Important People Management Skills - 5 Key Secrets For Your People Management Success

You be very good at managing your people if you want business success. These are skills that are mostly ones that you can learn and develop, and, of course, it really helps if you have a natural capacity to get on well with people too.

Practicing and building your abilities is not as hard as you might think. Here are the simple secrets that you can focus on to make the difference.

1. Do What It Says On The Tin - Manage!

Your people see the name on your badge, or your door (or your parking space) and they expect you to do what's expected of you. They want you to lead from the front and show you're in charge. This is about leadership; being the last on the ship and heading the charge into battle. When things get tough you dig in and show up.

Managing is about making sure you recognize what your responsibilities are and deliver them, and only them. People management skills deliver by giving others some responsibility and letting them get on with it. And that you are accountable for it all. No-one else; no shirking and blaming others. It's you.

2. Build A Great Team

If you really want to make the best of your people asset, you get great at leveraging the amazing talents of all your people. Squeezing their potential to the full by supporting, guiding and coaching (maybe even 'coaxing' them!), to realize what is possible.

You see, a manager's role is to deliver success. And not just in the results in their business - psst, it's more. People management skills are totally about a legacy of developing and utilizing capability fully. Gluing individual talents together. Making the whole bigger than the sum of the parts.

3. Ooops - And Let's Not Forget Those Results

Bottom line, is that you have to deliver the day to day, year by year business and profits or other success measures expected of you. It's what pays you and your people.

So, you have an obligation to keep your eye on the ball and deliver. Your people will depend on you to lead them to success, with their help, of course (and believe it, they will be your rocks, if you do this right). They trust you to work hard enough to make the numbers stack. In the tough business world we inhabit, their jobs depend on it.

4. Build Relationships

OK - let's rewind a little. It helps you as a people manager if you get on well with people. If you are a people person. It's pretty much a pre-requisite. When you are wringing out performance from your people, it really helps if you have a rapport together.

And it's easy to do.

You show an interest in them. You ask them questions that show an interest in them as people and not just colleagues - what's important in life to them. You listen effectively and hear what they say. More, you start to anticipate what they are on about when they talk to you. Or before even. And, of course, you treat them as equal human beings and show trust and respect to them.

Then it works.

5. Accept Feedback

The final key people management skill is an ability to show a little humility. You aren't perfect - not at all. The very best managers listen hard and learn much from their people too. It's a fine-edged balance that they get just right. Managing how they absorb and react to feedback is a testament to who they are. And they get back the reward for the way they handle what their people share with them about them.

Listen, your best advocates are the people you listen to and help you develop yourself. Then they listen to the constructive way you help them. It's two-way traffic and mutual support. It's invaluable. It's terrific.

Five little steps that will help your people management skills succeed. You may need to flex and change a bit. You may need to gulp down a bit of your pride too and change your behaviors.

And wow - is that OK!

Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com/

Have An Internet Marketing Strategy is a MUST for Marketing Online.

Hey, Mark here, if you're planning on starting some internet marketing, make sure that you have some sort of marketing strategy. The main reason people fail at internet marketing is they have no plan or strategy whatsoever. The problem with this is that you have no clue what to do if things don't go as expected. You have to be prepared for the worst so you can keep going in the right direction.

By not having a marketing strategy you are putting your business at a disadvantage and giving your competitors the upper hand. Having a plan allows you to strive for bigger and better things as opportunities arise. It is vital that you have some sort of a marketing plan because without one when times go bad you may get lost and begin guessing what is best for your business. This leads to poor marketing and will hurt your business.

While it is important in internet marketing to have a plan, you must also keep in mind that your plan should and will change over time. As you are just getting started, your objective is to get your site up and running to begin making money. Once your site is going, your plan will be to begin internet marketing and get your name out on the web. It is like a staircase, the more your site develops the more your plan should change to stay with your website.

When you begin planning out your marketing strategy there are three things you need to determine; an objective, a marketing strategy, and a marketing tactic. The objective answers the big question of how you're going to answer your internet marketing challenges. You have to have it planned out how you will handle the problems you will face and try to determine what problems you may face.

Your marketing strategy will back your objective up in a sense. While the objective addresses the big picture, the strategy plots out how you are going to go about solving it. It plans the general approaches you are going to have to make in order to become successful with your internet marketing.

Finally, your internet marketing tactic is when you put all your planning to use. This is where you take all your strategies and begin using them to see how well you planned.

If you have a marketing strategy you will increase your odds a drastic amount of succeeding in the internet marketing industry. With a plan you will know what you want to accomplish, when you want to accomplish it, and how you are going to go about accomplishing it.


Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com/

10 Things You Can Do Today To Boost The Effectiveness of Your Marketing Program (Part 2, 6-10)

It is human nature to try and improve upon the conditions around us. For organizations, there have been many theories expounded over the years about quality improvement, continuous improvement, conscious improvement and a slew of others - clearly getting better at what you do as an organization is a key component to success.

