Marketing Plan Basics and Their Importance

Running a successful business can be difficult and the hardest part is often developing a marketing plan. Marketing is perhaps the most dynamic aspect of business ownership. Marketing plans are almost always unique to each business. This means that there are no set plans that business owners can follow when developing their own. Following certain guidelines can be done however.

On Target The Book on Marketing Plans is written by Tim Berry and Doug Wilson. Together they outline the features of marketing plans that are generally a part of each plan in one way or another. A well developed plan is the best way for business owners to accomplish their marketing goals which is why the book was written. When they were writing the book they made sure to remember that business owners aren't expert marketers.

This book can still offer some help to business owners out there that are actual experts at marketing. Most people are familiar with the different methods available to market their business. Three of these advertising methods that everyone knows are done through television, online, and print channels. Developing a plan that will help carry out marketing through these channels is the focus that Berry and Wilson spend time writing on.

For a marketing plan to be successful you can build around a few different aspects. Part of your success is built around how well you research your market. From there you can develop a strategy and settle on what tactics to use. Keep your budget in mind when you are doing all of this planning as well.

A business owner often finds it hard to take advice from others even if they have been successful. They started their own business so they could run it on their own. But generally the most successful businesses are those that are open to advice and guidance. This is even more true when it comes to marketing. Let Berry and Wilson guide you through the process of developing a rock solid marketing plan!

On Target The Book on Marketing Plans.

How To Boost Your Sales During Christmas

More than likely, you are fully aware of the fact that people tend to spend more money during Christmas than they do at any other time of year, and if you are running a business, one thing you will want to do is figure out how you can maximize this opportunity for yourself; of course, while this seems simple in theory, you also need to realize that every other company is likely thinking the exact same thing, and your goal will need to be figuring out how you can attract customers your way even better than those other companies are!

A great way to get people into your store is with giveaways and contests, but the main thing you need to realize about running giveaways and contests is that the Internet is your best friend; rather than running a contest in your store, come up with a contest that you can run using facebook and Twitter, and incentivize spreading the word, as you will be able to simply set up the contest and then allow others to spread the word for you!

Another thing that a lot of companies will be doing is having a Christmas blowout sale, and while this is certainly a great idea to consider yourself, there are a few specifics you will want to keep in mind in order to maximize these efforts: firstly, you will want to have the sale over a short period of time rather than stretching it out over weeks, secondly, you will want to advertise aggressively so that people know you are having the sale, and thirdly, you will want to make sure you are discounting items people will actually want, as this is more likely to drive crowds your way!

And sometimes, one of the best ways to boost your sales during Christmas is to work with another store. One idea for doing this is providing advertising space for each other in your own store, or even coming up with some sort of promotion - such as "a receipt from one store gets you 5% off your next purchase at the other" - as this will stir up additional business for both of you!

Tips For Exchanging Reciprocal Links On Your Website

When you are trying to boost your website's search engine optimization, one thing you will probably be doing is looking for different ways by which you can take advantage of the manner in which search engines work - and once you understand that backlinks (that is, links from another site that point users to your site) are among the most important elements of SEO, this may lead you to start doing some reciprocal links - where you link to another site in exchange for a link back to you - but while this can be a beneficial SEO trick, it can also hurt your website if you do not do it right!

Know who is linking to you: If you have a website that ranks well, and you are exchanging a reciprocal link with a site that is brand new, or that does not rank well at all, you will still be helping them, but they will not be helping you at all; furthermore, you will not receive any help through a reciprocal link if you are exchanging links with a site that is deemed by search engines to be irrelevant to yours.

Know who you are linking to: While links from a poorly-ranked site will not hurt your search engine ranking, you should know that it is possible to hurt your search engine ranking by linking to "unsavory" sites; if a website has lots of spam on it, or if it is overflowing with pop-up ads, or if the content on the site is offensive, linking to this site will actually hurt your standing with search engines rather than helping you!

Pay attention to anchor text: The anchor text (that is, the text that this "partner website" is turning into a link) will also make a difference in whether or not the reciprocal link helps; the best way to reciprocate links is to tell the other person what you want the anchor text to say, as this will allow you to make sure that the anchor text contains keywords that are relevant to the page being linked to, which will cause the link to have more weight with search engines.

SEO can be complicated at first, but once you start understanding the little things such as this, you will be in much better shape to boost your placement on search engine rankings pages!

How To Bring New Customers To Your Business

In order for your business to stay alive, the most important thing will be for you to realize that 90 percent of your business is likely to come from ten percent of your customers, and because of this, you will want to do everything you can to show your current customers that you care about them and are loyal to them, as this will keep them around for the long run - but if keeping your current customers is the most important thing to keeping your business alive, the next most important thing is that you know how to bring new customers your way as well.

One of the best ways to bring new customers your way is to offer deals that will get these customers in the store; when you offer a great deal - running some sort of promotion for a few days or a week - you will get a lot of new people milling about in your store, and even though not all of them will become long-term customers, many of them will!

