Frank Delano provides the following examples of what he says are brand names that catapulted their products to global marketing stardom:
Nissan’s Pathfinder—believable because the vehicle is built for off-road exploration.
Sony’s Walkman—simple and captures both the product’s essence and consumer attention.
Planet Hollywood—projects the image of an exciting dining experience inspired by the worlds of film and television.
Ford’sTaurus—the astrological sign Taurus suggests power, durability, and reliability.
Intel’s Pentium—captures the uniqueness of the product and consumer attention.
Absolut Vodka—suggests the “ultimate” and captures the consumer’s attention.
Procter & Gamble’s Ivory Soap—suggests the product’s essence (clean smelling and white).
Volkswagen’s Beetle—unique, attention getting, and believable.
Source: Frank Delano, The Omnipowerful Brand:America’s #1 Brand Specialist Shares His Secrets for Catapulting Your Brand to Marketing Stardom (New York:AMACOM, 1999), pp. 61–64.
Tuesday, 31 July 2007
Omnipowerful Brand Names
David Aaker’s Brand Identity System for Building Brands
Aaker argues that to build your brand you must develop a brand identity to provide direction, purpose, and meaning for your brand.“Brand identity,” he writes,“is a unique set of brand associations that the brand strategist aspires to create or maintain.These associations represent what the brand stands for and imply a promise to customers from the organization members.” In order to develop an identity for your brand,Aaker says you should consider how your brand could be portrayed from four perspectives: (1) as a product, (2) as an organization, (3) as a person, and (4) as a symbol.
Product Perspective
Product scope—with what product or products is the brand associated? For example,Visa
credit cards.
Product attributes—functional/emotional benefits.
Quality/value—is the brand a Mercedes, Buick or Ford?
Use or application—can the brand “own” a particular application? For example, Clorox bleach “owns” an association with whitening clothing and Gatorade “owns” an association with athletics and high performance.
Users—Gerber babies;Weight Watchers weight control and nutrition.
Country or region—Chanel French, Swatch watches Swiss, Mercedes German.
Organization Perspective
Organization attributes—characteristics such as innovation, drive for quality, concern for the environment, and so on that result from the people, culture, values, and programs of the company.Aaker notes that organization attributes such as reputation for innovation and so on can be extremely valuable in building a brand because they are hard for competitors to copy.
Local vs. global.
Person Perspective
Personality—the humanlike qualities people attribute to the brand or should attribute to it
such as competent, impressive, trustworthy, fun, active, humorous, casual, formal, youthful,
intellectual, and so on.
Brand/customer relationship—how people view the relationship. For example, Saturn
friend, Levi Strauss - rugged outdoor companion, Hallmark - warm, emotional relative.
Symbol Perspective
Visual imagery and metaphors—Transamerica pyramid, Nike “swoosh,” McDonald’s Golden Arches, Quaker Oats man.
Brand heritage—U.S. Marines the few, the proud;Amtrak the heritage of first-class travel by rail.
Aaker says that by considering your brand from these four perspectives you should be able to arrive at both a “core” identity and an “extended” identity for your brand.The core identity is the essence of your brand; the associations that are essential to the meaning and success of your brand and that are likely to remain constant as you enter new markets and launch new products.Your brand’s extended identity includes elements that provide completeness and texture to your brand’s identity.These are the elements that flesh out the details of your brand. For example, Saturn’s core identity, says Aaker, is that of a world-class car delivered by a company that treats customers with respect and as friends. Its extended identity is as a U.S. subcompact, a no-pressure/friendly buying experience with no-haggle pricing, and a personality that is thoughtful, friendly, down-to-earth, reliable, youthful, humorous, lively, and thoroughly American.
Kevin Clancy and Peter Krieg: Steps to Creating a Compelling Position
Here are the steps that Clancy and Krieg recommend following in developing a positioning for your brand.They begin with the assumption that you have clearly identified your target customers and that you have conducted research to determine your target customer’s desires and problems and your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
Step #1: Make a list of at least 200 tangible and intangible attributes and benefits that might motivate your target customers and thereby serve as the basis for a powerful positioning.
Step #2: Prioritize the list and combine redundant items to get the list down to between 50 and 100 items.
Step #3: Survey at least 200 and preferably 500 or more target customers on these 50 to 100 items on three dimensions: (1) how desirable each item is to them (dream detection),
(2) the extent to which the product/service they are currently using contains that attribute or benefit (problem detection), and (3) the likelihood they would buy a product or service that had that attribute or benefit (brand preference detection).
