Explore strategies and techniques that you can use on the Internet that will enhance and support your business's overall marketing objectives. Learn how to conduct banner promotions, generate targeted online traffic, positioning your content, and over all brand awareness.
Marketing Online: Men and Women Use the Internet Differently
We know that when it comes to the way men and women shop; it's different. Men waltz into a store to gather what they came for while women will take the time to browse and explore the new products that have been introduced in the isles. The same is true when it comes to the online behavior of men and women; gender stereotypes apply. Take a few moments to learn how both men and women use the internet and how that information can help you in positioning your product or service.
Explore the Benefits of Marketing Online
Marketing online offers many benefits that you won't find in traditional marketing and many companies are embracing those benefits during these tough economic times, find out why.
Social Media Marketing: Put It to Work for You
Do you want to implement social media into your marketing mix, but you are unsure of where to start? Learn not only importance of social media marketing, but gain the knowledge you need to begin putting it to work for you and your business.
Twitter: How to Measure the Buzz
Twitter is a valuable marketing tool, but how do you measure the buzz that is being created on Twitter when it comes to you, your company and your products? It's not as difficult as you might think, I show you two easy ways that you can begin using today to gauge what's being said.
B2B Marketing: Reasons to Adopt Social Media Marketing
Adopting social media marketing has been difficult for the B2B business. A recent study has revealed that 69% of B2B buyers use social media to assist them in business development and decision making. Can B2B companies really afford to continue to dismiss social media marketing techniques as an effective way to get the word out about their products and services? Learn why it's time for B2B companies to take a deep look into the effect of social media marketing and how it can benefit them.
Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies
Internet Marketing can attract more people to your website, increase customers for your business, and enhance branding of your company and products. If you are just beginning your online marketing strategy the top 10 list below will get you started on a plan that has worked for many.
Five Myths of Internet Marketing for Independent Professionals
The vast majority of what appears on the Internet about marketing is designed to help you market products and services sold and delivered exclusively on the Internet. What does that mean for the independent professional whose web presence is primarily aimed at selling his or her own personal services? Learn how to identify and avoid the five myths of Internet Marketing for independent professionals in this guest article by C.J. Hayden.
Web Technology in Marketing: Friend or Foe?
If you're not taking maximum advantage of web technology to market your professional services, you are behind the times, and missing out on huge opportunities. At least that's what most marketing experts would have you believe. But how valid is this advice? And is it for everyone? Guest Author C.J. Hayden walks you through the necessities and options of online marketing.
What Big Online Retailers Don't Want You to Know
Don't be intimidated by the big online retailers – you should welcome the opportunity to compete with them. This week's guest author shows you things that they won't tell you that could give you a real advantage when trying to gain more ecommerce customers at their expense.
Marketing In A Virtual World
This is the age of the virtual consumer, but how do you get the attention of a potential client or prospect that you've never met face-to-face? Learn the steps you can take to successful market your company in a virtual world in this guest article by Steve Van Yoder.
Business Networking Online
Networking is one of the most effective ways to find clients for any consulting or professional services business. Learn how to increase your possibilities by networking online in this guest article by C.J. Hayden.
Five Levels of Internet Marketing and the Sales Process
Creating a successful online sales process can be accomplished by making sure that you represent and court your visitor through the five levels of the sales process on your site. You can do this by meeting the psychological needs that your visitor has. Find out how in this three part series.
Internet Marketing Strategy: What Can it Do for You?
Having an Internet marketing strategy gives you a measurable and definitive way to target your market and position your business so that those looking for what you have to offer are finding you easily. Learn what it can do for your marketing efforts.
Internet Marketing Strategy : Why is it Important?
An Internet Marketing Strategy is just as important as a business plan. Find out why it is important and the risks and problems you can face if you proceed without one.
Using Web Metrics To Improve Your Site
The goal of any web presence should be to improve the business as a whole and complement its offline marketing and sales efforts. In other words, to help it achieve maximum profitability. Learn how using web metrics can help you improve your website.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
5 ways to being Recession Proof
Its deju vu all over again. Thats my favorite Yogi Berra-ism, and thats the way this economy feels to me -- just like it did a decade ago when the music stopped for the first time for baby boomers.
With pockets of the country in steep recession 10 years ago, boomers fretted that their careers would be short-circuited. Savings crumbled along with expectations. We were hunkered down in houses and apartments that we couldnt sell, holding on to our jobs for dear life.
