Everything you’ve ever learned about marketing and advertising is WRONG. Everything you’ve ever heard everything you’ve ever tried, everything you’ve ever done, it’s all WRONG.

Hello, my name is Rich Harshaw; I’m the CEO of Y2Marketing, the nation’s leading marketing consulting and fulfillment agency. What I want to do in this series of articles is teach you a system for innovating and marketing your company to a point that it’s instantly evident that you’re the obvious choice to do business with. I want to show you how to make those advantages of doing business with your company so obvious to your prospects and customers that they quickly and easily draw this one simple conclusion: “I would have to be an absolute fool to do business with anyone else but you…regardless of price.”

Let’s say that you own a moving company… and you spend $3,000 a month in the Yellow Pages for a full-page ad, and that ad generates an average of 70 calls per month. Is that good? Is that bad? Well, it depends….but, let me ask you this: What if you could take that same full page ad that costs $3,000 a month, and by just changing what it says, and how it says it–now, instead of getting 70 calls a month, you could generate an average of 955 calls a month…and the average quality of the prospect was quantifiably BETTER? Let’s say you owned that moving company. Would you be excited about that? 955 better qualified calls a month instead of 70? If not, we need to take your pulse and see if you are ALIVE! That’s what’s called getting more results–making more money–for the same time, the same money, and the same effort spent.

Or let’s say you’re the CEO of an up and coming bank that is trying to get a stronger foothold into the small business loan market. Let’s say you’ve got 22 retail locations supported by $370,000 a month in total marketing and advertising expenses for the small business loan program, including heavy telemarketing, direct mail, newspaper, and some radio and television…. as well as various brochures and collateral at each sales office. What if you’re that CEO, and despite spending a fortune on advertising and marketing, your efforts to generate leads and subsequently close loans are losing money and is actually getting worse as time goes by?

What if you could change the message being communicated in your marketing and advertising and in all of those brochures and other collateral materials, and by doing so you could increase the number of leads generated by 465%, increase the quality of those leads, and therefore increase your closing ratio from a paltry 8% to a healthy 31%? Not by changing the amount of money being spent on the program, not by hiring some expensive celebrity to say he gets his loans from you, not by doing anything substantially different than you’re doing now…. Just by changing what you’re saying in your marketing so that it WORKS BETTER.

Whether you spend $3,000 a month, $370,000 a month, or $3,000,000 a month on marketing, I’m going to show you how to use the “Monopolize Your Marketplace” system to leverage what you’re already doing and get those kinds of results for YOUR business by changing the way you do all of your marketing and advertising, including advertisements in all media, brochures, websites, trade shows, signage and everything else. I’m not talking about radical changes that are “creative” or strange or weird or anything else.

The process for getting these kinds of results is very systematic, and anyone with a strong business background can figure it out. But simply put, my purpose is to show you how to change your marketing and advertising, and allow you to leverage your marketing momentum. Just like the moving company and the bank in the examples, and just like the dozens of examples I’m going to give you in this series of articles. The result is you make more money for the same time, money, and effort expended.

Most companies simply don’t know how to do this. Some companies know their marketing could use some help and that it’s under leveraged, and as a result, they’re looking for solutions. Maybe that’s you. But there’s a larger group, a group that doesn’t really understand the untapped potential that lies in their marketing. They spend some money on marketing or advertising, get some results, make some money, and then decide that whatever results they’re getting are probably about as good as it gets… and figure that there’s not much they can do about it.

They figure that the 70 calls a month on the $3,000 ad is about what you ought to get for a $3,000 ad; they never imagined that 955 calls were even possible. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you just understand what you’re going to learn on this program, if you understand how to run what we call the marketing equation on a consistent basis, then you’ll always get predictable, consistent, and inevitably huge results every time you do anything called “marketing.”

The system is based on unchanging principles of human nature that dictate that people always want to make the best buying decision possible and therefore marketing’s job–your job–is NOT to YAK incessantly about how great you are or how low your prices are–but rather, your job is to simply facilitate the prospect’s decision making process, and allow them to feel like they’re in CONTROL of the decision, based on having enough quantity and quality of information. The system is truly a breakthrough in marketing and advertising, yet it’s simple and easy to understand. We have thousands of client successes to prove that it works literally every time it’s implemented, regardless of what kind of business or industry you’re in.

We compete head to head with marketing consultancies and large traditional advertising agencies who grub money from their clients with no accountability for results. These agencies hate our guts because we expose their ineptitude and reveal our results-getting processes to our clients so they can evaluate for themselves… just like we’re going to do on this program… and then we show them step-by-step how to make more money every time they run an ad, produce a brochure, create a website, show up at a trade show, send a sales person out in the field, or any other sales-generating activities. The ad agencies hate us so bad because we threaten their very existence; they even call us the “anti-agency.”

So how can I say that everything you’ve ever learned is WRONG? How can I accuse you, without ever having met you, of leaving huge untapped profits on the table that are easily and readily available just by doing what I’m about to share with you? How can I say, in essence, that you don’t know what you’re talking about marketing-wise–even given the fact that there’s a good chance that you’ve been doing marketing for 10 or 20 or 40 years–and you’ve been getting what most people would consider good results that whole time?