If you think of your outreach marketing program as the volume control for the information, it would be a simple impulse to turn up that switch when you needed more members, or wanted to launch a new program - one simple motion.

Unfortunately it's not really that simple. However, there are lots of small things you can do to increase the effectiveness of your outreach marketing - some of them as easy and inexpensive as turning up that volume control.

Some may seem obvious, but in aggregate, they should boost response, increase participation, build membership and loyalty, and increase retention in your organization.

6) Benefits, Benefits, Benefits!
"What's in it for me" is the phrase that you can use to evaluate all your activities geared toward communicating with members and prospects. The full range of communications vehicles can all benefit from this exercise. If it's not clear what the member gets in return for their participation, in cold hard prose, then write the piece so it is clear. If they have to work to understand your value proposition for their business, their career or their personal development, you've lost them before you start.

If you begin with the mindset that recipients read to find something in it for them, you'll be highlighting benefits rather than outlining features. Your organization offers great benefits to its members, or it wouldn't exist - tighten the copy to focus on benefits - it forces you to crystallize the value proposition and is extremely persuasive.

TO DO: Dig out the last broad membership promotion you created, and see if you can extract 5 tangible, relevant benefits - if you can't find five, it's time to rework your outreach recruitment efforts to focus on the needs of your audience.

7) Crank Up the Creativity - Reach Out in a New Way
Promotions, especially direct mail collateral pieces, are most effective when they take the recipient by surprise. In other words - Get Creative! Because of the cyclic nature of most non-profit marketing, the temptation is to update materials or recycle concepts from prior years. This can save you some time, but it can be deadly to take a previously-used piece of creative material and simply change the dates and the city. Don't fall into that trap.

Change formats, use an unusual paper stock, bring out the bright colors, if you normally use type, try an original illustration, if you've used illustration, try photography.

The new concept behind the execution is even more critical. Stick out of the mailbox with a dimensional mailing of unusual proportion or odd shape. Try a contest, a multi-part mailing, a premium, bundle several offers into one themed piece. If you've done it before, eject it from the start and see what you can come up with that still resonates with the audience.

Mail still pulls response beautifully if executed well, and something truly new and exciting is still extremely effective. It's hard to deliver a sample of a product with an e-mail! Use the advantage that mail offers you and get personal with the audience. With today's digital production techniques, there's no reason that each collateral piece can't be virtually unique to the recipient - that alone makes it different and engaging. The trick is to get the audience's attention.

TO DO: Try this exercise - Gather your creative staff around a flip chart. The goal is to create an ad for your next meeting to run in your house member publication in an hour. Get your staff together and brainstorm 5 concepts, each extending the original concept one degree further out than the last. Start with headlines, images, copy points, whatever works for you. The only rule is, you can't have used the idea before anywhere in the organization previously. By the time you get to the fifth concept, you should be breaking some new ground.

8) Deliver The Message In a Way They'd Like To Receive It
Someone famous said "The medium is the message" - never has that been more true than now, in the age of multi-media, electronic, digital, satellite, cell phone, PDA, blackberry, text message driven society. A good message sent via the wrong medium will almost certainly fall on deaf ears and blind eyes. On the other hand, a good match of medium and message can multiply the impact.

The good news is, after doing your research, updating your database, and creating groundbreaking creative, you can deliver this new marketing communications miracle in the way that the recipient would like to receive it, simply by asking them.

For you, permission-based delivery:
* Makes your job of reaching them easier
* Makes the task of delivery more efficient and effective
* Cements your relationship to the recipient
* Improves the chance that the recipient will take action
* Broadens your potential audience through the use of alternative media

For the recipient, it
* Delivers the message where, when and how they want to see it
* Give them the freedom of choice
* Gives them control of their relationship with you
* Lets them respond in a way that is easy for them on their schedule

All these benefits can be yours for the taking, if you just ask for the information.

How do you get this information, and how do you keep it all straight? The answer is in the structure of your recipient database. If you've noted that a certain subset of your house list seems to respond well to e-mail rather than mail, be sure that this group receives the promotion via e-mail almost exclusively - save the postage.

If you've noted that a fax to a certain group, or about a certain issue seems to pull well, flag them for faxing as a matter of routine - save the postage and printing. If you've noticed that a certain type of offer works best only when mailed, create a whole series of mailers on that topic and mail away. The trick is to reach people in a way that works for THEM.

TO DO: Gather up the registration cards, order blanks, response coupons, and other ordering devices you routinely use throughout the years to prompt and record an order. Lay them out and review each, and see if there's room for a simple multiple choice question: "How would you like to receive information about this (organization, product, activity, issue)? Mail, Fax, E-mail, Phone, text message, other." Armed with this information on your members and prospects, your response rate for all of them is bound to rise if you just use it.

