market research using keyword search

Why do Market Research Using Keywords?

Why do market research? What is market research and why do it using keywords? All my working life I have worked in the charitable sector with people face to face. I had very little use for computers and the world of the online internet marketer wasn’t even in my periphery.

Market research is the foundation of any business online or off. What I learned was that the main reason people fail online is because they have failed to do proper market research if they have done any at all. When I first came online I did not understand what market research, keywords or most of the other verbiage that goes with the world of internet marketing was nor its importance.

Market research is the investigation of the need and competition of what you are offering to the market place. Your objective is to find a big enough market that is looking that is looking for your product or services. An online market is a community of people who share a common passion or interest interest in a specific subject. You will find that these communities often have their own language. for example golfers, online gamers, internet marketers, web masters, married couples, facebookers, sk8boarders all have a language that you need to know in order to find what they are looking for.

Within each market you will find hundreds of niche markets. An example would be photography. You have photography for different groups…families, schools, business, wedding, artists, professional, scientific, microscopic, hobbyists…you get the point. Each of those could be a niche. To get more specific you would want to look further into a “micro niche” which would be details within each of these groups. They could be how to, tools, hiring, and even brand specific niches.

Keywords are the words that people use to search online. The people searching would be the marketplace. The words they are using to search on the search engines will be what give you the indication of the strength and competition of the market for that niche.

How To Use Keyword Search

                   

market research using keywords

I can’t underline it enough that if you want to really build your business using the internet you need to learn how to do keyword research or get someone who know how to do it for  you.Once you have decided on your market you need to explore what people are looking for. Become familiar with the vocabulary and language they use and start doing searches in the search engines so see if in fact there is anything already available online. If there are a lot of paid ads on the search pages this is a strong indication that there is good competition since businesses are purchasing these spots. You can do general searches around the words you think people are using and then you can do specific searches by using quotation marks around the phrase. Only exact results will show up and you can see how competitive it is.

You want some competition but not too much. It is important to spend some focused time on determining the keywords you will be using. The micro niche approach to it allows for longtailed keywords that cover more area for organic searches. It is through well chosen ones that you can make your way onto the front page of Google ahead of competitors if done chosen correctly. There are only 10 spots on that front page and you want to be amongst them. Some companies have sites that have been SEO optimized for years with many backlinks and a high Google page rank so will be on this page but if you look closely you can also see which ones are there without optimizing very well. These are the ones you can replace.

Free Keyword Search Tools

There are a few things on line that you can use for free when you are just getting started and there are also some paid tools available. Ask around to other internet marketers about what they use to get some sort of indication of what may be good for you or not.

A great place to start is by simply playing around in your search bar say on Google. When you are typing into the search bar you will see that Google offers a menu of other words that they have gathered from previous searches in your niche. They also have a search based keyword tool which you can find highlighted here.

I like to use Google Adwords Tool This is a tool for people who are paying for ads on Google for them to pick the best targeted words for their market and also to decide on cost according to their budget and competition. You can use it even if you have yet to decide upon purchasing advertisement. It provides a lot of information that is helpful for deciding on viability.

I have recently explored the free version of Market Samurai and am blown away with all the details they have built into the system.  It generates keywords, niches, micro niches and then analyzes strength and competition as well generating  domain names and content. I haven’t hardly scratched the surface with it yet. I am so thrilled with its ease of use with the support of excellent video tutorials and the huge understanding it gave me of what the importance of market research using keywords really means to my business that I just purchased it.

I highly recommend exploring all the tools I named here and also taking full advantage of the 30 day free trial of Market Samurai. You will be glad you did if you haven’t already.

Thanks for dropping by. I would love to know what tools you use for your market research using keywords. Please tell me in the comment section below along with why you chose those specific tools.

