Marketing Consultants

2011-12-04T02:11:00.001+03:00

interesting online jobs went up in 2011 by 30%s

2011-12-03T19:01:00.001+03:00

interesting online jobs went up in 2011 by 30%s

THE MARKETING PLAN

2011-04-10T13:07:00.000+03:00

For an entrepreneur to understand the process of creating a marketing plan, he or she must first understand the concept of marketing. The concept of marketing is commonly known as the marketing concept or the marketing orientation.

The concept of marketing is the process of matching the consumers’ or customers’ needs with what that specific business offers. This way, the business makes the money and the consumer or the customers’ needs are gratified.

As an entrepreneur, it is important to understand the marketing concept which is mainly referred to as the marketing orientation, or the marketing mix made of the 4 Ps.

For an entrepreneur to get the full benefits of the marketing concept there is a need to develop the marketing plan. First some assessment needs to be done. Like the strategic plan we discussed earlier, the marketing plan starts with the assessment by analyzing the business abilities.

To assess the business abilities, a key question of what can the business do and not do and why need to be the start point. The business ability is the business core competencies. Popularly known as the marketing audit, like the financial audit, the marketing audit looks at all aspects of the market.

Some of the elements assessed at the marketing audit include the market share, the industry attractiveness and the competition analysis.
Ignoring the business core competencies leads to business disasters that makes the business lose money, time and may even lead to the death of a business.

The marketing assessment starts with the entrepreneur defining the competitors; however the word competitors narrow and lead to only assessing businesses offering similar products or offers. For me the word competitive set is a more holistic term.

Let’s look the two terms, the competitors and competitive set if applies as a basis of an airline. For example an airline’s competitors are other airlines, while if the same analysis was based on the competitive set, it would include video and teleconference facilities, the internet charts, emails and brands like Skype.

Besides the assessing the competitive set, the marketing plan also need to assess the operating environment, which include the economy, the political elements, technological changes and the legal elements.

For a marketing plan to be of a great advantage to a business, three key elements must be taken into consideration, these three elements are, the business core competencies, the consumers’ or the customers’ needs and the business operating environment.

It is important for the entrepreneur to know that a marketing plan helps in identifying the business competitive advantage and thus making the business focus on what its best at, giving it the competitive advantage.
The entrepreneur should not look at the marketing plan as a waste of time and money, but as an investment. A marketing plan will create a detailed process, detailing different activities and how to achieve the set objectives.

Without a marketing plan a business will not be able to take advantage of the marketing opportunities, face the challenges and optimize the profits.

THE STRATEGIC PLAN

2011-04-07T18:18:00.000+03:00

Every year, business leaders and entrepreneurs take a retreat and work out on what is commonly known as a strategic plan brainstorming sessions. The origin of this tradition is not something I can write about because I do not know who the first person to do this was.

For me, the question is what is a strategic plan and does it has to be done away from the office? When a strategic plan is mystified, I can guarantee you the entire plan will not be implemented as desired as people think the process is not part of the business.

For me, a strategic plan is made of only four phases. The first one is assessment, and then planning and the third is implementation and finally the evaluation.
A strategy is how a business needs to be run, it is that simple. The first phase; the assessment involves various already established tools. Environmental scanning is a key tool. At this stage the PEST or PESTEL analysis is one of the best tools for environmental scanning coupled with market analysis research, taking care of the external analysis. For internal analysis the best tool is the SWOT analysis. The role of assessment stage is to understand the environmental and internal factors that are and will influence the business in future. This could be a new technology, a new legislature. Business internal factors could include lack of qualified staff as this could affect the business now and in the future. Once a true to the ground assessment has been done, a brainstorm involving as many people as possible is carried out to inform and verify the findings is a one key way of assessing a business, do not make it management task only, involve other employees. A clear way of meeting the challenges and optimizing the resources is developed at this stage.

The next stage is the planning, this is the phase where the resources are allocated to meet different objectives established and developed at the assessment stage. The objectives of the planning stage are based on the questions of how the business will utilizes the available resources to achieve its objectives. This is an important area as the business is able to identify areas with more resources than necessary, shortage of resources as well as resources that may not be required to meet the business strategic objectives. At the planning stage, a plan is laid down synchronizing the resources with the strategic objectives.

The implementation stage is where execution takes place. All that was put in the plan is brought to life. Here is about getting the hands dirty. The implementation stage is about bringing practicalities to the plan, making it real.

The final stage is the monitoring stage. This is a key step that many strategic plans fail to develop. How will the business know if it is on right track, how will the business know that results are trickling in unless there are measurements of the achievement. If there is no tracking and evaluating, the strategic plan will remain static and may not give the desired results.

With the above steps, no one needs to have retreats every year for strategic brainstorming.

THE BUSINESS, STRATEGIC, MARKETING PLAN FOR AN ENTREPRENEUR

2011-04-06T17:09:00.000+03:00

A business needs to have a direction in its endeavor to grow. For a business to succeed there are many types of plans that a business needs to develop. As such, the planning for business starts long before the business opens its door to the first customer. The first planning is the business plan. Once the business plan is done, the next level is the strategic plan. The final part is marketing plan.

THE BUSINESS PLAN
The first of such plan is the business plan. Many people write a business plan to impress the venture capitalist and the banks. But did you know that a business plan is a very ideal tool for the growth of your business?
A business plan sets the course of an entrepreneur. It is a roadmap by which the journey for entrepreneurship follows. With this in mind, when making a business plan, remember it is for your business and not for the other parties like the banks and venture capitalists. Before you set up to make a business plan sit to understand the market and the industry you are planning to play in. This may sound farfetched but a business plan needs the industry attractiveness.

THE STRATEGIC PLAN
Once a business plan has been made, then it is time to develop a strategic plan. The strategic plan is the tool to action the business plan. It gives the resources required and the direction of the entire business. Whereas a business plan may cover the business in a lifetime, a strategic plan is made for a minimum 3 years and may stretch to about 5 or more years. The strategic plan details the resources required, the way the resources are going to be used, the purpose of each resources, the objective of every move. The strategic plan is simply a way of doing things to meet the desired objectives. The strategic plan includes other plans i.e. the marketing plan, the human resource plan, the financial plan etc.

THE MARKETING PLAN
The marketing plan starts with the marketing objectives, i.e. in my initial year I will grow my market share by 5%. For you to determine the percentage of growth, you must know the size of the market. The market size is usually determined at the business plan level. The marketing plan is made of small plans based on the marketing mix, or the 4 ps. In the marketing plan there is a promotional plan which includes the advertisement plan and budget and the desired result. The other part of the marketing plan is the product plan. This details the products, the different variants and sizes, the package, the role and what each elements plays. The other part of the marketing plan is the place plan; this is what channels to sell the product, the role of each channel etc. The final part of the marketing plan is the price plan. This is the role of the price, the pricing structure of each product.

For any entrepreneur to make it there is a need to harmonize each of the three plans to work for the business.

DEVELOPING A NEW PRODUCT THAT MEETS THE CUSTOMER AND THE MARKET NEEDS

2011-04-06T13:08:00.001+03:00

Where do new product for a business start? Many entrepreneur think that a new product or offer start in the business boardroom. You will find the NPD group in a business giving specs of the new product to the lab and in a short while a new formulation is developed, taken to the quality control for testing before hurriedly taken to government regulations and standardization body for certification. However, something is lacking in the whole process, the customer or the consumer of the product.

The problem with the above method of developing a new product is that it lacks the input of a key decision maker in the purchase of the new product.
In many of my writings, I have always talked about market insight that leads to a product development.

The journey for a new product do not start with NPD team in the business boardroom, but it starts with the customer. All new products should start with the customer needs. It is by identifying the needs, either through market segmentation, a usage and attitude survey, an observation or data mining do we investigate the need, size the market and go ahead to brief the NPD team on what the customer need and give specs of the NPD.

The first thing the NPD team does with the help of the marketing team is develop the concept of the new product. The concept is the idea of the new product, illustrated on a medium. It could be a set of sentences, a mood board or even a voice over description of the product, the benefits, both functional and emotional.

A concept is made of the insight; an insight is a truth about something that has been observed or derived from observing consumers. The need is what the consumer is looking for. The benefits are what the consumer expect from a product and the new brand fit is how the proposed brand fits with the insight and the consumer needs and the benefits is provides.

Below is an example of new product concept:

Insight
Every morning I wake up feeling tired because of the previous nights drink.
Consumer need
This makes me face the day with less energy and thus makes me fail to fulfilling my potential.
Benefits
To refresh my day, I take a cup of tea with olive oil, that helps clean my body system in a minute making me feel fresh and energized the whole day.
The new brand fit
Introducing Olivetea; a delicious tea in a tea bag, containing olive ingredients, which cleans my body from previous nights drink, making me feel refreshed the whole day, thus facing my day with confidence.
Olivetea, for the day after.

Once the concept has been developed, it is taken to the consumer through focus groups discussions or quantitative surveys.

It is important to develop between two and four concepts, each concept well thought and positioned differently.

The best concept is converted to a product. Once the product has been developed, prototypes are developed and a process of product testing is carried out. The product testing is simple process where a questionnaire is developed. Through quantitative testing, monadic sampling is applied. Like the concept, it is important to develop at least test two prototypes of products to be tested. Besides, at this point the pricing research can be combined with the product testing.

The most common pricing research is the Price Sensitive Measure (PSM). For the analysis of both the product and pricing research, a statistical technique known as conjoint analysis is applied to determine the best product and optimal price.

If a new product follows the above process, the chances of success are higher than if a boardroom decision led to a new product development process. The above process is way of an entrepreneur to reduce chances of failure as well as save money.

MARKET RESEARCH FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND STARTUPS

2011-04-05T17:51:00.000+03:00

WHY MARKET RESEARCH
As an entrepreneur with a zeal to succeed, you business needs a marketing strategy. This is a long term plan of set policies and guidelines that enable your offline and online business achieve its business objectives. Creation of a market strategy revolves around effective ways of coming up and executing the marketing mix.

Marketing mix is popularly known as the 4 Ps of marketing, namely place, promotion, product and price. Effective marketing strategy ensures that the customer's needs are met and satisfied and the business makes profit, which is what any entrepreneur want. One of the key question many entrepreneurs ask themselves is how do one develop an effective marketing strategy?

As an entrepreneur, first you need to understand the market; this can be done by carrying out a marketing research. Marketing research is based on three main methodologies and these three methods are: desk research, qualitative research and quantitative research.

DEFINING DESK AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
Let me start by first defining three research techniques. Desk research is the secondary research. This involves the researcher going through historical documents and data. This could be other research findings, industrial documents and information from the search engines. Desk Research is about analyzing information already in the public domain.

The Qualitative and quantitative research are primary research techniques, this means that the research gathers the data herself or himself. Qualitative research aims to explore whys, initial market understanding plus motivational issues and usually involves smaller samples. Qualitative research gives words as opposed to how many and the numbers and has borrowed a lot from social sciences. The key data gathering tool for qualitative research is discussion guide; an unstructured questionnaire that changes as the research continues.

Quantitative research seeks to quantify and measure relationship of various attributes. Unlike qualitative research we talked about earlier, quantitative research sampling is far much larger as well as representative of the target population. The sample selection is an elaborate process which could be either random or purposive.

It is based and borrows a lot from applied mathematics and is used for hypothetical and other mathematical testing. The key data collection tool for quantitative research is the structured questionnaire and this could be administered face to face, phone or online. There are also special gadgets that are used for data collection i.e. the bank customer service tools that we press every time we visit a bank. Quantitative research borrows a lot from applied mathematics.

WHAT IS QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
Qualitative research is critical in situations basic information is lacking. At times if one has quantitative data qualitative research is used to understand the motivational factors leading to the numbers. Another key use of qualitative research is in hypothesis generation and once the hypothesis are generated the quantitative seek measures and tests the hypothesis.

Another key thing to note is that qualitative research does not require representative sample and purposive sampling techniques are applied. This means the sample for qualitative is not a representation of the population or the target market.

There are various methods used by the researchers to gather qualitative research data. One of the key methodologies is the Focus groups discussions. A Focus Group discussion is a group of people are invited to a place to discuss about their attitude or usage of a product or service.

The focus groups are moderated by a qualified moderator, who asks questions in an interactive manner using the group dynamics to get the relevant feedback. They gather both rational and irrational answers and through content analysis the research develops the finding of the research.

The focus groups discussions are designed to make the members of the group feel free as they would normally be when discussing in an informal setting. The group is either taped by audio or video recorders where the contents are transcribed and used thematically in report writing.

Focus groups are used in usage and attitude survey, behavioral surveys concept testing, advertisement testing and idea generations. Focus groups are also ideal in new packaging development or improvement.

Besides Focus Groups Discussions, Ethnographies are used too as qualitative research methodologies. Ethnographies are basically observations. In Ethnographies the researcher is either an active or passive observer. This means that he or she is a member of the target group and becomes part of their routine.

Ethnographies help in understanding the respondents through observation and participation. This could be a researcher going to live with a family to understand the way they watch TV, how they prepare and eat their food, wash their utensils and clothes as well as the brands they use etc. Ethnographies provide information based on observations, whereas the other techniques interview the respondents. Ethnographies call for active involvement with the target group.

WHAT IS QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH
Quantitative Research is a methodology that deriving numerical data. It is a key research method ideal for measuring attributes, phenomenon and deriving relationship among factors being measured. This type of research is more systematic as it seeks to quantify and measure and results are usually in tabular or graphic form.

As I mentioned earlier the sampling is far much larger and is the representative of the target population. A structured questionnaire is the primary data collection tool and the questionnaire is administered either face to face, through the phone or online.

To design a questionnaire for a quantitative research, the first converts the objectives into information areas. The generated information areas are structured into questions with scales to enable measuring. A typical structured question could be: in a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is the least important and 5 is the most important, what are the factors that you consider before starting a new business.

Quantitative research is ideal for testing hypothesis, simulating and modeling the market as well as track performance and measuring satisfaction in customer or staff surveys. Quantitative research is used as experimental and quality control in businesses

Statistic plays a big role in quantitative research to generate figures, perpetual mapping as well other relationships.
The quantitative results either maps, means, percentage, ratios and other mathematical models explaining relationships of measured attributes.

So next time you are creating a marketing strategy remember that you will need to have some help in designing your marketing research process.

Do you know the industry you are about to start a new business

2011-04-05T12:48:00.000+03:00

The other day a friend of mine was asking me what business he should be on. I paused for some time trying to think how to answer that question. It was a straight forward question but the answer was not as straight forward.

Starting a business is not about having money, but having the right idea. The idea is based on an observation or knowledge on something the market need, what the market need is sometimes referred to as an insight. For you to get the insight, you must be familiar with industry.

This does not mean for you to start a business, you must have worked in the specific industry you are planning to start the business. What it means is that prior to starting a business you must make sure you understand the industry basics, the market dynamics, the competition, the pricing model, the regulations in that specific industry among other things.
It may sound a tall order to gather the information I have mentioned above, but with internet and the local libraries that possible.

The first thing you need to do is carry out a desk research on the industry you are about to venture in. To get the industry information, go to the local chamber of commerce; get all the relevant documents related to the industry of your interest. There are many publications in the public domain relating to the specific industry you want to be part of.

Try and get what any industry research that has been taken on the industry you are planning to be part of. The industry research provides very relevant information on current market size, the competitive sets, trends and projections. This information forms part of your business plan and cash flow projections. The trends are very important in designing the offers to you customers. The market size and the players are ideal for developing the right strategy for your business.

The other way of getting to know about the industry before you start the business is carrying out some interviews with the stakeholders. Get out and talk to the competitors, of course you will not tell them that you want to compete with them. This way you will get to know the dos and don’ts of the industry.

Every industry has what are called the industry experts; these could the local journalist who writes about the industry, the government official who regulates the industry or even the tax department. Make appointments and meet with them in their office or a café, have a set of questions and ask them about the industry. The questions could be what they think is the future of the business, what are the perceived threats and opportunities, the existing regulations and what do they perceive to be the future trends.

