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Here is a great article for any business looking to re-start their engine.  

How many times do we sit down and wonder, what can I do to drive more leads to my business?  These common sense tips offer a fresh look at how you can ‘freshen’ up your sales and marketing plan and have a real impact to the bottom line.

What are your thoughts on this article?

11 Marketing Tips for your Business

Having a marketing plan for your business is an often overlooked component to many small businesses.  Why do I need a marketing plan? Is a common question asked by new entrepreneurs and those running small 2 or 3 person companies. 

Having a plan that outlines your marketing efforts will help you reach the sales goals you have in mind for the future.  Putting it down on paper is not as hard as you may think. Writing a marketing plan is just another part of your steps to being successful.  Learn to write marketing and sales plans for your small business.  

Example of a marketing plan outline For Small Business

Executive Summary

A high-level summary of the marketing plan.  This is where you include information about how you plan on Marketing your company, such as building a new website, monthly email newsletters, newspaper advertising etc…

The Challenge Laid Out In Your Marketing Plan

Brief description of the products or services that you want to market and associated goals, such as sales figures and strategic goals. Take a step back when writing this section and see things at least 1 year out.  You will be surprised how quickly time moves.

Situational Analysis

Company Analysis

Understand your business goals for both today and in the future.  Is your marketing plan addressing your growth goals and is it specific enough to measure against?

• Goals
• Focus
• Culture
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Market share

Customer Analysis (Persona)

• Number
• Type
• Value drivers
• Decision process
• Customer base by product by region (even if your region is your local town where are the customers located)

Competitor Analysis

• Market position
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Market shares

Collaborators

• Subsidiaries, joint ventures, and distributors, etc.

Climate

Analyse those elements within your geographic region, again even your own town.  Also take in to consideration large global indicators when reviewing the climate of your market.  The price of gas at your local pump is impacted by global activites which in turn will impact your marketing plan.

• Political and legal environment
• Economic environment
• Social and cultural environment
• Technological environment

SWOT Analysis 

A SWOT analysis of the business environment can be performed by organizing the environmental factors as follows: Read more about SWOT and your marketing plan here.

• The firm’s internal attributes can be classed as strengths and weaknesses.
• The external environment presents opportunities and threats.

Market Segmentation

Description of the market segmentation as follows:

Marketing Plan: Section 1

• Description
• Percent of sales
• What they want
• How they use product
• Support requirements
• How to reach them
• Price sensitivity

Marketing Plan: Section 2

Alternative Marketing Strategies

List all alternatives that were considered before you arrived at the recommended strategy. Alternatives might include discontinuing a product, re-branding, positioning as a premium or value product, etc.

• Should we enter a market/industry?
• Should we increase funding for our product(s)?
• Should we maintain funding for our product(s)?
• Should we divest or cease production of our product(s)?

Having this and reviewing it in the future will help keep you on track.

Selected Marketing Strategy

Discuss why the strategy was selected, then the marketing mix decisions (4 P’s) of product, price, place (distribution), and promotion.  As your business grows and your markets become more satisfied learn about the 7 P’s and incorporate them in to your marketing plan. The new P’s are People, Process and Physical evidence.

Product

Your product decisions should consider the product’s advantages and how they will be leveraged. Remember perception plays a large role in the branding of any product. Product decisions should include:

• Brand name
• Quality
• Scope of product line
• Warranty
• Packaging

Price

Discuss pricing strategy, expected volume, and decisions for the following pricing variables:

• List price
• Discounts
• Bundling
• Payment terms and financing options
• Leasing options

Distribution (Place)

Decision variables include:

• Distribution channels, such as direct, retail, distributors & intermediates
• Motivating the channel – for example, distributor margins
• Criteria for evaluating distributors
• Locations
• Logistics, including transportation, warehousing, and order fulfilment

Promotion

• Advertising, including how much and which media.
• Public relations
• Promotional programs
• Budget; determine break-even point for any additional spending
• Projected results of the promotional programs

Short & Long-Term Projections

In your marketing plan include the selected strategy’s immediate effects, expected long-term results, and any special actions required to achieve them. This section may include forecasts of revenues and expenses as well as the results of a break-even analysis.