9) Cross Promote Whenever Possible - Strength in Numbers
When does 1+1+1 = 5? When each of those "1"s cross-promotes to the others. Chances are your organization has several different departments, each promoting their product, program, event or benefit. Chances are also good that several of those outgoing promotions are going to the same individual, either member or prospect.

If your database is so equipped, from number 2, and all the departments share that database, then you can flag them as multiples, and at least bundle them into a common envelope and save on materials and postage. If it happens a lot, you'll save a bit of money, but eventually everyone will get everything going out in one envelope, and your targeting goes out the window.

Cross promotion is the answer. A piece of collateral promoting the latest book might also mention that there's a newsletter on a similar topic available to members only, and it might mention that there's a seminar session at the annual meeting on that topic for top executive members only. On the other hand, seminar attendees receiving a meeting promotion could also have a book list inserted, with the relevant titles highlighted, based on the sessions they've attended in the past.

The key is to find a common thread or common denominator to help cross over the recipient to take advantage of more than one service or product you offer. Each time one piece sent to a subgroup of members or prospects mentions another service they might find appealing, it acts as a multiplier, at no cost, for the effectiveness of the program. But how do you carry that out?

Once again, it's the database to the rescue. It should show you all the activity of the members, and also what each prospect has received, at least for the previous year, hopefully farther back than that. All that information is waiting to be put to use, like money in the bank. It's up to you to use it.

TO DO: Pull together a year's worth of promotions from the past year from all the various departments, and search each one for mentions of other services, products or events by other departments. Try to find 5 instances where cross promotion could be inserted in any one of them, promoting 5 related benefits, even if it's just a web address for the other product or service. If you can't find all 5, this technique could be used more regularly to boost participation and save money within your organization.

10) Leave No Stone Unturned - Use Alternative Media and Bring Big Results
Marketing an organization, especially a member-based one, is a full-time 24/7/365 effort, but that doesn't mean you have to work that long or that hard - you can let technology do some of the work for you. Used properly and appropriately, technology, including traditional phones, cell phones, PDAs, Blackberry devices and other computer based message equipment can be doing the job when you're home enjoying your own time.

The goal is to be "top-of-mind" for members for the benefits you offer - you have to be the number one brand for those particular products or services so that whenever they think of those things or need those things, they think of you as the best, the quickest, the highest quality, indeed the ONLY place to get those things, and if they stop being a member, they lose all that access. In order to do that, you need to be a ubiquitous presence in their working lives. One way to do that is by using a variety of media to reach them.

Say a fax arrives in their office promoting a meeting, then several days later, a brochure with full registration information arrives in the mail. The member calls the organization for an unrelated service, and during the brief period he's on "Hold" he hears a promotion for the meeting's keynote speaker, in his own voice, offering 3 tips for how to get more out of their meeting attendance.

Three days before the meeting, an e-mail arrives, with links to the meeting webpage, containing a pre-populated registration form on which they simply complete the payment info and hit "submit".

Two days before the meeting, the recipient's cell phone receives a text message with last minute hotel rates at the meeting hotel and a 800 number, and a local number for the local golf course to arrange for a tee time.

That member has been hit with six different media, all promoting different aspects of the same meeting, with cohesive messaging, coherent branding, personalized information and they've gotten the message at different times, for different reasons, on different devices, in different environments. Computer technology can make this all possible, and in many cases, automatic to the point of being hands-off.

TO DO: Investigate your organization's capability to use all possible media for outgoing messages, including e-mail, pop-ups, live web links and PURLS (Personalized, Uniform Resource Locator), broadcast e-mail, broadcast Fax, broadcast text messages, on-hold recordings, automated voice mail, IP-based registration or automated orderform pages with unique log-in, and any other technology that can deliver a message. Once this inventory has been completed, see if there is a way to drive them all from your in-house database. Once the technology is hooked up and interacting, the sky's the limit for using various combinations to reach members and prospects in unique ways.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com/

10 Things You Can Do Today to Boost The Effectiveness of Your Marketing Program (Part 1, 1-5)

It is human nature to try and improve upon the conditions around us, and as humans we are hardwired to be curious and to strive to improve our lot in life in ways large and small. For organizations, there have been many theories expounded over the years about quality improvement, continuous improvement, conscious improvement and a slew of others - clearly getting better at what you do as an organization is a key component to success.

If you think of your outreach marketing program as the volume control for the information reaching prospective members or customers, it would be a simple impulse to turn up that switch when you needed more members, or wanted to launch a new program - improving your communication quality, focusing the message, boosting the frequency and breadth of the media carrying it to increase sales or membership in one simple motion.