Step #4: Average each respondent’s scores for each item across the three dimensions to get the motivating power of each attribute or benefit. (Note: Clancy and Krieg say you may want to give more weight to the first dimension if the product is new and more weight to the second dimension if the product/service is an established one.)
Step #5: Examine the results of step four to identify highly motivating attributes and benefits that your brand enjoys relative to competing brands.
Step #6: Write three to seven different positioning statements and test them with 150 or more target customers to determine which is most powerful in terms of purchase interest, uniqueness, and product/brand superiority. Pick the winning positioning strategy.
Source:Adapted from Kevin J. Clancy and Peter C. Krieg, Counterintuitive marketing:Achieve Great Results Using Uncommon Sense (New York: Free Press, 2000), pp. 121–129.
Sunday, 29 July 2007
Business Forcasting, More Art Than Science
Business forecasting is not a pure science. It is more likely to be a matter of common sense, patience, research, and educated guessing than statistical analysis or higher mathematics.
Consider the weather forecast: it’s one of the best forecasts available anywhere.
Meteorologists study wind patterns, satellite pictures, air pressure, and years of past trends. Each forecast is based on careful analysis of what’s going on, why it’s going on, and why it might lead to something else tomorrow. If a storm is over the ocean and is headed toward the coast, then the probability of rain or sunshine is a professional guess, based on a wealth of knowledge, some good judgment, and common sense. Computers, satellites, and other tools increase the store of knowledge, but they can’t do it all alone.
The same general idea applies to many other good forecasts. Market researchers, stock brokers, and even political analysts base their guesses on huge volumes of carefully analyzed information. They might use computerized econometric or simulation models or
complicated trends analysis. But even the most sophisticated computerized forecasting models do little more than pull equations out of the past and spread them into the future. This is a good way of considering alternatives and a valuable check on the thinking process. But there is still no substitute for consideration of trends and alternatives: the famous “what if” we hear so much about.
There are no magic forecasting methods that always work, let alone a computer program that will forecast by itself. The heart of forecasting is good guessing and the best guess is an educated guess. So use common sense, judgment and as much information as
possible. Look at as many angles as you can and consider past trends, new developments, anticipated cycles, and anything else that gives you a hint of what is to come.
Your Competitive Edge
What is your competitive edge? How is your company different from all others? In what way does it stand out? Is there sustainable value that you can maintain and develop over time?
The most classic of the competitive edges are those based on proprietary technology and protected by patents. A patent, an algorithm, even deeply entrenched know-how, can be a solid
competitive edge. In services, however, the edge can be as simple as having the phone number 1 (800) SOFTWARE, which is an actual case. A successful company was built around that phone
number. Sometimes market share and brand acceptance are just as important. Knowhow does not have to be protected by patent to offer a competitive edge. For example, for years Apple Computer used its proprietary operating system as a competitive edge, while Microsoft used its market share and market dominance to overcome Apple’s earlier advantage. Several manufacturers used proprietary compression to enhance video and photographic software, looking for a competitive edge.
The competitive edge might be different for any given company, even between one company and another in the same industry. You don’t have to have a competitive edge to run a successful
business - hard work, integrity, and customer satisfaction can substitute for it, to name just a few examples - but an edge will certainly give you a head start if you need to bring in new investment. Maybe it’s your customer base, as in the case with Hewlett-Packard’s traditional relationship with engineers and technicians, or it’s image and awareness, such as with Compaq. Maybe your competitive edge is quality control and consistency like that of IBM.
Keys to Success
The idea of keys to success is based on the need for focus. You can't focus efforts on a few priorities unless you limit the number of priorities. In practice, lists of more than three or four priorities are usually less effective. The more the priorities (beyond three or four), the less chance of implementation.
Virtually every marketing plan has different keys to success. These are a few key factors that make the difference between success and failure. This depends on who you are and what services you offer. In a manufacturing business, for example, quality control and manufacturing resources might be keys to success for one strategy, and economy of scale for another. In another example, the keys might include low cost of assembly, or assembly technology in packaging kits. The channels of distribution are often critical to manufacturers. You might also depend on the brand or the franchise.
Think about the keys to success for your marketing plan. This is a good topic for a discussion with your management team. What elements are most important? This discussion will help you focus on priorities and improve your business plan.