The final way of getting to know about the industry you want to start a business is visiting a trade fair; most of the trade fairs are announced way before they start date giving you ample planning time. Get into one of those fairs and meet the industry stakeholders. This way, you will meet the players in the industry. At the fairs you will get to know how the industry is structured, who are the big and small guys and how do they relate to each other.

No matter how the great is your business idea, getting to know about the industry you are about to start the business is the first step. Without that inner industry knowledge you could be heading for a very hard start or even failing.

MORE ON COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

2010-08-10T14:33:00.003+03:00

As I mentioned in my previous post a business core competencies creates its competitive advantage. A competitive advantage enables a business to offer its customers better value than its competitors. The competitive advantage is sustainable depending on how difficult it is for the competitors to imitate. The ability to imitate a competitive advantage may difficult if the business in question has been in existence for a long time.
Take for example the Coca-Cola Company, it has been there for years, it has developed an effective distribution system and has created trustworthy partnership with its distributors and if one was to start manufacturing soft drink, then he or she would need to have their own such an effective distribution channels to compete effectively. For Coca-Cola the effective distribution is part of its competitive advantage. However with today’s technology, a new business may strategically use internet to create a pool of affiliate marketers thus leapfrogging Coca-Cola.
However Coca-Cola has many defense mechanism to protect its competitive advantage, First Coca-Cola may opt to block its competitors by patenting its distribution system or even threaten legal action to whoever tries to copy its distribution model. However such a move could only keep other business away from the Coca-Cola competitive advantage for a matter of time. Besides the consumers behavior could change to buying everything from the internet thus rendering the Coca-Cola distribution system obsolete. It may buy time blocking the competition but eventually they will catch up. The block strategy, Coca-Cola may opt to erect barriers around its business model by making their offer distinct and different from other offers in the market thus offering the consumers a unique value and then block the competitors by introducing better margins to its distributors. This blocking strategy bear fruits only if the product line is so distinct and different from what the competitor offers the market.
Because of the shortcomings of the block strategy above, Coca-Cola may decide to use a run strategy, this means that Coca-Cola will keep coming with new competitive advantage and every time the competitors catch up Coca-Cola is ahead. This has been the case of Apple, they first came up with Macintosh computers which were easier to use. By the time the competitors caught up with them, they had moved ahead with the IPod, then IPhone and latest IPad. This strategy calls for business to be always identifying new consumers needs and moving ahead to provide new products.
Coca-Cola may also opt to use team up strategy; that is team up with online merchants to extend its products online. This way, its consumers can either buy from Coca-Cola brick and mortar infrastructure or from its internet based business.
The best way for a business to operate is to use the above three strategies in order to maintain the competitive advantage.

BUSINESS CORE COMPETENCIES

2010-08-09T17:00:00.000+03:00

I would like to write more on the competitive environment. For any business to succeed in today’s competitive environment then a business must have a competitive advantage. Competitive advantage is the position of any business operating in a competitive environment that allows the business to make profit and grow in investment in a sustainable manner. This competitive advantage must be unique as to differentiate the business from the competitors. To develop the desired competitive advantage then the business needs to fulfill the criteria below.
First the business must be willing to leverage widely in many products and markets as possible, this will increase its opportunities in its environment. More products means more niches and hence more money. More products which are complimenting each other make it hard for the competitors to develop substitutes thus defending the business from encirclement and flanking attacks
Secondly, a business must come up with a business model that the competitors will find difficult to copy or imitate. This goes even to the type of offers the business is providing to its customers, remember one of Porter’s five forces is threat to substitute products. Thus a business must work hard to identify new opportunities, cover its back to avoid competitors coming up with new ways of meeting the needs their product are meeting.
The third and not the least criteria is to fulfill and meet the consumers needs by providing product, services or solutions that meet their needs.
The above three criteria are what business experts call business core competencies.
Take a look at Apple, they are always on the lookout and they come up with new products to keep pace with the market, their core competencies rotates around innovations. Core competencies have been defined as a specific factor that a business sees as being central to the way its business works. Core competence can range from superior customer service “Customer is the king” to innovation. Once a business define its core competence and take them as the guiding light, every employee must know that is what the business stands for. Business core competences are strengths relative to that specific business competitors and peers. Core competencies must flow to all facets of the business if they are to meet any desired objective. Core competencies define how the business is ran, how the resources are shared, the skills required, coordination of different sectors of the business. Core competencies are a commitment to a business, when a business says customer is the king it cannot afford to treat customers in a carefree manner, it must make sure that all the staff know customer is the king, every mantra of that specific business must demonstrate that customer is the king. For me I always look at core competence as a culture and the business DNA.
In competitive environment a business must have a competitive advantage to grow both in profit and revenue over time. Competitive advantage is achieved through a business developing and sustaining its core competencies.

UNDERSTANING THE COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT

2010-08-08T13:52:00.000+03:00

After reading the Dimensions of Brand Personality and writing a post about it, I have started relooking at my business books and articles and today I would like to share with you a very interesting business topic from Michael Porter’s book “The competitive Advantage”
In his book, Porter talks about the Five Forces sometimes referred to as Porter’s Five Forces. These five forces are Rivalry, Suppliers Power, Buyers Power, Threat of Substitutes and Barriers to entry. In this post I will not break them down but will just illustrate some of the forces.
For a business to thrive well in one must understand the following:
The business model, which is the method by which a business uses and builds its resources in order to offer its stakeholders who include the owners and the customers a better value than what its competitors are offering. Simply put a business model is the way a business plans and makes money not only in the short term but in the long term too. A business model is made up of a systematic way of arranging the resources, other business components and linking them together to offer a dynamic money and value making formula.
Another element that one needs to understand in succeeding in any business is the environment that the business is operating in. A business lives in an environment and not a vacuum and like a human being survival is key, because of the competition. I remember back in my school we read about Charles Darwin and his theory of survival for the fittest, call it business Darwinism or not but it is a reality. Because business lives in a competitive environment its success is based on its business model. With the internet, the environment is the whole world. For a business to succeed there is a need to first carry the Environmental Scanning Some great tools in the Environmental Scanning include SWOT ANALYSIS and the Pest Analysis. To know how to carry the two types of environmental scanning read the post by clicking the terms.
Besides the competition, there are other factors that a business must deal with strategically; these include the suppliers and the customers.
Understanding the suppliers is another very important element, one needs to avoid having very powerful suppliers, powerful suppliers will force you to take substandard good at high price. They will change price now and then making it hard for you to survive in the competitive business environment. Remember, the higher the price from the suppliers, the lower the profits for your business. One way many business avoid this trap is having many suppliers for a given product
Other critical people in your business environment include the customer, when the customers are powerful, they will force the price down and ask for more value than the business can sustain. A lower price translate to lower profit.
For your business to remain competitive and survive, the business owner must take charge of change. Change is an element that if ignored will lead your business to become extinct, just like the dinosaurs. Take care of changes by understanding the trends, new way of doing things, living with the consumers at heart by understanding their changing consumption patterns, their changing lifestyles etc. Understanding change is also important as it leads to new opportunities and diversification.

OF THE BRAND AND BRAND PERSONALITY.

2010-08-07T20:51:00.000+03:00

I was reading an article the other day, when a term I had almost forgotten was mentioned by the author of the article. I remembered almost five years ago when this was a term that could not go unmentioned for a day and I wondered if I was becoming rusty in my marketing and branding knowledge. I have decided to write about that term in this post because for any business person it is a term that we cannot allow to get forgotten. The term is Brand Personality. The brand personality I am talking about it’s the one written by Jennifer L. Aaker in her article to the Journal of Marketing Research, Volume 34 on August 1997. This article title was Dimensions of Brand Personality . In this article, Aaker talks about a theoretical framework of the brand personality. Aaker defines the brand personality as “the set of human characters associated with a brand. Aaker mentions five brand personality; Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication and Ruggedness. Understanding your brand personality is a very important in your business as brand personality is used in positioning the brand in consumers mind. A brand personality is what differentiates one brand from another. Let’s look at some of the brand personality of some of the brand we know. Caterpillar and Levis are brands that have a rugged personality. One the way market researchers gets the brand personality is in the qualitative research where the researcher asks the respondents to imagine the brand in question was a human being. This activity is called personification and the respondents goes on telling the researcher if the brand is a male or a female, what its age, the type of the car the brands drives and the respondents even give mentions the brand personality, i.e. cool, trendy, smart, down to earth, you name it. After the qualitative stage, at quantitative stage, the respondents in a point five scale are asked more on the brand personality. I would go on and on about brand personality, but I believe in teaching a person to fish as opposed to giving out the fish and hence I have included a link to the Jennifer Aaker’s article. Read more on the Dimensions of Brand Personality here, you can even download the article Dimensions of Brand Personality .

WORK HARD TO LOOK FOR GAPS IN THE MARKET AND YOU HAVE BUSINESS

2010-02-18T16:24:00.000+03:00

First and foremost starting a new business is not as easy as many people think. It is one big reap of faith. It is something you have to do with knowledge that it could fail. One thing about entrepreneurs is that they are easy goers, adventurers sort of people. The other thing is that they like freedom. They hate structures and are very determined lot. They also need a lot of support from their closest relatives and friends. I was reading something about Amazons founder Jeffrey P. Bezos and how he quitted his job at D.E. Shaw to start selling books in the internet. By then internet was at its infancy. What I like about this story is the trust the Bezos had on Jeff that they gave him their retirement money to start a business that had 30% chances of succeeding. In this story I see determination, positive attitudes and trust. To succeed in business, one need to understanding the trends in the industry they plan to be in. Jeffrey of Amazon got his aha moment. This aha moment came when he saw that internet in 1994 was growing at 2,300%. He thought strategically by wondering what business opportunity was there for him and true to his word he created Amazon. He stated by researching on top 20 mail-orders to determine how he could give the customer the best value. When he identified a gap in books, he went for it. Because of his research and discovering a niche, he discovered that he had limited knowledge in books and he went ahead to attend the American Booksellers Association's annual convention in Los Angeles. This basically is the very path many entrepreneurs pass through, they identify a gap and ask themselves how they can offer the best value to customers. Work by first looking for gap in the market and then asking yourself what you can offer and there you are, you have your business model.

WHAT MAKES AN ENTREPRENEUR DIFERENT FRON US ORDINARY PEOPLE

2010-02-17T11:50:00.000+03:00

Many Business starts with a bang but as times goes by they decline and die. They say over 50% of all new businesses die within first year of establishment. Many have attributed the failure to many things including lack of market, lack of capital, failure in management. But with all these failures we have some businesses which have grown to become the biggest in the world. Who knew Google in 1995? No one knew about Google, because Larry Page and Sergey Brin were just student at Stanford. But for the last 10 years Google, has grown to be one of the largest organization in the world. We can talk about many successful businesses which have grown from nothing to great business within the last 15 years. Think Amazon, EBay just to name a few. We can as well talk about many which died too. The greatest value any entrepreneur can have to make their business grow is the idea. The ideas of all the major business giants which have grew within the last 15 years have been different. The ideas were based on new ways of doing things. The ideas are different from other business, we knew in our childhood. But what do all the success entrepreneurs have in common? They must be willing to go the extra mile. They must seek new ways of doing things. They must be willing to pay in innovations. They must be willing to work hard. This way they are assured of their success in the long rum

BRANDING YOUR BLOG - THE TEN SUCCESS TIPS

2009-09-17T14:33:00.000+03:00

This is not a new post, I wrote it and submitted it to article directories some times back, the only reason I am posting it today is because somebody asked me a question on blog branding and I thought this article may help.
As a blogger the need for branding is huge. You cannot achieve the desired marketing growth if your lack proper marketing communication. A blog will do just that, it will communicate and help your online marketing. But how do you brand? The following are ten tips on successful branding of your blog.
1. Segment the market: This way you will be able to identify your primary target and develop benefits that will appeal to them. With a segment for your product or your blog, you will be able to specifically target your offering; you will be having a clear picture of who your intended customers are.
2. Know your target: understanding why they are buying from you is a big move that will help you in tailoring your products and designing your blog. Understand what sort of people they are, know their nitty gritty. This can be achieved by using subscription to be able to talk to them as often as you could make it personal
3. Have your unique selling proposition: This will make your offer unique. You will be different from your competition. Differentiate the way you sell your products, how you treat your customers. Have consistency in messages fonts, colour schemes. Get professional advice if you must but do it.
4. Know your competition: Your competitors will crush you if they get the chance, know them, and understand their plans, their customers, and their offer. Track, monitor their every move, anticipate their moves, it's a chess game, don't let the check mate you.
5. Turn your brand inside out: Look at what is working and retain, throw away what is not working, innovate, turn your brand younger by the years, extend your brand, give your customers new experiences and change the rules of the game. It's the only way out.
6. Create loyalty: People by nature want to be part of something larger than them. People need a hero. They hero worship anything bigger than them. Niche marketing is your best shot. It creates niches which eventually turn into small tribes. Tribal brands are worshiped by clique of people and guarded secretly.
7. Be a good brand: A good brand is consistent, gives clear messages to its customer. Provides details of its benefits. Its benefits include both the extrinsic and intrinsic of the brand. It caters for its customers both functionally and emotionally. A good brand keeps its promise
8. Give consistency in quality: Consistence should be all round. The product quality should be the same. A bottle of coke is the same whether in a store in Atlanta or hawker cart in Tajikistan. Quality of a brand is in the color scheme, the way the name is written. Consistency is part of the promise. Part of the offer. It reassures your customer of lifetime relationship.
9. Be distinct, relevant and memorable: Since you know your customers very well, then you know what they want, why they want it, and you will always be able to remain relevant. While your competitors are stuck in old ways, you become distinct, standing out. Have easy tags, lines that even kids can recall. Live memorably to live longer
10. Offer more than your competitors: This is the golden rule in marketing. Yes, with all the above then you will be offering more than your competitors.
By adhering to these ten tips in your branding, you will leap benefits by getting traffic and your marketing online efforts will start paying off.

YOUR BUSINESS PORTFOLIO AND YOUR BUSINESS PLAN.

2009-08-22T16:11:00.001+03:00

We have talked about business plans; we have described some business plan parameters and what makes and breaks business plans. I want add something to your business toolkit; a business portfolio. A business portfolio has been defined as a collection of products that make up your business. A business portfolio is a sum of what your business need to sell to make it in the marketplace. It is the entire line of your products and with each products contribution and role defined strategically. Each of your products must play a critical role in the growth and profitability of the business, now and in future. In a business portfolio development, each product must be described in its current and future role to your business. Your business portfolio must be in line with your business SWOT and your entire business mission and vision. To come up with an effective business portfolio that will serve your business on a long term, you must start by scanning your current business portfolio and ask yourself what role each of your product is playing currently as well as its future role in the entire business. Scanning your business environment gives a clear picture of how your business environment will be today and the future and therefore you will be able to determine the lifespan of each of your products and assigning them a more strategic role as well as allocate the right amount of resources on a long term basis. Scanning the environment will enable you to create the right strategy for your business product line. Your business portfolio must be in line with your business strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities. In your business portfolio creation, you must decide on resources allocation and how that will be maintained currently and in the future, the resource allocation will be based on current and future role of your products. The relationship between your business portfolio and the strategy is that your business strategy borrows a lot from your business portfolio. Your business portfolio is the map of what products need to be killed, replaced and which products needs to be maintained and for how long and any products extension your business might need in future. I always say that a business portfolio is your entire marketing strategy. To close this post I would like you if you have no business portfolio to start by doing the following: Start by scanning your business environment, and develop your long term product strategy. Sorry guys, lunch hour is over, its time to get back to work.

