Your Salsa Pub

I was pretty amazed when I discovered how easy it was to market online. The cost factor is tiny in comparison to what marketing potential you can unearth.

With seo technologies everywhere its as simple as following a simple plan and working with the search engines to achieve your traffic goals.

You do have to do a bit of manipulation to build up your link backs but the on page optimization is mainly for helping the person reading the page see it easier and more quickly, thus this is why the search engines require certain simple formats for rankings. The keyword saturation helps your site reach relevance for specific keywords.

If you have not learned the easiest most cost effective way to market on the Internet then you may be paying way too much, and going through way too much effort when you don’t have to.

The thing about the very infrastructure of the internet is that using seo tactics (that’s search engine optimization tactics) you can work with the very places people go to begin their journey to search for sites like yours.

It’s in the long run a way to help search engines get better search results by having quality pages build, and for you to reap the rewards of following the system!

Whatever your busines’s wants whilst transferring or exchanging foreign money, Foreign Currency Direct can often be able to help people save time or conceivably precious money FCD offer one off abroad transfers, regular abroad payments or furthermore have options whilst bringing money back to the Great Britain.

The company are also the leading independent foreign currencies negotiators having just been online since the year 2000 this is sort of impressive. The business appreciate a particularly great team of employees that have been well known in their experienced advice & aid Another reason Currencies.co.uk are so widely chosen is that for currency exchange Currencies.co.uk offer the best currency rates & the finest foreign money exchanges, this has been very much documented by The Sunday Times 2 2 Observer.

Currencies.co.uk is incredibly easy to use; once people have opened an account folk can only try to guarantee a foreign money rate by using telephone. If an exchange rate is declared that you yourself agree, The company will at once fax, email & post one’s confirmation. When you yourself buy foreign currency with the site, the currency rates can often be based surrounding live interbank foreign currency rates (the currency rate on that one bank retails to another) The aforementioned are also aggregated with a number of sources, are quoted within real time and might well be loads more competitive than frequently cited by high street money exchangers and building societies. The interbank foreign money rate, which the majority of sites or newspapers use is a mid market foreign currency exchange rate that is not actually for sale to exchange at. Folk can constantly get a foreign exchange rate somewhat below the interbank rate or maybe sell somewhat above; this is the primary way the business will offer the foreign money transfer.

For the reason that you can be found to be emigrating you yourself can be found to be feasibly going to be exchanging immense amounts of currency into a foreign currencies, your foreign money rate will result in the difference between affording quite a bit of luxurious extras or ending up with lots less than you budgeted for. Foreign Currency Direct specialise in foreign currency exchanges. They offer exchange rates at very competitive rates so view the rates online at their site.

How do your define marketing? What is the basic idea that works in your mind when you go for marketing your product? Is the idea just selling and so, increasing your profits?If yes, then you may be wrong in your approach to marketing your product. the nature of today’s consumers has become most volatile. At any given time, he can switch to another product that offers him a bit more comfort than yours. That’s because all your past efforts that led him purchase your product last time around haven’t been successful in long run. So what is the mantra for long-term success in the market? That mantra is fairly simple. And in Hindi it is called apnapan.

Have you ever wondered why a student wants to attend the class of a particular teacher and bunk another’s. It is not because of the topic or the subject being taught, but how it is taught. It is about how a particular topic is presented. That presentation makes students want to attend the class. Because the student feels there is something to gain. The same holds true for the market. If you are treating your customer just as a means to raise your sales and profits then your success in the market is surely going to be short lived as you are not deploying the right tools that lead your customer to purchase your product again.

So before entering the market make your purpose clear. Be clear in your mind that from now on whatever you are going to do will lead to strengthening your relationship with your customer. Try to develop a culture in your organisation that is consumer-friendly and not just sales friendly, because it is ultimately the consumer who will determine the fate of all the employees from top to bottom who are working in your organization.