The Essential Contents of a Marketing Plan
Every marketing plan has to fit the need and the situation. Even so, there are standard components you just can't do without. A marketing plan should always have a situation analysis, marketing strategy, sales forecast, and expense budget.
Saturday, 28 July 2007
Do You Really Need a Business Plan?
Some members of the business and academic communities challenge whether an entrepreneur really needs a business plan. They claim that preparing one is a waste of time because the marketplace moves so rapidly. This is like asking a pilot to fly without navigation equipment, or a ship’s captain to set sail without a nautical map—it’s a bad idea. Business plans provide vision and accountability and can be tools for recruitment, motivation, and the benchmarking of performance. There are many reasons to prepare a business plan, including,
Friday, 27 July 2007
The Art and Science of Due Diligence
Due diligence is usually divided into two parts and handled by separate teams: the financial and strategic part, handled by the venture investor’s accountants and management; and the legal part, conducted by the venture investor’s counsel. Both teams compare notes throughout the process on open issues and potential risks and problems. Business due diligence focuses on the strategic and financial issues surrounding the deal, such as confirmation of your past financial performance and the future potential of your business plan; confirmation of the operating, production, and distribution synergies; and economies of scale to be achieved by the acquisition and gathering of information necessary for financing the transaction. Legal due diligence focuses on the potential legal problems that may serve as impediments to the transaction and outlines how the documents should be structured.
Effective due diligence from the investor’s perspective is both an art and a science. The art is the style and experience to know which questions to ask, and how and when to ask them, and the ability to create feelings of both trust and fear in you and our
team. (This encourages full and complete disclosure.) In this sense, the due-diligence team is on a “search and destroy” mission, looking for potential problems and liabilities (the search) and finding ways to resolve these problems prior to closing (destroy) or to ensure that risks are allocated fairly and openly among the parties after closing.
The science is preparing comprehensive and customized checklists of the specific questions that will be presented to you, maintaining a methodical system to organize and analyze the documents and data you provide, and being in a position to quantitatively assess the risks raised by the problems that the advisers to the
prospective investor or source of capital uncover.
In business due diligence, venture investors will be on the lookout for issues commonly found in an early-stage company. These typically include undervaluation of inventories, overdue tax liabilities, inadequate management information systems, related-party transactions (especially in small, closely held companies), an unhealthy reliance on a few key customers or suppliers, aging accounts receivable, unrecorded liabilities (for example, warranty claims, vacation pay, and sales returns and allowances), and an immediate need for significant expenditures as a result of obsolete equipment, inventory, or computer systems. Each of these problems poses different risks and costs for the venture investor, which must be weighed against the benefits to be gained from the transaction.
Due diligence must be a cooperative and patient process between you and the venture investor and your respective teams. Attempts to hide or manipulate key data will only lead to problems for you down the road. Material misrepresentations or omissions
can (and often do) lead to post-closing litigation, which is expensive and time-consuming for both parties. It’s also common for entrepreneurs to neglect the human element of due diligence. I can remember working on deals where the lawyers were sent into a dark room in the corner of the building without any support or even
coffee. In other cases we were treated like royalty, with full access to support staff, computers, telephones, food, and beverages. It is only human for the investor’s counsel to be a little more cooperative in the negotiations when the entrepreneur was helpful and allowed counsel to do the job at hand.
Understanding the Different Types of Investors
Most investors fall into at least one of three categories: emotional investors, who invest in you out of love or a relationship; strategic investors, who invest in the synergies offered by your business (based primarily on some nonfinancial objective, such as access to research and development, or a vendor-customer relationship— though financial return may still be a factor); and financial investors, whose primary or exclusive motivation is a return on capital and who invest in the financial rewards that your business plan (if properly executed) will produce. Your approach, plan, and deal terms may vary depending on the type of investor you’re dealing with, so it’s important for you to understand the investor and his or her objectives well in advance. Then your goal is to meet those objectives without compromising the long-term best interests of
your company and its current shareholders. Achieving that goal is challenging, but it can be easier than you might think if your team of advisers has extensive experience in meeting everyone’s objectives to get deals done properly and fairly. The more preparation,creativity, and pragmatism your team shows, the more likely that the deal will get done on a timely and affordable basis.