Unfortunately it's not really that simple. However, there are lots of small things you can do to increase the effectiveness of your outreach marketing - some of them as easy and inexpensive as turning up that volume control. Some may seem obvious, but in aggregate, they should boost response, increase participation, build membership and loyalty, and increase retention in your organization.

1) Get To Know Your Audience
Primary research among membership-based organizations is more rare than most would care to admit, and good research into your members' preferences, needs and desires can really provide you with a good, solid foundation for basing creative and strategic decisions going forward. The more you know about your members and prospective members, the more your marketing messages will resonate, the more likely your offers will be found relevant to their lives, and the more value they will find in the programs designed for their benefit. Phone research, in the form of in-depth interviews with members, either individuals or representatives of organizations, can provide eye-opening insights that can drive your strategic marketing efforts in a new and more effective direction. There are several highly reputable research organizations and consultants that can help guide you through the process to be sure you get accurate, actionable results.

TO DO: From your in-house database, select 20 members, and 20 prospects, with a good selection of large and small (trade only), or for professional societies, a good mix of member types. Call the list using a short 1-page, 5-question script devised to elicit in-depth responses, not one word answers. Use questions that rank priorities as often as feasible, so you have some quantitative data as well as general, anecdotal information. Note the differences between members and prospects - that gap is where to focus your efforts.

2) Refine and Use Your "House" List for Direct Mail
Your member database is the heart of your organization. Is it healthy? Is there plaque build-up of bad information, outdated addresses, prospects that have no relevance to your offers, or need of your services? Is it unwieldy to use, complex to navigate, cumbersome to work with? Is it structured the way your organization works so that it mirrors your efforts, or does it fight you every step of the way? Do you find that it takes an inordinate amount of time and effort to extract what should be simple requests for subsets or quick lists like committees or sub-groups? If the answer is "Yes" to any of these questions, it's time to evaluate your database software, structure and use in light of how your organization uses and needs access to data.

If you can't easily extract and manipulate your own in-house data, it will be extremely difficult to compare it to prospect data so you can make intelligent selections for focused, targeted, personalized mailings. Bad data does more damage than good data used ineffectively, especially in membership-based organizations where every member needs to be treated like gold, let alone executive committees, board members, special-interest groups that need some extra attention.

TO DO: Select a random list of 40 members from your database, however your normal procedures allow you to do that. If it takes longer than about an hour, you need to develop new processes at a minimum, and at worst you need to revamp your entire database, starting with new software and converting the data, after you clean it up and verify each piece. One quick way to do this is with a database dump postcard. Craft a postcard that explains what you're trying to do - clean your data. Ask the members to update the info on the label on the front in spaces on the back if need be and mail it back to you. The first 200 that return the card will receive a small gift as a "Thank You". You should receive less than 2% bad addresses. If not, time to do a major overhaul of your data.

3) Re-Evaluate Your Benefits and Offers - Are They Still Relevant?
The question running through any prospect's mind when they think about membership is "What's in it for me?" If the benefits of membership are not delineated in crystal clear fashion in your prospecting and membership materials, you've lost before it ever gets opened.

Presenting a compelling reason to join and stay a member has everything to do with knowing the audience and crafting benefits statements that resonate with that audience. They should be strongly worded, clearly written and explained, and demonstrated as a benefit that solves a known and widely understood "problem" within the homogenous group.

If you're the Paint and Stain Manufacturers Association, and your biggest issue of concern for members is EPA regulatory compliance, one of your benefits should be something like "Close monitoring and strong, regular member input on all regulatory and legislative issues that could negatively impact manufacturers of all types of paints and stains." While that activity ultimately benefits non-members as well, the key is "member input" - they get direct access to legislators, through correspondence and website access, etc. Direct benefit - strong statement.

TO DO: Using the data gathered in item Number One, trot out your membership selling brochure and verify that the benefits of membership there still match up with the recently gathered data surrounding member needs and desires. If they don't, it might be time to re-evaluate the use of that piece of collateral.

4) Review Your Media List - And Use It To Raise Your Profile
Trade media should be the marketer's best friend. Good relationships with publishers and editors of various magazines, newsletters, websites, and blogs that serve your industry, including your own publications, is essential to crafting a cohesive view of your organization and branding the organization accurately and effectively. Strong relationships with those key individuals allow you to:

* Craft and release your statements at leisure
* Gives you early warning of other's perceptions of the organization from a neutral source
* Can tip you off to impending PR crisis
* Gives you heads up when there are going to be controversial stories written that involve your organization
* Allows them to readily contact you to get your point of view before it's published

. . . in short, it keeps the media fair and reasonable, and allows you better access to your audience, which consists of both members and prospects.

TO DO: Review your media list, and call the Managing Editor, and the Publisher, of the top 10 publications, websites or blogs covering your industry. Ask some simple questions about how your organization is performing based on what they've heard from their advertisers and readers.

