promotion coordinators, assistant product managers, marketing research analysts and customer relationship managers.

Three years in length, the program’s application process requires students to have completed an Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD) or equivalent, or have mature student status (19 years or older); English Grade 12 C or U or equivalent, or skills assessment and Math Grade 11 C, M or U, or Grade 12 C or U or equivalent or skills assessment.

The offering first allows students to obtain a general overview of business and marketing by having them attend courses that are common among most Centennial Business Marketing programs. They then advance to Business Marketing-specific topics. Regardless of the topic, students benefit from the expertise of experienced faculty members in an interactive environment that sees them grasp concepts through case studies, guest lectures, presentations, projects, and computer simulations and technologies.

These are some of this program’s most beneficial courses:

Marketing Communications: This course differentiates between the agency and client sides of advertising. Students focus on the application of media reports and marketing research information to the development of objectives and strategies for marketing management, advertising, sales promotions, publicity, media and creative execution.

Marketing Research: Examined in this course is the criteria used in the decision to conduct marketing research and in the choice of marketing research options. The offering also looks at the relationship between marketing and marketing strategy.

Strategic Marketing Planning: Students of this course learn to assess customer value and loyalty, marketing performance and how the different marketing strategies contribute to the profitability and growth of organizations. In addition to blending theoretical and practical applications, students are also taught modern marketing and analytical models.

Professional Selling: To get students to develop successful sales presentation skills, emphasis in this course is on pre-selling activities, techniques and procedures to use during the sales interaction and post sales activity. Training in Professional Selling includes role-playing sales situations, readings and groups discussions.

Interactive Marketing: There are a few aspects to this course. Firstly, students learn the importance of creating a customer-centric approach to the marketplace, along with specific strategies for building long-term customer relationships. They then learn about direct marketing, which focuses on campaign management strategies – especially the effective use of databases to find customers and directly market to them. Finally, in learning opportunities for digital marketing, students develop skills in the selection and implementation of strategies that exploit the potential of websites and mobile devices for engaging today’s consumers.

To graduate from Centennial College’s Business Marketing program, students must maintain a C grade average and an overall GPA of 2.0.

Importance Of Referral Marketing

Any service providers or businesses need to utilize referral marketing in order to grow and succeed in today’s competitive marketplace. Even if your goal is to merely to maintain your current levels of customer satisfaction and business, you should incorporate referral marketing as one of your marketing strategies.

Referral marketing provides a very effective method of maintaining a healthy customer base of individuals who are pre-sold on purchasing your particular products or services. The technique relies heavily on customer service which is essential to the success of absolutely any business. Referral marketing can help you replace any customers who will inevitably begin to lose interest, move away or switch to one of your competitors.

If you create a referral marketing campaign that is personalized and focused on establishing solid customer relationships, you will often see immediate positive results.

More Repeat Business

Individuals who feel they have established a positive rapport with the people in your company will be much more likely to become long-term repeat customers. A greater number of customers tend to return when companies choose to build trust via referral marketing.

Improved Customer Relations

Companies that focus on establishing solid business relationships also experience improvements in customer service. It can be a very wise decision to have your top professionals included in this plan. Customers want to be treated as respected individuals, rather than merely a number. If your company operates on this philosophy, your valuable customer base will continue to grow.

Ability to Up-Sell

Referral marketing also incorporates the ability to effectively up-sell. For example, an insurance salesperson who establishes a solid relationship with a customer interested in purchasing car insurance will be more likely to see that individual return. In fact, that same individual may also decide to purchase additional insurance policies such as homeowner’s insurance, health insurance and life insurance if they have been treated very well by the owner of their auto insurance policy.

Genuinely Interested Referrals

You need to find a way to make your company stand out among your competitors. This is essential in a very competitive and often cut-throat marketplace where many businesses are trying to sell the same products or services. You can start to set yourself apart by increasing your levels of customer service and addressing them on a personal level. This will result in referrals that are genuinely interested, excited and motivated to buy!

Increased Sales

Your revenue charts will reflect any successful marketing efforts. Your company can experience remarkable increases in revenue and customers when your customer base continues to expand. In fact, some businesses have experienced growth of 200 to 300% or higher by utilizing referral marketing effectively. You can retain your current customers and continuously attract new ones. Better yet, referral marketing enables you to achieve these results with minimal money or time.

Enhanced Sense of Ownership

It is a proven fact that solid referral marketing systems that are relationship-based create customers who feel they have a genuine connection or ownership in the business. Clients may begin to refer to their banker as “my banker” or their accountant as “my accountant”. They adopt a different attitude towards the professionals they encounter in your company. An added benefit is the fact that the increased sense of enthusiasm and loyalty expressed by these customers is contagious; it can attract new customers and turn existing clients into long-term, satisfied ones.

Be Business Smart has been created to assist anyone who is setting up a new company and to offer valuable support and advice to individuals who wish to expand their current business.

Did you realise that approximately 80% of new businesses fail each year? You certainly don’t want to become one of those statistics. Fortunately, Be Business Smart can provide you with the help and support you need to ensure your business becomes a success!

Be Business Smart offers two levels of membership to suit your business budget. Here at Be Business Smart, we have a lot to offer any new business, but please don’t take our word for it. We encourage you to browse our website and see for yourself.