Rebecca Happy~The Connector Gal

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Internet Marketing: Moving The FREE Line

The FREE Line

What is the FREE line? You most likely have been participating in numerous free line offering without even realizing it. When developing a marketing strategy you need to have something of interest to offer people for them to give you their attention. The more you can engage them and offer value for solving their problems the more they will begin to know like and trust you and even rely on you for certain information. Essentially in internet marketing all the content you offer on your blogs, videos and pertinent reference sharing, is free.This is all upfront to be freely consumed by your fans,readers,audience, potential customer. This would be the top of your sales funnel. The free line would be the line that divides this part of your product/service line from those that you charge a fee for.

Internet Marketing Sales Funnel

The Sales Funnel is essential for every business whether online or or not. It is in your marketing process that you eventually get your prospects/ideal clients to pass into action in regards to your product. As I stated above, the free offering is the initial point of contact. It is the funnel opening. Then as the funnel gets smaller and the message more targeted with more expensive products you will have less people passing through but they will be very engaged customers.The more you can attract to the free offering the better.

Even for the customer to do an exchange of their personal info for a more valuable piece of content like a free report, e-book, marketing tool or free blog, the free offering has to be very appealing.

moving the free line

Moving The Free Line

As more and more people are using the internet for sharing content, entertainment, learning and researching the competition for those potential customers is growing. Since the revolution of the dynamic web with web 2.0 and social media, the speed with which things are changing is growing exponentially. Tools and information are changing daily. People want to be in the know to follow the market changes and are willing to pay for the top information to do it. But it has to be the newest from those “in the know” as yesterday’s can be found for free somewhere.

It is said that in order to remain competitive you have to give to away some of your best content for free. Those that can give away the most will certainly be those that make the most sales and the more of that that is being charged for by your competitors is even better. Think about your own behaviours online…with a little click of the mouse you are gone onto the next bigger better faster (cheaper) site. Word spreads quickly too as to who is doing what. There are no secrets anymore and the sooner you add that to your tactics the better. Moving the free line is a necessity to remain competitive and relevant. Moving the line down forces the  top of the funnel to get larger. More people will be served as well if it is truly valuable.  What you sold last time is a new free add-on to what you are selling today. Your task is to see how far you can push it.

On my last Squidoo lens you can read more on moving the free line and see how marketers may want to pay attention to the power of the people using the social web.

Make a Splash With Your (Above the) FREE Line Offering

When working on your free offering it is best to think about the WOW factor and how you can make a splash with it. I have seen and heard of many creative campaigns around competitions and book launches. One that stands out is Moon Fruit a website producer. To promote their company they had a give away of 10 Mac books on Twitter. They made quite the buzz with that and increased traffic by 600% or something. The point of entry was to tweet.

One that I am fond of because the offer was so helpful to me was of course to have someone build my blog for free. Social Spin is doing this. I was around when they were doing the beta testing on it and jumped at the offer. Now they have just launched full force with an even better offer including a training I paid for several months back. They are having a real door crasher event with this.

The early adopters have explored, tested and trained across the social web. Now all types of businesses realize the importance of building a web presence. The free offering of a blog set  up is great for social spin as their back end is training. In  order for their training to be beneficial to their end users they need to ensure they have the best tools in place first…so in my mind this was a genius offering that I am sure will entice thousands to part with their info. It is all in their benefit. Social Spin knows what it means to come from a place of service. Check them out if you haven’t already and get your free blog.

Are You Moving Your Free Line?

I would love to know how you have been moving your free line since last year. Why not tell me in the comment section below or name some of the best ones you have come across either online or offline.

Thanks for dropping by

Rebecca Happy~The Connector Gal

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Make Money From Your Blog Content With

Affiliate Marketing

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a marketing tactic that a business or brand uses to promote and sell their products to more people by using affiliates. Affiliates are people with blogs, websites or networks where they present niche specific products to their customers/readers. The brand or company pays the affiliate a referral fee for driving traffic to their sties to make sales and or generate leads.