Let them know that you've got some exciting new initiatives coming in the near future and you'd like to get their take on them before you launch them, since you value their opinion so highly. Not only will this reconnect you to them with the call itself, but give them something to gossip about and talk to the others about, speculating about your next move. Suddenly, you may notice that your next press release will get a lot more attention than it might have otherwise.

5) Show How Exciting Your Meeting Is, Not How Great The City Is
Meetings as a function have changed and evolved significantly, especially in the last few years, as travel has been curtailed for budgetary and security reasons. Your meeting marketing must show compelling reasons for your members to:

* work their way out of the office for a few days
* go through the trauma that is today's airport security
* get set up for three days of meeting, greeting and eating
* reverse the travel home,
* foot the entire bill themselves for the airfare, hotel, meals, seminars and the rest.

That needs to be some pretty convincing marketing. The meeting must look like they'll be at a grave disadvantage if they miss it, by presenting unequivocal benefits for attendees, tangible benefits that you can clearly see the advantage in receiving. That fact that it's in Cleveland, or Orlando, or Seattle, or wherever, is of minimal benefit, unless you live near the convention hotel in those cities. For the other 90+ percent of your members, it poses no compelling reason to attend.

As hotels become more homogenous and hotel brands are imposed more rigidly on individual locations and select properties, there is even less to differentiate the location for the meeting attendee - when one looks much like another, there's not even any benefit to the hotel choice, let alone city destination. At the end of the day, attendees will have seen a ball room or two, a generic restaurant, possibly the parking garage and their generic room. If not their hometown, it may as well be anywhere - unless you make it a special, memorable experience.

Make your meeting memorable with solid content, outstanding speakers that really know your industry and are exciting to listen to, and after hours activities that really showcase the destination, its history and culture. Focusing on the destination in your marketing materials is a crutch, is not effective, and can easily be avoided with some creativity, some teamwork with your meetings department and committee interaction in the planning stages.

TO DO: Pull out the collateral and registration materials used to promote the last five meetings you hosted for members - examine them under the cold light of day, and see if you used any of the destination crutches to create "excitement". Examine the program as a hard-working, time-starved, cash-strapped member might, and see if you'd attend this meeting if it were up to you to pay for it. Show them to your neighbor, and ask them "if the meeting were intended for their industry, would they pay to attend?" If not, time to re-examine your meetings goals and the approach you use to market them.

The above tips touch on many different aspects of non-profit and organizational marketing programs, but they are by no means complete or inclusive. They should at least be recognizable within your organization in some form, and will hopefully get the wheels spinning as you relate each to how you currently market the organization, and how some of them might fit into your current plan.

Some are free or inexpensive to implement, other require a greater investment in time, money and energy but pay off significant dividends in the longer term in increased member participation, boosted meeting attendance, bigger member rolls, more active committees, greater visibility for your organization and increased operational efficiency going forward. Anything you can do to increase visibility, build awareness, encourage members to join, participate and stay members is worth investigating.
Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com/

3 Reasons ThinkBIG Will Deliver Your Business Safe, Fast And Reliable Results

There is no question why ThinkBIG has built up such a reputable image over the short time of its existence. They have a track record of delivering safe, fast and reliable results all at affordable rates. While thinking outside of the box, this company truly delivers exquisite results.

There are three reasons why ThinkBIG can bring you results with their internet marketing and web design specialists. The first reason is because of their organic SEO. If you want your business to succeed, you need to implement some kind of search engine marketing campaign. In order to elevate your web site’s search engine rankings organically, you need to seek social marketing and some kind of strategic inbound linking.

ThinkBIG will dedicate a space in one of our many privately owned (industry relevant) company blogs specifically for your project. You will share this blog with no more than 4 other companies, none of which will be competitors. Our in house team of professional writers will post keyword rich Blog entries 3-5 times per week, every week for six months. Each and every Blog entry will be infused with the client’s keywords and they will be strategically linked back to a page and/or pages on the client’s main website.

We will strategically point relevant one way links from our network of Blogs, Websites and Social Book Marks to the client’s website every month for six months. Our linking department will monitor, measure and manage the linking structure of each account on a weekly basis. This ensures the client will receive most value from each and every link pointing to their site.

The second reason this company will deliver for you is because of PPC bid management. You do not want to mess around with any traffic you can get. Instead, you want to get highly targeted traffic from prospects that you can legitimately convert into a customer.

The philosophy behind ThinkBIG is if you are not successful than they are not successful. It is their goal to drive the right kind of traffic to your site to make it easy for you to succeed. The highly targeted traffic you will generate will make it easier than ever to convert visitors into customers.

The final reason this company will help you succeed is because of their high level of expertise in web design. Far too many entrepreneurs overlook the importance of having quality design on their site. This company specializes in website design, development, and enhancement.