Organizing your finances enables the creation of additional wealth
What does it mean to organize your finances in order to create more wealth? As you have gained greater control of your spending and borrowing, and have begun planning and saving for the future, you have naturally been led towards more opportunities to create wealth. As this new wealth accumulates, your overall financial picture, though perhaps better understood by you now, is also becoming more complex.
Without organization, it is impossible to continue painting that picture because you will not understand how to order and control some of the complex issues that can surround wealth creation and retention within that big picture. The image on the right of a “junk” drawer helps further illustrate why Principle 8 is so important in light of everything else you have learned thus far. If you’re like most people, you probably have a “junk” drawer in your home where you keep odds and ends. You most likely store items in this drawer because you haven’t decided where an item really belongs and figuring out where to put some things is overwhelming and time-consuming. Consequently, nothing in the drawer ever gets properly organized.Most people have a “financial junk drawer” as well, like the one illustrated here. If you were to examine your own financial junk drawer what would it look like? Perhaps it would resemble this picture where a mishmash of important financial and legal documents have been tossed. Like the junk drawer in your home, this drawer only exists because you haven’t taken the time to order and arrange your important financial documents or
to sort and review them as necessary.
Six Tips for Establishing Good Credit
Even if you're a confirmed rebel, try to be as "normal" as possible in your consumer credit habits, especially if you expect to borrow for a house some day. Instead, channel all your anti-establishment efforts towards clothes, music, and body piercings. Here are six small ways to keep your credit record clean:
Basing Your Marketing Plan on Personal Recommendations
Once you have decided to base your marketing plan on personal recommendations, your next job is to understand why people go out of their way to recommend certain goods and services and not others. What gets them motivated to sing the praises of a business they think highly of? Have you told a friend about a particular business—perhaps a seamstress, gardener, dentist or cheese store—in the last six months? What were the things about each of these businesses that caused you to recommend them?
Most of this book is devoted to analyzing these kinds of questions. But the answers can be summed up as follows: If your business is truly worthy of being recommended, you will be able to answer all or most of the following questions in the affirmative:
• Is your business running smoothly on a day-to-day basis?
• Are your financial records in order and up-to-date?
• Are your employees knowledgeable about your product or service and enthusiastic about working for you?
• Do you offer top-quality goods or services?
• Do your customers have confidence that if something goes wrong with the products or services you sell, you stand behind them?
• Is your website being kept up-todate?
Just the simple exercise of asking and answering these few questions may prompt you to make changes in your business. The rest of this book should help you implement changes that will really allow you to take advantage of personal recommendations. Before we deal with the many practical techniques you can use to encourage customers to recommend your goods and services, it’s important to understand the elements that go into a positive recommendation. To succeed in the long run, a marketing campaign based on personal recommendation must be in tune with all of them.
Thursday, 26 July 2007
How to Let Customers Know Your Bussines is excellent
we’ve just talked about the need to decide which groups of customers and friends to focus your marketing efforts on. This chapter discusses the best ways to give those people enough information about your business so that they will know why it is good and be able to communicate this to others. The point of doing this is obvious. To really become effective missionaries on your behalf, your customers, potential customers and friends need to know specifically what sets you apart from others in your field. How do you make sure your customers have enough information about you to spread the word knowledgeably? One way is to tell them yourself. The way you run your business, of course, makes a strong statement. However, you should also make an effort to give your customers information that lets them judge the quality of your business for themselves. For example, a plumber might say, “I’m glad you let me install 3/4-inch copper pipe instead of plastic, because I feel confident it will last two generations without giving you any problems. Also, it works so well that the pressure in your shower is now good enough that you can take a shower while washing the clothes and running the dishwasher, without loss in pressure.” Or, if you tell a customer in your boutique that the half-Dacron, half-cotton jumpsuit she is considering buying to bring on a trip will dry on a hanger in two hours without any wrinkles, and it does, that person has clear evidence that you and your business can be trusted. Or, if a respected financial columnist states that for a certain type of investment, a 15% return is excellent, and your personal finance advising service has just done substantially better than that, you will want to be sure your clients are aware of how you compare. New Balance bases their marketing on the concept that high quality athletic shoes can be made in America at competitive prices. They include a hang tag with every purchase explaining their commitment to providing jobs for American workers and to support domestic manufacturers and suppliers where possible.