Well, I’m not going to answer that question right now….in fact, I’m going to let you answer that question for yourself as you read this series of articles; If I do my job, then I think that answer will become self-evident. But I’ll make you a promise right now: This is not hype, it’s not the same old stuff you’ve heard a million times repackaged…even though that’s what all the so-called marketing gurus and ad agencies would like for you to think. And even if you do think it’s the same old stuff, I’m going to give you some evaluations later on to prove to you, quantifiably, that it isn’t. Anybody who’s claiming we’re using the same old formulas and processes should be producing marketing and advertising that looks like ours does, works like ours does, and most importantly, makes money like ours does. They should have a specified set of rules and formulas and strategies that can systematically be applied to any kind of business across the board. They should provide a set of evaluations that will allow anyone to instantly and objectively judge and rate their own marketing and predict the success of a marketing campaign before spending any money. And guess what? Nobody does. That’s right, nobody. This information is exactly what you’ve needed and been looking for to take your business to the next level of profitability and success.

Rich Harshaw is the founder of the Monopolize Your Marketplace system and CEO of Y2Marketing Business Marketing Strategies [http://www.y2marketing.com]

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Pixel advertising is an innovative marketing concept introduced by 22-year-old Alex Tew that allows advertisers to buy advertising space on a per-pixel cost basis. The more pixels an advertiser buys, the larger their ad and the greater the chance that it will be clicked on. Selling one million pixels at $1 each, Alex’s Million Dollar Homepage has created quite a buzz in the news media and has easily reached its $1 million target.

Thanks to the stunning success of Tew’s Million Dollar Homepage (MDHP), pixel ad sites have mushroomed all over the net. There are even commercial scripts that you can buy that will allow you to set up your own million-dollar homepage in less than 15 minutes. However, this does not mean you’ll make a million dollars…or even a thousand dollars…or even the cost of the script.

Alex Tew’s pixel advertising concept was simple, so simple that it eventually led many people to pound their heads on the wall repeating to themselves, “Why didn’t I think of this first?” But his idea was also novel and original. And because of its novelty it commanded a lot of attention (and free publicity) from the media.

Needless to say, no news organization will rush to report about a second million-dollar homepage, let alone one set up in 15 minutes with a purchased script. This is not to say, however, that there is no room in cyberspace for the second or third or even thousandth MDHP. In fact, there are presently at least a thousand MDHP clones hoping to capitalize on the pixel advertising craze. Many of them have managed to make a lot of money despite not being the original.

Some people view MDHP clones as little more than shameless imitations trying to leech off Tew’s original concept. This would be the case if his idea, while fun and original, has little use beyond his website.

On the contrary, the clones have proved quite the opposite. Their successes have demonstrated that Tew’s Million Dollar Homepage was worth much more than $1 million. Moreover, they have lend legitimacy to the concept of pixel .

While the original MDHP has made “internet history” (in Tew’s words) by achieving its $1 million goal, it is unlikely to become anything more than just a blip in internet history if the concept is not adopted and refined by others. In fact, most MDHP clones have achieved their riches not by ripping off Tew’s site verbatim, but by borrowing his pixel advertising concept and finding creative uses for it.

Far from being just a fad, pixel advertising holds an enormous promise as an alternative, cost-effective channel for online advertising. But the concept is still in its infancy, and to avoid becoming internet history, it has to evolve. An important aspect of this evolution is how limitations inherent in the concept itself and in how pixel advertising is being used are addressed.

Perhaps the most obvious argument against pixel advertising is that its current use is largely limited to websites with seemingly useless clutters of ads with no content whatsoever. At best these sites offer advertisers little more than a source of non-targeted traffic.

An obvious solution to this is to incorporate pixel advertising into content-rich sites. Instead of selling pixel advertising exclusively through a site with nothing but a giant grid of picture ads, banner-sized pixel grids may be incorporated into a site with real content. A good example of this application is the relatively small and unobtrusive pixel panel placed on http://www.ezclassifieds.org/. Since most people go to ezClassifieds.org to post and look at ads, the site is an ideal place to offer pixel advertising to visitors. Obviously, incorporating pixel ads into content sites involves a lot more work than installing a ready-made script on a new domain. It involves developing a content-rich site and *then* offering pixel ads as an alternative to text links and traditional banner ads.

Used in this way, pixel ads are at the very least superior to traditional banner ads. Unlike traditional banners, a pixel banner may contain ads for several advertisers. Plus, pixel ads are not confined to predetermined shapes and sizes. Many pixel ad scripts will automatically resize images submitted by advertisers, eliminating the need to edit them to conform to the publisher’s requirements. Purchasing pixel ads is usually painless and often fully automated. Since most people have grown accustomed to ignore banner ads, pixel ads are likely to generate higher click-through rates.