BASIC MARKETING COURSE: MARKET TARGETING AND SEGMENTATION

2009-08-16T18:01:00.000+03:00

A segment is a group of people, customers, and businesses, which have one or more similar characteristics. A market segment is ideal in marketing because it can provide a basis of providing product or products to that specific segment. Within a market segment, the attributes that make the segment be classified together are considered homogeneous within the group but are heterogeneous compared to other market segments. Thus market segmentation is the process of dividing different customer clusters that share similar attributes within each segment but are different from other clusters. When your business is carrying out a segmentation exercise it must have enough information on the entire market so that you can be able segment the market into distinct market segments with similar wants, needs, attitude, demographics, psychographics, lifestyles, life stages etc across the entire segments. After the segmentation exercise, a close match of products benefits are closely matched with the needs of the specific segments to create relevant products for that specific customer segments. This, in marketing is called targeting and the specific segments for that specific product is called target group. The action of matching the segments to the products is what in marketing is called market positioning. Segmentation enables a business to calculate the size of the segments, making it possible for a business to forecast the revenue as well as profits, an ideal step when writing a business plan. While developing a business or a marketing plan, the market segmentation exercise will enable your business set effective and tangible targets for each part of the process, based on tangible information as opposed to gut feelings. Market segmentation exercise improves on marketing efficacy, which means that it improves on the marketing effectiveness as well as the efficiency, and brings value to your target customers. One key advantage of segmentation is that the marketing efforts is applied to each segments with a clear understanding of who they are and where they can be found as opposed to scattering your marketing spending to the entire market some of whom will never care. Don’t just get into the market baselessly; segment the market to enable your business take advantage of the existing niches based on the customer needs.

WHY MANY BUSINESS PLANS FAIL

2009-08-15T16:01:00.001+03:00

The bug to start your own business has bitten you and you are talking and telling your friends about it. But stop a minute, what will you sell (the product), who will you sell to (the target customer), what is the price (The price), how will people know about your business (Promotion). Basically what is marketing mix? These may seem simple questions but actually if you do have an answer to each one of them, then you have no business to talk about. The right answer to each of these questions is what is called a marketing opportunity. A marketing opportunity is a combination of factors that creates a market. A market is a place where you find two types of people, willing buyer and willing seller. Many times we think we have a viable business idea, we talk about it to our friends, relatives or even neighbors, we spend time writing business plans but we never execute those business plans. This because we cannot answer the above questions, we have not identified a marketing opportunity, we don’t have a marketing mix and we have no marketing strategy. Many would be successful business never see the light of the day because the idea owners lack the necessary skills to identify a marketing opportunity, as well as create and implement a marketing strategy. Marketing strategy is basically a plan and execution of any business on how to sell anything in this world. It is the core of sales and profits. It is what gives our business the bottom line as well as, maintain a health cash flow. Marketing plan creates our business competitive edge, which differentiate us from other businesses and make us grow. For you to identify a marketing opportunity, the first thing to do is to carry an environmental scanning. This scans both the business’s macro and micro environments. I have talked before on how to carry out environmental scanning, you can get write ups on PEST and SWOT analysis by visiting this blogs archives. The tool for analyzing your macro environment is SWOT analysis and the tool for analyzing the micro environment is PEST analysis. Therefore as you are planning a new business, scan the environment and your business will succeed and grow.

FIVE QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF BEFORE GETTING TO BUSINESS.

2009-07-19T00:32:00.000+03:00

Many people get to business and fail within the first one year or so. This is because they get themselves into something they are not ready for. I don’t want to discourage you, but for you to become an entrepreneur there are some basic attributes you must possess. I’m not saying if you don’t have them, you are done, but you will need to learn them. This is the only way you can be assured that you will have a business to be proud of. One way of establishing if you have the relevant traits to succeed in the business of your choice, is to ask yourself a series of questions.

The first and critical question to ask yourself is if you are familiar with the type of business. If you are familiar then there is no problem all you need is self confidence, patience and some luck. But if you are not familiar you need to learn or get a partner who is more conversant with that type of business or industry.

The other question to ask yourself is how much time do you need to make it happen and do you have the strength, the patient, the resilience and the money to survive. A business takes a long time to give returns and if you do not have the above attributes, you are definitely going to fail.

The third question is do you have what it takes, entrepreneurs are hard people, they can withstand a lot, they work hard and late. You cannot become an entrepreneur if you are an eight to five gal or guy. You must be ready to spend time over and above what a regular job demands to make it work. You must be willing to sacrifice a lot.

Another question to ask is who is supporting you. If you are married, your spouse must be on your side otherwise, it will be the business or your family. Remember you will need to spend a lot of time trying to make it work, you are going to be rare to your family and friends and if they cannot understand your mission, then it’s going to be a tough time for you. You might be forced to make hard choices.

The final question will be can you live with failure. No one is telling you that business is easy. You could brow all that money and live with huge debts. Are you ready to face it, when the time comes and your business idea doesn’t work, are going to be an entrepreneur enough to call it quits and still be willing to get to another venture in future? If the answer is yes then you are an entrepreneur.

If you can answer the above questions positively then start a business, you are an entrepreneur and you will make it. If you are not sure, repeat the questions again and if you are not sure, take some few days and ask yourself the question until you are sure whether you are an eight to five guy or gal or an entrepreneur.

THE FIRST STEPS ON WRITING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS PLAN.

2009-07-18T21:16:00.000+03:00

I have written a lot on business planning, but I have to admit that there is a first step that I have not written about and it is very important. A business plan is your business concept put on a paper. Therefore for you have a business plan, you must first have that concept in your mind. As much as it may not be written, it must be well organized in your mind such that when you begin writing, it will be easy for you to put it in a more organized manner. An idea could come in flash, but I always tell my trainees to have a note book and write those flashes. I have such a note book and I write my ideas in it. I have written so many ideas and I have utilized very few. Such a note book helps your business by keeping the business ideas in one place. This helps you to toy with those ideas before you make a decision to put any in action such a business venture. The other important point of toying with your business idea for a while is the fact that you become conscious of it and you move with it in your mind. This way you come face to face with your potential competitors and understand more on how the market is structured.Once you commit to a business idea in your mind, it is easy to start planning your potential business in the following key areas:
• How to start the business.
• How way to raise capital.
• Identify the best location for your business and if it is an online business, you toy with the design, the domain name and you even such for its availability.
• You also start talking about it to your friends and family who will either support or discourage you

It at this is the stage you carry out the SWOT, PEST and Five forces analysis. This forms the basis of creating a strategy for your business. By having the potential business idea toying in your mind you understand the legal element plus the taxation issues related to your business.By the time you commit to write the business plan, you can vividly talk about the following:
• The capital required and where you propose to get the support, could the banks or venture capitalists, or a loan from friends and relatives.
• The competitors and the way the market is structured and your war plan.
• The cash flow and other related matters and how you will manage your finances.
• The legal elements and the political situation of your market.
• The future trends and the expected opportunities as well as the expected market threats.
• The competition and the size and how you will deal with them.

You can see that already you have your business plan in place; all that is remaining is committing it to a paper. This way your business plan will meet your needs and you will be able to present it to all the relevant parties.

HOW TO DO A FEASIBILITY STUDY.

2009-06-26T16:15:00.000+03:00

How to Do a Feasability Study

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

re more then you can imagine for a fesability study, you did it so often so people calls you consultants.

Steps

Define the objectives of study, there might be one to several
Research on the business model analysis of targeted industry or company
Conduct market analysis, i.e. 5 Forces, competitive study, market share analysis
Construct business plan
Review the plan with insider, i.e. managers, frontline staffs,suppliers, customer of targeted company or industry
Simplify and modify the business plan so everybody will be able to understand after 1min's pitch
Conduct Market research on proposed plan to focused group or survey
Perform breakeven analysis and sensitivity analysis
Marketing plan
Operation plan
Financial plan
combine everything in above to perform decision tree/fishbone/scorecard analysis.
Write the study report

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Do a Feasability Study. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

THE ROLE OF A FEASIBILITY STUDY IN WRITING A BUSINESS PLAN.

2009-06-26T15:17:00.000+03:00

The other day I was talking to my friend and he told me something I really would like to share with your. This guy told me that research is a life skill. I repeat it is a life skill, that each one of us has done marketing research at one time or the other. Let’s start; with buying a car, we carry out marketing research by asking our friends and relatives what they think about that particular brand of a car. When asking questions we seek to know what their experience is, what they have heard about that particular brand of a car and what its power, stability, performance, fuel efficiency and resell value. The same goes when buying a house. Imagine that even window shopping is a also a form of marketing research. Based on this, marketing research is the first action for any new concept or any improvement, be it in business or otherwise. To me marketing research is the dipstick to new waters. It is a measure of acceptability by our friends and relatives. In many of my trainings on business planning and marketing, whenever I mention the term marketing research, I see people panic. Many people think that marketing research is about the bar graphs and other statistical parameters and many people feel they are not curved for that. Today I would like to demystify marketing research by telling how to carry a feasibility study enable you understand if your intended business will work for you. A feasibility study is a simple way of identifying new business opportunity for diversification as well as starting new business. A feasibility study is the most important starting point for business plan writing. If you carry out a feasibility study you will be able to decide whether you will continue or stop your proposed business. In writing a business plan, feasibility study will create the basis of the cash flow projections. The following are basic steps for carrying out a feasibility study. Ask yourself the following questions:
What is the business and is it doable, is it real, is it practical? As much as entrepreneurs can dream big and innovate in a big way, their concept must fit the world they are living in. Imagine proposing to have a diabetic hospital in a region with its entire population always in dire need for a daily meal. Always ask yourself, Can it be done?
The next part is your concept’s economic sense, will it make money? This is tied to the cash flow and revenue, which forms a vital part of your financial planning. It is very important to establish how big the market is? If they are other players, inquire how much they are making, what is the size of their market. A simple way is to count the number of players, common sense dictate that if you find a business with many players, then there must be money to be made, they cannot all be making losses. However always remember that if you get to and industry with many players, competition is stiff and the barriers to entry are few, limiting your business sustainability and growth.
Another critical question is about you and your team’s abilities. What are your strengths and weaknesses, what are the technological and other technical know-how required for this business? Will you get the right manpower, is the technological requirement available. This calls for a SWOT an analysis of your current or proposed business.
Make sure that you have time lines of how long do you intend to take before you start operating. Are you going to get everything on the required timeframe? Make a critical path to enable you achieve your objectives and goals. The other critical thing is to segment the market. You must segment the market and at least estimate what each segment will add to your revenue. If a segment is very small and cannot sustain itself, combine that poor segment with a segment that is similar and get an offer that appeal to all the customers. Market segmentation is the basis of any marketing plan; this applies to either old or new business. Market segmentation will help you to create the customers’ profiles, which in turn will assist you in conceptualizing and developing the relevant offers, both available and unavailable market offers. The unavailable market offers are opportunities. Once market segmentation is done, project growth of all your segments and develop you financial plans. The financial plans include cash flow and revenue. With clear market segmentation then you will be in a position to project the market and be in a position to nurture both current and future growth both in value and volume. Value means finance and volume means customer traffic. By the time you are finishing in this feasibility study, your business will be taking shape. Based on the market offers, work out you mission and vision. This will enable you to work out the human resource required, including the criteria and qualifications of the required personnel. Get the steps of how to carry out a feasibility study in my next post.

FROM THE ART OF WAR: WHAT IS MARKETING TO YOUR BUSINESS AND THE CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL MARKETING HEAD?

2009-06-13T14:21:00.001+03:00

Sun Tzu says “War is a matter of vital importance to the state, a matter of life or death, the road to either survival or to ruin, hence it is imperative that it is studied thoroughly.”
That is Sun Tzu and Cashmoneylink says ““Marketing is a matter of vital importance to any business, a matter of life or death, the road to either survival or to ruin, hence it is imperative that it is studied thoroughly.”

We take marketing lightly, we mix it with sales, we think sales is marketing and marketing is sales, using the two words interchangeably. It is wrong, and for you business to grow you must start to differentiate the two, otherwise your entire business is headed to the ruin. Marketing is a process, it is a strategy, sales are the actions, and hence it is a tactic. Marketing involves planning, executing, conceptualizing, innovating, setting the price, distributing, promoting, linking with your customers to create satisfaction. Marketing is the department of defense, the Pentagon and the head of marketing is the General. He or she leads the army. What are the characteristics of your marketing general, back to the Art of War, He or she must be: wise and able, more talented, able to take advantage and identify the terrain, (read opportunities and threats), carry out the mission and the vision of the business and above all be able to develop the stronger army (read team). Better trained and finally be able to administer punishment and rewards in an enlightened and correct manner. Marketing is the entire business concept, without a marketing plan then there is no business, without a marketing strategy then there is no strategy. It is that simple. Do you take marketing seriously in your business? If you don’t, then remember in the business world, there are only two people, the Quick and the Dead, and without having a marketing philosophy in your business, I can assure you that you are not the quick, you are the dead. Give me two businesses, and let me judge their marketing head and I can tell which business will survive and which will die. Effective marketing is a reflection of the wisdom of the general. The general must be disciplined and your business must provide the necessary material to win the war (read customers). Customers in business are the spoils of war, the reason why we go to war (read marketing) in the first place, the end results of any campaign (business growth). Your general must create situations that will provide your business with more customers than your competitors (read enemies). The general in your business must be deceptive and gather vital information on your businesses competitors. The general must know what battles to fight, who to create alliances with, who to deceive and who to leave alone. Those are the hard decision that any marketing head must know hoe to make them and with the accuracy and precision of a brain surgeon. Marketing role is simple, to bring the money to your business, and if the leader who brings money to your business is not well trained, and disciplined you can bet that your business will not have the desired end result, to make money (read win the war). For me sales is the big guns, the missile we point to the enemy, sales are the results of a well executed battle plan (read marketing strategy). This strategy is well laid by the best general who never mix, sales and marketing. From today, ask your general to separate marketing and sales and your business will get the desired results (read make more money).

DEVELOP AN EFFECTIVE STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR YOUR BUSINESS PLANNING.

2009-06-10T15:52:00.001+03:00

Many times I have heard people use the word strategy synonymously with planning. This is not wrong, but planning cannot replace strategy. A plan can be either strategic or tactical. A strategy is a long term course of actions, while tactical is a short term. Strategy is deep and involves series of tactical moves. Strategic planning is critical for any business growth; strategic planning is your business way of defining your strategy. Remember a strategy is long term; it should not be less than 3 years and should be measurable over time. Tactics are the small moves that the business makes to achieve the entire business strategy. A business strategic planning should start with environmental scanning. The first step in understanding the environment is by understanding the political, environmental, social or cultural changes and technological changes. The other step, is the competitors analysis, this includes benchmarking your business with the competitors, identifying your and their strengths and weaknesses. This way, you will be able to identify existing opportunities. It’s time to practice this by creating a strategic plan for a real or hypothetical business. First take 4 pieces of papers, A4 size will work. On the first paper write this question: Where are we? This includes a SWOT analysis and a competitors’ analysis. On the second paper write: Where do we need to go? This is futuristic, opportunity identification and threats to be tackled. On the third paper write: What are the prevailing factors affecting our business? This is basically a PEST analysis, five forces analysis and competitors’ analysis. On the fourth paper write: What do we need to do to get where we want to be? This includes: Tasks and resources required in terms of capital, personnel, technology etc. There must be time lines attached to each resource or tasks, this is what makes a strategic plan measurable. If you can do this and follow what you have written then you have a strategic plan for your business. Remember a strategic plan can be amended along the way, but this should be because there factors that are beyond your power. Small adjustments are not a problem, but make sure that you at least you achieve 50% of your targets. If you find that your strategic plan is easy to follow and to achieve target then your environmental analysis was not accurate, you need to identify why it is simple and easy to achieve, adjust accordingly.

MARKETING PLANNING, WHAT IS IT?