A second way to ensure that your customers have information is to have someone they trust tell them how good your business is. Positive validation by a trusted person can be extremely effective. For instance, think about how good you would feel if a fashion designer told you the suit you were wearing was beautifully tailored, or if your uncle who is a dentist looked into your mouth and assured you that your regular dentist did excellent work or if an award-winning architect remarked positively about the remodeling job you had just done on your kitchen. You can and should, of course, use both of these methods to let your customers know that you run an excellent business. Once they know this, they will not only tend to patronize you more themselves, but will also surely recommend your business to others.
Tuesday, 24 July 2007
Possible Sources of Specific Positioning
Philip Kotler suggests that you consider the following as possible sources of specific positioning for your brand:
Source: Philip Kotler, Kotler on Marketing: How to Create,Win, and Dominate Markets (New York: Free Press, 1999), p. 58.
WHAT IS A BRAND?
David Aaker, author of Managing Brand Equity:
▫ A brand is a distinguishing name and/or symbol (such as a logo, trademark, or package design) intended to identify the goods or services of either one seller or a group of sellers, and to differentiate those goods or services from those of competitors.A brand thus signals to the customer the source of the product, and protects both the customer and the producer from competitors who would attempt to provide products that appear to be identical.
Scott Davis, author of Brand Asset Management:
▫ Brand [is] an intangible but critical component an organization “owns” that represents a contract with the customer, relative to the level of quality and value delivered tied to a product or service.A customer cannot have a relationship with a product or a service, but may with a brand.
▫ A brand is a set of consistent promises. It implies trust, consistency, and a defined set of expectations.A brand helps customers feel more confident about their purchase decision.A brand is an asset and, next to your people, no asset is more importan.
Duane Knapp, coauthor of The Brand Mindset:
▫ [A brand is] the internalized sum of all impressions received by customers and consumers resulting in a distinctive position in their “mind’s eye” based on perceived emotional and functional benefits.
Adam Morgan, author of Eating the Big Fish:
1. Something that has a buyer and a seller—the Spice Girls, but not the queen.
2. Something that has a differentiating name, symbol, or trademark— Tide, but not sugar or bleach—but also something that is seen as being differentiated from other like products around it for reasons other than its name or trademark—the Los Angeles Police Department, but not the Fourteenth Infantry Division.
3. Something that has positive and/or negative opinions about it in consumers’ minds for reasons other than its literal product characteristics—Cirque du Soleil, but not Concrete.
4. Something that is created, rather than naturally occurring— The X-Files and Las Vegas, but not Adam Morgan or the Blue Grass of Kentucky.
Daryl Travis, author of Emotional Branding:
▫ A brand is an unwritten contract of intrinsic value.
▫ A brand is an expectation of performance.
▫ A brand is a covenant of goodness with its users.
▫ A brand is predictable.
▫ A brand is an unwritten warrantee.
▫ A brand is a presentation of credentials.
▫ A brand is a mark of trust and reduced risks.
▫ A brand is a reputation.
▫ A brand is a collection of memories.
▫ A brand can be—must be—more than the sum of all these parts...
Perhaps the simplest way to think of a brand is to use the metaphor of a handshake.A brand represents the handshake that has been used by generation after generation of ordinary people as the sign of a deal well done.
Sunday, 22 July 2007
More Sense-and-Respond and Less Make-and-Sell
Markets today, says Day, are changing more quickly and behaving less predictably
than in the past. As a result, traditional make-to-forecast firms with their hierarchical structures and command-and-control systems are finding it more difficult to compete. Day predicts that the future belongs to “sense-and-respond” organizations. He writes, “These market-driven companies win by establishing a dialogue with each customer and providing personalized responses to their unpredictable requirements. They have the ability to search out, capture and intercept clues about emerging customer requirements, and then build to order by deploying modular capabilities that can be combined and reused in many different ways. These firms also learn from each interaction . . . [so] . . . the relationship created through these interactions keeps getting smarter.”
So there you have it. Marketing is dead or dying. The Ps are in trouble. Quick-fix marketing schemes don’t work, and we are in the middle of all kinds of troubling market transitions that turn everything inside out and upside down. It’s enough to give any marketer a chronic case of indigestion and a migraine chaser. Need something to pick you up? How about this here are a few declarations from our gurus that we are sure all marketers
will find comforting:
Marketing is important! Marketing is essential! Marketing is strategic!
Marketing is central to business! Marketing is THE only path to growth!
Marketing is the engine that drives performance!