As consumers are doing more and more of their purchasing online more brands and businesses are developing affiliate programs for their e-commerce strategies.  Now that web 2.0 and blogs have made it very easy for the average person to be online, affiliate marketing has become a viable way to make an added income stream. These programs are now accessible to people who are not webmasters.

Finding Affiliate Networks for Your Niche

To make it easier for brands to find affiliate marketers and for affiliates to find good programs, affiliate networks began to pop up in the late 90s. Now there a hundreds of these available specializing  all sorts of niches. Two things to take into consideration when researching for an affiliate network are to make sure that the network company is reputable and to find ones that have offers relevant to your niche. Some that I know of that have been referred to me by people I trust are Click Bank, Commission Junction, eBay, Amazon and Linkshare. There are many out there but you can start with some of these.

Choosing Affiliate Programs for Your Blog

When choosing programs for you blog it is best to pick ones that are of interest to your readers and will help them find solutions they are already looking for. I think it is good to have ones that can easily fit into the conversation you are having. For example if you have a site about parenting, you may link out to things available that parents would want. On a site about financial investment you would not want to have theses same links. If they are things they are going to be purchasing anyways, why not purchase from you. You also want to choose ones that have a good pay out percentage.

I find it interesting to find sites that are getting good traffic in a related field and study what and how they are adding links to their site. Some people build their blogs only to make money from the links and others are doing it to offer their expertise to get people to purchase services or products. One blog that is essentially only  focused on selling is http://Johnchow.com. He IS generating money from every affiliate link or banner on his blog. By seeing what others are doing, you will be able to see what is or is not working. You can find affiliate networks that may be pertinent to your field and you could always ask the blog owner for feedback on the credibility of the affiliate networks as well. .

Get Your Blog Ready for Affiliate Marketing

Even though I heard for a long time that the blog or website is the hub of all your online networks, it was the last frontier for me. I am a great people person but certainly not a techie. I know nothing of coding or formatting. The entire vocabulary to me was foreign and scary. I did try my hand at a couple of posts once or twice but had major mental blocks.  A few months ago I had some internet friends start a new company and they were offering to set up my WP blog with a premium theme and all the pluggins already installed for FREE. I jumped at the offer. The price was perfect for me. All I had to do was get a domain name and pay for hosting and I was up and blogging. They set up the blog you are reading now for me. All I need to do is create great content and slowly learn how to tweak things to my liking.

I am sure you can see that more and more businesses are discovering the necessity and benefits of having a blog. Adding affiliate links to them will be an automatic next choice once they are set up. If  you are interested in getting your blog up and running within 72 hours with the added benefit of having top experts customizing it for you for FREE, I recommend going to The Free Blog Place . Then if you decide you want to add some affiliate links and your target market is looking for online business tools and services you may want to consider becoming one of their affiliates.You can do that here>>(Affiliates) I did and the links I use for them will pay me whenever anyone decides to use them.  For every FREE blog you give away you will receive $50.  If you already have your blog set up and are interested in doing some affiliate marketing I highly recommend their program and their services. People will love you for sharing that link.

Thanks for reading and please tell me in the comments…do you thing you want to add affiliate links to your blog?

Rebecca Happy~The Connector Gal

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So Many Social Networking Platforms to Explore!

I would say that many businesses today that do not yet have a web presence are now considering how to add the online marketing aspect into their marketing mix. Depending on their ideal customers of course, they will be looking at the 4 big ones like Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. You may think that is a lot already. Social networking platforms may seem relatively new but for the early adopters they are aware there are hundreds of platforms and have already been using them for4 or 5 years.

Using some of these social networking platforms can be good for building online credibility and faster SEO so it may be good to explore them after you have developed what you are doing with the the top 4.  I am what you would call an advanced newbie. I have had the opportunity to have trained with some of the early adopters so have been introduced to a few that provide a lot faster SEO than your own blog can. Today I want to tell you about the one called Squidoo.

What Is Squidoo?

