Make Your Next Move Your Best Move - Now It's On You

There is no greater mistake than when a young man or woman believes he or she will succeed with borrowed money. Why? Because every man's experience coincides with that of Mr. Astor, who said, "it was more difficult for him to accumulate his first thousand dollars, than all the succeeding millions that made up his colossal fortune." Money is good for nothing unless you know the true value of it (understand that money is merely a form of currency - and there are several forms of currency. Also, money as we know it is Fiat Currency . Which means it only has the value man assigns to it. It has no intrinsic or inherent value and no commodity-backed value ).

You’ve read about the importance of being courageous, rebellious and imaginative. These are all vital ingredients in an effective advertising campaign. However, they must be tempered with the most important ingredient of all—strategy. As long as the advertising industry has been in existence there has been debate about whether advertising is art or commerce. Quite frankly, this kind of divisive argument is a waste of time and has only helped to diminish what little respect the industry has earned through the years. Besides, the answer is simple. Advertising is the art of commerce. It can’t be pure art because pure art won’t engage the consumer on behalf of the brand. Art can certainly get people’s attention, but it rarely causes them to take action. If the consumer is not actively engaged, the brand won’t grow. If the brand doesn’t grow, the company won’t profit. And if the company ceases to make a profit, it dies and takes its brand with it. On the other hand, advertising can’t be mer...

In order to get consumers (whether they are retail or service customers or business-to-business audiences) to notice an advertising message, many companies resort to loudness and one-upmanship. Neither of these tactics works in the long run. If your competition is talking loudly and you decide to yell louder, what do you think they will do? Yep. They’ll start to scream. Nobody wins a shouting match when it comes to advertising. And usually you’ll find you even lose a few customers in the process because they can’t stand the noise. It’s the same with one-upmanship. If you have to compete on more and better coupons or more and better discounts, giveaways or incentives unrelated to your core product, your revenue per sale decreases as well as your number of sales. Customers see these types of games as gimmicky, fake and disingenuous; and they leave. The ones who do stay now view you and your competitors as commodities with no difference except your price. That is a dangerous place for a ...

Most of the Internet Marketers seem to think of website promotion as just submitting to search engines, directories, link building and advertising in ezines or banner exchanges. It is a known fact that most people in the world use most of their time off-line. They read newspapers, magazines, listen to radio and watch TV, talk with their clients, friends, neighbors and family. Not all the time is spent surfing on the internet. To ignore the value of off-line marketing is to leave 65-70% of the money to be made from your websites on the table. Some suggestions for creating an off-line advertising/publicity campaign are : Let your local papers know ( you can purchase a press release from our SEO affiliate ) that you have a unique product/service that will benefit the local community and you are able to help them save time, learn more and be more effective in their daily lives. This could lead to an interview with a local reporter or even with a national program with your website as a feat...

I am constantly asked the following question: “What should I put on my content sites?” They are asking about our Autoblogging strategy where we recommend creating content sites and pushing the traffic to create income streams. Here are some things to consider putting on your content site: 1. A Resource Directory Resource directories provide visitors with resources relative to their search inquiry. Though it is not always the case, these directories are also Link Directories. According to Merriam-Webster, a directory is an alphabetic or classified list . Yahoo actually got it’s start as a resource directory. They are now one of the top visited sites on the entire internet. The search engine ranking data (http://www.RankingFactors.com) shows that outbound links are still a positive ranking correlation factor (even though so-called SEO “experts” moan about PR leak and other such nonsense). However, in this " ever-changing SEO industry " (and according to Moz ), the quality of t...