Copyright 2006 Oudam Em

Oudam Em is the publisher of MillionDollarBuzz.com, http://www.milliondollarbuzz.com, a pay-per-click pixel advertising site. This innovative model incorporates performance-based pricing into pixel advertising, allowing for more systematic and equitable pricing of pixel ads. MillionDollarBuzz.com also syndicates pixel ads to content-rich websites, extending the use and effectiveness of pixel advertising.

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Marketing plans are important to successful businesses. Your marketing plan will lay down all the important pathways by which your business will market its products and thereby earn. This will serve as both your guide and reminder in creating a successful business.

Sticking to Marketing Plans

It is always easy to create a marketing plan and forget about it in the future. It is very essential that you device your marketing plan to be as practical and applicable as possible. To do this your marketing plan should be simple and comprehensible. It should outline your marketing goals and the ways by which these goals should be attained. Always remember that a successful operation is an operation that sticks to the plan so be strict when it comes to complying with your formulated plan. However, retain enough flexibility to accommodate improvements.

Market Research and Marketing Plans

Before formulating your marketing plan, good market research should be done. Research is a very important if the validity and effectiveness of marketing plans are to be assured. Take valuable information and analyze it properly.

The main issues that you should research on in formulating your marketing plan are the market, your competitors, your product, and your cost. Understanding the market means seeing your target market,s wants and needs. Once you have this data you would be able to predict your target market,s actions and take advantage of them.

Getting data regarding your would be competitors lets you see their strengths and weakness. Your competitors are your best friends (you can learn from them) as well your greatest challengers. Getting to know them will give you sufficient methods in counteracting their actions properly. This will enable you to see clearly the steps you will have to make to gain competitive advantage.

Marketing Plans: The Need for Product Knowledge

Information on your product will give you the most marketing advantage. Coupled with your knowledge of your target consumers, you can market you product to fit their needs. Marketing plans that aim to create a need for a certain product can also be formulated.

Product success also depends on its uniqueness. New ideas catch the consumers interest. Just make sure that you and your product create a good impression. A bad impression from the start will make competing for your public share harder.

Product knowledge will also give you an idea regarding the cost of your product. Remember that the cost of your product will dictate your return on investment. So it is important that you know the basics in allocating product cost. Your cost should not be solely focused in earning the highest amount possible. It should also be balanced by factors such as purchasing power of your target market and the demand for your product. The simple rules of economics never fail you in this aspect.

Successful marketing plans should be realistic and ideal at the same time. You should put the maximum amount of effort on the factors that you can control. This ensures that the time, effort and money that you invest has a substantial return and is not wasted on superficial matters. At the same time, invest a tiny portion of your resources on uncontrollable factors. Experimentation is the mother of all discoveries. Trying things that have never been tried before lets you take advantage of untapped ideas and methods. New ideas oftentimes become trailblazers for businesses.

Written by Steve Pavis In the last year Steve’s companies have generated over 1.5 million dollars worth of business using different strategies one of them been internet marketing online at http://onlinemarketingelite.com Steve is a leading expert with 25 years experience in the business sector has offices in both the United States and the UK. The most solid advice you will ever hear is “find an easy market” with little competition and research your keywords correctly, research is the key

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Maximizing Your Online Advertising Dollars

We’ve already established that you will get further, faster, by utilizing paid advertising resources over free advertising. You must target active buyers in order to sell. Now, let’s get into how this can be accomplished.

THREE WORDS – SEARCH ENGINE INJECTION

People go to search engines to find what they are looking for, so that is the place you want to be.

PAY-PER-CLICK: Basically, with this type of advertising, you need to open an advertiser’s account with a PPC search engine. Select the keywords that your target market are using, and bid on them. The higher you bid per keyword, the higher is the search results you will appear for those keywords.

You only pay the search engine for the actual clicks you receive, not for the number of times your link is shown. For example: You select the keyword pet care. You bid .05c per click, and you have the highest bid for that keyword. Your link will be in the number one position for the search results for that keyword. You only pay that .05c when your link is clicked on, sending that person to your site.

CONTEXTUAL ADS: With this type of advertising, you create keyword targeted ads, and decide on the maximum amount you are willing to pay for each click. This is also referred to as Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising. Rather than just bidding on keywords to rank in search results, you create an advertisement around targeted keywords, and based on how much you are willing to pay, your ad will appear in the search results when someone searches your keywords.

PPC puts your link in the search results, CPC puts your advertisement in the search results. In the case of Google AdWords, your ad would appear in the right sidebar on the results page.

The advantage of this type of advertising, over PPC, is that webmasters everywhere use programs like Ad Sense, to place targeted advertisements on their own web sites, to generate extra income for themselves. As a result of this, your advertisement could end up on thousands, even millions of web pages throughout the net.

EZINE ADVERTISING: Running ads in ezines, solo ads in particular, is a fairly good way to promote your business. However, unless the ezine is published on the web, rather than through email, it will not get you into the search results of your target market.

The great thing about ezine advertising is that you can still target your audience, by advertising in market specific publications. For instance, if you are promoting children’s products, then your ezine advertising can be focused on parenting publications. If you’re selling dog shampoo, then you can run your ads in ezines that are devoted to pets and pet care.

Now, the absolute best way to utilize ezines for promotion is through the writing and submittal of articles.