Squidoo is the brainchild of thought leader and entrepreneur Seth Godin. The platform went live in 2006. It is an  an article marketing/social networking platform. It is the perfect place to create and publish information on a topic of interest. You can gather all that you know on a certain topic and make a “Squidoo Lens” including videos, photos, amazon, an RSS to your blog, text and many other media features to provide a very thorough presentation of your subject matter. Some of these feature modules also contribute to the quality of the content in that if you produce regular content it will be updated regularly improving recency of the content on the lens as well. Squidoo is amongst the 100 most popular websites in the US._{quoted from Squidoo.com.}

Why You May Want to Make a Squidoo Lens?

Squidoo is a social networking community unto itself. You can favorite lensmasters and share them in your lens rolls. People are there to help if you ever have any questions. The platform recognizes good producers with certifications. Squidoo is highly optimized by the search engines and because of its size and authority, content on it will be ranked faster than content put on your blog especially if you use your keywords well.  A back-link from a platform like this will be a very strong one in terms of SEO credibility.

A Squidoo Lens For Faster SEO Rankings

I recently wrote a lens called Ignite Potentials: Igniting Your Journey To Success introducing a training company that I am working with in Ottawa called Ignite Potentials. The lens serves as a corporate flyer for them and is filled with backlinks to different pages of their website. Writing this blog post about the lens adds to the speed with which Google will rank it as well as ensuring it is linked to my blog first. This is to keep it straight for Google. I think what Ignite does is fantastic so wanted to do this to help them out with their social media marketing and by telling you about them. They do personal and professional development trainings for individuals and corporations. While they provide me with success coaching I provide them with social media marketing training. I am writing this blog to demonstrate some of the possibilities to them.

So that is it for now. I suggest getting connected on Squidoo and playing around with it. It is very accessible, easy and fast to get started. Some of you may even find it fun and pursuit becoming a giant squid. I would love to know when you publish your first lens so please connect back when you do.

Thanks for dropping by.

Rebecca Happy~The Connector Gal

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Blogging and Product Placement

The other day when I was reading some blogs, it occurred to me that blogging  and online journals are just one great big opportunity for product placement.  Maybe that is all they are. Is social media, blogging included, one big piggy back?  I got to thinking in fact about blogs and the whole idea of piggy backing and product placement marketing tactics in connection to all this.   Blogging with affiliate links or Google Adsense or back-links to other sites is a form of product placement. Some people practice transparency by saying they will make money if you purchase through their affiliate links and others do not…it is a personal choice. Music video producers or the big film makers don’t mention it. Some big Youtubers have been asked to review products for payment and some likeiJustine created their brand by doing doing spoofs and reviews.

Discovering Social Media in a Launch Campaign

When I first came online to discover social media marketing, I fell quickly into a book launch campaign. I had no idea I was in until I purchased the book being launched. This happened to be a very detailed organized strategical campaign. All the conversations, the lived experiences and the content that was developed became part of the product and company branding. The line between marketing and real life was blurred. It was an experience that altered my life and opened up an entire new world of people, connections, and possibilities for me

.

A Joint Venture is Formed

Some of the people I met decided to partner, incorporate and build something exceptional together.  They all had different complimentary specialties. They were all working and learning in the same space. I knew a couple of them from the Facebook platform. I admired what they were doing and was intrigued to watch as things transformed. In all honesty, I was also very impressed that they were all GenYers.  Social Media is great for many things and finding JVs or good partners is certainly one of them.

Marketing With Real Life Events

They have a developed a huge plan and are ardently executing it. As part of the plan, 8 of them moved across the US to set up house together for one year to create and launch this business called Social Spin. You can be sure, since they all have lots of social media marketing experience and are very aware of the benefits and need for transparency and authenticity that they shared/used every activity as a marketing tactic. Again I find myself participating in a launch where the lines of marketing and life are blurred. I am fascinated. I am certainly learning in the process. I have been thinking about how I could help them succeed.  They piggy backed their launch on the Apple iPad launch.

