Internet Marketing Tips
Tips on starting your marketing campaign
- Define your target – target audience, geographic target, industry target
- Setup your campaign goals – name awareness, traffic, sales increase, become famous
- Research your competitors – define 3 main competitors – research each competitor
- Research market cycle – search the market to see if anyone has the similar plan
- Be different/Bold/Creative – out of the box thinking will take you far ahead of your competitors – come up with catchy titles/phrases/taglines, use something people will remember and will generate talk around the water cooler (great examples: Got Milk?, What happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas)
- Create an emotional connection to your product or service
- Give a reason for your target audience to BUY NOW!
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The following actions will be a sure way for your business to fail here are the reasons and how to avoid them:
No plan – it is critical for a business to have a business plan. Many small business fail because they did not plan properly. Your plan must be realistic, accurate, current and have done enough research to project the future. When creating a plan you should include: description of your business, needs, potential problems with solutions, competitive analysis, marketing, budgeting and a financial section that outlines your planned income, balance sheet, income statement, cash flow, sales and expense forecast.
Insufficient savings – many businesses fail because they do not accurately plan enough funds to keep the business up and running for any period of time. Most business plan for the opening operations, but don’t plan out any further to cover the cost of staying in business.
Location – location is the critical success of your business. You need to consider the following when choosing a business location: traffic, accessibility, parking and lighting, location of competitors, where your customers are, condition of building, community around your business.
Start your business for the wrong reason – If you are just looking for money, freedom or to be your own boss, this is not enough. You must have a passion and love for what you do and have a strong belief that your product or service will fulfill a need. You need to have determination, drive, patience and be strong mentally and physically. You must learn from your mistakes, thrive on independence and can take charge when a solution is needed. Finally, you must love people and working with others with honesty and integrity.
Poor management – many business fail because of poor management or business owners having a lack of experience and unless they realize where their weaknesses are they are sure to fail. You must be able to organize, study, plan and control all operations including purchasing, sales, managing employees and finance. You should continually keep up to speed on market research and customer data.
Not having a website – if you are not online your business has limited reach. 77.3% of the US population is online shopping and searching for information in 2010. At the very least every business should have online reach, a profile or webpage that is professional so that users can easily find information about your business and your products or services. If you aren’t visible online, you will be loosing business to those who are.