Articles can be submitted to directories and syndication services, allowing publishers to use your content in their own publications and on their web sites. This is extremely viral. If your articles are good, they will be picked up and used by publishers and webmasters who are looking for content related to your subject matter. This is one way that you can effectively leverage someone elses list.

The key here, is to write good articles. If you are not a versed writer, hire a professional. Ghostwriters will write content for you, for a fee of course, which you will retain the copyright for, and can distribute as your own work, to as many directories and publications as you wish. More than that, if you submit your articles to publications that are syndicated, using RSS feeds, you will find that you are reaching more people with less effort, while being indexed in the search engines as well.

Syndicated publications have a further reach because they are able to be reproduced quickly and easily on other web sites across the net. Think of it in these terms: Dear Abby is a syndicated columnist. Her column appears, not in a single newspaper, but in thousands of newspapers nation wide. Why? Because the publishers of those papers know that folks want to read her column. So, if they want to please their readers, they will provide them with what they want to read. This concept can be applied to the Internet as well.

Additionally, if you have your own web site, you may want to consider syndicating a publication or two on your own pages, to provide your visitors with interesting information, relevant to their needs. This will give them more reason to return to your web site regularly, which obviously gives you repeat opportunities to sell to them.

The secret to success with any advertising campaign is getting in front of your buyers. Put your information in the hands of those looking for it. Don’t spend all of your valuable time posting free ads all over the net, hoping that someone will click your link.

Would you like to know why marketing gurus promote free advertising? It is because they’ve joint ventured their way into free upgraded memberships in these free advertising programs, counting on their personal endorsements to get you to sign up and then upgrade, all the while, building their contact list to include you. And once you upgrade, it’s not free advertising anymore, is it?

Copyright © 2006

The Trii-Zine Ezine

http://www.ezines1.com

About the Author:
Trina L.C. Schiller
Publisher – The Trii-Zine Ezine – Internet marketing and home business resources and information. Serving online professionals since 2001.
http://www.ezines1.com/triizine
Publisher – AdsOnQ – Article Distribution and Syndication On Quikonnex http://www.ads-on-q.com

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The history of these battles is the history of guerrilla warfare.

There are similar stories in business.

One example is that of the “Marlboro Man”. Before the Marlboro Man, the Marlboro brand of cigarettes was ranked 31st – almost rock bottom.

After the introduction of the Marlboro Man, and the guerrilla branding campaign to promote it, Marlboro became the #1 brand in a multi-billion dollar industry.

It may shock you how many of the “big business” names (that are now household words) started out as struggling small businesses.

The history of the ascent of these icons is the history of guerrilla marketing.

Until 1984, the principles of guerrilla marketing were known only by a select few people in the world. They jealously kept this information quiet with almost fanatical secrecy. And who can blame them? If you had some special knowledge that allowed you to rise to the top of your field, would you want this information to be made public? Of course not!

The balance of power was dramatically upset by a maverick marketing genius named Jay Conrad Levinson – a man who is arguably the most respected marketer in the world.

He is the man who coined the term “guerrilla marketing” and introduced these secrets to the average Joe (like me). His concepts are so successful that he has published 27 books on the subject (in 37 languages), his books are required reading in the most respected MBA programs in the world, and he is now the most widely read and respected author of business books in the world.

And Jay did all this “from scratch”. That is, the success of the “Guerrilla Marketing” brand is a testament to the very principles Jay himself teaches.

It just so happens that he is also one of the creators of the Marlboro Man. (Think what you will about tobacco, but you can not deny the power of the marketing behind Marlboro – arguably the most successful marketing campaign in history, and the most widely recognized brand in the world.)

So, what then, is Guerrilla Marketing all about?

Let’s take a segment from Jay’s new book “Guerrilla Marketing for the New Millennium” to learn:

“Marketing is absolutely every bit of contact any part of your business has with any segment of the public. Guerrillas view marketing as a circle that begins with your ideas for generating revenue and continues on with the goal of amassing a large number of repeat and referral
customers.

“The three key words in that paragraph are EVERY, REPEAT, and REFERRAL. If your marketing is not a circle, it’s a straight line that leads directly into Chapters 7, 11, or 13 in the bankruptcy courts.

“HOW IS GUERRILLA MARKETING DIFFERENT FROM TRADITIONAL MARKETING?

“Guerrilla marketing means marketing that is unconventional, non-traditional, not by-the-book, and extremely flexible. Eighteen factors make it different from old-fashioned marketing: “

Jay then goes on to list 18 things that separate guerrillas from “mere mortals”.

(See below for info on his new electronic book – it’s recognized as his most powerful work yet – and can’t be found in book stores.)

So, how then, does this information apply to those of us marketing on the Internet?

Far more than you think! The Internet is not just a new guerrilla battlefield – it’s the *ultimate* guerrilla battlefield. There have been more small business mega-success stories in the last 5 years than in the combined history of business.

And there are clearly two factors that have influenced this more than anything:

1. The Internet

2. Guerrilla Marketing

Ever wonder why big businesses are totally blowing it online? Because they are not guerrilla thinkers!