Piggy Back Large Brands or Hot Topics

Apple is very smart with their brand and their marketing so much so that people freely create content for them as did the guys at Social Spin. They built their launch with a competition to win Apple iPad prizes. Perhaps one day they will attract Apple product placement for their reality show for entrepreneurs. A piggy back provides benefits for both the brand and the bloggers. When Bill Hartman or Dewane Mutunga, who I mentioned in last week’s blog Piggy Backing With iPAds, or the many others reviewing iPads plan their keywords well they probably even boosted their SEO.

Aggregation bloggers like AllTop have made themselves the one stop shop for online news of everything. They even make it possible for you to create your own “personal, online magazine rack”.  If you study it, you will find many of the forward thinkers are connected to it by both consuming the lists and making up some of the lists as their brands have grown. It is back link galore. The line between life and business is blurred…

What do you think? are we all just part of one massive marketing campaign by the mere fact of being on-line either as a consumer or as a producer?  I find it intriguing. In the meantime if you are an internet marketer keep your eyes open and always probe beneath the surface especially when you find someone who is successful at what they are doing. Learn from them whether it is a start-up group of GenYers like the Social Spin boys or Alltop or Apple. Tell me who’s back will you jump on?

Thanks again for dropping by.

Rebecca Happy~The Connector Gal

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CLICK THIS BANNER TO SEE PIGGY BACKING IN ACTION

Piggy Back Your Blog

Using your blog or any social media tool to Piggy Back on advertising campaigns is a genius way to attract great traffic if done well.  The first time it was brought to my attention was when I was attending Chris Record’s Cash-mapping course on SEO, Adsense and affiliate marketing.  Video for brand marketing is very effective and is becoming a primary focus for big brands as they add social media to their marketing mix. They are investing a lot of money in producing outstanding ads. For the stealthy blogger, this is easy content  to piggy back on.

Piggy Back on Apple iPad Launch

Dewane Mutunga has a whole series of critique reviews of the effectiveness of various video ads. that are worth reading. He is an integrated marketing and brand strategist and is using these critiques to help educate. From what I see this serves a few purposes. It showcases his mind and critical thought to potential customers. It also sublimely piggy backs on expensive top brand campaigns providing great SEO and traffic to his site.  He has loaded a couple of Apple’s best iPad videos. Here is one he posted that Apple made for their iPad launch that was obviously targeted to those who are already Apple fans.

Piggy Back With Your Learning

I haven’t quite figured it all out but am certainly finding it exciting to unveil.  One of the reasons I wanted to mention Dewane’s blog is that I read it when I was writing my last post on the Unstrapp’d Reality TV Launch and their piggy back on the Apple iPad launch. I also happened to read  Bill Hartman’s blog where he wrote a short review on his purchase of the iPad. I found thousands of these blogs big and small. (I am sure that Apple had this built into their launch strategy. They would have planned on their fans creating content for them to make the launch go viral). Dewane and Bill and SMA provided concrete examples for me to examine.  When I recognized that, I wanted to see how I could implement some of these tactics in my blog writing as well will be playing with a few themes in the next little while.

Piggy Back High Profile Campaigns

The ninja bloggers and marketers love the high profile campaigns as they can use it to hijack some of the traffic. The good ones will keep some of the traffic by providing excellent content. The team at Social Spin are doing it to launch their new show. I can’t wait to watch the Unstrapp’d Reality TV for Entrepreneurs and how they get the show out there for just this reason. I will be keeping an eye on Dewane Mutunga as well.

Please tell me in the comments how you have used piggy backing in any of your blog posts? Have you measured the results or were you just doing it for fun? Thanks for dropping by.

Rebecca Happy~The Connector Gal

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Product Placement

Product placement or embedded marketing, is a form of advertising, where branded goods or services are placed in a context usually devoid of ads, such as movies, TV shows, news programs and now social media. The product placement is paid for and is often not disclosed.

