After all we have worked so hard building and developing it and it really is of great value, right? We must realize however that this is NOT how to target and attract our best buyers. Yes, I’ve been guilty of this too early in my career.

But, here’s the secret…

“The Who Is More Important than The What”

Just look at all the very generalized advertisements many businesses put forth. It is easy to see that rather than zeroing in on their niche (the who) in the market most are desperate to appeal to as wide an audience as possible because they do not want to lose any sales and therefore primarily focus only on selling (the what.)

…In the process they end up losing many opportunities to make themselves more visible and authoritative even endear their business and products to the folks most likely to buy from them.

It is interesting how even seasoned entrepreneurs and established businesses keep on making this same mistake over and over again. There are many cases of businesses suffering sudden bouts of amnesia where they completely forget the people who’ve made them a success in the first place.

How many budget products have we heard of over the years that become so successful that they decide to launch a high end version of their best-selling product? Talk about creating serious identity crisis in the market. It is hardly surprising that time and again they confuse their market and end up sabotaging their earlier success.

The big idea is that our businesses must remain authentic and consistent with who we are and who we serve.

Attract Your Ideally Matched Prospective

There is another less obvious reason why it is such a bad idea not to focus on your core target market and not to always focus on how to target and attract your best buyers. And it has to do with the fact that customers are increasingly bombarded by advertising and promotions.

This happens from the minute they wake up. Just think about it for a moment and you will realize that too many activities in our day are dominated by advertisements. Because of all the “noise” our minds tend to shut out most of these messages especially the general messages. We only respond to messages that seek to solve our unique most pressing problems or core desires. They are the ones that get our attention!

So by carrying out specific targeted marketing, obtaining lists of and being in front of your ideally matched prospects who have a strong interest in the value you bring you therefore get a lot more bang for the buck.

…And it is also the reason why a lead generation service that is highly targeted has to be one of the most valuable marketing assets anywhere. This is powerful and is exactly how to target and attract your best buyers.

Speaking of Lead Generation, find out how you can easily and consistently attract more ideal new customers, clients or patients without strain, struggle with ‘Auto Pilot’ Business / Practice building.” Click here >>

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Whatever your business, marketing is the single most important thing that will decide whether your business succeeds or fails. And the only way to get it right is through testing…

Test everything in the message as well as in the method of marketing and promotion. In your message try different headlines and see which one gets you the most attention and sales. Test subject lines in your email and in your offers and learn from your results. It often just takes a few minutes to test each tool, ad, medium, etc.

When it comes to methods used in your marketing, some are free while others may cost you a lot. Nobody is saying you should not start with the free but remember that the most expensive could easily end up being your most profitable marketing. How will you know for sure without adopting testing and improvement in marketing?
One of my longtime mentors, Dan Kennedy whom many consider to be a marketing genius advices that it is very important to mix the different methods because when you don’t you are sure to lose out and end up leaving tons of cash on the table. This testing and improvement in marketing approach will enable you to find the best combination that will serve you best?

Game Changer: Investmenting vs. Spending

The big game changer here is when you stop thinking about marketing as a cost and instead look at it as a valuable investment. An investment based on your constant testing and improvement in marketing. Take the long term view and find ways to maximize on the lifetime value of your customers rather than just focusing on short term one time only deals that look very profitable but actually aren’t.

There is a valuable lesson to be learnt from those retailers who always seem to come up with those specials that are so low that you are sure they are losing money. A sure sign of desperation in these hard times perhaps? Not really. Actually it is a wildly profitable marketing investment.

For decades retailers have used loss leaders to rake in enormous revenues and profits. That’s the reason why Gillette enthusiastically gives away razors knowing that the real money to wipe out the initial loss will come from replacement blades which will be required regularly for a very long time after that. Microsoft’s Xbox system reportedly loses the famous company more than $100 each time a unit is sold. And yet it all comes back accompanied by huge profits from the video games that very user needs on a regular basis. It is instructive to note that the most auccessful retailers are firm believers in testing and improvement in marketing.

Brazen It Out!

