Recession Busting Marketing Tactics

Time moves on and we are all struggling to survive the tough times and strive towards a place where the economy is not an issue for us

If you ever have the chance to talk to the CEO of a Public Relations firm, take advantage of it. You can learn a lot about how companies operate that work on a business-to-business platform. The social media that you may talk about has a large role in the marketing business, and why marketing is so essential during a recession. You can use this marketing to help your customers and their customers.

If you ask a PR person whether social media is valuable or not, they may bring up the point that average everyday people are really torn in their answers. Similarly, PR people will tell you that you can use social media like blogs as though they are tools, to deliver industry and marketing knowledge and insight. But your customers don't want to waste their time with fluff posts.

When you consider using social media, and how valuable it is, look at the whole marketing mix. Email, direct mail, advertising, webinars, seminars and trade shows all have a role in business. Social media is really just a technical way of delivering public relations. It is the best and least expensive way to reach your target audience with a very specific message, without a tremendous amount of effort.

If you're worried about your marketing people having their budget cuts cut during this or any recession, you should look back to a tried and true adage – You should advertise in good times, but you must advertise during bad times. You can't go dark while you're in a recession, but it's easy to cut your marketing budget, thinking that you need salespeople more than marketing.

Look closer. Salespeople have their own function, but that doesn't include educating potential customers or building on the credibility that your company already has. That's where marketing comes in, and it has immense value during a time of recession.

Every dollar counts in a recession, so everything your company does must have value. This means that your marketing department can help your sales team to assist customers. This can be done by finding out how you can best help your clients turn around and sell to their clients.

Marketers need to ask what your customers need in order to win more deals. Then they need to decide how you can position your services and products to get the key benefits that your company hasn't yet explored. They can look into how to change your wording so that you are offering solutions from a perspective of how they can gain extra revenue for each user.

Some companies now are throwing ideas against a wall and keeping what sticks, thus keeping only the cheapest of their marketing tactics. Their head of PR may be telling the higher-ups what they should do to remain effective, and marketers might agree without thinking about the way those tactics fit into their plan for business. The right plan for marketing during a recession? Evaluate and measure everything. Know where you are going, and don't be distracted by tactics that don't have any intrinsic value. Be consistent and be patient, especially since the recession appears to have turned the bend.

http://www.moremarketingsolutions.com.au

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Market Successfully

Social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook are among the fastest growing Internet communities, and there are millions of users. Facebook actually started more or less as a personal site, but they are adding many features that makes the site more friendly to business users. LinkedIn is the highest ranked professional networking site, which makes it an excellent business tool. There are other various social sites on the Internet, too, like Twitter and MySpace, but Facebook and LinkedIn are the main sites that offer business owners the best chance to be seen and to generate traffic. The tools will work on any sites, though.

Facebook's goal is to help people connect with each other. This is mainly accomplished through becoming friends with people you know or would like to know. If you find a profile of someone that you'd like to connect with through the site, you just click “add as friend”, and they will decide if they want to be your “friend” or not. Additionally, when others see your profile and want to connect with you, they can do the same. You can use this growing online audience to market your services or products, and Facebook is a great place to find new prospects. You can also be found by new prospects, too.

Social networking sites facilitate your making friends with others and connecting with them. So, if your direct network of friends has two hundred people, that means that if your friends each have two hundred other friends, that's 40,000 people. Those are amazing numbers! Social sites recommend friends of your friends as possible future friends for you, based on location and interests, so it's easy for you to grow a friend base. Additionally, you can see who your friends have as friends, and connect to them in that way. When you use social networking sites for your business, your goal is to befriend as many people as you can who may be relevant to your niche market, either as business partners or potential customers.

When you set up your profile at Facebook, or other social networking sites, make sure that you include your business blog's address or your website address in a location where it will be easy for people to see, if they want to jump from your profile to your business website. You can upload pictures of yourself, and videos that explain things about your business, show a tour of your business, and include any other information that might help people become more familiar with your business. When you use a social networking site for business, you are letting people know the types of products and services that you offer, and the problems you may be able to solve for them. You can put a face to your name too, which will help in building relationships.

With the social networking sites' rapid growth, you'll want to tap into them sooner rather than later. Keep your profile updated so that visitors that check it can link through to your business website.

http://www.moremarketingsolutions.com.au

Staying social till next time....

Jen

Finding your Target Market

Not everyone wants your product or service. So how then do we find the people who do?

You know that your potential customers are out there, you just need to figure out how to find your target market. You have what they need, and you know that, you just need them to visit your store or website. In order for that to happen, you'll need to utilize some time-tested target marketing strategies.