Piggy Backing and Product Placement

I was reading Charlene Brisson’s new book that I spoke about in my 3-part series on 3-Step Marketing. She has really compiled a very extensive list of marketing tactics. One of them was product placement. I was a little familiar with how imbued our lives are with it today since my daughter had to do a research paper on it a few years back. In fact we just observe these things for fun when we are watching movies, TV and video. Charlene shared Lady Gaga’s videos and found over 15 in one. She was impressed at Gaga’s birlliance.

Anyways, I was thinking about the group at Social Spin and their launch of the new reality TV show for entrepreneurs: “Unstrapp’d” and how they were going to finance all of their endeavors.  I started really toying with the whole concept of product placement for them. They used product placement in a piggy backing mode…(not really product placement in the traditional sense of the word where the brand pays the company). I am sure you have noticed all the hype around the Apple iPad.  The guys at Social Spin decided to ride the wave of hype already created by Apple for the iPad launch. To help their launch go viral and hit their goal of 100,000 views in 1 month they are holding a contest with an Apple iPad as a prize incentive. I won’t go into the details but you can see the trailer here and if you want to register just follow the links in the description. This is what I would call piggy backing and there is a lot of it going on across the web. “

Piggy Back video Response

I thought I would apply what I had learned from the Social Spin team and leave a video response on the Unstrapp’d Trailer to “piggy back” onto the “Reality TV for Entrepreneurs” launch. If you look closely, I played around with product placement too. Watch here and tell me how many products/logos you find and how many different businesses:

Thanks for dropping by.

Rebecca Happy ~The Connector Gal

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What would you be willing to do to get the message out about your favorite company? How far will you go?

What motivates you to success, simply paying it forward or winning top of the line technology for your business? Well either way, this contest is for you! Time to pay it forward and get the word out there about the big launch going on with Unstrapp’d and Social Media Altitude.

Here’s the deal:

Thousands of bloggers are surfing the net every day, facebook, youtube, twitter, and hundreds of B Sites as well. Unstrappd’s goal is to get over 100,000 views in the first month of the trailer for their new Reality Show for Entrepreneurs, and we know you’re in the game! You’ve got the platforms in place, the friends who are like minded. We’re asking for your help, but also there’s something in it for you!

You’ve seen the benefits of the new iPad – you can work from anywhere! The size and convenience will keep your business running from the beach, your favorite cafe, out fishing or wherever your heart desires.

Ready to play? Great! The clock starts now and runs until June 15th. Enter into the contest by clicking the link below and read the instructions clearly. Once you enter the contest, sign up as an affiliate for a second chance to win! It’s pretty simple, and there are lots of ways to win… try new things, use those lists you’ve been building and see what type of excitement you can drum up! As you do all of this, you’ll learn more about what works and what doesn’t.

Want to win? It’s easy, all you have to do is enter the contest for one shot at the random drawing, and refer people to the contest as an affiliate. If someone you refer wins, you win too!

We’ve got up to 3 iPads to give away – when we hit that 100,000 mark, a 3rd winner will be choosen based on recruiting skills, so if you’re a hot shot this ones for you! See, everyone wins!

What are you waiting for? Get started NOW!
http://www.rebeccahappy.com/FREEiPad

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Recap of Marketing Steps 1&2

In my last post, Step 2 of 3-Step Marketing for Non-Marketers Online and Off I spoke at about crafting a message for your ideal client in a manner that speaks to them and differentiates you from others offering the same product or service. This would be your USP. In post 1 we talked about identifying your ideal client in lots of detail. Here I am going to cover picking or matching the right tactic for the right customer.

Marketing Step 3

Step 3 would be to select the best marketing tactics to reach your target market to attract your ideal client. Now that you have done your thorough research in regards to demographics, psychographics and geographics you can save yourself a lot of time and money. The marketing tools/tactics you choose need to be aligned with the day to day buying behaviour of your customer. This is where you connect the dots from knowing your customer, knowing your message and now connecting the two.

