marketing

Advantages of Viral Marketing – Top 3 Ways to Create A Buzz Online

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Due to the tight competition in the business world, all business owners constantly look for successful marketing techniques to promote their business all over the world. A very popular free marketing strategy is called viral marketing.

In the next few paragraphs, we will be discussing the advantages of viral marketing and looking at the top three ways to create a buzz online.

Advantage #1: Low cost

Viral marketing operates on the basic premise of word of mouth marketing: peer-to-peer product recommendations. The internet is full of social networking sites, blogs, forums and review sites that are practically free for everyone to access, sign-up and participate at.

Use it: Marketing with social media is done by setting up an account or making a page for your business at every possible social networking site. Marketing with twitter and Facebook are the top choices because these two sites are known to have over a hundred million users on a daily basis.  Visibility is the name of the game—the more visible your business is, the more it is readily accessible to the public and the easier it is for you to deliver your message to your target market. Again, set-up profiles everywhere possible, it’s free after all.

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Advantage #2: Great Reach and High Efficiency

Most effective marketing strategies make use of social media word of mouth because of its wide reach in a short period of time. The technology today makes it easy to like, share and repost photos, articles and updates about your products and services.

Use it: Once you have an update about your business, whether it is a promo, a revamp in your establishment or website, freebies or coupons, a new offer or product, posting it on Facebook or Twitter as a status update is the first step. Upload pictures to appeal to the visual senses of the web community then ask friends and family to like, repost or share. Do so politely. If your post is attractive and catchy enough, you can monitor the turnout of likes and watch it translate to sales and revenue.

Advantage #3: High credibility

One of the advantages of marketing on the web is the rapid and easy feedback system. See, it is common nowadays to whip up your phone, take pictures of daily life and let your friends and family know about it. Instant messages, tweets and status updates are the quickest ways people express their rants and raves. I’ve seen it far too many times: friends tweeting away about that sale we saw as we passed by, asking people on twitter for opinions on an outfit being tried at the dressing room, ranting about a strand of hair found on top of a pasta dish. Yes, rants and raves. The point being: people want to share what they know in an instant. And the information that come from these people are regarded as highly credible by individuals in their own networks.

Use it: Maintain your business’ credibility by constantly checking on people’s feedback and responding to them. Small thank yous for rave reviews or responding to requests and even making changes according to people’s non-so-good reactions makes your audience feel important. Part of the advantages of viral marketing is that it information spreads really fast. Why not make the buzz about your business a good one?

Keep in mind however that as all things go, there are also disadvantages that come with the advantages of viral marketing. Successful marketing entails having the good side outweigh the negative aspects.

Next, if you are looking at how to start a viral marketing campaign, you want to check out this tool, it might help you save some time.

Why is it Important to Conduct a Marketing Breakeven Analysis?

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Conducting a regular marketing breakeven analysis is something that is important for both big businessmen and small entrepreneurs to do. This form of business accounting will show you how much you have to earn to offset all your operating costs; past this point, you will start making a profit. The benefits of conducting a break-even analysis is that it allows you to see the relationship between your production costs and your expenses as well as letting you play around with these figures to determine how changes in costs, prices and revenues will affect break-even points and profit levels. However, the limitation of break-even analysis is that it is best suited to analyzing a single product, as it is easier to determine all the relevant factors required.

The various elements of a marketing breakeven analysis computation are:

•    Fixed costs. Also known as overhead, these are normal expenses that do not change much from month to month. Examples include utilities, rent and insurance premiums.

•    Sales revenues. These represent the amount of income you earn from sales. To ensure the accuracy of your analysis you need realistic sales forecasts based on the actual volume of business you expect rather than estimates of how much you have to sell in order to make a profit.

•    Gross profit per product. This is the amount that remains after you have subtracted the production costs from the sale price. For example, if you have a product that is selling for $500 but it costs you $350 to produce, then your average profit per product is $150.

•    Gross profit percentage. This figure tells you how much of the sale price represents profit. To illustrate, using the above example, the average gross profit percentage of your product is 30 percent.

Using these figures, we can conduct a sample marketing breakeven analysis to determine what your break-even point is. Assuming that your fixed costs are $10,000 a month, divide it by your gross profit percentage or 0.3; this means that you must earn $33,333 a month just to break even. If your expected earnings are less than this, it means that you either have to lower costs or increase sales if you want your business to flourish.