Now, where do we go from here? Should we treat the customer as the king? No. Then what? Make your customer a friend. Do something that will make your customer a loyal friend of yours. Redefine your objectives? Concentrate on the efforts that make your customer feel proud and satisfied with the brand he is going to buy. If this happens, then one thing is guaranteed and that is your staying power in the market

The author of this article holds the degree of Masters in Business Adminstration. He has over 5 years rich experience in the field of publishing, marketing, and research in India. he can be contacted at dixitchanana@yahoo.com

THE EXILER (your search for true brand attributes ends here!)

With the advent of new marketing strategies and techniques, many theories have sprouted up telling you many ways to impress your target customers and make them buy your product. But when it comes to practical implementation of the theories, most of them fail, or give partial results because they are based either on buying behavior of customers or extensive surveys

When the customers choose to buy a product they look only into very few features of product / service which are vital for their selection. A semi literate customer (or even a highly educated customer for that instance) never substantiates his choice based upon extensive surveys or consumer behavioral theories. The big players being unable to notice these simple facts spend large sum of money in the name of market research. Let’s probe into facts and find out what the customer really wants!

I strongly believe there are four key characters which a customer takes into consideration before buying a product or availing a service. If customer is satisfied with these four aspects, only then he feels a strong urge to buy, if not he shall never buy that product/ range of products what ever promotional campaigns might say. In most of the cases promotional schemes are only ephemeral in inducing him.

Let me name these four key characteristics as key brand attributes. These KBA’s determine the success of the product in the market. Now we shall discuss about them in detail.

First of all is AFFORDABILITY. Customer may be induced by the advertisements and other promotional campaigns to buy the product but what matters most at the end while buying is whether he can afford to buy the product or not. If he can’t, there is no point in compelling him to go till the stores. So it is very important that the product pricing should be compatible with customer’s budget for that particular product.

Second KBA is QUALITY. According to customers quality is not zero defects. They perceive it and tend to measure it relatively as “the comparison of particular product with other products of same kind in terms of amenities, aesthetics, image of brand, utility and usage patterns.” So better the quality, more are the chances of sale.

Third KBA is DURABILITY. Once the customer checks for quality and affordability of the product, he inspects durability of product. Customer can employ various methods to find out the durability of the product like, checking for product specifications, looking for warranties, guarantees, or by simply touching the product physically.

If he finds more than one product is meeting all the 3 criteria, he selects the best one out of them based on single attribute called VARIETY. Variety is how your product is positioned as different from other products. More variety the customer perceives, more are the chances of your product being sold.

These 4 KBAs will have the significant influence on the sales volume of business. They might not appear in the same order always, since they often differ with age group, gender and nature of product, but on the whole these are the only factors which have the greater impact on the sales volume of the business. Hope you discovered the elixir for success in your business by now.

Please post your comments and suggestions on this article to abhilash_ponnam@yahoo.com

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A typical day at the inbox
————————–

Today, I received 374 e-mails total.

A pretty light day considering some days I get more than 1,000.

To clarify what they were–35 were for business, 4 were personal in nature, 11 were from groups I asked to get information from like Neiman Marcus and Urban Outfitters, VH1, and a PR Newsletter.

The balance of 324 was unsolicited (UCE-unsolicited commercial e-mail)–in other words spam.

If I extrapolate the UCE I’ve gotten in the last six hours alone, I find I must be missing something about myself on some spiritual level..

I am a balding, fat man with a small penis that doesn’t work. I am in debt.

I am looking for a lower interest rate on my mortgage while at the same time making thousands of dollars with no effort on my part in the privacy of my own homefilling out surveys, stuffing envelopes and not selling something that miraculously sells itself.

Even better, I can be a travel agent without wrinkles; obtain a college degree while waiting for my 1500 advance to show up in my bank account; I can restore my credit rating legally while watching my free satellite TV and munching on my drugs sent courtesy of an offshore pharmacy that has a doctor who will write me a prescription… HMMM…definitely something to consider. NOT.

I’ve also discovered that I am a prime candidate to help an African Prince transfer funds into the US. He trusts me. All I have to do is give him my bank account information.