The manner in which you advertise will also be a big part of attracting new customers your way; when you advertise, the biggest thing of all will be that you get the name of your business in the heads of potential customers, as planting your name in their head will make it that much more likely in the long run that they will turn to you when they need whatever it is that you are selling or providing!

And in the same vein as "keeping your current customers happy," you should realize that word of mouth is the greatest advertisement of all; when you keep your current crop of customers happy, they are far more likely to say good things about your company to everyone they know - and these people to whom they talk about your company will naturally be that much more likely to visit you down the road.

There is no perfect formula to attracting new customers to your business, but when you follow these tips, you will be on the right path - which will place you on the right path for continued success!

Conducting Effective Giveaways

One of the best ways to gain extra customers for your business is to conduct giveaways, as this is an excellent way to sacrifice a little bit of inventory (or time) in order to gain a lot of exposure; before you conduct a giveaway, however, you need to make sure you are going about it the right way.

One mistake a lot of businesses make when conducting a giveaway is that they give away something that is "convenient" or "easy" for them to give away, but that is not necessarily something that any of their customers want; rather than giving away an item that most customers might themselves see as a "giveaway" item, you can make the contest a success by giving away something they will truly want.

A giveaway should always involve participation from your customers (and prospective customers) in some way, but this does not mean that you need to make their participation difficult or an "obstacle"; instead, you can turn their participation into something that is fun and easy, as more people will participate if this is the case.

Getting people to help spread the word is the most important aspect of a giveaway, and because of the fact that people are busy with all the things going in in their own lives, it is sometime difficult to get people to take this step and help out. In order to encourage people to help spread the word about the contest, the best way to do so is to incentivize the "spread the word" aspect; one way to incentivize this aspect is by having a separate giveaway that each customer is entered into when they spread the word about the first giveaway on such social media sites as Twitter and facebook.

When you run a contest in such a way, you will be able to gain plenty of new customers, and the only money you will need to spend on this form of advertising is the loss of a small amount of your inventory or time - which is a tradeoff that is definitely well worth it!

Meeting Your Sales Quota For The Year

Working in sales can be difficult at times, as you will not only have to do a good job selling your product to customers, but you will likely be under pressure to reach certain performance quotas for your company - as far as how much (and how quickly, and how efficiently, and even how profitably!) you are selling; of course, sales quotas are simply part of working in sales, but if you are wanting to eliminate some of the stress of working in sales and trying to reach your quotas, here are a few tips to keep in mind.

First off, you should always make an effort to think of your quota as something that is supposed to be hit in half the time of what is actually supposed to be hit; for instance, if you are supposed to reach a certain sales goal in a year, you should make it your goal to try and reach that sales goal in six months instead, as this will set higher goals for you than simply what the company is giving you, and although you might fall short of these personal goals you have set, they are likely to still help you reach the quota assigned by the company long before the set date!

A lot of people end up getting overwhelmed when it comes to sales because they look at the big picture of the sales numbers they are supposed to hit, which can seem like an insurmountable task, but a better way to look at the sales numbers you are trying to hit is on a day-to-day basis; this does not even mean that you should assign yourself a certain number of sales you should try to hit each day, as anyone who has ever worked in sales knows that your sales will fluctuate from each day, but it simply means you should narrow your focus to "taking care of what you can take care of each day."

Finally, realize that you are likely to get ahead of schedule when you incorporate these two approaches into your sales work, and as you get ahead of schedule, it will be easy for complacency to set in. Protect yourself against complacency by always expanding your goals, pushing yourself to accomplish more and more in sales than you were aiming to accomplish before!

Using Your iPad For Work

The iPad is one of the most popular products these days, as it gives you a surprisingly natural way to interact with your "computer" by allowing you to hold it in one hand and use the touch screen to navigate - but on top of being used as a "toy" or a "diversion," many people find that the iPad is great for more productive things as well, such as work; of course, the iPad is great for work if you are able to use it for such, as it is much more compact and easy to transport (and easy to carry around!) than a laptop - but you must also realize that the iPad was not "designed" to be a work device, and because of this, there are a few things you will need to do in order to turn your iPad into something you can use for work.

First off, you need to realize that typing on an iPad is altogether different from typing on an actual keyboard, and unless you are an extraordinarily slow typer, you will not be able to type nearly as fast on an iPad as you would be able to on a keyboard; because of this, one of the main things you will need, in order to turn your iPad into a "work device," is a bluetooth keyboard.

You should also be aware of the fact that the iPad is not equipped with Microsoft Word - nor, for that matter, is it equipped with a similar word processing program; because of this, you will need to purchase a program in the app store that will allow you to type in the same way you would at your work computer - and while there are a lot of different apps available for this task, the one that many people find works best is Pages.

And of course, you will need an easy and natural means to share files across different computers - and while you can use email for this, this process can be made a whole lot simpler by having iCloud or Dropbox to naturally share files with hardly any effort on your part.

And of course, you will need patience if you want to use your iPad as a work device; it can be difficult to get used to this at first, but once you are used to it, you will realize that you are able to work from your iPad just as well as you can work from your regular computer!