As you might guess, our gurus have some answers. Some say the road to marketing salvation is through branding; some say it comes through managing customer relationships; others say the path to righteousness is through building customer equity; and some say well-being is found in word-of-mouth buzz. We’ll get to all of these in the remaining chapters, but for now let’s sum up the key ideas we have discussed so far.
Friday, 20 July 2007
The Internet Makes It Possible for Companies to Tie Prices
According to Modahl, most traditional companies have sought to measure demand for their products and services. For example, grocery stores and other retailers regularly collect point-of-sale data in an effort to monitor what is selling and what is not. The problem for traditional businesses has always been one of getting such information in a timely manner. In many companies, even today, point-of-sale data may not show up in printed reports until weeks after the sales have occurred.
In contrast, many or most e-commerce companies collect and make available to decision makers point-of-sale data as the sales occur. Companies like Amazon.com actually measure demand in advance of sales by taking prepublication orders for books and music CDs. Others, such as Priceline, let consumers submit a kind of “request for proposal”—“I would like to purchase a one-way coach ticket from New York to LA on this airline for $$$$”—and allow companies to respond—“At this airline we have a seat available on this flight for $$$$.” Modahl predicts that the availability of such current information will force all companies to change the way they measure demand and set prices.
In the past, suppliers set the market agenda, determining which products to sell and at what price.The successful companies were those that did a good job of estimating future demand. Of course, no company ever estimated demand exactly right, so gaps existed. Sometimes, companies missed the opportunity to sell, when demand ran higher than available supply. Other times, they made more than the market wanted and had to write off inventory. Using primitive tools like monthly retail reports, companies tried to adjust to demand, but their ability to react was limited. . . . On the Internet, companies will measure and respond to current demand: what consumers want now.As they do, they will change the dynamics of competition.When consumers set the agenda, it is more important for companies to be able to respond quickly than it is for them to predict well. In Dynamic Trade, companies that can adjust the prices and quantities of goods—their supply—more closely to consumers’ current demand will succeed.This eliminates the gaps between what consumers want and what companies can offer them.
Modahl predicts that the consumer industries most vulnerable to these demand affects will be the ones that are characterized by temporary hits or fads (such as movies and music), focus on events (such as sports and entertainment), or operate on a seasonal pattern (such as fashion and toys). Regardless, they represent a capital P problem for the pricing P.
Thursday, 19 July 2007
The Internet Increases Apparent Supply
Modahl points out that in the traditional marketplace there is a difference between actual supply and the supply that is apparent to the customer.
When a buyer seeks a product, whether it is information such as news or hard goods like groceries, they go to the market. But the market is only as large as the one that a consumer can reasonably address.To an isolated villager, the “market” is limited to what is piled up in the stalls of local merchants. Similarly, when a woman drives in her sedan to the mall, she chooses a blouse from among the stores in the mall. If she wants to, she can drive another forty-five minutes to a discount store like TJ Maxx or Frugal Fannies, where it is possible (though she can’t be sure beforehand) that she’ll find the exact same blouse at 50 percent off. But most women
won’t take the time to go find out.
In the cases of both the villager and the mall shopper, the actual supply of whatever they were seeking is many times larger than the supply around which they must make their purchase decisions. However, it simply isn’t practical for consumers to locate and include all of the actual supply when making their decisions. Instead, consumers make their purchases from the supply they can easily find—the apparent supply. While there is no evidence that the Internet increases the actual supply
of goods in any consumer market, it clearly increases the apparent supply. . . . Once on-line . . . consumers can visit both upscale shops and discounters without moving an inch. In addition, new price-comparison engines sift through hundreds of web sites, searching for the best price on a given item.As a result, the Internet is driving up the quantity of goods that consumers can see and driving down prices.
The actual difference in prices for identical products charged by ecommerce and traditional retailers can be considerable, says Modahl. For example, she reports on an experiment undertaken by Forrester in which the researchers used price-comparison software readily available to consumers to check prices on a CD, a kitchen appliance, and a personal digital assistant. On average the e-commerce sites were quoting prices 15 percent below their brick-and-mortar counterparts. The CD was available on-line
for 37 percent less. Price differences such as these and, more importantly, writes Modahl, the ease with which consumers can discover these differences is certain to “cause real problems for companies whose products are sold at different rates in markets separated by geography or information. . . . Price differences based on poor information or geographic distance won’t stand up very well in the Internet economy.