Because of this, they ensure you that your web site will have the highest possible quality in form and user function. ThinkBIG will help you build an attractive web site that is going to be noticed by internet surfers.

It is the constant drive for perfection that separates ThinkBIG from all other companies on the internet. It is their intention to help you prosper in every form of your web site. Whether it is the design, content, or traffic you generate, this company is going to take your business to the next level. This article highlights just three of the key reasons why this company will deliver results.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com/

PPC Basics for Small Businesses

Pay per click or PPC is often discussed in terms of a wider internet marketing campaign, or as a method for large businesses with huge advertising budgets to buy their way to the top of the search engines. However, small businesses and SMEs can benefit from implementing a PPC campaign too. Depending on your product or service, investing in pay per click might even be more worthwhile than considering a search engine optimisation campaign because of the speediness of results (or lack of) – and you may find that being a small enterprise, where your strategy can be changed and adapted quickly, may even give you the edge in your sector.

Keywords:
Knowing which keywords/phrases to target for your PPC campaign is likely to be the most important aspect to get right. Being a small business with a tight advertising budget means that the more comprehensive your research and the more compromising you are with your terms, then the more successful you shall be. In simple terms, unlike SEO, you will be paying for the privilege to be at the top of the search engines up front. But at the same time, you will be able to see where your campaign is and isn’t working within a couple of weeks, compared to months or a year for SEO.

That said, when considering which keywords/phrases to bid for, the rules are quite similar to those of search engine optimisation, i.e. general terms (such as ‘paints’ or ‘shoes’) will be highly competitive, whilst smaller, niche phrases (‘watercolour paints’ or ‘non-leather shoes’) are likely to be cheaper – and should generate more conversions due to their specificity.

When you have put yourself in your customer’s head, carried out your keyword research, and established which search terms to target – you then need to be sure to optimise your landing pages for those terms. Although the idea is simple, many websites still fail to remember the following: every time a prospective customer clicks through to your site, you will be paying – it is therefore of utmost importance that the page they arrive on is exactly what they are looking for. Using the example, ‘watercolour paints’, it would be less logical for the landing page to display art supplies or a huge range of paints, and far more worthwhile to the consumer if that page just shows ‘watercolour paints’ – exactly what the customer wants.

Titles and Ad-Copy:
Similarly, your titles and ad-copy should be as related to the search terms as possible, and it is not worth spending on the clicks of prospective customers and not having exactly what they want. Therefore, be sure that your titles contain your keywords/phrases, and strive to make them grammatically correct so they are clear and easy to read. For example, the search term ‘watercolour paints’ will most likely benefit from a title along the following lines: ‘Buy Watercolour Paints from Arty UK’.

Following this you must also think about the ad-copy that appears below. Here you can certainly flesh out your description a little. But it is important to remember that, due to the variety of ways your advert might be displayed, your first few words are the most important and the rest may not always be displayed. Consequently, this is a good place to put your brand name or a unique selling point of your site.

Tracking Results and Modifying Your Campaign:
Once your campaign is set up and your adverts are established, you then need to keep an eye on what’s working and what isn’t. One of the benefits of PPC itself is that it is easy to see results quickly, and modify the campaign accordingly. Additionally, being a small business or SME also means that that the process of changing target terms etc is not as likely to be held up by multiple levels of signoff and approval.

When tracking the success of PPC, It is often advised to think about each ad group alone, but also to consider each in the context of the overall campaign. However, there are two basics to focus on that will ensure a certain degree of progression. First, be prepared to eliminate any links that don’t get clicked or don’t lead to conversions – be confident and try a new term instead. Secondly, build on the terms that are clicked through often and lead to conversions – try additional variations and phrases that are subtly different.

Simple PPC can prove very worthwhile for small businesses that are trying to sell products or services, and can allow them to move into a position to compete with the biggest companies. It must be acknowledged that the above basics are an outline of the groundwork of just one strategy for online success, and just a small part of a comprehensive SEM campaign. However, for a small business, pay per click can be a good starting point and testing ground before implementing a full internet marketing plan.


Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com/

Your Marketing Outsourcing Options

Many entrepreneurs want to do everything themselves. And who can blame them? Their necks are on the line if something isn’t done right. But a good entrepreneur knows her strengths and weaknesses. A good entrepreneur knows when to delegate and what to delegate.

If you are trying to start a business and you don’t have time to create your own marketing materials, or you don’t know the first thing about how to go about creating marketing materials, you should consider outsourcing.

Before you outsource your marketing campaign, you need to decide on a target market and you need to know your budget. Then you’ll know who want to hire based on expertise, and you’ll know who you can afford to hire.

Here are the basic types of outsourcing support you can use to help create your marketing materials:

Marketing Agency
A full-service marketing agency can provide many services to you, and probably many things you’ve never even considered. A marketing agency can do your Public Relations, design everything from brochures to your Web site, buy your media placement, write all of the copy for your marketing materials and can recommend a good full-service printer or a more specific brochure or postcard printing company.