2009-06-09T14:48:00.001+03:00

I have this special post because I am receiving a lot mails from my readers on the following question: What is a marketing plan?
A marketing planning is the documentation of businesses actions and execution to grow or maintain your market position and strength. It covers from one year to five years. Marketing plans points out areas for growth and opportunities. Marketing plans include innovations and other new areas that a business plans to include in their current business or portfolios. Marketing plan are not stand alone but are part of the strategic planning that feed to the entire business plan. Many a times a marketing plan is a set of actions that need to be taken to gain or affirm your business marketing position. These sets of actions are usually part of the overall strategic plan for your business. There many plans in a business that form the entire strategic planning, some of these include, financial plans and human resource plans that if combined with a sound marketing plan they forms the entire business strategy. To develop an effective marketing plan your business need to have a marketing process. A marketing process is the right marketing attitude and process that is made of five steps which starts with the market and the environment research through setting targets and developing marketing strategy and the mix then ending with marketing controlling. Always remember a sound marketing planning is the core of a successful business. A marketing plan is the light at the end of the tunnel that you cannot afford to ignore.

THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN A BUSINESS PLAN, MARKETING PLAN AND STRATEGIC PLAN

2009-06-04T17:25:00.002+03:00

A business plan can be both formal and informal. A business plan is formal when it is documented and it is informal when it’s only in the mind of the entrepreneurs. Unwritten business plan changes with the mood of the entrepreneur and lacks tangible measure of any achievement. Many entrepreneurs focus their business plan on financial goals giving little attention to non financial goals like the business mission. The financial goals can only be achieved if your business mission and vision are adhered to. That is why I am saying a mixture of financial and non financial goals in your business plan are critical. A business plan is the first marketing, sales and any branding activity for any business. A business plan is focused in giving the image of the business to both customers and stakeholders internally and externally. That is why there is a very fine line between a business plan and a marketing plan. Most of the time we rush to write a business plan when we want to get money from venture capitalists and this makes our business plan focused to the external stakeholders as opposed to being a business plan that means something to our internal stakeholders as well. External stakeholders include the banks, other financial partners, venture capitalists etc. Since a business plan is about goals and means of achieving those goals, it therefore important that it should be shared with the internal stakeholders, who include, business partners and employees. This makes any business more successful. I have always said that a business plan is the flight path of any business and one cannot just make one for the bank only. A business plan is made to be followed; it is a bible, which an entrepreneur refers to different verses and chapters. It is always important to know that a business plan must have the buyout of the internal team, remember this is the team that is going to work for your business to achieve the promised goals. Your brochure, the company profile is actually derived from your business plan. A proper business plan will assist your business in generating the employee’s manual, the marketing plan, code of conduct, the business philosophy, culture, attitude and values. For me a business plan in the base map, that other smaller map are derived from. It is the atlas of your business. A business plan is the entire business strategy, because it details goals and means of achieving them. In many instances, entrepreneurs disassociate a business plan with strategic plan and the marketing plan, but basically they are the same except that they are done for different reasons. While as a business plan is mainly made for the external stakeholders, a detailed business plan on how the resources of the business will be used to achieve the goals is what commonly referred to as strategic plan. Marketing plan is a business plan created to focus more on the marketing, sales, branding and image of the business aimed at increasing target customers, product usage and awareness. From now on I would like to ask you to look at your business plan as a decision-making tool that will assist your business in goal creation and detailed information on required resources, means and ways of achieving those goals. It is a flight map that determines your business flight path.

GETTING A THOUSAND FOLLOWERS IN TWITTER

2009-05-26T12:46:00.002+03:00

Twitter is becoming on of the most important elements of our life. For those of us who cannot do without twittering and we are always worried when our bosses catches us. We vow in writing to the board of directors never to twitter again and yet we report all that back to our twitter friends in crime. Twitter for us is a drug we cannot do without. My friend the other day was asking me how one gets followers in Twitter and I was taken back. I don’t know how you get followers but one thing is definite, you must have a post for anyone to follow you. Twitter is a conversation and if you don’t post anything you will get nothing. The other thing is if anybody follows you, return the favor by following them back and also use your direct message to write personal notes to your followers. Post which are trendy and have a sense of humor get more following, making more people follow your posts. Let’s continue twittering to converse more.

THE ROLE OF PRICE AND COST IN A BUSINESS PLAN

2009-05-26T11:57:00.001+03:00

Price is one of the four original Ps in the marketing mix. The other three Ps are product, promotion and place. Price is the result of exchange between a buyer and a seller. It is a quantity. Price is the only P in the marketing mix that gives back to the business, the other Ps are concerned with getting from the business. Cost on the other hand is the expense paid to buy something. Cost is not the same as price. To the seller price may include profit, but to the buyer, the price is the cost. Cost is an investment by the buyer; it is based on the perceived value of the service or product being purchased. When writing a business plan, price and cost are critical because they are both used to give the revenue expected from a business venture. While writing a business plan price minus cost gives you the gross margin. Price, time taken and quantity sold gives the cash flow, which is a critical element in drawing a business plan and determining if the venture is worth pursuing or not. For those writing a business plan to access capital through banks or venture capitalist, price and cost becomes critical for one to succeed. When writing a business plan for a new business, price may only be hypothetical and may change once one gets to the ground, this may be based on the competition, target market and other macro and micro factors. It is therefore very important not to exaggerate the proposed price as you may find it difficult to achieve your numbers, especially if a bank is breathing on your neck. Be very realistic in your proposed price. On the other hand cost is a straight forward thing as whatever you propose to buy could be in the market with a brochure available. Always remember not to confuse price and cost as they have different roles in your business planning.

WHY A BUSINESS MODEL IS CORE FOR YOUR BUSINESS PLANNING.

2009-05-21T13:57:00.001+03:00

For you to come up with a very effective business plan there are three things you need to put in place: First you need to have a business model, then you need to assess the environment and third but not the least you need to take into consideration that there will be changes in your area of operation. In this article, I would like to talk about, the business model element. A business model is the means by which a business plans, creates and executes its resources. This enables a business to create offers that will meet its target customers’ needs. Your business model’s role is to create value for your customers thus driving sales and leading to profits. In essence, a business model is a plan and the execution detailing how a business will make money. It takes into account today’s and future needs and plan the allocations of the businesses resources in a long term manner. With that in mind, you must have a business model for you to have a sustainable and competitive business. A business model is the core of any competitive advantage. Without a business model you cannot outwit your competitors. To me a business model is the system by which a business offers value to its customers. I always consider it to be the source of revenue for my business. Without a business model, I cannot implement and sustain my business’s activities, resources and capability that are elementary in helping my business beat its competitors. With all that in mind, a business model must consistently change to fit with the changing business environment. Therefore when you start thinking about starting a new business you must develop an effective business model first. That is why you cannot think of a business plan without first having a business model.

A VERY SIMPLE STRATEGY TO GROW YOUR INTERNET BUSINESS

2009-05-20T14:43:00.002+03:00

To succeed in your internet business, you need to have a core competence. This makes the foundation of your business philosophy and strategies. There are three core competences postures or platform that your business can take. These three platforms are vital for your sales, marketing and business planning. The three postures are:
• Operational Excellence: When your business takes this platform your business need to offer superior value by leading in price and convenience. The danger of this platform is that it can be duplicated by other industry players. Unless you are very good in sourcing for cheaper and superior products than your competitors. To take this platform becomes more challenging when you are doing online business, this is because online prices are duplicated and copied by competitors
• Customer Intimacy: This platform is based on providing your market and customers with tailored solutions for different market segments and niches. Customer service becomes the core of this platforms success. The advantage of is that it’s hard to duplicate and it is ideal for service industry. The beauty of this platform is that its relationship based, making your business become more personal to your customer to create the desired intimacy. This personalized relationship leads to more sales through repeat purchase and word of mouth advertisement.
• Product Leadership: In this platform your business need to continuously provide the market with new product. The backside of this platform is that if you are not dealing with very strong brands and legal structure where copyright rules are respected, your competitors will be copying anything new you introduce to the market. This platform works well with pharmaceutical and technological companies.

No business can excel in more that one platform. For your business to succeed, you need to take one platform and make it your core competence, while maintaining the industry standard with the other two. Don’t try to be all three, you will fail.

INTERNET AND ONLINE BUSINESS

2009-04-16T16:42:00.001+03:00

The internet transformed the world’s economy by radically altering the way customer source for product information, order and pay. In essence it changed the customer’s life.
Internet made the world smaller turning it into a small village. It brought more importance on new ideas, information and changed the entire spectrum of the customer service.

Information is now on the finger tips of customers and the competitors thus altering the entire marketing mix. Online, one cannot play with the elements of marketing mix e.g. the price, because everybody knows your price and the competitors can lower theirs to skim the market. Online, the same guy who manufactures products is the same guy who sells thus killing the middle men and creates affiliate marketers to work directly for him/her. Internet opened a new killing field for faint hearted business people. Internet is a place for champions and winners; it is not for quitters and losers.

Internet made technology, which for along time was a back bench come to the front line. Technology is the core of any successful internet business; technology is currently enjoying the center of attention. Imagine Intel which is the inside part of a computer that is not supposed to come out but made sure that it is visible to everybody with a simple message “Intel Inside”. Even the cars we drive, we do not even know the brand name of the engine but we know the brand name of the processor of computers we own.

Technology is an enabler in this internet age. Without adequate technology, internet business cannot enable any transaction to any customer.

In your internet business, make use of any available technology to get the results you desire.

TIPS OF WRITING AN EFFECTIVE BUSINESS PLAN

2009-04-09T16:45:00.002+03:00

Writing an effective business plan is dream of many entrepreneurs. There are many templates in the internet to assist you write a business plan. But that is not enough, to write a business plan first you need to have a business idea. A business idea is not an easy thing to come up with. A business idea is something you look for, spend sleepless night refining it in your mind. A business idea is something that hits you and the bug to have it done bites you. In marketing, we develop business idea by observing and inquiring, we continuously ask why until we hit what we call an Aha! Moment. To come up with a business idea, follow these simple steps and you will crack it.
• Observe many things people around do, if it’s your wife, observe how she washes and cook food. Look at the way things are done and ask yourself why they are done that way and if there is a better way of doing it.
• Read a lot on your area of research to understand what other people are doing. If you have a camera takes pictures and video of what they are doing. Ask why, why, why until you cannot ask anymore.
• Look for needs that are unmet, this is simple, for example if a customer complain about something at your local shop it could be from closing time to the way the shopkeeper is rude, those are unmet needs. It means if you filled those gaps you have a marketing opportunity.
• The other way of getting a business idea is by segmenting the market into small segments. Many businesses use the mass market concept. This means that they are out there to satisfy everybody and in the long run they end up satisfying nobody. Identify segments and seize the opportunities. For example if the local shop sells everything, your business idea could be to specialize on something and become good at it. If the local bookshop sells all sort books, start a business selling only business books. If the local butcher sells goat meat, start a business of selling beef, or chicken or even fish. Create niches to identify market opportunities.
Once that is done estimate the size of the market. To estimate the size of the market use local population and statistic books. This will enable you to know the population size and the average income of your market. You can estimate the market by inquiring from reliable sources how much your intended competitors makes on a good day. Once this is done, you can now go on to work out on pricing, first identify the market price and ask yourself what will be your pricing strategy. Do want to sell at premium or do want to skim the market with a lower price. Always remember that a lower price will bring price war and you might never win, especially if you are new and with limited capital. A premium price means that you have to offer more value to your customers i.e. it could be ambiance by adding an air conditioner in your butchery, superior customer service, offer home delivery, offer half cooked etc. By doing the above you will be able to create the business idea and as well get your financial target. Always remember that your business idea is the core of your business success.

WHY BUSINESS PLANS FAIL

2009-04-09T15:51:00.001+03:00

The other day I came across a friend of mine who was very interested in writing a business plan because they were some banks giving out loans. He asked me to write the business plan for him and if it worked out he would give me some consultancy in his new business. I was taken back and wondered how one could write a business plan for someone else. I told him that was not possible. I told him that writing a business plan is a personal thing, it is like an exam. A business plan is mainly used for convincing investors and banks to give you money. That is one of the key reasons why people looking for loans, finances, investors and grants write business plans. But I want to clarify something today. A business plan is the first document that any business writes. You make a business plan before you get to any business not by get to a business and write a business plan later. A business plan is the concept behind any business. It illuminates the path that the business will follow to grow and that why it cannot be written by strangers. A business plan is the first strategic paper any business writes. The reason why many people even fail to get the funding they seek is because they write a business plan just to get money. They have no intention of doing what they promise. If you are genuine on all that you write in a business plan then you will get the funding and even if you don’t get the funding, your business will succeed if you execute the business plan. For those writing their business plan now, take time to understand the market you want to enter, have your targets market well understood and justified with figures plus your financial targets right. If you do it this way you will not only get the desired funding but your business will succeed.

NO BUSINESS PLAN WITHOUT MARKET SEGMENTATION.

2009-04-07T13:50:00.000+03:00

Many times entrepreneurs write their business plans without a clear marketing plan. A marketing plan gives the entrepreneur the market they need to target in their business. A marketing plan cannot be developed without first segmenting the market and identifying the target market for ones product. The market segmentation process which is basically a business through an elaborate defines and targeting customers in a market. It is a process that involves cutting the market into distinct similar groups of customers and then measuring the size of each market segment to determine feasibility. If the market segment size is found to be smaller and cannot be of any significant market value that segment is put together with other similar segments until they become mature to stand on their own. This is what leads to brand extensions when the smaller segments mature to stand on their own. So you see that you cannot write a business plan without a marketing plan, and you cannot write marketing plan without a proper marketing segmentation.

MAKE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION THE CORE COMPETENCE FOR YOUR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT.

2009-03-26T17:05:00.000+03:00

The other day a colleague was asking me why I keep on writing and talking about customer satisfaction. I had a simple answer for him. I told him that many business fail because, they make customer satisfaction the key objective of their business while customer satisfaction should actually be the core competence of any business. Customer satisfaction being the core competence means that the entire business strategy will rotate around customer service. This will make everybody in the entire business become customer service oriented. The customers are the source of income and thus profits for any business. A customer does not buy from us because they like us, but because we have a passionate relationship. Our relationship is deep; otherwise without this sort of a relationship, the customer will buy from the next website. We have intimate relationship with our customers because they are our core competence.

Defining strategy.

2009-03-26T16:19:00.000+03:00

Many people have asked me to define the term strategy and this is what I always tell them. A strategy is a business guide that enables the business orient with its macro and micro environment. It determines the way we acquire and allocate our business resources, ranging from staff to financial resources. A strategy is the tools enabling our business maximizes opportunities and mitigate threats. For a strategy to work as expected, structures, policies and procedures must be put in place in line with that specific strategy.
Without a strategy then your business is in problem because you are losing out.

5 Differences between Marketing Strategy and Marketing Plan.

2009-03-26T16:05:00.000+03:00

Many times people confuse the term strategy with plan. In this article I will point out 5 differences between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan.

• A marketing strategy is concerned with the holistic and long term objectives of the marketing, while a marketing plan is a day to day thing.
• A marketing strategy provide the long term structure, on your business development while a marketing plan is only for one stage of your business process.
• A marketing strategy is the overall orientation of your entire business marketing activities while a marketing plan is for the functional elements of your marketing activities.
• In a marketing strategy your objectives are evaluated on a holistic picture, while in a marketing plan your objectives are basically your specific targets
• A marketing strategy output is not evident immediately and thus cannot be measured, while in a marketing plan, the results are immediate and can be measured immediately
When you are making your marketing strategy, make sure that it is different from your marketing plan

WHY KENNY ROGER’S GAMBLER SONG MAKE A LOT OF BUSINESS SENSE

2009-03-25T13:58:00.000+03:00

The other day I was listening to music and Kenny Roger’s song The Gambler was playing. I had not listened to this song for quite a while and my mind was captivated by that song for a while. This song had a business idea for any entrepreneur in the world.

The song says that every gambler knows the secret for surviving. What if the song says every marketer or business know the secret for survival? What would be the secret for survival would it be good customer service, superior products, or would it be sound financial management?

The gambler song is an entire business toolkit, with tips ranging from business plan, market intelligence, to customer service as well as a sound business strategy.