At a retail store in Hernando not long ago, the owner and I exchanged business cards. I looked at his logo, and he studied the name on my card. "I know that logo. We've been in touch in the past," I said. "That's right. I know your company name," he said. Although we weren't able to pinpoint when or why we'd exchanged mail previously, we guessed it had been at least five years back. Neither one of us remembered any details. Rather, he had created a distinctive visual identity for his store, and I had devoted effort to linking my name with creative marketing. For at least five years his look and my reputation had lurked in the other's memory banks, while thousands or hundreds of thousands of other business identities had come and gone without leaving a significant trace. Why? Memorability. It illustrates a key element of successful branding. What is Branding? Branding is the process of creating distinctive and durable imprint in the minds of consu...

Although on the books, marketing is an expense, it’s really not when you stop and think about it.  What do you need to do to generate sales?  You have to let people know what you do and what you can offer them.  It’s called marketing. So when times are tough, why would you stop using your main resource outside of referrals to get more money in the company? With that in mind, forget what your accountant labels marketing as, you have to treat it as an investment. Allow me to go further on the subject to clear it up. In accounting, sure, marketing IS an expense.  But here's what happens when marketing is viewed purely as an expense: You think of marketing solely as an expense.   When business gets slow, many people cut marketing.  Now you are letting less people know about your products and services.  Results:  You get even less business. If you think of marketing only as an expense, the odds are, your marketing is nowhere near as effective as it ...

An effective logo/tagline combination can be one of the best ways to successfully brand your business. But you don't have to take my word for it. Do any of the phrases below ring a bell? See if you can identify which companies each of the following taglines belongs to. You'll find the answers at the end of the article. But before you read ahead to get the answers, take a few minutes to test the power of taglines yourself by naming the brand each of these top-ranked taglines belong to. 1) Have it your way 2) Is it in you? 3) The quicker picker-upper 4) Just do it 5) It's everywhere you want to be 6) Drivers wanted 7) When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight 8) Finger lickin-good 9) Because I'm worth it 10)Let your fingers do the walking So what exactly is a tagline? When it comes to marketing, one of the most powerful tools you can use to build your brand is a tagline or slogan. The two terms are pretty much interchangeable. I...

At an annual American Association of Advertising Agencies media conference, speakers stated that the industry must cater to consumers empowered by technology and multiple content choices. A joint study with Harris Interactive and the American Association of Advertising Agencies reported that roughly one-third of consumers say there is too much advertising interrupting programming. So...in a nutshell, as business owners, what this means is that we need to find ways to interact with our consumers in ways that are convenient for them while not interrupting them from what they are trying to do. While it may sound like a contradiction, it is certainly achievable. For example, most web site owners and anyone engaging in internet marketing has already realized that despite grabbing visitors attention in a big way, pop-up or pop-under ads generally perform very poorly if at all. In fact, they can often have a negative impact on a visitor's experience and remove all possibility of them beco...

If you... Need traffic to your website Need new sales Need to establish your brand Writing articles can do all of these and more. This is one of the ways to get exposure for your web site, or the product / service you are promoting by writing articles. This will not happen over night, but if you write one article a week the number of links you can build up for your site will grow steadily, and each one of those links helps you become more visible on the internet, helping your potential customer base find you rather than your competitors. Why go to all the trouble of writing and submitting an article, well these are some of the benefits of submitting articles Increased number of back-links to your website You can targeting different keywords and key phrases Ge links back to your site from your article content Authoritative back-links - establish yourself as an authority on your product or service Increase traffic to your website Increase your search engine position Why we ...

Do you want to know what it takes to successfully market a web site and generate repeat sales? It's simple really. You must position yourself as a perceived expert. It doesn't matter what product or service you are selling, this same premise will hold true. What is a perceived expert? Good question. Gone are the days where you could build a simple company web site, list your products and send customers to an order page. New web sites are sprouting up like blades of grass and competition is intensely fierce. The bottom line is this: why should a customer buy from YOU? A small but growing number of small business owners have discovered the answer to this question and are kicking your butt. How are they accomplishing this? By positioning themselves as an expert in their industry and using their web site to communicate that fact to potential customers. How can you become an expert too? Offer your potential customers an education to compliment the product or service you are selling....