Can you think of ways that you can use this strategy to attract brand new customers? The kind that will cost you initially and yet end up delivering tons of business on your door step over time.
At Sway New Media we keep throwing everything into building the relationship, including lots of cash. It usually ends up being a hefty investment upfront but our experience tells us that the lifetime customer value, the referrals that result and so on, more than make up for our initial losses in the end.

The message here is clear; don’t stick with the cheap low cost marketing methods. Instead you must test both the cheap and most expensive while being careful to monitor the results so that you end up building a solid strategy and ultimately a solid customer base all from those very results. Testing and improvement in marketing makes all the difference.

Photo: digitalart

As the father of business consulting Peter Drucker once said…

“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

And the best type of marketing known today is “direct response marketing” In fact, it has worked and prospered for decades since it became a popular method of selling about 89 years ago at about the same time that the printing press became popular.

Stands the Test of Time

It is truly telling that direct marketing has survived technological changes through the decades including the most recent and most revolutionary, namely the Internet.

And despite everything the definition that was given at the onset is still extremely accurate today in describing what this kind of direct marketing is. It is defined as marketing designed to get an immediate response that can be quantified and is specific. 

Just take a minute or so to analyze every direct response marketing conduit or outlet and you will quickly realize how true this is. Just to give two examples; magazines promoting subscription renewals will ask prospects to put a “yes” sticker on a postcard to renew their subscription. Secondly ads on TV will ask you to call an 800 number for more information or to take advantage of a certain offer.

To further encourage people to respond immediately these offers will usually place a deadline on their offers or reward the first respondents with a prize or bonus.

The companies using direct response marketing that are most successful are the ones that carefully measure their results. This is an exact science where they will know the exact number of people who responded to a specific advertisement. These results are constantly monitored and used to further tweak and improve the campaigns.

Hybrid Marketing

Today the most important word and principle in marketing is branding and yet direct response marketing is not branding. In fact it is very different from branding. Direct marketing is designed to get information from respondents or cause them to buy right away. It seeks to build a business in a scientific quantifiable way where even results can be predicted.

Branding however aims at causing a name to be known and remembered by prospects so that when they are ready to buy the name will come to mind right away. Branding seeks to build image and position a product favorably in the minds and hearts of customers and potential customers. It is hardly ever quantifiable.

The really amazing development here is that the power of the Internet has done the amazing thing of bringing direct response marketing and branding closer together than the two have ever been before in history so that direct response marketing has a most unlikely partner in branding.

The Internet has made it possible for marketers to create campaigns that are actually direct response marketing but also deliver branding results.

Applying Direct Response Marketing

For instance SwayNewMedia.com is one of the many e-newsletters we publish. It is published several times monthly and has a local subscription list of over a thousand. This e-newsletter has developed a brand presence. This is evidenced by the fact that when somebody sees a banner ad somewhere and then a text ad somewhere else, they are able to recognize the fact that both ads come from SwayNewMedia.com (SNM).

Still SNM is very much focused on being a direct response e-newsletter. This is exactly how we have built up our sizeable subscription list and grown our business. However because of our consistency and strategy of using our logo on all our newsletters, a brand presence where we are quickly recognizable to many has resulted even as we continue to sell directly using direct marketing methods.

The reality is that direct marketing is the ideal way for a small business to grow quickly and efficiently. Go out for immediate results and rapidly grow the business even as your brand develops out there. A new and almost hybrid version that is more powerful than both direct response marketing and branding combined.

For an awesome read on how to apply direct response marketing check out this book:

No B.S. Direct Marketing: The Ultimate, No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take No Prisoners Direct Marketing for Non-direct Marketing Businesses by Dan S. Kennedy

However, during a rainy day, one particular quaint ‘mom and pop’ restaurant did someting special that all others did not. They focused on giving results in advance by serving free hot consume soup upon our arrival and by asking what we wanted to see happen right away while we viewed the menu. Their approach built rapport and helped gained our trust, and after the consumption of a delicious meal we walked away with a very pleasant experience that kept us coming back for more during our stay.