Market intelligence and market research: First the gambler knows the competitions cards by the way they held their faces. This is a strategy in business, you tell what the competition is about to do by their current action.

If the competitors are purchasing a new plant it means that they want more market share. If they get a new financial partner or more money, they could even be targeting your customer with a new product, or they want to diversify

By reading your competitors action you can tell their strategy. Market intelligence and market research should provide you with that information. Make it your business to know any changes in the environment. You need to read your competitors face and know their cards. You need to read more, feel more and open your eyes to read the competition.

Understanding the market: For you to play the game, you need to learn how to play it right. For me this means you need to understand the facets of your market, your industry and your products.

You need to know when to walk away, when to run. This means that you need to understand your business and your market to know when to change tactic, when to change product, when to attack your competitors.

Knowing what to throw away, knowing what to keep. This is basically market segmentation. In segmentation you need to know which segments will give the best returns and the most profitable segments.

You got to know which customer to keep, which to ignore and weed away. Better have fewer happy customers than have a full bunch of customers who are not happy.

Financial: The song even mention things on financial. You never expose yourself by counting money during the deal. This is because it will expose your financial situation; you need to be discrete with financial issues as well taking caution on anything regarding your financial position.

For me it is superior market know-how through feeling the market which includes market understanding through intelligence gathering and market research, good customer satisfaction and planning is the secret for survival for any on-line business.

The moral of the Gambler Song is, think like gambler, act the gambler and you will see your business grow to new heights.

BECOME SALES CONSULTANTS BUT NOT PITCH FOCUSED

2009-03-22T12:12:00.000+03:00

Nobody wants to be sold to. To be sold to is insulting. If your sales team is pitching to your customers then you have a problem because you are loosing sales.
In today’s interactive environment the sales roles have evolved to being consultants. The sales department now gives advice to the customer regarding the best solutions to their needs. Is not about pitching anymore, it is consulting.

You can even start by changing the name of your sales department to from sales department to product consultants. The role of the sales department in this new light of consultation will be:

• To advice the customer on the best products in the market satisfying their needs.
• To partner with the customer in solving and sorting the customer out.
• Listening to the customer to understand their pain as well as their feedback on the product sold. Even if there is no sales prospect, stay connected with your customer, one day they will buy from you
• To seek a long term relationship with the customer, the customer needs continuity not a one off. Imagine the feeling of a customer if sold to and the sales person disappear only to come later with another product. I bet you that customer will not want to see that sales person again and you will have lost a customer.
• Understand the customer values, desires and the entire way of life. This way you will know what makes him or her tickle. Know their birthday, wedding anniversaries and send them cards. This way you will part of their lives and they will treat you like their family physicians seeking help from you always
• Always remember for anybody to buy from you they trust you and your product and you cannot afford to loose that link.
• Always remember that in the marketing environment your relationship with of your customer is interdependent; that is your customers needs as much as you them.
• The role of a sales person rotates round the customer, without customers you have nobody to sell to
To become successful in your sales always remember that you are not selling to your customer but you are meeting their needs.

HOW TO BRAND YOUR PRODUCTS TO ENJOY MARKETING GROWTH DURING THIS ECONOMIC MELTDOWN

2009-03-21T11:06:00.001+03:00

During this recession many business are experiencing troubled sales due to reduction in customer spending. The market is uncertain. The customers are tightening their wallet. They don’t want to buy something of less value; they want value for money in whatever they buy. Your branding will give the value they seek if you follow the right branding tips.
So what is branding?
To illustrate branding I will talk about animal keepers. Cattle keepers for example brand their cows so that they can identify them form the rest of the herds in the ranch. The process means taking a hot metal rod and making an identifying mark on the skin of the animal. The reason for making that mark is to be able to identify ones animals from the rest of the heard. The mark is a differentiator.
One person may put a similar mark for all his or her cows, while another may have different marks for each of the animal. There is always an agreement between the cow owners on the marks and the symbols used. It may seem rudimental but that is branding at its best.
Let’s take this cow branding further, assume that one cow owner known as Mr. Johnson gives his cows the best meal, water and medicine. Thus Mr. Johnson’s cows have quality milk, hide and meat while the rest of the cow owners just feed them whatever is available resulting to poor quality milk and meat plus the hide is not even applicable in making the simplest leather product. Mr. Johnson cows are sought after in the market prompting him to sell his milk, hide and meat at a premium price and the customers keep coming without complaining.
Them if Mr. Johnson calls his products Mr. Johnson’s cow products and market them consistently like that then he has created a brand. This brand has equity, it has a value and that value is paid at premium on each product that he sells, if he keeps his promise on quality and consistence, then Mr. Johnson is a true brand maker. While every cow owner branded their cows in all sort of marks and symbols, Mr. Johnson went further to make sure that his product are of quality from the day the calf is born to the day the calf’s output hit the market. That is consistence
So based on that analogy; branding is a way of increasing your product perceived value through an elaborate and systematic tangible value addition while maintaining consistence. A brand is a promise of consistence in offer, values and philosophy. The whole process of creating a true brand is called branding.
First use branding to differentiate your product in the market. Like the cow owner you want customers to identify some extrinsic values of your brand. You also want to identify your brand from the other products in the market.
Secondly your brand is a mark of quality, let the customer know that you are obsessed by quality offers.
Thirdly your brand must offer consistence, it must be the same all the time, no changes in functional and emotional benefits.
Finally make your brand a promise, a vow. A promise cannot be broken; once it’s broken it’s no longer a promise.
These four tactics will be perceived by the customer as adding value, they will have a reason to buy your brand even if it means going the extra mile. Many times when economic recession hits us, the first thing to cut is the marketing budget, but this not the best way to do it.
We need to offer value through branding when the market is in recession to get customers to keep coming to us, cutting the market budget is actually adding a nail to the coffin. Brand to remain valuable to your customers.

SALES PERSUASIVE TIPS TO GROW YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS

2009-03-14T22:41:00.000+03:00

Selling is an art that is very important for any business person. I will provide you with some persuasive skills that will take you along way in selling your way to success.
Understand the products you are selling inside out. This is because you will be selling products to people who will make decision based on the explanation that you have given. Your overall understanding of the benefits is paramount. Remember in sales you sell value not product. You sell benefits and the price is based on the benefits. You could try and lower your price to lock out your competition but, lower prices raises questions of quality. The customer buys benefits and has a price tag for the benefits hence lower price do not guarantee you many sales.
In your sales pitch always:
Sell value to the customer, talk about the product inherent benefits. For example say this software will integrate your customer database with your profitability and it works with all accounting systems without any problem as opposed saying that your software is the cheapest in the market. People do want to buy the cheapest they want to buy solutions. Always focus on the benefits never price. Your price then will be based on the benefits and no one can undercut you on pricing because the customer is willing to pay for the benefits. Tie the functional benefits with the emotional benefits. This software will make your business grow because it will save money in the long learn by reducing errors in you customer information system. Saving money is a functional benefit while growing the business is an emotional benefit. Before you start a sale pitch know your customer details. Greet people by appealing to them personally. Let them feel you are talking to them directly. Make feel special. Always handle your customer with finesse. Appeal to their hearts not their pockets. For you to have a successful pitch follow these are the steps of successful persuasive pitch. The first thing is to introduce yourself and then let you customer introduce themselves. This can be done by having a form to fill on their software needs. This way you will be able to provide relevant solutions and customized solutions. Offer and describe the right product for their needs and fully provide its benefits both functional and emotional. Briefly talk about the price without making it look cheap. If you want to bash your competitors talk about the superior benefits of your product compared to the benefits of your competitors’ product or solutions. This makes the customer feel your professionalism and honesty and this way he or she will want to know more and eventually make a buying decision most likely on your favor. Make yourself available after the sale. This can be done by developing a customer feedback form on your website. This is the form that the customer fills after using your product for sometime. Invite the customer to participate on your forum to describe the different uses of your product. Follow your customers by phone or mails to know if they are happy with your product and if they have new needs or problems. This way you will be looking for a new sale. By doing all the above you will be marketing not selling and you will enjoy success on your online business.

Tips on how to create a customer focused blog.

2009-02-28T23:44:00.000+03:00

Your blog must create love at first sight to your visitors. Marketing is about satisfying your customer needs and each product that you create must offer benefits to your customers. For you to achieve your desired marketing output, your landing page should offer the following information:
• A brief description of the product you are selling.
• The product’s benefits which should include both functional and emotional benefits should come out clearly.
Besides that your promotions and advertisements must be credible and believable. Most of the websites at this stage give testimonials, but testimonials have been overused by both genuine internet businesspeople as well as crooks and they no longer achieve much when it comes to credibility.
If you need to have customers’ feedback, offer forms for filling the required information, however when you do that avoid the following pitfalls:
• Don’t ask sensitive information about your customers unless you reassure privacy and security.
• Make the forms more accessible and easy to use by making sure they have few fields to be filled.
• Also make sure that if the customer makes a mistake, they do not have to start allover again.
• Make sure that the customer does not experience problems filling the forms by having a help icon and brief description on information required in each field.
If any customer writes to you seeking your help, here are some few tips on what you need to do:
• Satisfy their needs by helping them as much as possible.
• Ask them if you were helpful and if they need more assistance
• Encourage them to communicate to for any other related problems.
• Thank them.
These are basics for creating a customer focused blog that only retain customer but offers a high level of customer satisfaction.

Role of Marketing Research for your Online Business.

2009-02-28T13:44:00.003+03:00

In business you will always have many difficult decisions to make, making the right decision is not an easy thing. Let’s imagine that you have two products to launch and three advertisement campaigns ideas to choose from. For both scenarios, you have a limited budget and you must maximize on the available resources. What do you do?

First you cannot have the cart before the horse, which means you cannot have the new product first without having the right target. If that is your situation then you have a very big problem, for your new products to make it through the market you have to push them to the consumers through massive sales effort and even that is not a guarantee that it will work. Get it from me, I am talking from experience. I have been around the world of marketing for over 10 and I have seen such scenarios before and the results have been disastrous.

Let us see where I am coming from. We define marketing as a process of planning, designing and executing the marketing mix. Marketing mix is made of the Ps, it does not matter how many Ps we have but some of the Ps are the following: product, price, place, promotion, people, positioning and physical evidence. Marketing mix means that you cannot have any marketing activities or any marketing plan without any of the Ps.

For you to develop an effective marketing plan you need to carry out a marketing research. Marketing research is the process of linking functions of your business to its relevant market, this through understanding the market dynamics by using relevant information.

So how does marketing research help you in building the marketing mix and eventually the marketing plan?

That can only be answered by understanding some of the benefits of marketing research.

Marketing research helps your business in carrying out the market analysis and in return, this helps you in understanding the following market attributes:

• Size of the market
• Your competitors and how they are structured
• The different market segments and their profiles, size and monetary value
• Customer profiles by demographics and psychographics
• The customer need, how they are met and which needs are not met by the current market offers. For example by understanding and identifying unmet needs, you can be able to develop propositions, test them to develop the concepts and eventually develop new products.
Marketing research also helps you in segmenting the market and measuring the size and profitability of each segments, thus giving you a specific target market for each of your products. This way you do have to shoot blind. Marketing research illuminates the way for you and moving into without anything without a marketing research is a very big risk.

You do not need to have a lot of money or knowledge to carry out a marketing research for your online business. I have written other articles on the different methodologies and I will start with a simple brief for you. This brief is on how to use your current visitors to your site, as respondents for your survey. First I would like to ask you to develop a forum if you don’t have one and open a Facebook account for your site visitors. These two will form a panel of your customers who you can post to the qualitative questions on why and how they view your products, what are their needs and how do they think you can satisfy them. To develop a discussion guide or a qualitative questionnaire read my article on discussion guide development because it will help you carry out the process without any problems.

How to develop an effective marketing strategy

2009-02-26T16:09:00.002+03:00

A marketing strategy is a long term plan of a set of policies and guidelines. This enable your online business to achieve its marketing objectives. It revolves around effective ways of executing the marketing mix. Marketing strategy ensures that the customer’s needs are met and satisfied and the business makes profit. The key question is how do you develop a marketing strategy?
First you need to understand the market; this can be done through marketing research. To introduce marketing research I would like to make you understand two main methodologies that are applied in the marketing research process.
These two methods are desk research, qualitative research and quantitative research. Desk research is popularly known as secondary research and involves going through historical documents and data, other research findings as well as industrial documents and search engines. I will not say more on desk research for now, but I will talk about the other two methods commonly referred as the primary research methodologies. The first one is the qualitative research.
Qualitative Research
Definition:
Qualitative research is the type of research that aims to explore whys and motivational issues, as opposed to how many. It a field of research that borrows a lot form social sciences and quantitative research borrows a lot from applied mathematics Qualitative research is critical in situations where there lacks basic information or situations where one has quantitative data but cannot derive the motivational factors. Thus it is used for hypothesis generation, while as quantitative seek to measure and test hypothesis.

Unlike quantitative research, qualitative research does not require a representative sample but uses purposive sample, this means the sample for qualitative is not a representation of the population. Whereas quantitative research uses a structured questionnaire, qualitative research do not use questionnaire but a discussion guide. A discussion guide is a data collecting tool that is changed in the course of the research process by adding and removing questions, to make more relevant.

Get more information on research methods by reading my articles at http://www.goarticles.com, look for articles written by Francis Kimani Kamau.

Market Opportunity Analysis.

2009-02-26T15:49:00.001+03:00

A market is made up of willing buyers willing sellers. A market can be made of brick and mortar or virtual. A virtual market is what is commonly referred to as online business, while brick and mortar business is the likes of opening a small kiosk downtown. However it is important to note that the two definitions are only based on location of the business, one is physical, and the other one is internet based. The rules of marketing do not change whatever type of the market you are operating. The rules are basic. I have talked about environmental scanning and I would like to get further with this topic of environmental scanning and talk about market opportunity analysis. This is a step by step process that involves defining, describing and measuring the size of the market, both in volume and value and establishing different segments and how the competitors are satisfying that given market. It is an ideal tool to measure market potential and as well gives clues on our own market.
The steps of carrying this sort of analysis include:
Market understanding
Market segmentation
Segmentation size estimation and analysis
Competitors analysis and
Benchmarking
Once we have this information it is so easy to draw a marketing strategy.

Strategic planning: How to carry a market analysis, Part 3.

2009-02-24T16:57:00.001+03:00

Now we have the objectives we can go ahead and write a proposal for our market analysis. A proposal must have background information; this is the basic information about your business, i.e. when it started, its current customer base and products and services. This could be borrowed from your business website and it should be clear and short. After doing that, put down your objectives in your proposal, start with the business objective followed by marketing objective. For today’s practice use the objectives that we have just generated. Now, design the methodology. To design the methodology, ask yourself the following set of questions: What information do I have in-house. Current sales information must be available in-house. What information can I get from outside, maybe search engines, industry papers etc? Because there is information we can get in-house, we are going to propose a secondary research first and then follow it up with a primary research to fill the gaps. You have already started your market analysis and you are many steps ahead. It is that simple. In our next post we will talk about how to carry out a market research using primary research.

Strategic planning: How to carry a market analysis, Part 2.

2009-02-24T16:51:00.000+03:00

Now you need to generate the objectives, below are steps of generating objectives. Your objectives should be the business and the marketing objectives. Don’t panic, this is easy, ask yourself the following question: what do you want to achieve? Do you want to grow your sales? Do you want to bring new products? Do you want to fight your competitors? If for example your objective is to grow your sales, what are the sales currently and how do you want to grow them, be specific with figures. Them for you to grow your sales you need to know who buys most from you and why. What is your target market, who are your current competitors and what are they offering compared to your offer. You also need to know how the market is structured. With all these are questions answered you have already done some bits of your market analysis. To generate the objectives turn the questions into objectives by using the terms, evaluate, analyze, explore and understand. Here are some examples of marketing objectives: To identify who are our current competitors. To evaluate the buying pattern of e-book consumers in terms of how do they buy, where do they buy from. To identify key influencers in online buying by identifying how, when, with whom and where. To explore the means of improving our online sales by identifying barriers and areas of improvements. By generating the above marketing objectives then we can go ahead and develop the business objective. To succeed never have more than one business objective and it should only be one sentence, short and precise. A business objective should be something like this: To increase our online sales of our e-book by 3 percent for the next 2 years. In our coming post we will talk about designing the methodology.