These big bloated bureaucracies are sluggish and set in their ways. This means that someone like you can step in and out-maneuver them. (More and more big businesses are turning to small business entrepreneurs to teach them how to market online – the tables have turned!)

So, start thinking like a guerrilla right now. You have the advantage – all you have to do is take it.

Here’s the definitive place to get started – where you will find an easy to follow step by step plan for launching a “guerrilla attack”! History is full of stories where tiny, unadvanced armies have handily defeated better equipped and much larger armies.

Mark Joyner is the CEO of http://www.markjoynerseminarvideos.official.ws To quickly and easily start using free viral traffic building as he recommends in this article, we recommend you get a copy of these seminar videos.

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Advertising your business is probably the most important thing you can do to get your business rolling with customers. Many businesses overlook this important part of starting out. You have to build a good reputation as well as putting your name out as a reliable source. You have to make sure the customer trusts you. Build your trust with the consumer.

Advertising is a great way to catch the consumers eye. You can create a catchy slogan that everyone will remember. The worst thing about advertising is; it is very, very time consuming. I spend about half my business time advertising. The good thing about advertising is; it’s zombie work, anyone can do it. You have to advertise or your business will never prosper like it should. I will also be telling you how I advertise, using the same methods I use.

Ok the key with advertising your business is, advertising to the right audience. If you are selling musical instruments, you don’t want to drag people there that were looking for car parts. You have to advertise to the most wide range of consumers. And at the same time, you want people that are interested in buying your product already.

Always gear your advertisements to the material or theme you are selling. If you started advertising your business today, it should take you 1-5 months to see a steady stream of traffic coming to your online business. If you had a team of people working on it, say if you paid for it, the results would be faster. But that doesn’t guarantee you would get better results. You don’t know what that company knows about advertising and marketing. And in my opinion, if you want it done right, do it yourself yourself, don’t pay someone to advertise your business. Like I said its easy, it’s very time consuming. Advertising doesn’t happen overnight.

You’ll want to advertise in as many social communities as you can. Preferably ones that don’t mind you advertising your business a little on the profile. Don’t use MySpace. Some really good social places that have become really popular are digg.com, del.icio.us.com, technorati.com, facebook.com, spurl.net, and reddit.com to name a few. Social places like this, can bring in more than a quarter of your online business. They have millions of members. Go make some friends. Tell your friends in the social community about what you do online for business. You are sure to get a lot of repeat customers. People that know you, tend to return more often than if they didn’t know you.

That’s one way you could advertise. You could also write articles. Content is king and millions of articles are read everyday. Millions of online businesses advertise through writing articles everyday. Just find an article website and get to work. Write articles about your knowledge and skills in certain areas related to your business. If you are running a business, you should know a little about it and the products you sell. Think up a good subject or do some research then write an article from 200-1500 words. It’s easy, just use what you already know and write about it. If you sell electronics, write about a new electronics item and compare it to the older model; something like that. Then at the bottom of the article you put your website link information in. You are basically advertising your knowledge to attract people to your business. If you sound like you know what your talking about in your articles, people will be more apt to visit the link to your website. Try and make your articles interesting and original so they keep reading.

I use EzineArticles.com, searchwarp.com, ideamarketers.com, & goarticles.com, and yes, I have told you about these sites before. They are really effective and I would say about half of my targeted audience comes from writing my articles. You can also get paid to write articles for other companies. But that’s another story and I will write about that some time soon.

Join some forums and newsgroups related to your business material. Forums and newsgroups are a great place to meet people related to the content your business involves. Newsgroups and forums will have people with the same interests as you. It’s a social marketplace where people make posts and others reply to them. For instance, someone may have a question about where to get some headers for their car. You could reply to them by pointing them to your automotive website. Offer sales throughout the newsgroup or forum once and a while. People will most likely buy from you, because they have read your posts before, and they have got to know you through time. People tend more to buy from you if they know you, it’s a trust issue. And not trusting someone online is very common. You don’t know who you are dealing with sometimes. Making some friends throughout forums and newsgroups is a great way to build some trust. So if your business had to do with auto parts or cars, you would sign up for auto related newsgroups and forums. Remember to hit that target audience.

Use those signatures. Throughout forums or just about anywhere online, there is a place to put a signature. I signature is free space that the forum or social community will give you. You can put your name here. But I always utilize this space to advertise. That’s right throw your website or business information into the forum signature. Every time you post something, try and give your experienced opinion on the matter. If you succeed to show your expertise in certain areas, people will understand that you know what you are talking about and trust your word a little more. Then when they see your signature is related to the subject matter you are talking about, they would be more likely to click the link to your business.

Remember when you advertise, you only want to drag in your key audience. Your key audience is important because they are the customers who were already looking for your content. So they are already interested in buying something. You’ll notice I keep talking about advertising and trust. That’s because they go hand and hand. Even if the customer doesn’t know you, advertising can actually help someone trust you more. especially if you have shown them that you know what you are talking about.