Out With The Old In with The New Model

You see, the earliest people who decided to set shop took the classic approach which is that everything has to be paid for, nothing is free with an emphasis only on the business’ needs. Set up a shop, wait for customers, sell products or services and make a profit when they buy something. It seemed an amazing idea, low setup and running costs, a huge market, a little bit of advertising in newspapers. You just have to wait for customers and let the cash registers ring. When those customers did not turn up, realization came fast that there are many differences between the old model and the new.

The Internet is no different. While online gives the tremendous advantage that the whole world can be your market if you choose, it comes with the disadvantage that the whole world is your competition too.

Free Is The Future of Business

Web businesses soon realized this and getting visitors to their websites became top priority. The best but not the most intuitive way in the early days was to give away something for free. One of the earliest people to realize this was the creator of Hotmail. When he allowed anyone to just register at his site and walk off with a free email id, many people could not understand the point in running such a free service, but they understood when Microsoft bought the service from him for a whooping 400 million. What he got was just a fraction of what it is worth now. Such is the value of traffic in the Internet world.

There are many more examples; Google which makes 95% of its revenues from free services, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Facebook, the list is endless. The most proven method of marketing on the Internet is to pull in the crowds by giving them results in advance by giving away something valuable for free and then converting that traffic into profits.

The conversion could be by placing advertisements, affiliate marketing, selling products, or by any other method. The bottom line is that on the Internet traffic (or people) can equal profits if you serve them well.

Website visitors these days expect free stuff. One of the first things that website visitors do when they land on a new site to evaluate a product or service is to check if they can take back something for free.

The giveaway could be things such as a service, an eBook, a discount coupon, free software, a toolbar or a plug-in, a trial version of paid software, a free subscription, or an App. There are many options. If you generate sufficient traffic, your revenue will be many times the cost of the free bee and the money will keep flowing in as the popularity increases. The freebee business model is undoubtedly very profitable.

The freebee model if successful is the cheapest way of getting traffic when compared to other popular methods such as pay per click, affiliate marketing, or banner advertising. It has some other advantages too. Nobody really expects any significant customer support in a free product and of course there are no warranties or other service commitments for a free product or service. The cost is limited to just the development cost of the product or the cost of running the free service.

Value – the Difference Maker!

The only thing to remember when you give away something for free is that it should be unique and very useful to a lot of people. There is no point in giving away an eBook on a topic that nobody is interested in or a discount coupon that is available all over the place.

Once you get the traffic, you can then convert it into money if you have great follow up systems in place. Traffic is the commodity that has the highest demand in the digital world and giving away something for free is the easiest way to get it.

Now what good would I be to our community if I didn’t offer something very valuable for free while on this topic. 

Click here for a free report: Discover How to Get Your Sites at The Top of Search Engines So You Can Generate More Leads and Close More Sales!

Picture Courtesy of Master Isolated Images

But even before you start planning for your success, you will need to start by appreciating that we are in a period of unprecedented opportunity ushered in mainly by technology and the massive changes and upheavals that it has brought into the marketplace.

You must be able to find a way of taking full advantage of the exciting times for true entrepreneurs that we are living in. You should not lose this opportunity where more than any other time previously in history you have a great chance of lifting your small business to levels of prosperity that only a few short years ago, nobody ever imagined were possible for a small business to reach.

The question on your mind now must be what the best way of growing your business is: “What do you need to do to take full advantage of all the opportunities available to you and your small enterprise?”

You, Inc.

Your personal skills are obviously going to be key here. And so as a small business entrepreneur, your personal development must always take top priority over everything else. Simply put, those entrepreneurs who take the trouble and make the effort to constantly and consistently develop their skills (both old and new) will stand high above the rest and the impact on their enterprises will be very visible for all to see.
It is hardly surprising that observers are now saying that the gap between the really successful businesses and the struggling ones is growing by the day and still widening rapidly. It is expected that this gap will continue to widen and it will mainly be a skills gap.