The problem is that I am a woman who doesn’t suffer those ills.
Someone thinks I do…There is something wrong with this picture.

————————————————————
The future of bulk email and why it is likely to remain dead
————————————————————

Now, you might be asking why I, who was dubbed the “Spam Queen”
in the “Wall Street Journal” three years ago, am even bothering to say anything about e-mail?

Just to set the record straight, I have never advocated spam or sending spam.

One reporter said to me, “Some people consider all bulk email as spam. What do you have to say about that?” to which I replied, “Then I guess you’d call me the spam queen,” as a joke.

In our sound byte media world, one editor turned this little quip into a buzzword and I became known almost instantly, all over the world, as representing what everyone, including myself, hates about email.

The media as usual emphasized sensationalism and missed the point.

I am not complaining because my marketing business skyrocketed as a result.

At that time I advocated email as a very effective medium for small business, which because of its low cost lets small businesses level the playing field against big corporations.

At no small personal risk, I visited the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, DC, and spoke my peace about small businesses and not throwing out the baby with the bathwater before even the very term spam could be legally agreed upon and defined to the satisfaction of marketers, ISPs and the government jointly.

Small businesses are the lifeblood of the US economy, and entrepreneurs with their dreams are what have made the US the economic powerhouse it still is today.

Email that is sent to people who WANT to receive it, and that is in accordance with their preferences, still gets a high response. It allows many small businesses to get ahead. I didn’t want to see big corporations or the government take over email and bar entry, filter, and extort everyone else while still sending their own advertising messages freely.

And then came the Can-Spam act, which I and many other legitimate marketers welcomed, because it had a great promise of getting rid of the noise while keeping the signal.

As it turned out, the opposite happened. Email filters from ISP’s now block a large amount of legitimate messages, which they call “false positives”.

Marketers can’t send the text they would like to send to their subscribers, so they have to resort to filter tricking tactics such as spelling the word spam as sp@@@M so that they can get past the filters that were intended for another purpose entirely.

In a climate like this, legitimate companies that had been diligently following best practices, and keeping their lists clean for years, suddenly did not want to stay in business with ambiguities in the law and the potential litigation that might ensue even if all the rules WERE followed, so many companies just folded.

However the people that continue to send email illegally did not fold.

Often times sending from outside the US borders, they stepped up their operations even more, to the point that there is almost no truly legitimate bulk email left.

In other words, the signal has become lost in the noise.

The simplicity is this bulk commercial e-mail has gotten to the point where it isn’t effective. We just don’t do it anymore. What’s the point? It doesn’t get a response, and we found people are overloaded with advertising messages and no longer willing to receive more, especially in their inbox, unless they specifically asked for it.

As a marketing professional, the only thing that should count for you at the end of the day is effectiveness. Bulk commercial e-mail has turned into the above, a bunch of unprofessional, ineffective scams.

In other words, Spam is a four-letter word.

Legitimate marketers are staying away in droves and it’s easy to see why. First of all let’s look at some facts. In the United States, it is legal to send unsolicited commercial e-mail. The CAN SPAM act allows for this. You have to provide a way to opt-out and not hide who you are, and a few more simple but ethical rules.

Although it is legal, there isn’t an internet service provider in the United States who will allow you to send unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Larger mailers have opt-in information from lists they purchase which imply consent but those lists aren’t originated from the mailer, but from other sub-mailersyou get a free thing or access to a particular site and the user checks a box that it is okay to get information from their “affiliates and partners.”

The “affiliates and partners” they are referring to are those who pay for the e-mail addresses and opt-in information.

These guys are sending you mail legally, but the fact is, they are not getting into your e-mail box for the most part. Blocking, filtering, and doing it the “legal” way bulk wise, is just not working.

Not to mention, there is no way to prove that the recipients opted in or are willing to get the message since they opted in at someone else’s site, not yours.