For example, after conducting your marketing breakeven analysis you might decide that you need to find a supplier who will sell to you at cheaper prices, have to increase your prices or find some other way to reduce your costs.

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What are The Five Major Types of Marketing – that Give Results Without Hurting Your Pocket!

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A huge percentage of budget for business goes towards different forms of advertising. After all, getting your consumers interested and hooked in what you have to offer is the key to being a smashing success in your business of choice.

So what are the five major types of marketing that give results without hurting your pocket?

1.  Word of mouth – In marketing jargon, this falls under the category of direct marketing. Of all the different types of marketing, this makes it to number one for being the most cost efficient and effective at the same time.
Word of mouth can come in both oral and written forms. The best part about it is you don’t have to pay people to do it for you. Rants and raves about your business can spread like wildfire in the blogosphere, review sites and much more.
This type of marketing works because consumers tend to believe someone who has authority and reliability or someone who has actually tried your product/service.
Different types of business strategies would suggest keeping yourself abreast with how people react to your business and to make sure that there are more good publicity that goes around to benefit from.

2. Referral Programs – One of the relatively new types of advertising is the referral program. This marketing strategy does not hurt your pocket because its mechanism is to only give rewards to people who bring in a certain number of referrals or revenues.
The tendency is for consumers to make use of their own personal networks to bring in referrals, thus marketing your business well without you having to shell out big time or do the legwork.

3.  Social Media Marketing – Social media marketing is indeed one of the recent five major types of marketing that really generates results. Making a page or profile in social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and much more is simple and free. Putting up ads in these websites can cost you but your ads are sure to be seen by millions of people all over the globe.

4. Event-based marketing – This marketing strategy is more specific in a way that you advertise your business in an event that has majority of your target market. A good example of this is sponsoring an inter-high school cheerleading competition or sporting event in your locale if your target market are teens. Giving away special awards or samples give you publicity as well as a chance for your audience to sample your product and talk about it.

5. Online business listing – There are ample websites that offer free online business listings. This is very useful since consumers need direct to the point information like where to find you and how to contact you. Online business listings give you the chance to advertise and give factual information about your company without having to spend at all.

Next, to learn more on five major types of marketing, sign up to get free invitation to the next coming online seminar.

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Marketing Trends for The Future – 4 Effective Methods to Promote your Business

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Businesses nowadays are more competitive than ever before. With the ever-changing needs and wants of the market, it is essential to stay informed to keep the business afloat.

Keeping up with industry analysis reports and learning more about marketing trends for the future ensure that your company will stay one step ahead of the competition. Promoting your business entails careful market research, cost-benefit analysis and strategic planning.
No one wants to spend money on inefficient marketing strategies. And the most recent trends are pointing to the use of technology for marketing success.

Here are 4 effective methods to promote your business:

1. Search Engine Optimization
Creating a website that is search engine friendly makes your business very visible not only to your local market but worldwide. Using search engine optimization takes some level of skill; you may do it yourself of ask your web designer for help. It involves the use of keywords and links in achieving your desired page rank. It might sound a bit technical, but the more you make use of SEO, the more visible you get and that roughly translates to revenues and sales.

2. Social Media
It is an established fact that social media has become a great part of most people’s lives all around the globe. Statistics have shown that businesses have shifted their budget towards social media marketing and other digital initiatives because consumers spend more time online these days than ever before! Today, it is possible for a post in Facebook, YouTube or Twitter to trend and go viral in a matter of hours.
Creating an enticing (yet truthful) page about your business on reliable social networking sites enables you to reach out to more people and spread the word about your company, while also getting a sense of what your market is like through reviews, comments and statistics.

3. Internet as tool for localized marketing and geotargeting
Taking into consideration your target market’s needs and wants and bringing your products/services closer to them is what localized marketing and geotargeting is all about. The future of the internet in the field of marketing can be seen in the boom of local discount websites and review sites. Websites such as Groupon, Yelp and Reviewstream make it easier for consumers to find and learn more about your business. And as an added bonus, you get to learn about your competitors too.

4. Mobile marketing
2012 onward is undeniably the year of mobile marketing internationally. With the recent surge of mobile apps worldwide, marketing your business through mobile advertising and apps like Foursquare is simply a must.

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