A marketing agency is probably your most expensive option because they staff experts that only work on one aspect of marketing – the copy writer only writes, the designer only designs. And agencies charge by the hour, much like a lawyer. You could have four or five staff members working on your account at once, which means hourly rates of $100 to $300 are not uncommon. But, you get multiple brainpower and professionals with all levels of experience working on your marketing campaign.

They’ll take care of everything – even advertising placement. You won’t have to do a thing, except sign your approval. Depending on the size of your campaign, you’ll need at least $100,000 to use a marketing agency for a full marketing campaign. Keep in mind, though, that you can hire an agency to just do one part of your campaign.

Freelance Copywriters and Designers
Using freelancers can be somewhat cheaper than using a marketing agency. Of course some established duos or trios comprised of copywriters, designers and perhaps an artist might function like small marketing agencies. Anymore, with so many people having their own Web sites, it can be easy to find a writer and designer that can work well together, and that have many years of
experience. It’s also possible to find people with expertise in creating marketing campaigns for your industry.

You can place a free ad on Craigslist.org or on a freelance job board, like Elance.com. On Elance.com, you post your project and freelancers bid for your business. This makes it even easier because the freelancers come to you.

Media Buyers
If you don’t use a full-service marketing agency, you’ll probably need help in creating a media schedule and buying schedule, that places your ads in magazines, newspapers, TV stations, and wherever other media you want to see your ads in.

Media buyers negotiate rates and contracts on your behalf, and they generally make a commission of 15% for their services. This commission amount is pretty standard for marketing agencies too.

Marketing Coach
There are plenty of marketing gurus out there that work on a consulting basis. These people will look at your marketing budget and goals and figure out a strategy for you to follow to meet those goals. Coaches won’t do the work for you; just advise you on how to find marketing agencies, freelancers and media buyers along with printers and many other resources you’ll need for your marketing materials.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com/

How to Bag a job in Marketing

Here are a few tips of how to market your self in interviews and get a great job in marketing. If you have been thinking about starting a career in marketing it is essential that you have the qualities it takes to succeed in the industry. Marketing jobs are sought after and the applications process is competitive. Here I give some simple tips to help you understand what employers are looking for in candidates for jobs in marketing. It also makes sense to contact an agency who is specialized in marketing recruitment.

Strong analytical thinking skills
Your interviewer will want to know when you have shown these skills in previous work situations. If you can not think of any examples then think of a personal situation or for example, mention that you read several different newspaper titles a week for if you find that it gives you a better overview of current events.

Ability to carry out research and develop plans
These skills are important if you want a job in marketing. Think of examples to give in your interview of ways that you can perform research then use that research to develop plans. Think of examples of when you have done this in the past.

Excellent communication skills
Ensure that you speak clearly and articulately. Interviewers do not want to employ someone who mumbles or who is incoherent. You should present yourself well and make sure that you are friendly and polite to everyone that you come into contact with at the company. Do not be overly familiar but certainly do not be shy.

5 New Breakthrough Websites Make Automated Income!

There's a brand new Membership site that has 5 websites you get that make money for you automatically - and you can get them in just 6 minutes from now - all with just 1-click!

You can literally get 5 powerful websites that are already making money!

I'm NOT joking - I'll show you PROOF in a moment!

But what you need to know most is this:

You get…

5 amazing websites!
5 websites that convert sales automatically!
5 websites that forcibly put money directly into your pocket!
5 websites that are run by another firm for you (and at NO charge!)
5 websites that continue to promote for you over & over!
5 websites that grow & cultivate 5 separate proven lists!
5 websites that function automatically (so you never run it!)
And 5 websites that you get Free HOSTING for!
And again, they all come in a very easy-to-use Members Area you get your own private Username & Password LOGIN to!

It's rumored that the husband and wife couple who operate the sites may either LIMIT how many people are allowed in, or at the very least "choke" down the flow of new Members so as not to let just anybody get in.

It's also been speculated that they may stop offering anymore "5-Site Set" Memberships after some time (and without notice) just to keep competition "alive and well" (but who really knows?)

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PROOF!...
---------------------
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Paid Search Marketing - Can you make a mint out of AdSense?

There are numerous claims on the internet regarding people who have made large sums of money out of AdSense. You can even purchase ready made websites that are advertised as AdSense optimised and promise large rewards. No doubt most of us take most of these claims with a very large pinch of salt, but in reality, is it possible to make a reasonable income stream from displaying AdSense ads? After all, Paid Search Marketing generates many billions of dollars revenue a year.

This article looks at some of the ways to maximise your AdSense income. There are essentially three measurable variables that determine your income. These are the number of visitors, the click through rate (CTR), which is the proportion of your visitors that actually click on an ad, and the cost per click (CPC).