The response rate is pathetic and when that mail does get through, you have many disgruntled individuals who never remember opting in, so in their view, the mail is unsolicited. The only way to get e-mail into inboxes en masse is by not following the rules, so the only messages getting through are the scams, including the pornographic, illegal, and objectionable.

It is ironic that the very thing people want to rail against, they are getting more of in the aftermath of Can-Spam.

So where does that leave us?

What can a small businessperson do to get their message out, and not break their bank?

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How to market effectively in the new internet wave
————————————————–

If you are a small businessperson, there are 3 alternatives that you should consider, which are described in this next section:

What is effective you might ask? (Ask away, it’s kind of the point here..)

1) First party offers that impart some value added (a tip; some information, something the consumer is interested in.)

Lets say John Q. Consumer gave his e-mail address for a newsletter, or for more information on a particular subject, or to play a game.

Chances are he probably would not be angered to get an e-mail from your company especially since he asked for you to contact him. He would recognize your domain name since he spent enough time on your site to actually ask the info.

Additionally, your internet service provider would not shut you down for violations and you’d start to build a small but effective list of people who are actually interested in what you, as a business owner, have to say.

This has been effective since the beginning of the internet. The only problem is, how do you reach people the first time, to get them to your site?

How do you find a target market for your products that is likely to be interested in what you have to offer and sign up for your newsletter, visit your site, and hopefully buy your stuff?

Is there anything less costly than television, radio, and (ugh!) banner ads?

Yes there is. Drum roll please…..Search Engine Marketing. If you write good ads, and compete with the right keywords, people who are already searching for an answer to a question, doing research, comparison shopping will go to a search engine and type in their parameters.

If you know how to market well, only people who are interested will go to your site.

If you have a web site that is compelling and you are offering a value added, they will ask for more information or sign up for your newsletter, or get your free download.

Now, getting to this point can sometimes take a little time, but if you are persistent, and know how to interpret your statistics, you can do this. If you want the result without the learning curve, hire a Search Engine Marketing Firm.

So the new tools for small businesspeople to stampede traffic to their websites in 2005 and beyond are going to be:

1) Search Engine Marketing
2) Publicity, including press releases that provide meaningful news
3) Providing quality content and expert commentary for radio, TV, and internet hubs in your field

You can be successful on the internet and these tools help to establish you as an expert in your field, as well as attract the very people who are looking for your product or service at the same time.

These are the tools of a new form of marketing, which people are calling “In Touch” Marketing, or “intelligent marketing” and is one way to cut through and actually get you the most possible business, at the lowest possible cost, with laser precise targeting. In future articles I will teach you how to use them with deadly precision.

This is the new way for small businesses and entrepreneurs to succeed in 2005 and beyond.

Remember, you heard it here first

Laura Betterly
CEO, In Touch Media Group

Laura Betterly is the CEO of In Touch Media Group, (OTC:ITOU) and has successfully launched many ebusinesses for herself and others More information is available at www.intouchmediagroup.com

Most small business people on the Internet are on
a budget and that forces you to be “creative”.

Testing is important and a constant ongoing part
of any marketing plan. You need to test various
approaches and be able to access the results.

The simplest manner to do that is with Auto-Responders.

(For a FREE list of some good Auto-Responders that
can be used for online business, send for at:)
mailto:freeautoresp@emailexchange.org

You can easily set up a different Auto-Responder for
each different test that you run. For example, if you were
to market software, you could list your Auto-Responders
as: software001@123.com, software002@123.com, etc.

This allows you to test different ad copy, headlines, prices
or whatever and to gauge the results just by viewing the
responses you receive to each approach.

You must stress your:

1. Product or Service.

2. Focus on the Benefit.

3. Keep it Simple.

What might work great for your competitor, may very
well be completely wrong for your own project.

Make your project a personal extension of what you
need to accomplish with it.

Set aside a consistent amount of time that you
can afford to invest daily.

And, test, test, test until you find just the right
combination of elements to make your project
a HUGE success

About the Author

A.T.Rendon is an entrepreneur and published writer.
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