 Web 2.0 – The New Profit Model

Luckily with the World Wide Web it is also easier than ever before for any determined business owner to easily gain the necessary skills to ensure personal and business development, as well as, great resource for outsourcing any project or ongoing service that impacts the bottom line in order to take the businesses to the next level.

There are some critical areas in the development of your small business where a high level of skills will continually be required in larger doses in 2012. Marketing and sales is clearly one such area. With the emergence of social networking sites as a major way to promote small business, understanding sites like Facebook and how they can best be used to effectively promote a small business is key.

Before the web an entrepreneur would require a substantial advertising budget to have any chance of growing their business. With online marketing methods and social networking sites, the cost has come down considerably making it possible for any small business entrepreneur to lift their enterprise to unprecedented levels of sales volumes.

Optimism and Innovation

Above all else a positive attitude and the pursuit of greatness are very important and will make all the difference in the small business environment. As a small business you are not a Fortune 500 company with experienced board members and a Vice president for every vital department in the business.

A small business relies heavily on the innovation, motivation and work ethics of one person, namely the business owner. This is the reason why it is so critical that you as the entrepreneur behind it should remain highly motivated, with a constant thirst for improvement and innovation…
As it turns out, these are the top qualities and tools that top entrepreneurs are putting into practice and that have resulted in business success. And I believe it is the model that will ensure success in your small business in 2012.

Take these ideas and run with them, and remember… “Implementation, not just ideas, is the key to real success!”

In fact here’s a downloadable gift from me to you – a report on online marketing to give you a head start into the year: “The 7 DEADLY Internet Marketing Blunders Most Business Owners Make… And How to Avoid Them!”

Photo courtesy of Jannoon028

This is HUGE!

Now, CNN is talking about how the smartphone market is growing by leaps and bounds – having only 11% market share in 2008 – 17% in 2009 to 27% in 2010… meaning more people search the internet from their phone. With this comes a major shift to Marketing & Local Search Online.

This is what Our Marketing Solutions are all about! Find out more here: Advanced Internet Marketing Solutions

There is no doubt that the most effective way to grow your small business today is through mobile marketing. There are tons of benefits and most of all it works like a dream.

For starters we know that the world is interacting, sharing and talking on the World Wide Web and all a small business needs to do is to be part of some of the “conversations” that are already going on (or even start some new interesting ones) and they will reap huge results and multitudes of new customers.

There are over ’4.5 billion mobile phones in use’ as you read this. Now that is some serious and extremely wide access to the potential clients of any small business. And what makes it even more powerful is the very personal nature of communicating with your prospects through mobile. It is really difficult for any other medium to compete.

Folks have their phones with them everywhere they go meaning that they will quickly read texts and emails they receive virtually instantly. The efficiency of it all would have been dismissed as an impossible dream for marketers to achieve just a few short years ago. Now it is a reality!

But even before you can digest that properly there are more dramatic changes on the way. For instance experts estimate that mobile web will hurtle past desktop web within the next 3 years. That means that soon a vast majority of the people who land on your website will do so using a mobile device…

“It is therefore not surprising that so many businesses of all sizes are eagerly jumping onto the mobile marketing bandwagon.”

How can you benefit as a small business owner?

The most important thing you must realize when promoting your business through mobile marketing is that folks hate to be advertised to. Can you remember how you usually react when you receive unsolicited ad messages? Even permission-based advertising that is boring and repetitive and obviously trying to desperately sell something will fail.

What you must do is advertise without looking like you are advertising. Give useful information. Provide maps and directions to popular destinations near your business. Give useful tips that are genuinely helpful to your prospects.

But above all else be relevant. That is the big secret that has lifted Google from a business that did not exist 12 short years ago to the multi million dollar juggernaut that straddles the World Wide Web and almost everything we do on it. The founders were very determined that none of their advertising should resemble anything that is in the least spammy. And so they did what had never been done before. Those tiny ugly text ads that appear next to organic search results are extremely popular and effective because they are always very relevant to the search carried out.