Tuesday, 17 July 2007
Overcoming Financial Worries
We worry that education costs for our kids and perhaps medical care for aging parents will crimp, if not obliterate, our ability to save. Couples are waiting longer to have children, so those expenses are pushed further into the critical retirement nest-egg-building years.
THE GOOD NEWS: We’ll show you how to find the missing money in your household budget, reduce the cost of your debts and get started on a savings program for retirement.
We worry that social security will do little for us and that the system will go broke.
THE GOOD NEWS: Despite all the dire talk in Washington about social security, it remains on solid footing.We’ll show you what you realistically will get from social
security, what changes are in store, and how to make the most of it.
We worry because we have no idea what we’ll really need to retire. How much money will it take? Where will it come from? Many of us take what amounts to a
cross-your-fingers-and-hope approach.
THE GOOD NEWS: We’ll show you how to accurately calculate your retirement-income needs and your available resources. Then we’ll show you, step by step, how
to go about filling any gap between the two.
We worry that inflation will erode our retirement savings and it will. At a 4% annual inflation rate (that’s higher than the rate’s been for several years, but lower
than it’s been at other times), today’s $1 will be worth only 52 cents in ten years. Few private pensions are indexed to inflation.
THE GOOD NEWS: We’ll show you how to confront inflation to make certain you stay even or ahead.
We worry that we’ll be overwhelmed by rising medical costs. Employers are cutting back on the amount of health insurance they provide to current employees and especially to retirees. Medicare will pick up no more than half of your total cost-retirement medical costs, and Congress may restrict it even more as it works to cut federal spending.
THE GOOD NEWS: By knowing what to expect from medicare, what your employer’s plan will or won’t cover and how supplemental health coverage can fill any gaps, you’ll rest assured that health care costs won’t threaten your retirement nest egg.
We worry that frequent job switches can make participating in a company pension impossible.
THE GOOD NEWS: That’s less true today than it once was. We’ll show you why—and how to get the most from employer-sponsored plans.
We worry that our goal of retiring early is only a pipe dream.
THE GOOD NEWS: We’ll show you why even an early retirement is not out of the question if you make the right moves ahead of time.It’s never too early or too late to start planning for a worry-free retirement. Sure, earlier is better. But starting any time is still better than not starting at all—any financial decision you make before regular paychecks stop can be crucial. The message here is that it can be done; you can take control and plan for a financially secure future regardless of where you stand right now. Your best move to wipe away the worries is to take stock of where you stand, reconsider what retirement really means, compile your personal financial-freedom plan and put that plan into action. By reading this book, you’re already on your way.
Wednesday, 11 July 2007
WHAT IS MARKETING?
Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Mastering Guerrilla Marketing, adds
that not only is marketing not sales, it is not a lot of other things.
and now what do u think bout marketing itself???
doing only 1 percent of what you can do.
the business they need with direct mail. Mail order firms may be right
about this. But most businesses need a plethora of other marketing
weapons to support direct mail, to make direct mail succeed.
few weapons succeed as well as telemarketing—with scripts.You can dramatically
improve your telemarketing response by augmenting it with advertising—
yes, advertising—and direct mail—yes, direct mail. Marketing is
not telemarketing alone.
brochure about the benefits they offer, then pat themselves on the back
for creating a quality brochure. Is that brochure really all there is to marketing?
It’s an important aspect of your plan when mixed with ten or fifteen
other important parts—but all by itself? Forget it.
Most, and I do mean most, companies in the U.S. run a Yellow Pages ad
and figure that it takes care of their marketing.Advertising in the Yellow
Pages only is sufficient for 5 percent of all businesses. For the other 95
percent, it’s a disaster in the form of marketing ignorance. Use a Yellow
Pages ad as part of your arsenal—but only as part.
and that includes marketing. Think of marketing as sell business, as
create-a-desire business, as motivation business. [Marketers] aren’t in the
entertainment business—marketing is not meant to entertain.
people will recall your funny joke, but not your compelling offer. If
you use humor, your campaign will be funny the first and maybe the second
time. After that, the humor will be grating and will hinder the very
concept that makes marketing successful—repetition.
customers to remember the cleverness of your marketing—it’s your
offer they should remember. Cleverness is a marketing vampire, sucking
attention away from your offer.
because marketers expected miracles than because of any other miscon-
ception. Expect miracles, get ulcers. Marketing is the best investment in
America if you do it right, and doing it right requires planning and patience.