Conclusion

Summarize all of the above and give insight in to the future, plan for a sequel to your marketing plan.  After all your marketing plan grows with your business and should be reviewed yearly and updated to reflect your business and the changes in your market.

Appendix

Include relevant information on how you came to the conclusion you have.  Exhibits Calculations of market size, commissions, profit margins, break-even analyses, etc.

1. Should you advertise like a BIG business?

2. Is Cheaper better?

3. Where are my margins?

4. Be creative

5. LARGE Ad’s

6. Join With Other Business

7. Ask Your Customers For Help

So what is Internet marketing? Once your website comes into existence you have to spread the word around. Although the best way of getting traffic is by naturally (or organically) appearing high on search engine result pages for keywords and key expressions relevant to your business, it takes a very long time and great effort. You must have an Internet marketing strategy along with carrying out your efforts to optimize your website for various search engines.

The primary components of an Internet marketing plan are:

• PPC (pay-per-click) advertising: In PPC advertising your links are displayed on various search engines and high-traffic websites and you pay for every click they send you. The best example is the Adsense links that you often come across on many websites. Even when you use Google to look for something you see those big boxes on the right-hand side or at the top; they are paid advertisements and if you click those links the advertiser will have to pay Google. Since the links appear at various places, the advertisers can bid for prime locations.

• Link and banner advertising: This is almost same as PPC advertising but in this case you can either pay a monthly amount to the publisher for publishing your link or banner or you can pay for every thousand impressions (an impression is when a page loads and then that page displays your link or banner).
• Publishing articles and distributing them: This is an inexpensive way of spreading your links around the Internet. 100s of 1000s of websites are constantly looking for content to publish and when they use your articles they have no problem attributing them to you along with publishing a link to your website since most probably they are using your articles for free. You can either approach individual publishers or you can submit your articles to various online article distribution services.

• Publishing online press releases: Just like you publish your press releases in newspapers and magazines you can also publish them on online magazines and newspapers. In fact there are many commercial as well as free websites that can publish your press release along with a link to your website.

• Generating highly relevant content for your own website/blog: The more content you have on your website or blog the more reason you give to people and the search engine crawlers to visit your link, and if you update your website or blog on a regular basis you can generate lots of repeat traffic (repeat-traffic is far more valuable than new traffic). Relevant content on your website or blog also encourages other bloggers and website owners to link to you. Besides it also gives more pages to search engines to index and display.

• Encouraging other online publishers to write about your product or service and link to your website: You can always request other online publishers and bloggers to write about your product or service; sometimes they do it for free if they really like what you have to offer and sometimes you need to pay them. Whatever method you follow the basic idea is people writing about you and linking to you.

• E-zine/newsletter publishing: This is definitely one of the oldest forms of Internet marketing. When people voluntarily sign up to receive your emails it means they are really interested in hearing from you and sooner or later they will do business with you.

• Social media marketing: Have you ever wondered why websites like FaceBook, Twitter and YouTube have become such a rage? They allow people to express themselves and exchange ideas and opinions. They can also help you increase your visibility if you can engage in fruitful conversations with the users of these websites.

We are an experienced web services and solutions company handling challenging assignments from all over the world. So far we have helped hundreds of online business owners dominate their respective industries by unflinchingly promoting the links leveraging all the legitimate channels provided by the Internet. With our proven Internet marketing and online advertising services we make sure that you can reach your target audience using some or all Internet marketing methods mentioned above.

Before formulating every Internet marketing strategy we carefully study your market and the kind of impact your product or service can have on different demographics. Since it is the human visitors who are eventually going to do business with you they are our primary target while we give shape to your Internet marketing plan.

How do you know when your website is working for you?

Well to be honest many companies don’t know when. Often businesses see websites purely as a billboard on the side of a highway, yea that infamous ‘information highway’. Now is that where your business needs to be? I doubt it; just like you’re not advertising on the side of your local highway having a generic website isn’t for your business.

Businesses in Oshawa, Ontario can now realize true advantages to being online. The changing economy in Canada (especially for the manufacturing industry) requires change. If your business is struggling to bring in quality leads STOP NOW and re-think your plan.