There are many ways to increase your web traffic. Some are legitimate and some illegitimate. Illegitimate short term scams might make you a little money for a very short time. In the longer time frame it will get you banned from the program. We will not describe these short term scams here but if you are determined then you can find them. The two legitimate ways to increase traffic are (a) to provide a website with interesting and novel information that people want to access and (b) to get good search engine rankings. There are many articles on (b) but again we recommend that you only consider legitimate ones.

CTR can be maximised by ensuring that the advertisements match the interest of your visitors. Often this means avoiding certain words in the text of your site that might attract inappropriate ads. The layout and colour scheme of your ads is also important, as is their position.

CPC depends very much on the theme of your website. For instance, if your website deals with aspects of the law, you might well attract ads for injury lawyers which pay $6 a click, but if your content concerns music then ads for CDs might yield only $0.05 as pay per click can be very different.

The short answer to the original question is AdSense won't make you rich quick, however if you apply a reasonable amount of effort then it should generate a useful income stream.

The Best Internet Traffic Secret!

Welcome To The Internet Marketing Center Blog,

Your (Blog Editor) here with a great article by Jim Edwards!

Did you realize that thousands of website operators use a simple
technique to generate targeted visitors to theirwebsites without
paying a dime in advertising? It's true.

In fact, the technique works so well that many of them don't want
you to discover how they get those thousands ofwebsite visitors
and make so many sales on virtual "auto-pilot."

Their method?

Creating tightly focused articles other people publish in their
ezines (online magazines and email newsletters) and post on their
websites. This method rates so powerful thatsome even call it
"the web's best kept traffic secret." Now, you may ask, "Why
would an ezine publisher or website owner publish my articles
for their subscribers?"

The answer: Content!

Over a 100,000 ezines and newsletters operate on the web
(along with millions of websites) covering everything from pets
and cooking to investments and real estate. Many ofthem need
tightly focused content and they simply can'tproduce all of it
themselves.

Look at it this way... it's the same reason newspapers use the
Associated Press. Individual newspapers often can'tafford staff
writers to cover every story, so they acceptarticles from outside
their organization.

You can do the exact same thing for various ezines and websites
catering to your niche audience! You can get valuable publicity
exposure you oftencouldn't even pay for if you wanted to by
providing valuable, content-rich articles in exchange for a by line
and a link to your website (called a "resource box")!

The following represent only a few of the enormous benefits of
writing and distributing simple articles online:

** Attain "Expert" Status **

Let's face it! In the eyes of virtually everyone who reads your
articles you rank as the "expert" on the subject. Just look at people
who write newspaper columns. You may disagree with their view
points, but they still have an elevated status in your mind compared
to the "average Joe"off the street.

** Pre-sell Website Visitors **

If your article appeals to a niche audience hungry for more
information on a very focused subject, you actually pre-sell them
better than any sales pitch. In their minds, you've already
delivered content they really want so when they click over to
your site you already have a"reputation" in their minds.

** Traffic Lasts Longer **

Even though the Internet changes very quickly, webmasters are
usually very slow to remove content from their sites.Once you get
an article posted on another person's website,you have an excellent
chance of that article staying therefor weeks, months, even years.

** Increase Links To Your Site **

In a recent search I found just a dozen of my articles posted on
over 813 different websites! Not only do thosepostings bring me
traffic, but they also help my search engine positioning because
of my increased "LinkPopularity."

** Builds Your Affiliate Base **

Fact: Affiliates always take the path of least resistance.

If you provide excellent articles they can easily post on their sites
or copy and paste into their ezines, youraffiliates will promote you
more often and more effectivelycompared to those who don't give
them tools. Plus, as you make more sales and publish articles, other
people will see you providing excellent tools and will want to sign
up as your affiliate so they can use them too!

** Build a Huge "Opt-In" Email List **

You can use articles to build up a huge list of subscribers by simply
compiling several articles into a series and delivering them at
preset intervals. Often called a "mini-course," this technique allows
you notonly to prove to your subscribers that you deliver great
information, but enables you to capture their name and email
address so you can send them articles and special offers in the
future (with their permission).

** Requires No Special Skills **

People often think they need to be a "writer" in order to publish
articles, but that's not true!

FACT: If you have a passion for a subject and can talk and explain
things like you would to a friend over a cup ofcoffee, you can write
articles people will love to read.

So if you operate a website selling virtually any type of product or
service (whether your own or as an affiliate), publishing and
promoting with articles should rank high onyour list of traffic
generation strategies.

No other method of generating targeted traffic to your website
provides the quality, quantity and steadiness oftraffic in such a
simple, straight forward, and cost-effective manner.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author
of an amazing new ebook, "Turn Words Into Traffic,"that will teach
you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted
visitors to your website!