To promote your small business effectively you must make sure that the information you give out reaches your prospects at the precise moment that they are looking for it…

Observe this simple but powerful rule and it will guarantee you a high conversion rate. If you want to succeed you really have no option but to grow your small business the mobile marketing way.

And now, uncover how to put the power of mobile marketing and advanced internet marketing while automating most processes: Click Here >>

When marketing your business online, it’s important to know many email list building secrets in order to effectively carry out an online marketing campaign.

Experienced business owners know that email marketing is a valuable earning method for any business. This form of marketing involves the promotion of products and services using email.

Using this marketing method, businesses no longer have to worry about the hassles of traditional product promotion methods that require an influx of visitors such as SEO which is time-consuming or advertising which can be costly.

Good As Gold and Automatic…

Email marketing is worth its weight in gold because it allows you to sell more than once to the same buyer. Through email marketing, businesses can regularly update their email lists about the products and services they are offering. This allows them to send automatic personalized message to each and every recipient on the list and promote whatever it is they are selling multiple times. This may sound too easy but before anything else, they should already have a list.

Building an email list is the most challenging part about email marketing. Because of the increase of email spamming, many people are now reluctant to give away their email addresses. This poses a problem to businesses who wish to earn using email marketing. You have to be very creative if you wish to have people willingly give their email addresses to you. The Following are some email list building secrets that can help you collect emails.

Use an Autoresponder

An autoresponder is a computer program that automatically collects email addresses from people who willingly share them. This program automatically responds and sends out pre-written emails to the people who subscribe using their email addresses and can be programmed to send specific emails out at specific intervals to overcome common objections and stay top-of-mind when prospect is ready to buy…

…This is one the most important email list building secrets because it can prevent you from letting interested prospects fall between the cracks. Furthermore, collecting and organizing your subscribers automatically saves you from the hassle of sending out emails to each of your subscribers one by one.

Offer a Freebie

Email marketing should be done ethically and internet regulations are becoming stricter about collecting emails without the approval of their owners. Any email marketing expert will tell you that immediately that one of the best email list building secrets in email marketing is offering something that gives your prospect “results in advance” before they get involved in your product or service.

By giving away such thing such as a video, an ebook, an audio file, or a report related to the product you are marketing, people will be more receptive and willing to share their email addresses in return.

Treat Your Subscribers as Friends and not as Customers

One of the most basic email list building secrets you should know is that you should make subscribers feel that you are genuinely there to help them…

By sending out regular emails about the problems your product addresses, you can make them look up to you as an authority in your market. This will make it easier for you to “convince them to BUY whatever it is you are trying to sell” as long as you make your message sound more like an advice rather than a sales pitch.

By taking care of your subscribers and communicating with them as a friend, you can lessen the chances of your subscribers unsubscribing from your list. You can even grow your list because happy subscribers will share your website to their friends and acquaintances.

Look for Other List Owners and Endorse Each Othe

If you know another email marketer who has a list related to the product or service you are offering, you can offer to “trade subscribers by endorsing each other’s businesses.”

For instance, if you have a subscription list for weight loss products, you can endorse to them a friend who has products that help quit smoking in exchange for him doing the same to you. This is effective because while both products do not compete with each other directly, there is a big percentage of overweight people who have smoking problems and vice versa.

Participate in Joint Venture Giveaway Events

Joint Venture Giveaway Events are special events where internet marketers work together and give out free products or services to interested people. These events are perfect places to offer freebies such as software, ebooks, images, videos, and practically anything else.

By signing up as a JV giveaway contributor, you can submit your freebie and help in promoting the giveaway event. This is one of the fastest email list building secrets in email marketing because when the event is under way, a large number of visitors who were invited by all the event contributors will be interested in the freebie you are offering in exchange for their email addresses.

And now, uncover the proven formula that pieces it all together to increase profits while you spend far less time & money! Click Here >>

Many biz owners usually get very busy in promotions and networking online others put in some very hard work. And yet, they end up with very little or nothing to show for their efforts.

Why is it so frustrating?