Strategic planning: How to carry a market analysis Part 1.

2009-02-24T16:39:00.000+03:00

As I promised in my last post, I will give you a brief outline on how to carry out market analysis. My methods are based on market research as they are the most effective method that I know of and have worked for me. Market research is divided into two key areas, one is the primary research and the other is the secondary research. It is important to note that you do not carry out primary research first and then follow with secondary research; any of the two can take the first slot depending on the needs and objectives of the study. Primary research is the type of the research where one goes to the field to get the data firsthand. Primary research involves designing the project by developing the objectives, coming up with the relevant methodology, while secondary research involves desk research. Desk research is data mining from the previous research, industry papers, search engines etc. Most of the time, one starts with secondary research and then fill the gaps using primary research.

Strategic Planning: Market Analysis.

2009-02-24T15:33:00.001+03:00

This one of the most important step strategic planning and is very effective if coupled by SWOT and PEST analysis. Market analysis is the process that enables you to analyze your markets potentiality in terms of current and future sales. A market analysis will help you in developing sound strategies that will not only give you a forecast of the future sales but provide vital information regarding your entire competitive set. It will provide your online business with information regarding the size of the market, the growth trends, plus the attractiveness of the market. If you get good data, this process will help you in identifying gaps in the market that you can exploit by launching new products or aligning your current offer. This is the first step to help you come up with your marketing plan. Market analysis will identify and help you come up with the best types of promotional tactics, both above and below the line. It will also help you in aligning your resources to enable you achieve high level of return on investment. Without market analysis data, you will be making uninformed decisions which will result to massive losses for you and your business. One effective way of carrying out market analysis is by carrying out market research. With proper skills of data mining, market research geared towards achieving market analysis objectives, provides a clear and a working strategy. Defining what market analysis is, without demonstrating how to do it may not be practical for you. In the next few posts I will be writing steps of carrying out market analysis and research and if you need more information and help, please feel free to contact me for assistance. Our next post is on how to write an effective market analysis proposal with detailed objectives and methodology. If you write to me I will send you a detailed PowerPoint template and all you need is to insert you brands or products. Besides that I will also send you the relevant questionnaires.

Strategic Planning: PEST Analysis.

2009-02-23T17:33:00.000+03:00

PEST analysis is an acronym for Political, Economic, Social and Technology analysis, it is a tool used to assess the micro environment of an organization of business entity. Unlike SWOT which is for both micro and macro analysis of a firm. PEST scans the business and its environment. It is a great tool for strategic planning and cannot be ignored in any strategic management for your online business. It is instrumental in making sure that the business gets consideration from different environmental factors. This factors if ignored might affect your business growth path. PEST analysis is used to measure the potentiality of the market growth and threats to the business. Currently there has been a major shift to the name PEST with other people calling it STEER, STEEP, DESTEP, STEP, PESTE, PESTEL, STEEPLE and STEEPLED. But all in all, it just addition of other factors and the arrangement of the letters.
As I mentioned PEST stand for:
Political: This is the degree of how the government will intervene in the economy. These include the fiscal and monetary policies that the government will enact. New laws, any trade restrictions, constitutional amendments bills etc It is also important to note that when looking at the political issues any prevailing elections may bring new parties leading to the old adage of new lords new laws. Other important political issues in the Pest analysis are issues related to infrastructure, environment health and education policies.
Economic factors include anything economical in nature that will affect your online business environment. This could be reduced GDP or GNP, change in interest rates or exchange rates. Forecast increase or decline in inflation rates etc. the current financial meltdown is an economic factor to be consider if you are doing the PEST on your business today.
Social factors include any merging trends in the general population in your target market. Social factors are the aspects of the human nature that may affect the market and your business. This includes the cultural issues, change in population growth rate, increase in aging population, new trends which could include weight loss hype. For example if many young graduates prefer opening their own business after completion of college as opposed to employment, then you may strategically position your business to offer franchise as opposed to employment.
Technology factors include factors from any technological change expected with a foreseeable future. These factors include government commitment to improving the current data speed by laying a fiber optic cable to replace the copper infrastructure for example. Technological incentives from government because it means they will affect barrier to entry. New automation of a competitor’s production line expected or in place and technological shifts that could lead to better services. Industry marketing skimming will lead to lower costs and a new entrant in the communication industry could bring innovation and new products that will become a substitute of your core offers. All these are under technological factors.
The above factors stand for the original PEST analysis, however with the changing business environment, new factors have been added, and notable of new factors are the Environment and Legal factors.
Environments are factors that have been added to take into consideration the prevailing issues related to climatic changes. Such climatic changes affect the way industries are run or the way farming is done. These factors could also mean new ways of doing business due to emerging environmental trends i.e. the carbon trading and other related issues.
Legal factors include any changes in the law; initially this used to be considered under the political factors. This factor enables you to take into consideration any imminent legal changes i.e. it introduction of communication amendment bill which will change the way data is dealt with in a legal context. These are the regulatory factors that will affect your business. These two types of environmental scanning are easy to administer and its something that you may already know all you need to do is start. We will continue with the other factors in our next posts.

Strategic Planning: SWOT analysis.

2009-02-23T16:40:00.000+03:00

SWOT analysis is an auditing tool that will help you understand your online business as well as its environment. SWOT analysis stand for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and the threats. It is used as a strategic planning method that you will need to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to your business. It is the first stage of any strategic planning. This analysis involves identification and evaluation of the internal and external factors that will favorably as well as unfavorably affect your online business.
SWOT is instrumental in scanning of the business’s internal and external environment that are influential in achieving your online desired business objectives. Your business external factors include the strengths and weaknesses and the external include the opportunities and threats.
Once you carry out this analysis it will help you to match and synchronizing the businesses resources thus creating synergy with your business’s competitive environment.
The strengths of your business are your businesses resources and capabilities that form the core of your competitive advantage. Competitive advantage is something that is unique to your business; it separates your business from your competitors’. The strengths includes, special products, brands with strong heritage pedigree, patents, superior customer service, trained and loyal personnel. Your online business strengths can include effective channel of distribution, superior website with high traffic and low price due to access to cheap labor.
Your business weaknesses include things that are not strengths i.e. lack of trained personnel, new brand name, dwindling customer base, poor distribution network, major law suit, declining market due to trend change etc. To mitigate the weaknesses, the norm has been to change the weaknesses to strengths creating new opportunities.
When we come to external factors, opportunities are just that, opportunities include unmet needs, improved infrastructure, new favorable legislature or new line of business that will create more opportunities. Opportunities call for you to synchronizing your business to exploit the new benefits.
Threats are what could stop your business from achieving its objectives, these include product line that are dying due to changing trends, new major entrant in the market, new hash tax regime, massive change of consumption behavior i.e. use fiber optic instead of Vsat in data transfer.

With a clear understanding your firm can develop new business opportunities thus creating growth opportunities for your products. You can as well develop new product to fit to the changing trends.
Strategies are developed by creating means and ways of maintaining strengths while improving on the weaknesses. There is no need of identifying opportunities that you cannot exploit, so as part of your strategy exploiting the opportunities while reducing your business weaknesses.

Strategic Planning: Environmental scanning.

2009-02-23T15:52:00.001+03:00

I have talked about strategic planning for an online business. However it is important to note that nothing can take place in any strategic planning without environmental scanning. Environmental scanning is gathering, analyzing, and using that information for planning purposes. This is a process, that means that it is continuous. This process includes data mining, business environmental understanding, and market research among other data gathering methods. With this process your online business survives and grows by understanding what is happening both internally and externally. A well done environmental scanning is a source of business opportunities as well mitigating potential weaknesses. This process puts your online business on the lead. This is because it makes you understand and exploit opportunities before your competition does.
There are many ways of carrying out environmental scanning, key among them include:
SWOT analysis
PEST analysis
Competitor’s analysis
Market Analysis
Market Research
Benchmarking
We will go through each of these and how you can carry them out for effective strategic planning for online business.

Succeeding in your business through effective strategic planning.

2009-02-19T17:27:00.001+03:00

A business plan indicates how a business expects to compete effectively in the market place. It is made up of the vision, objectives and the entire growth strategy for the business. Remember that your business has objectives based on your strategy. Your business has functions that need to be performed and you need to have plans for each of the function and this leads to marketing strategic plan. A marketing strategic plan is a description of marketing functions that will be executed based on the business strategic plan. However it is important to note that your business strategic plan is not only based on you marketing strategic plan but it is inclusive of other business functions which includes research and development, production, accounting, human resource among other business functions. So make your strategic planning as inclusive as possible.
There is a process to formulate strategic planning process and the following are the general planning process. The first step is to examine the current situation which includes your strengths and weaknesses. The next step is to identify opportunities and threats. Both step one and two are handled through what is called SWOT and analysis. SWOT analysis stand for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. After the SWOT analysis, the other step is to set your objectives and then develop the strategies to achieve those objectives. And then execute. Many businesses once they execute leave the strategy to work like autopilot, but there a lot of other things that need to be done to make sure that your strategy is in line with your objectives. First consider your first execution as a pilot and review it within the first 6 months. This way you are able to adjust the tactics that you are using. Once that is done, create a critical path document with tasks, responsibilities and timelines, this way you will be able to make sure that your objectives are met and if they are not met, you will be in a position to know what is happening. Remember without a strategy, you have no business. Strategy is the game plan and you cannot afford to ignore it.

HOW TO SURVIVE THE MELTDOWN

2009-02-18T17:37:00.001+03:00

With the current global economic meltdown, you need to do different things to remain profitable. We are all feeling the pinch and it is not about to away. Right now you need to develop a strategy to stay afloat. This time you need to pull that book you read about leadership in crisis time. If you have no such book them I will give you some ideas which will save the day if well implemented. The economy is ducking and diving like a spitfire plane under fire and it such a case we need to know how to navigate through all these. You need to behave like a general during war, you need unquestionable loyalty from your troops and that can only be achieved if you have undisputed leadership quality to steer your men away from imminent danger.
The tool kit you need to do this are:
Quality customer service:
Quality customer service should be inherent in you business, this is not time to start. I have always said that customer service is too big to be left to one department; it should be the motto and the mission of the entire business. Make sure that you dazzle and wow your customers make them feel that you made that business for them, after all without them you have no business.
Strategic innovation: Think innovation, innovation. Look around you to identify unoccupied territories, unmet needs, segment the market further and further, listen to you customers more to find unmet needs, remember you competitors at this time are trying to survive but you are innovating, putting ahead of the tem
Become the undisputed leadership across all board: Command respect from foe and allies. You must be there to offer leadership services to you team. They are looking up at you to carry the day for them, so please do that without failing.
To prepare for what comes next: This could be the beginning of the storm and it could be far from being over. Save where you can, not by cutting the marketing budget but by reducing waste. Lease don’t buy, because at the end of the day, you need to make quick decision and unnecessary assets will be wasting you time. Like a soldier travel light.
This way you make it through the night.

Creating Marketing mix for your online business. Part 2

2009-02-16T17:37:00.001+03:00

We have talked about the 4 Ps and I promised to write about the 3 Ps which are:
People: This P is just that people. Initially this P was called personnel but that is changing to include even the customers. This includes the customers, Employees. This is made up off all the people involved in making that product a success. Basically this P means the Stakeholders, people who affect the marketing mix either directly of indirectly. It is the human face of the marketing mix.
Process: This is the procedures, the systems employed to make the marketing effort a success a success.
Physical Evidence: This is the utility of the product through intangible experience of the customer satisfaction that help in marketing through the word of mouth.
Other Ps that are being considered includes:
P for Packaging
P for Positioning
For you to develop any marketing planning you must first develop the marketing mix. This forms the basis of your marketing strategy to help you in coming up with a brand. In our series of developing and coming with a brand we need to talk more on packaging and positioning.

Creating a marketing mix for your online business. Part 1

2009-02-15T17:02:00.001+03:00

I have been talking and writing a lot on marketing you blog, but for you to make your blog effective you must develop a marketing mix for it. Marketing mix is a set of tools that a business uses to pursue its marketing plan and strategies. Marketing mix is also know as the Ps. Initially there were 4 Ps but now the Ps is now seven with 3 new ones included. The original 4Ps were: The first P is the Product, Is the tangible elements of the marketing mix for a product and for the service it is the intangible. It is what is created by the product maker, or manufactured by the factories. It is basically what delivers satisfaction and comes in specific units. For you online business, it could be the affiliate programs you are promoting, the content in your site, the e-books you are selling among other things, for you to succeed in your online business you must have a Product. This is so because without the product there is nothing to sell, the product is the solution to a customers need. The attributes included in the Product are the product varieties, quality, packaging, sizes etc. The other P is the Price, is the cost of getting the product, the amount a customer needs to pay in order to acquire the product. Price on itself may have its own role in the market place. Its role could be to penetrate the market, to promote the product, to capitalize through premium pricing. Price include, the recommended price, price discounts, terms of payments etc. The other P is Promotion, the communicating tool if the marketing mix; it includes the elements of communications that you may use to make your product become unknown. It includes SEO, Link building, testimonials, newsletters, banners and other offline advertisements which includes newspapers, radio and TV. It includes advertising, direct marketing, sales team, PR etc. In the initial 4Ps, the final P is the Place; this is the location where the customer can buy the product under the specified price. Place offers convenience and product availability, it includes, distribution channels, geographical coverage, logistics of making sure the customer gets the products. For online business it includes the website, the virtual store or your blog. However with the changing business environment more Ps has been included. These new Ps are personnel, packaging and physical evidence. We will talk about them in our next post.

Special Tribute to Affiliatejunktion

2009-02-15T13:37:00.002+03:00

It is with sadness that I post this tribute post on the closure of Affiliate Junction. I have been an affiliate for about six months and its closure has closed one of my income streams. It is my hope that they will be coming back in future once the economic situation has improved. My question is how many victims will this economic meltdown claim? Is this a start of what to expect in our online business in a near future? As for the affiliates of Affiliatejunktion, the management of has promised to pay them their dues based on the payments terms and conditions. This is a good thing. Does anybody else have more information? If you have more information, please feel free to add a comment.

MAKING YOUR BLOG A BRAND BY BREAKING THE RULES.

2009-02-12T15:51:00.000+03:00

To make your blog stand out you must risk letting go the tradition. I know many books have been written on blog layouts, color scheme etc. I am not an authority on layout, if visit my blogs you will see how clattered they are but at times it pays to break the rules. You cannot become a market leader if you play by the rules set by others. For those rules to be there in the first place somebody took the risk and broke some rules. Playing by rules makes it safe. But safe makes it ordinary, like the other person next door and this way you are not a leader but a follower. A follower will never be a leader. If whoever is leading you makes mistakes you take the fall. Following rules is actually taking the risk of falling because of another person failure. For your blog to come out differently, try different schemes layout, change now and then to see what works for your target market. Always remember there is always a room to break the rules. Once you have broken the rules and come out strong on your own, you will see that people will notice you because you stand out. When you stand out in marketing we say that you have differentiated yourself. If you differentiate yourself consistently then you become a brand. Over time you will have a market segment that likes you for what you are.

GET TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOG FOREVER .

