Business has the most success potential when it is able to move along with market demands.  There is actually no need to completely abandon a tried and tested manner of doing business such as in brick-and-mortar stores but they do have to learn more current ways of doing business such as the e-commerce to ensure maximization of presence and profit.  Making use of the respective advantage of offline and online businesses can provide just the exact formula to always remain on the customer’s list of preferred businesses to patronize.

Brick-and-mortar businesses make use of a physical location as a point of purchase for their customers.  In the process, they are able to establish a presence that customers can identify and locate as opposed to an online business which can only be identified through their websites.  Traditional customers remains a considerable niche which should not be neglected.  They are the ones who prefer to examine their products before purchase and still enjoy the thrill of going through actual displays in finding their choice buys.  The main disadvantage of this type of business is the overhead expense in maintaining a physical store as well as the need to hire employees.

Online businesses are relatively inexpensive when compared to their brick-and-mortar counterparts.  There is also no limit as to what specific nature to enter into as long as it can be marketed online.  Its main disadvantage is the issue of trust that plagues website-only businesses.  Another disadvantage is the wide range of competition easily found in the online environment.  These issues are resolved by establishing reliable service and appropriate marketing efforts.

A combination of the offline and online business model has worked for many businesses.  Not only does the option solidify an established brand, it also increases market potential both ways.  Nothing beats giving customers wider options to purchase from your business.

If you think you’ve got it made with a product or service you proudly call your own, you’ve got another thing coming.  What makes you think that by doing nothing else, you will get to see customers queuing up for whatever it is that you offer while realizing the hefty profit you’ve been dreaming of?  Once you’ve come down from the dream world to the real world, you can start seriously working for your goal if you even hope to see a part of that dream realized. 

Any business and every business for that matter requires a specific form of advertising appropriate to its nature.  The primary purpose of any advertising effort is to create awareness among customers that such a product or service exists and that it is offered by you.  Advertising is said to have accomplished its purpose when the customer is convinced that he/she needs the product or service and that it should be purchased from you and not from a competitor.

Notice how the effects of advertising always redound to the one making the offer.  This is just to be expected since advertising is being used as a tool to achieve established business goals and objectives.  It is a two-bladed tool, which can provide benefits when used correctly, or bring a company’s downfall when used wrongly.  Although, there is a popular saying in show-business that good news or bad news is still news, such principle may not apply to a product or service that requires the trust and confidence of consumers.

Advertising should not only represent what we hope to be but also who we are in relation to our offered product or service.  Excellent advertising can get a customer’s attention but it cannot assure sustained interest for an inferior product or service.  While it is the job of the marketing specialist to promote a business, owners have the responsibility to provide a product or service of value.  Otherwise, why advertise in the first place?

How can you do this? Isn’t providing excellent services or products enough to get you referrals? Theoretically, this is correct. If you provide the best service or product to your customers, then the chances are that they will spread the word among their friends and colleagues about you. Then again, wouldn’t it be better not to simply sit back and take that chance?

One way of actively seeking out referrals is by making it part of your business practice. That is, you voice out your desire for referrals from your customers. For example, you can include a short spiel when conducting your business. At the end of your transaction, you can tell your customer something like this: “Sir/Madam, we are confident that you are going to enjoy our product and that you will get the best experience out of it. As part of your responsibility as our client, we would like to encourage you to provide us with an X number of referrals within X number of months.”

Why is this effective? Because you have given them a guarantee that they will be happy with your service or product. That means you will do what it takes to provide them satisfaction. In the customer’s mind, referrals are nothing compared to that.

I have mentioned this before – email can easily become spam. I am sure that you have had your own experiences with spam. You probably dislike spam with a fervor – just like any other individual. However, this topic is not as clear cut as we would like it to be.

What constitutes spam? For some people, spam is basically any unsolicited email. And they take action against this kind of activity. Now, if your emails are unsolicited and sent in bulk – and this would seem to be the route to take for email marketing – you just might find yourself being labeled as a spammer.

This is one complexity that you have to consider when choosing email as your medium for marketing. One way to avoid being labeled as a spammer would be to include a double opt-in method. Wikipedia describes this as “a method which requires a potential recipient to manually confirm their request for information by clicking a unique link and entering a unique code identifier to confirm that the owner of the recipient email address has indeed requested the information. Responsible e-mail marketing and autoresponder companies use this double opt-in method to confirm each request before any information is sent out.”

Short delivery time
When you conduct transactions via electronic means, the transaction time is usually instantaneous. Same thing goes with email – once you click the send button, you can expect your message to get to the intended recipients almost instantaneously.