Maybe theres something we can learn from deju vu when it happens all over again.
We are told we're in an economic recovery, but it just doesnt feel like it. A New York Times/CBS News poll found that American workers are more anxious about the economy than at any time since 1993. Slightly more than half of those polled said they were very or somewhat concerned that in the next year they or someone in their household might be out of work.
The Wall Street Journal ran a piece advising parents to scale back college plans for their kids, adding an inexpensive state school to the list.
I see plenty of anecdotal evidence of the slump, too. Friends in New York who send their children to an expensive private school are now looking for a junior college because Mom got laid off on Wall Street. The gym I go to is nearly empty. No one has joined our tae kwon do school for a year. My husband and I get a call about once a week from a journalist who has lost a long-time position at a newspaper or magazine wondering if we have any job leads.
It's time to examine your opportunities
Im afraid we boomers didnt learn our lesson. I have a friend who spent nearly $500,000 remodeling her house last year. Now her business is off by almost 70%. Another couple says all their kids college money disappeared in the tech crash, and they wonder if theyll ever be able to retire. This time weve got Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers in the soup along with us.
But lets not get grim. When everyone else is hiding under the bed, its time to examine the opportunities. Here are five things to focus on:
1. Clean up your balance sheet. Youre heading for financial trouble when you find yourself charging for necessities, shifting payment habits, using a credit card where you used to pay cash, making only minimum credit-card payments, reaching card limits and finding yourself with no cash reserves and no savings cushion.
Shop for a low-cost credit line, pay down your debt, build a cash fund and check your disability and life-insurance coverage. Sit down with your partner or family and talk about tight money and what you might do about it.
2. Think ahead. A psychiatrist friend tells me that if you are resourceful, you will emerge from this crisis ahead of the game. Thats because the recession forces you to think about everything youve done, what youre doing now and what you want for yourself and your family. It can be a valuable opportunity to review your perspectives, your options and your values -- and to rearrange your priorities.
3. Consider a career shift. In 1990, one of my high-powered Wall Street friends who loved to visit Spain asked her Spanish client for the secret to the unhurried pace and rhythm of life there. Her client responded: In the U.S., you live to work. Here we work to live. After an epiphany, my friend bailed out of her fast-track job and set up her own consulting business.
Maybe a downturn is not the best time to pick up business. But its a great time to lay plans, to think about where youd like to go from here and what you could do to recession-proof your life.
In the early 90s, my husband and I were in Manhattan with two young kids in private schools and a monthly maintenance and mortgage payment that would knock your socks off. We vowed that when we got the opportunity, we would find a way to cut expenses and live more simply.
4. Remember that everything is cyclical. In 1991, when Bostons high-tech corridor was hit by recession and the unemployed could neither find work nor sell their homes because of the real-estate slump, the economy in Houston was picking up steam. A recent story in the New York Times showed that while Augusta, Ga., lost 5,000 jobs in the last year, nearby Savannah gained 3,400.
Look around. Its always a good time to invest in some training, take some classes or think about your ideal location. My husband, who is a journalist and consultant, recently completed the two-year course to get the Certified Financial Planner designation. We should always be creating more options for ourselves.
5. Develop a skills portfolio to go. During the last recession, I interviewed Charles Handy, a management expert and author who taught at the London Business School. In his book, The Age of Unreason, he argued that the structure of the workplace was changing dramatically. I hope you wont look for a job, he advised his own children when they graduated from college. Look for customers. If you have saleable skills, you can always work.
Handy, who began his career as an oil executive, divided workers of the future into three groups: managers and technicians who run the companies; unskilled clerks and laborers; and creative people and designers who work on a contract basis for the company. I think the third category should be your goal. Most of us will be working longer; it would be nice to be doing something we enjoy.
Handy offered a tip for those who wanted to reinvent themselves: Go to 20 people you know and ask each to tell you one thing you do very well. An unemployed advertising executive tried it and was told that he was very creative, good at organizing teams, presenting ideas, leading people, selecting wines and recalling historical details. This guy set up a business taking people on tours of battlefields and other historical sights and vineyards in Europe.
It wont do to ignore the reality of a slumping economy. In this environment, you can get ahead by re-examining your life and making smarter choices. As Fritz Mondale told his hastily organized campaign workers after they lost their six-day senate race in Minnesota: Often in life, you learn more from the defeats than from the victories.
With pockets of the country in steep recession 10 years ago, boomers fretted that their careers would be short-circuited. Savings crumbled along with expectations. We were hunkered down in houses and apartments that we couldnt sell, holding on to our jobs for dear life.