One tool to help in making the choice of marketing tactics as suggested by The 3-Step Marketing Pro, is to make a 2 column chart to write out your findings on one side which she calls “clues” and the other side “tactics”

Clues/Tactics

Clues come from the information you have gathered from the 3 areas of: pyschographics, demographics and geographics. All the clues give you what you need to have in order to pick the right tactic.

Eg./ Do they drive, walk, bike, sk8 or bus to work or do they work in a home office? From this you can learn about geographics, ideaology re: fitness, lifestyle, green, and finances for a start. Do they go to a gym at work or near home or not at all? Do they do their buying research online or do they get it from the radio, tv or print advertising? In asking what the client does in STEP 1 you will find the clues you need to choose the right tactics. Remember that you need to be using the same consistent message no matter what your tactic. People have so much information coming at them all the time they need to be exposed to your message 7-20 times before it resonates enough with them on a familiar level to even hear it.

Tactics can be online or offline or even mobile (cell and smartphones), radio ads,  tv ads, bus ads, bench ads, surveys with prizes, seminars, newsletters, direct mail, product placement and endorsements from celebrities. They have to be in alignment with what you have researched in regard to your ideal client.

You can find out more about what is already out there and understand the tactics available from Charlene Brisson’s new book. It is the perfect tool for small businesses to understand the terms.It is the ultimate guide to marketing tactics (online/offline/mobile). I think it is the only place around that you can find a such a list.  I am sure you will be surprised at the creativity behind some of them.

3-Step Recap:

1. know your IDEAL customer
2. craft a message that speaks to your Ideal customer
   
3. select effective tactics that reach  your IDEAL client

I would love to hear of some of the tactics you have employed and what were the results you saw. Please share them in the comments.

Tell me what you think.

Thanks

Rebecca

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Communication

I covered Step 1 of 3-Step Marketing for Non-Marketers Online and Off in my last post. Step 1 is essential groundwork that needs to be done for any marketing you plan on doing regardless of where you decide to do it and which marketing tactics you employ. Step 1 entails defining who your ideal client is with as much precision as you can gather. You will have a much better understanding of how to address your ideal client. It sets you up to be able to do STEP 2, which is crafting a message that speaks to your ideal client. You will be crystal clear on who you are speaking to.

USP and WIIFM

Your ideal client does not care about you. They want you to answer two questions prior to entering any relationship with you. It has absolutely nothing to do about you, your business, your product or your service. You will need to adequately answer:

1. Why should I do business with you more than anyone else?
2. What’s in it for me?

Your marketing message has to identify what differentiates you from anyone else as well as the benefits of your products or service. This is called your Unique Selling Proposition or USP. What is it that you do that is bigger, better, faster stronger than anybody else. It is not the “customer service”. Every company will say that they give great customer service. The point of differentiation has to be tangible. For example there is a local mobile phone store that offers these features:

Features

• ensure you have the right phone plan for your needs
• help set up your email via phone
• do complementary bill assessments
• provide on-site service
• set up blue tooth in the car and more
• give out gift certificates to a local pizzeria

These may all fall under “customer service” but they are all tangible features that help the customer and are not necessarily done in the phone store down the road. They are not charged for this. These are all added extras for doing business with this particular store. It differentiates them from the rest.

Benefits of the Features

Customers leave feeling cared for and equipped with what they need. Things are kept simple for them so that no time is wasted. They feel confident that they have what the need.

It helps if your USP is included in the title and/or subtitle of your company name so that what’s important to your market is right up front. Charlene Brisson, the 3-Step Marketing Pro did it. She keeps marketing simple and she put it in her name….3-Steps. Keep an eye out for her new book: 148 Ways to Advertise and Promote Your Business.  Ask me for your promo code.

It's the ultimate 360 page guide to traditional and new media marketing tactics.

Please share what differentiates you from the same business down the road. What makes you stand out? In my next entry I will describe Step 3 of 3-Step Marketing for Non-Marketers Online and Off: Selecting marketing tactics to reach your target market to attract your ideal client.

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