Accessibility
Ask the average person how many times he checks his email. Actually, you do not even have to go that far – ask yourself the same question. I am sure that at the very least, you would say “a few times” a day. If this is the case for majority of your customers – existing and potential – then your emails will gain more exposure and customers will find you to be more accessible.

Automation
Certain actions can be done automatically without human intervention. This is a big advantage of email marketing. If you lessen the time that you (or your workers) spend on the less important things, you can free up their time to work on more urgent needs. Naturally, you see this as an advantage, right?

In the next post, let us look at the disadvantages of email marketing.

If you want to consider email as a marketing tool, then you should do away with that limited way of thinking. Instead, try to see email and related activities in a broader sense. Here are some relevant points I got from Wikipedia:

• sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
• sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,
• adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers, and
• sending e-mails over the Internet, as e-mail did and does exist outside the Internet (e.g., network e-mail and FIDO).

As you can see, the medium is the same, the ideas similar, but the results hold even more potential if you consider these points.

How about the advantages and disadvantages of using email for marketing? Naturally, these two concepts have to be considered. One of the biggest advantages of email marketing is that it does not cost as much as other forms of marketing. It could even be virtually free. There is more to it than this, though. Let us take a deeper look at the pros and cons in the next post.

Push
When we say that something is a push promotional strategy, you utilize your sales force to engage in activities that will create a demand for your product or service. What happens here is that you go directly to your consumers to get them attracted to what you have to offer. Though I said “directly” I do not mean that you have to get in touch with your customers yourself (although this is part of the strategy). In fact, you can “push” your product or service to wholesalers, which are the first line of people between you and your customers. They can then push the product to retailers, who in turn promote it to the end users.

Pull
The other P in promotional strategy means that you focus your efforts on advertising in order to build up a demand for your product or service. Notice that advertising plays a very big role in this kind of strategy. Naturally, this strategy could mean that you would have to spend a considerable amount of money, that is, unless you can find a way to advertise for free or for almost no cost.

So which one is better? I don’t think that one can be simply labeled as being better than the other. Which strategy you employ would depend on various factors. Either one works well if implemented properly.

Way back when this all started, a blog was used much like a diary. Much as people wrote down the thoughts in the paper journals, same way bloggers started writing down the thoughts online as well as sharing them with the people in rest of world on the web. Today, blogs have become very advanced. Many blogs do not resemble to personal journals now. In fact, almost all blogs focus on some specific topic. Such blogs called niche blogs that have a web design contest among them. As their name implies, these blogs target a particular niche and they stay focused on that topic.

So if you want to start your blog, what type of blog should be best for monetization? It really depends upon your ultimate aim. For example, if you are interested in making some extra money. For this intention, you can have your personal blog that need not focus on any particular topic and does not have to be a part of a web design contest. This type of blog can make money via pay per post type of web sites. According to experts, you should figure out a particular niche that you desire to focus on, as niche blogs are necessary for the monetization of your blog seriously.

Long time marketers have already established sets of rules and guidelines as to how to go about marketing. One of the most practical tips I can share with you is the strategy called The Four P’s of Marketing. They are pretty much self-explanatory but let’s take a look at them.

PRODUCT
You have to be clear as to what product or service it is that you are offering. This is the foundation of your business and it has to be in black and white as the other elements are going to depend on this.

PRICE
Once you have decided on what you are selling or providing, then you can work on the pricing. There are many things to consider when determining your pricing. You have to check the current market prices, your own costs, and see how much you can price your product. Then you focus on the advantage that you are giving your customers with regard to price.

PLACE
As with the other P’s, you have to put yourself in your clients’ shoes. Describe the location of your business – its advantages and disadvantages. Describe your assets. The idea is to build your location around your customers and make them see that.

PROMOTION
Now that you have clear descriptions of your product, your pricing, and the place, it is time for you to come up with a clear and effective promotion strategy. We’ll take a deeper look into this in the next post.

Planning indicates that you are organized, that you have organization built in into your processes. With organization, it is easy to pinpoint problems and successes. It is easy to figure out what you can do better and what you can stop doing. That is why, even if there are only two people involved in your marketing activities, it is vital that you have a clear concept as to how things are organized. At the end of the day, a clear marketing plan will provide much needed accountability.

One way by which you can organize your marketing activities is by creating a clear organizational structure. Again, never mind if you are only two people working on marketing. If you have a clear structure – such as can be visually seen in a flowchart – then you can go about your activities more efficiently.

John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing proposes this structure.

It is a very useful chart that can help you create specific processes for all the items that you need to achieve. And with defined processes, you will get more concrete results.