2009-02-12T15:40:00.000+03:00

As a business blogger, you must be having the desire to have many people like and come more times to your blog. You need to drive and maintain traffic. Traffic drives you. You also need to enjoy high search engine optimization. For you to achieve this, you must make your blog a brand. A brand so strong, that it will stand out against your competitors’. But how do you make your blog a brand?
Many times people use the word brand without actually understanding what a brand mean. The marketers define a brand as:-
• A name or a term
• A sigh, symbol
Thus a brand is a combination of a name, sign. A symbol well designed to enable identification and differentiation by the customers. Without a clear brand, your blog is a generic; your competition can attack you with ease. For your blog to get to the brand league, it must have what the marketers would call, the blog quality. This will bring your blogging ability out and make you succeed both in blogging and marketing online.
The blog quality is the ability of your blog to perform its function which includes retaining the visitors, reliability, among other varied attributes. As a blogger, you need create a blog that will stand out as a brand. For your blog to become a brand it has to be maintained and protected, always remember a brand identifies you and so should be your blog. Being a business blogger, you need a tool for the buyer as well as the sellers. For the buyers, your blog will help them in identification and elicits the perceived benefits. A brand is a promise to the buyers and your blog must be a promise to its visitors. It’s a mark of quality and your blog must be a mark of quality.
To succeed in branding your blog, you must offer consistency, bundled benefits and it must never fail. Giving your blog a name and good colors is a good thing, but that does not make it a brand. For it to become a brand the blog must be more than just the name or symbol; it must capture the customer’s preference/loyalty. Your blog must represent customer’s perceptions, feelings, expectation and benefits of the product you are selling.
A branding expert suggests a brand reside in the mind of consumers and over time a brand develops good brand equity and so will be your blog.
As a brand, your blog must develop a master plan based on its understanding of its primary customers, their needs and what drives them to buy from you. You as a blogger must understand what makes your customer tickle?
Your blog must deliver strength by:-
• Relevance to its core customers
• Uniqueness
• Differentiation from its competitors and other blogger
In summary, for your blog to become a brand, you must do the following:
• Your blog must offer unique selling proposition and be different in solving your customers need.
• Your blog must offer many benefits to its core customers.
• Your blog must build its equality over time or it will lose relevancy and die.
In short your blog must live, survive and conquer. Based on that, how is your blog doing to become or remain a brand? Always remember branding is about the customer’s perception your offer. This perception is based on how satisfied the customer is.
Make it happen and enjoy repeat traffic to your blog.

STRATEGY FOR BLOGGING FOR PROFIT SUCCESSFULLY .

2009-02-11T15:15:00.001+03:00

No business in this world can succeed without a strategy. If you have a blog as your primary means of selling and promoting your products on the net and you don't have a strategy, then you are in for a big surprise.
I would like to introduce a very interesting topic by asking you a question. Do you view your internet business as a fortune 500 company in 5 years? If the answer is no, then this article is not for you. For those of us who view our internet business as a fortune 500 company, then I believe we all have a strategy. If you don't, have one.
Before you get a strategy you need to have a mission. A mission will include the blogs objectives, values. A mission also will have your blog offer to the viewers among other things. Once you have a mission either written or otherwise and you have well drawn objectives and a business portfolio then you doing right.
A business portfolio is a collection of all your affiliate programs and other products.
First analyze your current business portfolio and decide which affiliates or products should receive more or less or no investments, both in time and money.
Then start developing your blog strategic planning. A strategic planning is the process of developing and maintaining a strategic relationship between you and the business goals plus your capabilities in the face of changing world. Remember in the internet marketing opportunity change, old opportunities become stale, new ones are born, what worked for you yesterday may not work for you today. Always be dynamic by visiting other bogs to see what has changed. Visit other blogs to broaden your world view and improve on your strategic planning and you marketing plan as well. The internet is one huge market and we are marketers trying to sell to other people. We have competition as well as well as allies. Research to know who are you competitors, what market are they targeting, what are their promotion and public relation tactics are in the market. Become knowledgeable in the ways of online marketing. Remember your blog is a brand and it must grow to make sales and eventually profits for you. Always remember that with a good strategic planning, based on a sound mission your blog viewers will always come back for more. This way you will get the right traffic for your products. This will shape the future portfolio by developing new products to fill the gaps of the ones you have dropped. This way you can rest assured that you are on a path that will drive your business to the future.
Strategy is key to your marketing and branding campaigns, it is the foods for the soul of your blog so don’t ignore it or take it for granted.

Growing Your Blog Traffic through Customer Satisfaction

2009-02-11T14:47:00.002+03:00

Customer Satisfaction is paramount for your blog to grow.
Your blog must attract, retain and grow customers. For you to achieve this you must build a lasting customer relationship by creating superior customer value and satisfaction. Satisfied customers are loyal. A customer buys from the firm that is perceived to offer the highest customer perceived value. The customer perceived value is the value that the customer has in his/ her mind. Customer satisfaction is the extent to which a product perceived benefits matches the buyer’s expectations. If the perceived benefits are not met, the customer is dissatisfied. A satisfied customer makes repeat purchase and tells others about the product. To achieve customer satisfaction, always promise what you can deliver. Below are the benefits of a satisfied customer.
1. They are less price sensitive
2. They talk favorably about your business
3. They remain loyal for longer
4. They make repeat purchase
5. They create an emotional relationship with the brand or product or company
For your blog to succeed you need to create satisfaction with your customers and convert then to lifetime customer to get value from them. Customer satisfaction creates brands, and brands are the ultimate winners in any market. Customer satisfaction also make sure that your brand do not survive on promotion only, which in the long run makes your marketing budget manageable. Remember one happy customer will always come back and he or she will tell others about your product, thus making you the ultimate winner.

Blogging to promote and market your products and services, Part 2.

2009-02-11T13:27:00.001+03:00

Nobody is big or small in blogging. If corporate, small and medium businesses, political parties, lobby groups, individuals have taken blogs seriously, so why don’t you. It is an avenue to sell your products, ideas, services and share your frustrations, pictures, and video plus interact with world.
Making a blog is one of the simplest things to do and yet the blog gives the features of a website. Setting a website may call for you to invest money to a programmer familiar with HTML, pay the domain name, and the hosting fee plus all the time spent, all this is money, which probably you don’t have and if you do, there are better ways of spending that money. For starters a blog maybe what you want and this will take few minutes and it’s free. Blogging gives you both world, are you a DIY, who want to do the hard things in life, i.e. programming, coding, HTML, the blogging world will give you that. Are you a simple guy or gal who just wants the results or are you lazy like me its still possible because of a key feature in a blog called WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) and if you are sharp in programming and HTML things like my classmates back in college then you still have a place in blogging. Always remember, this is the best way to open shop in the internet, it’s cheap and DIY and there are many platforms for free and if you have the money you can still pay, we cannot deny you to spend your money if you want to. Important features in a blog are as I had said earlier they are interactive, meaning that people can comment back, this has made them very popular because people can respond back to your comments
Blogs keep all the posts that are posted to its by the authors as well as the readers who give their comments, this is called archiving and this can be done by categories of entries as well as the dates, just imagine.
Another great feature of a blog is the RSS feeds or Atom feeds, this tells your readers updates or new posting, blogs too have links to other blogs and this makes them a network. To succeed in blogging you need to like the topic that you choose as well as keep it updated. Updates makes the readers come back for more, making your blog popular. If you can update your blog daily, then you will become the darling of the search engines, they love fresh contents. The other thing is link building; this is one of the best SEO (search engine optimization) techniques that have stood the test of time. SEO is critical for you to get people coming to your site. They are many ways to get links, you could surf other blogs and leave comments with you signature to have people come back, or you could trade links with other sites that have similar products or services. Links also are a parameter used by search engines to gauge site popularity giving you high rankings. The other aspect is use of keywords in your postings, titles as well as selection of your blogs name. When you start blogging you develop another crave, crave for traffic because without traffic you have nothing to show for you blog. Start blogging today and realize your dream of owning a media company.

Blogging to promote and market your products and services, Part 1.

2009-02-11T12:57:00.002+03:00

A blog is a short term of web log; it has become a big feature these days. People are using blogs in business communication; this is commonly known as business blogging. Individuals and corporate plus other big organizations have taken to blogging in a manner that indicate this is a way for the future communication. A blog is ideal especially for the small business because of the following reasons: Blogs are easy to set up, some blog platforms are free, blogs are Interactive in nature and last but not the least blogs offer the same benefit as websites. People who use blogs are called bloggers, they come in from all walks of life, and people of over 70 years have blogged and written chronicles of their lives starting from their childhood. Some people may use a blog as diary to record daily events; others may use blogs as a shop to display their products while others may use blogs as a news medium to pass news across. Actually there are no limits or rules on what one can do blogging. I think now you see the immense opportunity of a blog. If it is done right it can propel you to a successful internet business. One key advantage of a blog over other websites is that a blog is interactive; the readers of a blog get back to you with their comments, making it dynamic as opposed to websites which are static. A blog is a two way, and can have more than one author. Blog gives each one of us a chance to be heard. Other important attributes are that there are some that are free and takes only minutes to set. Anybody can set up a blog, because one does not need to understand any programming language, HTML, codes and other programming jargon. Imagine the impact of such a media. Blogs are like website because they share many positive attributes of websites. For to appreciate the marketing opportunities from blogging start by imagining the opportunities presented by such a medium. Simply put this could make you very rich in the long run; Owning a blog is practically owning an internet billboard, or an entire media company
Having a billboard or a media company online will help you in advertising your links, and products. By doing this you will start getting money right away. Start blogging immediately by visiting http://www.blogger.com and following the instructions. It will take you 15 minutes to have your blog running and you are a media owner at last.

Online marketing tips, the Obama way

2009-02-10T15:34:00.002+03:00

Marketing is a very interesting career; many people confuse marketing with sales, advertisement, public relations and promotions. It is important to note that marketing is derived from the word market. A market is where we have willing seller willing buyers of products and services. This could be online; it could be brick and mortar business. There are different players in any market and due to competition others may offer discounts. A market could be made of retailers, wholesalers, customer or consumers all with needs and benefits to satisfy. To succeed in any online business you need to carry out a research to establish the prevailing market needs, this will help you to develop the market segments that are relevant for your product. For example you might decide to sell online games, do you want to sell them physically i.e. sell the CDs or do you want to give them free online. Do you want to have people play online or do you want them to download games. You have even an option of opening an online store or an online dating agency. The limit of what you can do in your business is only in your imagination. In marketing always remember Barack Obama and his speech of yes we can. You could decide to give free games for a period of time to entice the prospects, so that you can create a brand loyalty. It is fun to think about different ways that you can make your business grow through marketing. You can also tap on existing fashion or trend i.e. right now we are on valentine mood, why don’t you have online dating business to tap on the valentine, you can even make an Obama game and call it Barack Obama wins over the republican. All you need to succeed is a strategy to conquer the world the Obama way.

Maximizing on your email income

2009-02-10T15:02:00.000+03:00

Beside visiting your programs everyday and registering to as many programs as you can, another cool way of growing your internet business is by referring others. Start with your friends; make a blog to post your comments and views to grow your programs. Getting more referrals can be done two ways, doing it yourself and buying referrals. If you introduced your friends then you are doing yourself. If you decide that’s a hassle, you can buy referrals and benefit from them. This can boost your internet business if especially you don’t have many friends or lack the time to refer others, yourself. Another way of increasing your income online is upgrading, this may require you to pay some upgrading fee. I would encourage you to see how the system is working first before you upgrade. Let’s take an example from a PTC site on impact of 20 referrals to give you a picture of what you will achieve if you refer others.
An earnings example
• Each click earns you 0.02
• You have 20 adverts per day
• You click 20 ads per day = $0.4
• For Each referral you get 0.01 per click
• 20 referrals click 20 ads per day = 2
• Daily earnings = $ 2.4
• Your monthly earnings = $72
• Your total annual earnings = $864
This is only from one program imagining if you had 20 programs with the same returns. This is a job you cannot afford to ignore, always remember the more referrals you have, the more money you will make. It’s all about working hard

Make money by reading emails

2009-02-10T14:01:00.003+03:00

If your are new in the internet and want to know what PTC/PTR are, please read my post on understanding online market,this was written to give you definition of internet business terms. There are many PTC and PTR sites in the internet today, some pay some don't. I have included a list of the PTC/PTRs that are trusted, register in the following sites to understand how you can make money in the internet without paying a coin. Register to the Hits4pay and see what I mean. It is important to note that some PTC and PTR are scams and will make you work and not pay you as they had promised. The site I have given you is for proven and honest PTC/PTRs. For you to avoid such scams, please check the following for any PTC/PTR you are about to register. A scam PTC/PTR will promise high value per click i.e. 1000 + cents per click. A scam PTC/PTR will change payout amount when you reach the payout amount. A scam PTC/PTR has a record of not paying. Avoid PTC/PTR with pop ups in their websites. Avoid PTR/PTC which has been hacked before. Many new PTC/PTR may get it wrong and not pay you. PTC/PTR without payment evidence may not pay. Register in PTC/PTR sites that are owned by honest individuals with a track record of payments to its members.
Other tips of making money online may require you pay some money, such programs includes but not restricted to the affiliate systems.
Continue visiting this site for more updates, good luck and enjoy.

Understanding on line market

2009-02-10T12:24:00.001+03:00

When you are new to the internet industry and you want to make money, terms may slow you wasting your time.
To start with, understand the following terms as we continue to create a more comprehensive glossary to make your work easier.
Affiliate: This is you if you have an agreement with a merchant to sell his/her products and get a commission. As an affiliate you sell someone else products.
Affiliate marketing: In affiliate marketing you promote and sell other people's products
Autopilot: This is a system whereby you do not have to engage full time to make money. This is the concept behind referring others to a program whereby you earn from your downline and upline. You sell a product once and get paid over and over again in future.
e-mail marketing: is direct marketing technique whereby one sends emails with an aim of communicating about products. This form of marketing can be used to acquire new customers or enhancing relationship with existing customers as well as customer service It is important not to spam when using this form of marketing
Freebies: This term refer to free things that one get from the internet. This could be software, e-books and other products in the market place.
GPT: This is an abbreviation for Getting Paid To: This includes PTC and PTR as well as getting paid to do other tasks like sign up, playing internet computer games as well as trying new product.
HTML, stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, It is a language for Web pages. It is a used in providing ways and means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document for placement in a webpage. It is the basis of converting texts and images in a web page.
Keywords: These are very important words that are generated by a computer program for use in advertisement. These words value depends on their demand in the market place in a specific time. Keywords are used to attract consumers and buyers to a site.
Merchant: This is the person who gives you products to sell in an affiliate program.
Newbie: You! that is if you are starting on internet business for the first time. This refers to people who are venturing into internet business for the first time. \It could also mean low knowledge on internet marketing and jargon as well as the process.
PTC: Is an abbreviation for Paid to Click, advertisers are willing to pay money to people to read, and view advertisements and as well sign up to their websites. This is the concept behind PTC and PTR.
PTR: is an abbreviation for Paid to Read. This involves receiving and reading emails and responding by clicking to websites and advertisements. Once one registers emails are sent on a regular basis. Both PTC and PTR you get paid to read, visit and click to links. Registration to most of the PTC/PTR sites is free. However the amount given for each task is so small and one can improve on the amount earned by referring others and upgrading.
Product: What one sell, it could be a tangible product i.e. pills for weight loss, it could be an affiliate program, it could be a service.
Spam: What you should avoid at all cost. This is basically sending similar messages over the internet without authorization and to people who don’t want the messages. This could be done via email and it’s illegal and unethical. The message in a spam is of commercial nature and the claim of the product could be false. Simply put, SPAM IS A CON MESSAGE. Flooding a similar message over the internet is also considered spamming.
Traffic: In internet traffic is the best thing that can happen to anyone. Traffic means visitors to a specific site. Traffic is brought by advertising and using of keywords. Traffic is a blessing; it means the number of people who visit a specific site in given time.