Website traffic doesn't mean anything, if you don't target it, and your chore is finding the buyers within your niche who want your service or product. Define your market, and then invite your target customers to come and visit your site. Here are some of the best methods for targeting the people you want to attract to your site.

Article marketing is the simplest way to get many targeted visitors to come to your site. Each person that reads your article is already interested in your subject, and the readers that click through to your site will be wanting to take action on their needs.

There may be thousands of people who read your articles over the years, and many of them won't click your link. Those that do click have taken a step further, to learn more about your niche, and these are the people you want to come to your site. In this way, you narrow the field.

Article marketing can help you find targeted traffic in whatever niche your business is in. It's well worth the time and trouble to get articles out there, whether you have the time and talent to write them yourself, or whether you decide to have someone else do your work for you. Article writing is a valuable marketing tool to help bring in your target audience.

Forums are another way that people of like minds gather at one website, and some of your potential customers will be hanging out here. You need to approach them in the correct way, so that they'll want to visit your site and find out what you have to offer. You can't just jump in with a sales pitch, though, or you will be ignored, and maybe even banned. You have to post questions and answers that are of value, so that people will read them. Then people who trust your suggestions may click through to your site.

Facebook is another place to find your target market. They have thousands of groups that are already established, for various topics. You can join into a group, and let others know that you're an expert in their area of interest. You can take this opportunity to teach people more about you, so you become more real to them than just a name on the screen. You'll get friend requests in this manner, and some will go to your Facebook page to learn about you. Have your Facebook landing page direct people to your site.

Yahoo answers is a great place to get attention. People go there to ask or answer questions (or both), and they are already needing a product or service when they get there. They don't know where to buy what they need. Answer questions with valid and worthwhile answers, and people will look to you for advice, and come to your site for products or services.

http://www.moremarketingsolutions.com.au

Till next time......

Jennifer

Driving Traffic to your Website

Lets talk about traffic to your website. How hard can it be to drive new business to your door via the internet?

Back in the early days of the internet, all you had to do to drive traffic to your website was place a few lines of code on your home page, at the top, and then submit it to free directories or search engines. Things have changed since then. Now search engine optimization and the promotion of websites has become a job in and of itself. Search Engine Consultants will help you find ways to bring your ideal customers to your site.

Before you leap into search engine optimization, set up a solid, strong foundation for your business. Design a plan, and the profile of your ideal customer. Be consistent with your advertising and “brand” your website and your company. Use the same motto, logo and colors everywhere on your site. Create policies that will engender trust in your customers. A newsletter privacy policy, a code of ethics and prompt and courteous customer service will help to establish your business.

Have your web master name your web pages using a keyword that you will supply, to help drive traffic to your website. Give added value on your site that will help your customers feel loyal to your company. This may include links to other sites, books and affiliate programs. You can also add script that allows visitors to bookmark or “favorite” your business site. Add a “recommend this site” link on your web site. With this link, a visitor to your website can email your link to a recipient who might appreciate it.

If you have certain pages on your site that are updated regularly, place a note somewhere on the page so that visitors will know that. They will be more likely to visit more often if there is new information there frequently. Join some web-rings, if you have the time. There is information pertaining to web-rings at Bravenet and WebRing.

On the web pages that are visited most, add a subscription box where visitors can enter their email address for updates, business announcements or e-zines. If your site is large, create a page for “What's New”, and have your web designer set up a visitors' “site map”, for easy navigation.

One of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website will be search engine optimization, or SEO. Search engines seek out meta tags, headings and titles, so be sure that your website is “search engine friendly”.

Be sure to use keywords within the wording of every text page. This is especially important at sentence introductions and locations high up on your site page. Submit your site information to the search engines, so that they can locate your site. There are various ways you can submit your site.

Although it is time consuming, you can submit your site to search engines individually. Open a free email account for use when dealing with anything that is free on the internet. Two sites you can use to submit your site to search engines are Scrub the Web and Submit It. You can also pay for programs that will critique and submit your site.

http://www.moremarketingsolutions.com.au/

Until Next time

Jen

Have you thought about Press Release

Hi everyone. I hope you are all recovering from the festive season and looking forward to a bright and prosperous new year. Well it's back into the swing of things for me, with more ideas to get my business heard in 2010. Recently I started researching way's I could get the word out without it costing me a bomb and I thought about a the idea of press Release.