Why is online marketing an promotion so difficult? The answer is really very simple. Promotions online are terribly difficult for those who ignore the key rules and fail to understand the medium that they are using.

And you’ll be surprised to discover…

One of the most common mistakes most business people make is to assume that just because both audio and video are possible online, then the Web is some kind of upgrade on TV when it comes to advertising and promotions.

The emphasis is therefore placed on broadcasting a message to as many people as you possibly can. Actually another name for this is SPAM and the problem is that even if you stick very closely to the online SPAM rules people will still ignore and avoid you if your message still comes across as leaning in the direction of being spammy. That means the broadcast is aimed at everybody and nobody in particular.

The new cold call

Actually the Web is not an upgrade of TV. Rather it is a more personal tool when you are thinking of marketing and much more similar to the telephone. I like to think of it as an enhanced version of the telephone. Once you understand this simple truth your promotions on the web will be revolutionized and you will appreciate the power of networking online.

What you must do is take time to build relationships and network online without being in too much of a hurry to sell something. The huge advantage of the web is that you can build relationships super-fast with a vast number of individuals at the same time. And this is what you must focus your attention on doing.

While doing this it is very important to position yourself consistently at all time. You cannot be an expert in all things. Resist the temptation of having something to say about everything…

“You need to clearly ‘identify your niche’ and then communicate by ‘offering to solve real problems’ out there within your narrow area of expertise.”

And so the Facebook or social networking site updates you post should seek to discuss current pressing problems related to your niche without you trying to sell anything. Folks are terribly busy when they are online and they are therefore only interested in topics that are relevant to them. “Relevance” is the real secret behind the success and fortunes of Google and that should tell you a lot.

“Inch by inch it’s a cinch, yard by yard is hard”

Above everything else it is important that you are patient. Everything happens super fast on the web but you will need to be patient enough to wait for your relationships to grow and for people to begin to make out exactly who you are and what you stand for…

…And more importantly in what way you can be useful to them. There is no way you can go wrong if you follow this approach in your promotions and networking online.

Strike a chord

Now that you understand this, I’d like to give you my free 21 page report: Social Media Marketing so you may grow a massive network and shamelessly (effectively) promote your biz like the pros

Here’s the link for your free report: http://www.swaynewmedia.com/blog/

Your Place in The Sun

Sometimes things just seem to take off online and it can seem as if every site you visit is saying the same thing. If something is important to your market, or newsworthy or even just interesting, there is nothing wrong with writing about it, but try to find an original spin on it.

Remember that your life experiences are unique from any others, so take that and use it to find something new to say, even if it’s about old news. The majority of your content, though, should be original to your site, particularly if you are seeking to become the newsmaker yourself, the one whose content everyone else is talking about.

Be Informative and Fun

People like to be entertained, and there are sites that are dedicated to that, but many also like to be kept informed. Whatever your niche, you can establish yourself as an expert in it if you provide friendly, informative/valuable content for your visitors.

Creating great content does not have to take a lot of time, nor does the content have to be dense with facts and figures to be informative. Get in the habit of writing tightly and giving as much information as possible in sentences that are easy to read and memorable.

Be Sincere

If you know that you are good at what you do, or that you have important things to say, you no doubt want others to recognize this, too. No matter how much you know, though, people often need to be able to trust your word before they will spread those words around to other sites or link to them.

Everyone makes mistakes; if you do make a mistake or unintentionally give out wrong information, correct your record publicly and immediately. Others will soon realize that you value integrity and your word over getting hits on your site, and they will be more likely to both refer your site to others and to link to your content themselves.

Don’t Be Overly Cute

Be creative in your content, but not too creative. Unless your site is one of those for which being cute, or sarcastic, or funny is part of the business, keep that to a minimum. This doesn’t mean that you should not let your personality show through in your content; personality can be of the main draws of good content.

Remember who your audience is, what they come to your site seeking, and why they return. Do all that and the great content you create will be simple, effective and something well worth reading…

…This will allow you to build rapport and trust with potential clients that can lead them to get happily involved in your products and/or services.

Towards Your Success!