There are tons of ways to advertise or market your business. These are a few of the main ways I advertise. Give them a try. Your website or online business will thrive the more you advertise it.

Learn how to start your own home business by following this amazing step-by-step guide. Want to be an Ebay Powerseller This guide will help you. Check out my Daily Blog

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If you are now or ever have been part of a large company or corporation, you are familiar with planning exercises–business planning, financial planning, marketing planning, all sorts of planning. Some of it is done in groups, while some of it is done by individuals. And if it’s done “right,” there will be some kind of document at the end of process, which will either be used as a reference throughout the period the planning covered, or will get put away and never looked at again.

I have a theory that in large enterprises the more “intangible” the plan, the more fanfare goes with it, and the less useful the outcome is. For example:

– A financial plan–with lots of numbers and forecasts–is tangible and trackable; it can be checked and compared with actuals at pretty much any point along the line. This type of plan is invariably prepared by only a handful of people with very little muss or fuss, and is used regularly to track business profit and loss status.

– A business plan tends to be less tangible and trackable. Though there is certainly a financial component, there are also more ephemeral bits–things like goals, say–that are more difficult to check on. This type of plan is usually done by a group of “key” managers in one or more formal (sometimes facilitated) sessions, and may be referred to periodically to take the business pulse.

– A marketing plan is about as intangible as one can get, and it requires creativity, discipline, and commitment to craft trackable elements for it. This type of plan is often accompanied by the blare of trumpets and lots of meetings, and the resulting document is likely to be full color with lots of charts and graphics–and is never used.

Though I’ve oversimplified and generalized these three types of plans, the bottom line is that, in my experience, the marketing planning process in large corporations tends to be a wastefully resource-intensive exercise that doesn’t provide much value to the actual pursuit of the marketing function. There are a lot of flourishing gestures and intense facial expressions, and not a lot of really useful work gets accomplished. No wonder that smaller businesses rarely proactively engage in marketing planning. They don’t see the point.

But hold on.

Isn’t that–pardon the cliché–throwing the baby out with the bath water? Just because marketing planning is ineffective in many cases, does that mean it shouldn’t be done at all?

I say no. In fact, I say that smaller businesses must plan their marketing programs–map out what they need to accomplish and how they will do it–preferably prior to the start of their business year. They need to step back and think creatively about how to use marketing most cost-effectively to meet business objectives, and how marketing can help them gain or retain competitive advantage.

Smaller enterprises cannot afford to waste their resources–either human or fiscal. They cannot afford to pursue ad hoc initiatives that may or may not produce results. And they definitely cannot afford to implement marketing tactics whose results can’t be measured in some way.

A marketing plan does not need a lot of fanfare, facilitated meetings, or fancy graphics to be effective–quite the reverse, in fact. It needs to be a useful reference document that spells out what programs will be pursued and why, and how those programs relate to each other. It also needs to specify how the
effectiveness of the programs will be measured and how often.

Here is an overview of the steps to take to arrive at a useful marketing plan for your business:

Clearly state where you are today. What was your marketing expense for 2004 (assuming you work on a calendar year basis)? What percent of revenue does this represent? What specific programs did you implement? What results did they produce? What does the competitive landscape look like today? How about your market? Have there been changes over the past year that could affect you?

Define your marketing goals. Based on your 2005 business
objectives, what specific marketing goals are appropriate? Clearly state these goals in active terms (e.g., “Participate in five industry trade shows with at least a 20% qualified lead rate,” “Realize at least fifteen media mentions in local and trade press.”).

Identify appropriate marketing tactics. Considering your goals individually and as a whole, what marketing activities are most likely to be successful? Think about how the activities can interrelate to give you the most bang for the buck (e.g., a newsletter that is put on your web site, emailed to your contacts, and printed in hard copy format maximizes your
preparation/publication expense). Also, identify activities or tasks that will require third party assistance (e.g., graphic design, copy writing, or–ahem–4-R Marketing’s services!

Determine how and how often you will measure the effectiveness of your activities. Marketing results can be intangible–how do you know whether your web site leads to sales or whether your trade show exhibit was as effective as it could have been?–but they still need to be measure somehow. Come up with proxy measurements that you have confidence in–the number of hits on a certain web page, for instance, or the number of visitors to your exhibit who stay for more than five minutes–and that you can use to measure the degree to which your activities are hitting the mark in terms of achieving your goals.

That’s basically it. A marketing plan in four pages (more or less). A fifth page might be a marketing budget that encompasses all the activities you have planned; this can serve as another metric to gauge marketing effectiveness.

Now that you have a marketing plan for the year, here’s what to do with it:

– Communicate marketing goals and activities to your staff and be sure to illustrate how they relate to overall business objectives.

– Create and implement a project schedule that spells out at least high level timelines and milestones for your marketing activities. A lot of marketing tasks are long term (some conferences call for papers a year ahead, and trade show planners will want stuff from you months prior to the show date); putting a schedule into play will keep things from falling through the cracks.

– Refer to the plan periodically (once a month? once a quarter?) to see if you are on track relative to the status of the business as a whole. Are your goals still appropriate? Are your activities on track?