Join This New and Exciting Program and Start Making Money Immediately

2008-11-03T15:30:00.001+03:00

I have just read something that is of great value to you as an online marketer. With the coming of Christmas holiday, the online business in worth lots of money and for you, it is a great opportunity to get that money into your pocket. First, people will be buying products in the internet and since you may not have that product, I am going to tell you where to get the product and how to sell it. The first thing you need to do is join an affiliate program, all for free. I have an affiliate program that sells a lot of products. These products are very hot during this season. The products include computers, cloths, computer games, name it, and the products are from the big brands in the world. This affiliate program is one of the best in the world. They will give you commission for selling their products and for referring other people to the program. With this program, you will sell anything legal, from computers to car hire all in the internet and you can accept credit cards. Imagine you actually open your own supermarket that accepts credit card free. You can get up to 20% commission on anything that you sell and 1.5 US$ for anyone that you refer. The best thing is that they pay your PayPal account. If you don’t have a PayPal account, you can register here for a PayPal account by clicking JOIN PAYPAL NOW. It as easy as ABC and If you want to join this exciting affiliate program, click this icon LinkShare Referral Prg and start making money immediately. Once you have product to sell, you will need the customers and to sell your product globally you will need a website. Don’t panic, you can do that for less than 20 minutes and it’s all free, that is if you visit: http://makeblogforprofit.blogspot.com/ and learn how to create a blog. Then start selling. It all depends on how determined you are. By joining PayPal you can start getting paid by your customers using their credit card and this increases the chances of people buying from you all over the world. Kids are doing this why not you and the risk is zero, all you need is a computer and internet connection.

Start Making Money Online Now

2008-10-23T17:48:00.008+03:00

To make money in the internet, you will first need to have an idea of where and who will give you an opportunity to make money. The easiest way, is to become an affiliate marketer. An affiliate marketer sells products for other people and gets a commission. This is very easy because some affiliate programs are free to join and give very good commissions. You can join as many affiliate marketing programs as you like and sell as many products as you can possibly sell. The affiliate program you join will give you marketing training and materials. All you have to do is just to get customers for them. It is very easy especially if you have many friends and relatives, who you can urge to join the affiliate to create your own team. Kids are making a lot of money this way, so why can't you do it, you just need a head start. To give you a head start, I have included a list of affiliate programs that you can join and start making money immediately. Joining an affiliate program is like opening a shop, but you do not have to worry about the stock and logistics of sending the products that you are selling to anyone. The affiliate program you have joined will help you in that, all you have to do is get a customer and the customer to pay for the products your are selling directly to you affiliate and you get your commission.Some of the best affiliate programs are listed below, click on them to join now and start making money.
Clicksense
SFI
The other popular way of making money is by selling Forex in the internet, this way the Forex you will be using will train and gives an account to trade, here the risks are high but the returns are great. You can start on the Forex trading immediately joining Refer Forex one of the best for you to make money online selling Forex.Forex Accounts from $25

As I have said before the safest way to buy or sell anything in the internet one needs a means of transferring and receiving money. AlertPay and PayPal are the best online banks and with them you do not need to have a credit card to buy or sell anything online. Join both of them right now by clicking here: Join AlertPay and PayPal by clicking the relevant icon below.

Here. If you want to make more money, read my other posts to give you more ideas.

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Why I think PayDotCom is the Best Affiliate Marketplace on the Net!

2008-10-10T15:46:00.002+03:00

If you are familiar with Clickbank.com (R), or even if you are not but you want to make profits online, then you will want to check this out ASAP ...
While I like Clickbank, and they are a great marketplace... they are limited to many restrictions to sell products or earn affiliate commissions...
Well, there is a GREAT NEW SERVICE now...
It is a new FREE marketplace where you can sell any product you want.
Yours OWN product...
- OR - (the best part)You can become an INSTANT Affiliate for ANY item in their HUGE marketplace.
It is called PayDotCom.com!
Did I mention it is 100% FREE to Join!
This site is going to KILL all other marketplaces and I by now, almost EVERY SINGLE SERIOUS online marketer has an account with PayDotCom.com
So get yours now and see how much they offer...
OH! - Also, they have their won affiliate program now that pays you COLD HARD cash just for sharing the site with people like I am doing with you...
They give you cool tools like BLOG WIDGETS, and they even have an advertising program to help you get traffic to your site.
If you want an ARMY of affiliates to sell your products for you, they also allow you to have Free placement in their marketplace!
Even better... If your product becomes one of the Top 25 products in its category in the marketplace (not that hard to do)...
...then you will get Free advertising on the Blog Widget which is syndicated on THOUSANDS of sites World Wide and get Millions of impressions per month.
So, what are you waiting for...
PayDotCom.com ROCKS!
Get your FREE account now at PayDotCom.
P.S. - Make sure to get your Account NOW while it is Free to join.

Opinions are worth money

2008-10-10T15:43:00.000+03:00

Let's be honest with ourselves..
The web is filled with more scams then legit opportunities.
It's hard to find something that really does deliver what it promises.
I have been looking for REAL paid survey site for a while now.
I paid to join the top 5 I could find. I have to say that 3 of them were total crap. One was so-so, but it only had about 25 companies to work with.
One of them was definitely head and shoulders above the others.
It had everything it said it had, and it was easy to get started making money.
Join PayDotCom.

2008-10-02T15:09:00.001+03:00

Technorati Profile

2008-09-27T15:53:00.002+03:00

BACK TO BASICS

I want us to go through some basic facts; this is because people are asking me very basic questions on how to make money in the internet. If you want to start from the first post click here, this way, you will understand the method very well and it will make your money making life easier.
Besides the other methods that I had mentioned, you can make money by trading Forex. To start Forex trading. To register click here Forex Accounts from $25 . You will get information on how this works.

If you read this site starting form the bottom. That is where the story starts. You can also subscribe to receive updates on you mail. Don’t ignore anything, if you are patient and you want to succeed then I believe that you will register and refer to as many people as you can. Many people register to these sites and then they don’t visit daily and they don’t refer others and they give up eventually, I call quitters and quitters never WIN. They are born losers and I hope you are not one of them. The secret to succeed is by referring others using your referral link and if you don’t make money over time, then you will surprise every internet business person. Once you register to any program, get your referral link and send it by emails to as many people as you can, but PLEASE do not SPAM, you will be deregistered by any program if you are caught or people complain about you. You can also make your own blog and advertise as many links as you can.

If you have opened accounts with either PayPal or AlertPay or both and you refer people to either of them and they use them for any transaction of over US$ 250, you earn, this is a very easy way to get some money while you are doing nothing. If you have not opened an account with either of them, then register now by clicking to these icons Alertpay Link:

They are the most trusted internet banks. Besides gaining from their referral programs, they also enable you to buy and sell online even if you do not have a credit card. They are an ideal way of sending and receiving money globally and they are the most trusted and secure globally. Register to both of them now, don’t waste time.

2008-09-05T14:15:00.006+03:00

How do Google Adsense Work.

Google Adsense serves advert by placing the adverts that are relevant to its consumers at your site. The types of adverts that Google Adsense places are called contextual marketing. To get a more understanding of what contextual marketing is visit The Internet Glossary. Google’s places adverts that will be served in your site in small text adverts and a HTML link is provided to you to place in your site. The adverts that Google Adsense places in your site comes from a very popular Google advertising platform called Google Adwords. Some of you will have used Google Adwords to advertise their site. In Google Adwords, a system that is known as pay per click is used. How then do you make money, when Google places their advert on your site, and visitor visit your site and click at Google Adverts, you are paid by Google part of the amount the advertiser paid Google for that advert. Yes am right, you are paid part of that advertising money. Imagine if your site had many visitors and they come often and you are recruiting more and more everyday, how much can you make? To be success with Google Adsense you will need read Terms and conditions of Google Adsense before starting, otherwise your site will be deleted for good if violate their terms and you will loose all the money that you have made Read Tips on how to maintain your Google Adsense Account. Please remember that it is important that you read Google Adsense terms and conditions so that you can maintain the Google Adsense Account.

More on Google Adsense

2008-09-05T14:15:00.003+03:00

How do Google Adsense Work?

Google Adsense serves advert by placing the adverts that are relevant to its consumers at your site. The types of adverts that Google Adsense places are called contextual marketing. To get a more understanding of what contextual marketing is visit The Internet Glossary. Google’s places adverts that will be served in your site in small text adverts and a HTML link is provided to you to place in your site. The adverts that Google Adsense places in your site comes from a very popular Google advertising platform called Google Adwords. Some of you will have used Google Adwords to advertise their site. In Google Adwords, a system that is known as pay per click is used. How then do you make money, when Google places their advert on your site, and visitor visit your site and click at Google Adverts, you are paid by Google part of the amount the advertiser paid Google for that advert. Yes am right, you are paid part of that advertising money. Imagine if your site had a many that many visitors come often and you are recruiting more everyday, how much you can make? To be success with Google Adsense you will need read Terms and conditions of Google Adsense before starting, otherwise your site will be deleted for good if violate their terms and you will loose all the money that you have made. Read Tips on how to maintain your Google Adsense Account. Please remember that it is important that you read Google Adsense terms and conditions so that you can maintain the Google Adsense Account.

Make Money Through Google

2008-09-05T13:51:00.003+03:00

Make Money from Google Through Google Adsense

I know you must be wondering how you can make money in the internet without paying a coin. In this session I will tell how to make money from Google. I mean Google, the biggest search engine in the world. They give people money, all for free, but how do you qualify to make money from Google. First you will need a website, yes a website. I know you are wondering how the hell you can make a website. I will tell you something that will change your life. In this world there is something called a blog. For more information on blogs visit Make Blog for Profit . Once you have made a blog, which is free and easy to make because it will take less than 15 minutes, then register for Google Adsense Why should Google pay you money? That is the question you are asking yourself. Internet is a big medium of advertisement, many companies advertise through internet and you can imagine how many of these companies go to Google. Google Adsense will make you an online advertiser and you will be making money when you are asleep, at night, when you go to office, over holidays, 247. Google Adsense is limitless. That is why maintaining a good blog that is adhering to Google terms and condition is paramount. When you join Google, you become an Adsense web publisher. People all over the world are making thousands of dollars in a month from Google, so why not you?

Take control of your life

2008-08-19T17:37:00.012+03:00

Many sites in the internet want you to pay for registration fee. This may be hard for you and also may expose you to scams in the internet. I want to show you a way to make money in the internet without coughing a coin. However, to make this work you will need to follow my step by step instructions. First you need to work, getting work in the internet is simple, join systems that pay to do something, and such sites are available at. to start earning immediately for free click the this link: PTC/PTRs . But before you start making money you will need to register to either at PayPal or Alertpay or both. These are internet bank accounts. If you are uncomfortable about giving your debit or credit card numbers, register and you will give that information once you are comfortable with the whole process. Read the posting below of how to start.
Once you have registered with sites that I have provided then its time to work. Visit at least 10 sites alternately i.e. if you registered in 20 sites, at least visit 10 one day and the other 10 the next day and maintain this system until you get enough money to pay for programs that need registration fee for the other system, always remember the Jacob story when he needed a wife and his uncle had to ask him to work for 7 years. It’s the same concept here. Always remember, guys and gals are doing this and making crazy returns in less than a year. Work like crazy and you will get the financial freedom you desire. Be in control, work for yourself not to some dumb boss who just leave you working and go play golf and pays miserable salary. I believe the world is fairer than that. Who said that you were meant to be in rat race, waking up in ungodly hours, leaving behind you lovely family with almost nothing to eat, working like an ass the whole day, getting paid peanuts by ungrateful boss, who does nothing and paying almost everything to a silly landlord in a small house that you hardly spend time and this has been continuing for years, come on Give me a break, I don’t think that is the life you want. Once in my life I used to be like you, I woke up in the morning and had hot water for breakfast, took cold shower for a bath, simply because I could not afford to “overuse” my power by heating water or my power bill would dent my wallet by a big margin. Then I would take some funny looking public transport with all other losers like me and if I wanted a change, I would take a risk in my old, rustic and outdated car, that could decide to stop along the way for either lack of enough gas or faulty engine or BOTH and this happened more than often. Get to work one minute late and find my ungrateful boss, who would spend the entire day threatening me with a sack. And after what looked like eternity with some cheap lunch and in the evening I would repeat the same process of heading back home through the same torture. God! I wonder how I managed and survived those days. After five o’clock I would head back to my “home” where I lived in a house owned by a miserable silly landlord, who always got broke when I received my dismaying salary and took a third of that hard earned cash and if I failed to pay him on time because my idiot boss had failed to pay me on time them my family would live with his continuous harassment until I paid the high rent after my LAZY boss had paid my dismaying salary that is after deducting my advances which amounted to half my salary. God! My life was chaotic, solitary and nasty. I LIVED A DOG’S LIFE but I knew that guys were making money in the internet and I tried many systems, they promised heaven as they squeezed the last coin from my wallet making me poorer. Then ONE DAY a miracle happened, a friend send me an e-mail, titled THE BOOK. It was simple instructions of how to make money in the internet without contributing a coin and using the money you get as seed money to grow your business. I worked like a horse using all the instructions laid IN THE BOOK and at last I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and few months later, I found the way. This site is step by step instruction from THE BOOK.
If you believe you deserve better life, then this is the way to go.To Start working in the internet visit this sites: The first one is a glossary site with key information, at least start by learning the internet jargon and the other one has free money making opportunities Internet Glossary and PTC/PTR Did you know that you can make a blog for free and start making money? Learn more at Blogs for Profit .The key thing is to register and understand the concept as much as possible.

Make Money Today!

2008-07-15T12:31:00.017+03:00

Session 1

INTRODUCTION
Making money in the internet has never been so easy. Take caution as there are many promises of quick rich in the internet. The key to making money is by approaching the entire internet money making machine with the following caution; not as get rich quick scheme but as a job that need dedication, commitment and hard work. There are many ways of making money but in this session I will only give you three ways to make money in the internet: One is by paying for products and services; the other is by committing time or by combining both the money method and the time method. The paying method are all over the internet, but the question is, do the system work, some are just scams and you will get the meaning of the old adage " A fool and his money soon part company" that is if you are not careful. The time method have their downside too, you can work and not get paid, however there are honest business people in the internet for sure. One of the best time method is to be paid to do a task, key among this method is Paid to Click websites, popularly known as PTC and Paid to Read Emails commonly known as PTR.
OPENING ACCOUNTS
To start with, you need and account to enable you get paid the money you earn. I will recommend AlertPay and PayPal Join any or both by clicking the links below Alertpay Link:

Some money making programs requires that you pay, such programs include but not restricted to the affiliate systems:
The site below will offer you a chance of a lifetime, please visit.
http://www.ndasika.com/
Continue visiting this site for more updates, good luck and enjoy.

If you are new to the internet world I would like to catch up with the terms, please visit http://interbizgloz.blogspot.com/ This is a site designed to give you definitions of important terms in the internet business. Get Paid to: Partcipating in surveys, doing data entry and affiliate programs Getting paid to participate in online Surveys Market research companies pay to answer simple questions on their online surveys and for participating in online focus groups. This could be done at comfort of your home or any other place of your choice. They are many companies to register however the programs are not free and some may not be for international participants. It is important to understand that the program that you aim to join accepts members from your country. Key thing in is that these companies need your honest opinions as a consumer to help them make market decisions including new product, understanding usage and habits of products and brands and figure out gaps that need to be filled by new or extension of brand. . Below is a link for that will shed more light on how to make money in internet surveys, please note that you may be required to part with registration fee. https://paydotcom.com/r/11804/ndasika/18281353/ The other way of making money is by doing data entry for companies in the internet at the comfort of your home. Below are links to companies that can assist you in achieving that goal. https://paydotcom.com/r/15630/ndasika/18393005/ https://paydotcom.com/r/10031/ndasika/18289881/ https://paydotcom.com/r/7599/ndasika/18289931/
The other way of making money is by joining an affiliate program, The following are links for Affiliate programs you can join for Free http://www.quickinfo247.com/10215125/FREE https://paydotcom.com/r/10459/ndasika/19630698/
Did you know that Google made billions of dollars last year in advertisements? I can show how to at least get a piece of that cake. Follow the this link for more details https://paydotcom.com/r/10459/ndasika/19630698/
Try this and tell me am wrong. Always remember I do not offer get rich quick schemes, I offer opportunities.