How to bring in new customers in today’s economy

More then ever online activities are the new drivers for every business.  Ok, maybe not so much for the local variety store but defiantly for everyone else.  You have a product or service that you have been selling for years to a loyal group of customers.  Then the recession hit them and you and everyone else on the planet.  Now what do you do?  Is your corporate website working for you?  Although the world economy is in its worst shape in decades it doesn’t mean you have to close your doors.  Without a doubt other there are other buyers out there looking for what you have.  Finding them is the key to your success.

How do you drive new business to your door in a recession?

Yes it can be done, and yes it can be done without killing your budget.  A well thought out online marketing plan with the right tools can drive business directly to your door.  There are countries out there that are actually growing and needing what you sell.  So why not drive them right to your door?  Canadian product and services are respected the world over.  They are seen as high quality and good value.  So take advantage of that today and drive business your way.

Where do you start?  Well first having the right company on your side is crucial in building a winning strategy.  In the Durham Region AMR Media is known as a leader in global online marketing.  With 18 years experience selling on line around the world AMR Media has the insight to connecting business with customers.  Call or email us today to find out how we can help your business grow.

By now everyone has heard of blogging, twitter, Facebook and other social media technologies.  The question many small businesses have is how does this help me?

If there was one tool or technology I would suggest ever company use it would be blogging.  Blogging is perfect for small businesses that want to reach a wider audience or to take on the big players.  When the Internet was first introduced to business at large the biggest benefit was for those who had limited budgets and limited resources.  Blogging is a perfect tool to help your business reach new customers by giving them insight to who you are and what you can do for them. 

Example of Corporate Blogging for Capital Equipment.

A great example of a Corporate Blog is the website Industrial Machinery News (http://www.industrial-machinery-news.com).  This website showcases industrial machinery utilized in many industries around the world.  Capital equipment sales has taken a big hit with the down-turn in today’s economy.  Many equipment manufactures are looking for new effective ways to drive traffic to their websites.  Industrial Machinery News has done this through targeted articles that enlighten the reader and helps to push them to the customer’s website.

3 Reasons Blogs help small business

What’s the quickest way to improve search engine ranking?

Blogs are search traffic magnets. By writing an article a day, a business can very quickly build up a massive blog archive packed with keyword rich articles! Content is food for the search engine spiders blog archives are an endless source for the spiders. If you feed them well they will in turn reward you with traffic!

Blogs build brand equity and establish you as a market leader.

People read a lot and a lot during the day.  When you blog about your business you continue to state what it is you do, why you do it and why you’re the business to go to. You build your Brand Equity and the view others have of you.  Leadership is easier to do online with a blog then by any other traditional marketing tool.

Blogs give your business a human voice

We all became a little jaded with all the sales and marketing hype over the past decade or so.  Blogs help to knock down those walls and open new doors of communication.  People are becoming engaged, passionate and motivated.

Corporate blogging does not only mean maintaining a blog, but also monitoring the blogosphere. At the rate news travel on the blogosphere, you need to be in at the right place at the right time to address any issues. Monitoring the blogosphere is no longer a choice, in my opinion. If you are not aware of what people are saying about you online, its time to turn your business offline.

 What other benefits are there in corporate blogging? Care to add to this list? 

The key to any successful strategy is to continue to develop, review and refine to form a comprehensive strategy. Knowing what works and what doesn’t is critical in moving forward. Often marketers fail to see their own pitfalls for fear of being embarrassed or worse reprimanded. An open approach will allow you to see not only what didn’t work but more importantly what did. It’s the ‘did’s’ that you build on to improve your strategy.

Where to start when developing a framework for success?

Email Marketing Strategy Checklist.

Email Branding

Segmentation

George Carlin’s famous “Seven Dirty Words” you can’t say on TV definitely applies to email marketing. There are simply certain words that will cause you, and your email, to be instantly rejected. If you’re writing for your own company or providing a service to others you must proof your copy, and more than once.

• Free
• 100% Free
• Amazing
• As seen
• Call now
• Earn
• Compare
• Opportunity
• Make Money
• And so on…