Well written press releases can help you to capture the attention of journalists, and will get your company good exposure. They aren't written directly to consumers or customers – rather, they are done for the purposes of journalists who may use them as part of a longer feature or story. Write your press release in a way that will tell your story the way you would like it to be told. Press releases are not just sales pieces, and if you write them in that way, they will go ignored. Your press release's points made, and the order you make them in, will help to tell the journalist how to develop them into a storyline.

Leads refer to the first paragraphs of press releases. They need to be strong, and they must communicate your message concisely and swiftly. The headline and your first paragraph should be written as though they could stand alone, so that if someone only reads those two elements, they would still understand what you're speaking about. You will provide pertinent details in the rest of the essay. Each journalist may see thousands of press releases in a given day, so you only have mere seconds in which you can grab their attention.

The print media is always looking out for good stories, so your press releases need to be newsworthy, not just factual. If you can understand why journalists would be interested in your story, that is your key to success. Write the press release as you want the journalist to read it. Press releases should be timely, and they need to tie into social issues or current events, wherever possible. Use a good angle and something that will grab a journalist's attention, and that is a good starting point for your press release.

Effective press releases answer all the pertinent questions (who, why, when, where and what), giving the journalist useful information about your company and its services, products or events. If your press release sounds like a sales pitch or an ad, throw it away and start over.

Management changes, new websites and company launches happen quite often, so they are not, in and of themselves, good stories. Concentrate on anything that makes your event or change unique and interesting. Make sure your press release makes the reader care about what's happening, and makes them want to read on. Concentrate your writing on the aspects that make your press release unique.

Be sure you use real stories regarding how your company solved a problem, or launched a product that helped fulfill a need in your community. Use real life examples to show the journalists the benefits of using your service or product. Use the words you need to tell your company's story, no less and no more. Make each word count, and make the overall press release flow smoothly.

Speak in plain English in press releases. Limit the amount of industry specific jargon you use, because those are only understood by others in the same business as you. Press releases should appeal to all readers, not just those in the same field as your company.

http://www.moremarketingsolutions.com.au


Carp diem

Jennifer

Search Engine Optimization

Discover the secrets of how you can rank high on Google and drive more business and traffic to your website. Once you implement this strategy, you will be surprised how simple and effective it can be

Those who aren't familiar with SEO may be overwhelmed by the terminology, but it is a very effective business tool. SEO means Search Engine Optimization, and it refers to the ways you can improve your web site's ranking in the results of search engines. The algorithms and the processes may vary from one search engine to the next, but you can use some of the same techniques in order to boost your rank.

SEO is not a perfect science, but there are general methods that will effectively boost the ranking of your site on the major search engines. Basically, relevance of your site content to a search for keywords will generally determine whether your site will appear on search results. When you are writing SEO content, keep in mind the specific keywords that people may search for, and reflect those keywords on your site.

This does not mean that you should pepper your site with over-used keywords. Search engines of today are very sophisticated, and they can detect unusually high keyword concentrations. They may omit sites in their listed results which have the keywords used excessively. So use keywords as you would in normal written “conversation”, and only where needed.

Some sellers also use hidden text, either successfully or not. It is generally accepted that many search engines can detect hidden text, and this may affect your site's standing negatively. There are many conflicting views on this subject, however – it may work for you, but it may not.

Each of your pages has a title, and it's usually named with something that is relevant to the information on the page. In this case, you can give the page a title with wording to the effect of improving your search engine ranking. This way, the keyword sentence then exists on the page.
Linking is also a factor in search ranks for Google, which is why sites including Squidoo and Ehow rank well, since those sites have many links from and to each page. Websites were originally thought of as islands, designed as such to keep visitors inside their own virtual world. But the nature of the terms “website” and “internet” actually suggest that web-rings and links are essential to the workings of the Internet.

To work with SEO to get your business website higher in search engine results, join as many sites and online communities as you have time to, and provide links back to your site wherever you can. Make sure that you read terms of use before you do link-backs, because some companies' sites do not allow it.

You can also use back-linking to promote your business. Leave comments on blogs, sites or articles and include pertinent information for readers, and also information with links to your site. In this way you can help others while you help yourself. This type of strategy for linking also works with favorites, subscriptions and RSS feeds, or basically speaking, anything that will create a link between others and you. All that you will spend on SEO work is time, basically, so use these tips to generate more traffic to your site.

Hope this helps towards your success. I know it made a huge difference to me once I learned the secrets to this little gold nugget.

http://www.moremarketingsolutions.com.au

Until next time

Warm Regards and may 2010 be a year of prosperity

Jennifer