– Also periodically, gather and review the metrics you’ve identified for your marketing activities. What do they indicate? Are you getting what you need from your programs, or are changes called for? Tracking marketing metrics gives you the opportunity to modify your activities “midstream” if they aren’t producing results, rather than waiting till the end of the year and realizing you’ve wasted resources on the wrong things.

If you are in any kind of business, no matter how large or small, you do need a marketing plan. But your plan does not need to be accompanied by a herald blowing a trumpet, and does not need to be a huge document with loads of graphics and tables. Create a plan that is concise, actionable, and measurable–and you will have an invaluable tool that will help you grow your
business the way you want to.

Trish Lambert, president of 4-R Marketing LLC (http://www.4rmarketing.com), is an experienced marketing consultant and creator of the 4-R Marketing Model™ for service businesses. Very much a “non-conformist” in the marketing world, Trish creates campaigns and programs that make sense for her clients, that can be clearly measured, and that produce the targeted results.

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When was the last time that you placed a single advertisement and made a million dollars? Have you ever asked yourself why you have to place ads over and over again? This article will explain how advertising works and if you understand the concept that I am about to teach you than you will be on the road to greater rewards.

First of all have you ever tried to get through a door without using a key? Did you push on it with your shoulder? How far did you get? Did it work? So after you pushed on it the first time and it didn’t open, how many times after that did you push on it again? My point is that in order to succeed you had to repeat the same task over and over and over again. Just pushing one time to open the door did not work. This task requires multiple pushes.

Advertising Doesn’t Work

Well the same can be said about advertising. The truth is that advertising does not work. Let me repeat that, advertising does not work. If it did work you could place a single ad and never do another one and make millions of dollars. Advertising is a broken vehicle. Because of this stated fact that is why you have to be repetitive.

Please do not think that this article is going to tell you not to advertise because I am not. That is not the point. What we are saying is that a lot of people fail in business because they do not understand how advertising works. Advertising should not be confused with marketing. It is just a tool that marketers use to get attention for their product or service. Advertising is the process of giving intelligence. It is publishing. Advertising has its focus on our senses one by one or in a combination. Advertising does not feel it makes people feel. Advertising should be designed to touch someone.

Advertising is only a tool like a pencil, a map or a computer. When used this way the benefits will out weigh its limitations. Advertising makes expressions, it is not able to make discernments. It cannot tell if someone is interested or not interested its only job is to give intelligence. This is a process.

People Like To Be Sold Through Advertising

Whatever you do at all cost do not try and make the process of advertising human. In other words advertising should draw the human out of people and not try to be one. Many marketers fail at this. Do not think that your advertisement has to answer questions. Instead they should create them in your clients mind causing them to look for you. Advertising gets people in the door to meet you. Once they are there it is your turn to proceed.

Now people look at advertising like it is a key. People love advertising. Advertising brings new ideas, intelligence. Advertising does for people what words do for paper. It gives instruction by raising questions like, “if I bought this service could it solve this problem for me”. By a good use of questions advertising tells people where to go to get more without them realizing it. A reason why many advertisements fail is because they tell people what to do without giving the person another option. Advertising qualifies people. You want your advertisements to be open ended not closed ended. You want people to see as many uses for your product or service as the mind can hold. A good advertisement is like having a team of salespeople. In your clients mind “no” is not an option because they will see all the many benefits of saying “yes” one solution at a time. When this is done the emotions take over and your client will likely proceed with the sale. Let your advertisements allow your clients to dream.

The World Needs Your Advertisement

Without advertising the world would be a much smaller place. Advertising connects people with ideas. Use your advertising to your own advantage to get what you want. When done with the right motivation and understanding an ad campaign done over an over again can be compelling.

Doing the right thing not well enough in the past seemed to be my only forte. When I started to think about how my ads would make people feel it was like I grew up ten years. Today I pay very close attention to my advertisements. My goal is always to show people that my business is for their benefit.

Remember to keep what you want your customers to feel in mind as you float your advertisement campaigns on the internet. Advertising is the giving of intelligence. The best way to advertise is to think about how what you say will make your client react. Since advertising is a broken vehicle keep doing it from different angles. Cover all of your bases. This way your sales will grow faster and become predictable.

Written by Marvin Kane. You can learn more about how to achieve incredible results for yourself. As a work from home marketer with over 20 years experience I inspire people to find out what it is like to earn $30,000 in 30 days.

Simply visit my website for the details.
http://www.moneydrama.com

Get A FREE copy of “Maximum Profits From Minimum Ads” ($30 Value Yours FREE)
http://www.moneydrama.com

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What is a Smart marketing system? Well, a Smart marketing system is not really a known term, but rather a term coined by someone who writes marketing books, does seminars and is a consultant in marketing. It makes sense to coin new phrases and new terms and indeed that is in perfect form of someone who does marketing.

To me, I believe a Smart marketing system would be one that would be similar to the one that I developed for by franchising company, which I had founded. I called my marketing system; Bonzai and Blitz Marketing. Whereas the marketing consultant and author who wrote about the Smart Marketing System; talks about a hybrid model of marketing which can be applied to be different types of businesses, I am quite confident that the Bonsai and Blitz marketing that I have created in the real world is far superior in every way, yet both methods are superior to what nearly all businesses out there are doing presently.