Maybe theres something we can learn from deju vu when it happens all over again.
We are told we're in an economic recovery, but it just doesnt feel like it. A New York Times/CBS News poll found that American workers are more anxious about the economy than at any time since 1993. Slightly more than half of those polled said they were very or somewhat concerned that in the next year they or someone in their household might be out of work.
The Wall Street Journal ran a piece advising parents to scale back college plans for their kids, adding an inexpensive state school to the list.
I see plenty of anecdotal evidence of the slump, too. Friends in New York who send their children to an expensive private school are now looking for a junior college because Mom got laid off on Wall Street. The gym I go to is nearly empty. No one has joined our tae kwon do school for a year. My husband and I get a call about once a week from a journalist who has lost a long-time position at a newspaper or magazine wondering if we have any job leads.
It's time to examine your opportunities
Im afraid we boomers didnt learn our lesson. I have a friend who spent nearly $500,000 remodeling her house last year. Now her business is off by almost 70%. Another couple says all their kids college money disappeared in the tech crash, and they wonder if theyll ever be able to retire. This time weve got Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers in the soup along with us.
But lets not get grim. When everyone else is hiding under the bed, its time to examine the opportunities. Here are five things to focus on:
1. Clean up your balance sheet. Youre heading for financial trouble when you find yourself charging for necessities, shifting payment habits, using a credit card where you used to pay cash, making only minimum credit-card payments, reaching card limits and finding yourself with no cash reserves and no savings cushion.
Shop for a low-cost credit line, pay down your debt, build a cash fund and check your disability and life-insurance coverage. Sit down with your partner or family and talk about tight money and what you might do about it.
2. Think ahead. A psychiatrist friend tells me that if you are resourceful, you will emerge from this crisis ahead of the game. Thats because the recession forces you to think about everything youve done, what youre doing now and what you want for yourself and your family. It can be a valuable opportunity to review your perspectives, your options and your values -- and to rearrange your priorities.
3. Consider a career shift. In 1990, one of my high-powered Wall Street friends who loved to visit Spain asked her Spanish client for the secret to the unhurried pace and rhythm of life there. Her client responded: In the U.S., you live to work. Here we work to live. After an epiphany, my friend bailed out of her fast-track job and set up her own consulting business.
Maybe a downturn is not the best time to pick up business. But its a great time to lay plans, to think about where youd like to go from here and what you could do to recession-proof your life.
In the early 90s, my husband and I were in Manhattan with two young kids in private schools and a monthly maintenance and mortgage payment that would knock your socks off. We vowed that when we got the opportunity, we would find a way to cut expenses and live more simply.
4. Remember that everything is cyclical. In 1991, when Bostons high-tech corridor was hit by recession and the unemployed could neither find work nor sell their homes because of the real-estate slump, the economy in Houston was picking up steam. A recent story in the New York Times showed that while Augusta, Ga., lost 5,000 jobs in the last year, nearby Savannah gained 3,400.
Look around. Its always a good time to invest in some training, take some classes or think about your ideal location. My husband, who is a journalist and consultant, recently completed the two-year course to get the Certified Financial Planner designation. We should always be creating more options for ourselves.
5. Develop a skills portfolio to go. During the last recession, I interviewed Charles Handy, a management expert and author who taught at the London Business School. In his book, The Age of Unreason, he argued that the structure of the workplace was changing dramatically. I hope you wont look for a job, he advised his own children when they graduated from college. Look for customers. If you have saleable skills, you can always work.
Handy, who began his career as an oil executive, divided workers of the future into three groups: managers and technicians who run the companies; unskilled clerks and laborers; and creative people and designers who work on a contract basis for the company. I think the third category should be your goal. Most of us will be working longer; it would be nice to be doing something we enjoy.
Handy offered a tip for those who wanted to reinvent themselves: Go to 20 people you know and ask each to tell you one thing you do very well. An unemployed advertising executive tried it and was told that he was very creative, good at organizing teams, presenting ideas, leading people, selecting wines and recalling historical details. This guy set up a business taking people on tours of battlefields and other historical sights and vineyards in Europe.
It wont do to ignore the reality of a slumping economy. In this environment, you can get ahead by re-examining your life and making smarter choices. As Fritz Mondale told his hastily organized campaign workers after they lost their six-day senate race in Minnesota: Often in life, you learn more from the defeats than from the victories.
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