In fact, we proved it when we marketed our franchise system in 23 states, 450 cities and 110 major markets. We attacked the market and targeted the customers and slammed the competition into the carpet so hard that they gave up. Now that is marketing; it is that Smart marketing? Could I call my marketing system a Smart marketing system? Indeed I probably could; but I chose to call it Bonzai and Blitz marketing.

What we learned in this scenario when studying various hybrid marketing plans is that different people have found different ways to market and any marketing system that achieves results in the market place is a Smart marketing system. And that means whether it is my Bonzai and Blitz marketing system or the actual branded; Smart Marketing System by a marketing guru and consultant; it is still marketing and creative marketing which puts together multiple marketing methods towards a single message and a single goal for the company. I believe that in this case anyone would consider that to be Smart marketing. I hope you will consider this in 2006 and develop your marketing plan in a creative, innovative and successful fashion.

“Lance Winslow” – Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is an online writer in retirement.

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It certainly pays to have professional help when it comes to running advertising campaigns, but with some tips and good creatives, you should be able to run your own advertising campaigns effectively.

Running Your Own Advertising Campaigns

Follow this step-by-step guide to running your own advertising campaign to ensure success:

1. Conduct a Market Research

Identify your target market as mentioned in the article Choosing Websites to Place Ads at http://www.momtycoons.com/promotion/advertising-websites.shtml. Conduct a thorough research on where you will find your preferred customers. See where your competitors are advertising.

A simple way to see where your competitors have incoming links from is to go to [http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/] and type in your website address and 3 of your competitor’s URL’s. You will see a chart showing comparisons between your link popularity and yours. Click on each Search Engine name to see all the inbound links of the 4 websites (including yours).

For offline advertising, identify local and budget publications that reach your target market. Your goal should be to reach the people who are most likely to respond to what you offer.

2. Decide Upon Your Advertising Budget

It is important to decide beforehand how much money you want to spend on a particular advertising campaign so that you do not end up wasting your precious bucks. Deciding how much to spend depends upon your financial ability and the size of your business.

3. Plan Your Campaign

Plan your campaign in advance. For planning an effective campaign, you will need to mix-and-match various forms of advertising. An example of how to break down your budget into various forms of advertising is shown below:

Total Budget – $1000

Online Advertising

Press Release – $100

Website Advertising – $100

Pay-Per-Click Advertising – $100

Ezine Advertising – $90

Sponsored/Text Links on Websites – $70

Classified Ads – $40

Offline Advertising

Promotional Items – $200

Print Shopping Guides – $50

Classifieds – $100

Flyers – $150

4. Prepare Excellent Advertising Material

Before you start implementing your planned campaign, aim yourself with adequate and quality advertising material. For online advertising, prepare good quality graphic banners in various sizes and compelling text ads of varying word-lengths. Write or get professionally written, an interesting press release. Your ad creatives and text ads are extremely important to your campaign. DO NOT risk designing them yourself unless you are extremely good at doing it. Saving a few dollars here may cost you your entire advertising campaign! Leave this job to the professionals.

For offline advertising, have adequate printed material on hand. This will include form mailers, brochures, flyers, signboards etc.

5. Begin Your Campaign

Send out your press release. I recommend PRWeb. This is not the place to try saving a few dollars so avoid sending only a ‘free’ press release as it will get you nowhere. Go in for their paid press release distribution programs. The extra $50 will be worth a lot more!

Book ad spots on various websites and in Ezines and Newsletters. Buy clicks on relevant keywords from ‘Pay-per-click Search Engines’. Place text ads/classifieds/directory listings etc. in various websites, directories and indexes.

For Offline Advertising, start distributing brochures and mailers, send out mailers etc.

6. Track Results and Work on Your Campaign

Once your advertising campaign gets started, you will need to track the results of each form of advertising. Allow 3 to 6 months time for advertising forms which are performing well to judge their performance accurately. If some means of advertising do not work at all or bring in results that are not at all cost-effective, discontinue them. See which text ads, banners and keywords (in pay-per-click) bring best results and use them again. Try using different keywords and monitor the results.

You must daily track all your ads actively and keep tweaking the ads to get the best performance out of them. Some banners, texts and keywords will perform very well while others won’t. Only through effective tracking will you be able to make your campaign a success.

Hiring an Agency

If you have an advertising budget of $25,000 and more, you should consider hiring an Advertising Agency to work for you. Advertising agencies have experienced staff for writing ad copies, designing compelling graphic ads etc. and they will place your ads on relevant websites and ezines and also provide you with ad tracking stats, thus making work easier for you.

About the Author:

Lata Tokhi is a successful website publisher with a network of popular websites. She shares her internet success secrets with you at http://www.MomTycoons.com

Visit some of her other popular websites at http://www.DotComWomen.com, a Home & Lifestyle website and an online community and http://www.Celebrating-Christmas.com, a complete Holiday portal.

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