Monday, 9 July 2007
Advertisers:Poor Company to Keep
It is estimated that each American is exposed to well over 2,500 advertising messages
per day, and that children see over 50,000 TV commercials a year. In our
view, as many as one-quarter of all these ads are deliberately deceptive. Increasingly,the family of businesses that advertise is not one you should be proud to be associated with.
What a Marketing Expert Says About Advertising “Increasingly, people are skeptical of what they read or see in advertisements. I often tell clients that advertising has a built-in ‘discount factor.’ People are deluged with promotional information, and they are beginning to distrust it. People are more likely to make decisions based on what they hear directly from other people: friends, experts, or even salespeople. These days, more decisions are made at the sales counter than in the living-room armchair. Advertising, therefore, should be one of the last parts of a marketing strategy, not the first.” —Regis McKenna, The Regis Touch (Addison-Wesley, 1985) Do you doubt our claim that a significant portion of advertising is dishonest? Do a little test for yourself. Look through your local newspaper as we did one recent morning. We won’t belabor the point with the many other examples we could cite from just one newspaper. Obviously, whether you look in a newspaper, magazine or the electronic media, it is not difficult to find many less-than-honest ads. Even if you advertise in a scrupulously honest way, your ads keep bad company. The public, which has long since become cynical about the general level of honesty in advertising, will not take what you say at face value. For example, suppose you own a restaurant, and instead of extolling the wonders of your menu in exaggerated prose you simply state that you serve “excellent food at a reasonable price.” Many people, cynical after a lifetime of being duped by puffedup claims, are likely to conclude that your food couldn’t be too good if that’s all you can say about it. One type of dishonest advertising is especially irritating because it’s a bit more subtle and involves magazines and newspapers that you might have respected before you discovered their policy. It works like this: The publication touts the products and services of its advertisers in its news stories. For example, some computer magazines have been known to favorably review the products of their heavy advertisers, and small newspapers often fawn over the products and services of businesses that can be counted on to buy space. Once you discover this sort of policy, everything the publication reviews, even businesses that are truly excellent, is thrown into question. Devious advertising is rampant in our culture; from “enhanced underwriting” of public broadcast shows, featuring announcements that look identical to commercial television ads, to paid product placement (inserting brand-name goods into movies and TV). And we have come a long way from the dairy industry giving free milk to children at recess. School districts across the country sell exclusive ad space to the highest bidder on school buses, hallways, vending machines and athletic uniforms. Channel One, which gives participating schools video equipment in exchange for piping ads into the classroom, is the tip of the iceberg. Corporations have begun writing the very lesson plans themselves.
Sunday, 8 July 2007
Selling your product by selling yourself
Those basic principles
First, you’ve got to know your product. You’ve got to know it thoroughly and speak about it with confidence and authority. You also have to know the competition thoroughly. This allows you to speak well of your competition while emphasizing your own strengths. Second, you have to believe in your company, your product, and yourself. You have to be proud to represent your company. It’s obviously the best in its field. After all, it hired you. Third, “Ya gotta know the territory,” as Meredith Willson said in one of the songs from The Music Man. That means you need to know who the decision-maker is and sell to that person. It’s a total waste of time to make the sale and then discover that you have to make it again because you’ve been selling to the wrong person. I realize that sometimes you have to do it twice, but if once will do, why repeat? Integrity is the hallmark of the salesperson who has long-term success. Yes, a lot of fly-by-night people make megabucks at other people’s expense, but the customers of a salesperson with real integrity keep coming back because they know they’ll get honesty, quality, price, and service. A person can’t have just a little integrity. It’s something you either have or you don’t. And that’s what the customer becomes aware of very early in the selling game. You have to have a good name, and the only way you get that and keep it is by having integrity.
Initiative is the ability to get in the door, to make the presentation in a unique, interesting, imaginative way, and to know you did a good job for yourself and the company even if you didn’t make the sale.
Thursday, 5 July 2007
"Thanks God I had a Wonderful Life"
"Thank you god coz send me an angel with very cute cupid." Sometimes it's the small events that are the most exciting. Like the day I made three cents. Not three dollars. Not thirty dollars. Just three cents. And yet it was a very exciting event because of what those three cents represented. I made those three cents the first time someone clicked an advertisement on one of my Web pages. And it was just the beginning. Every time an ad was clicked, I'd make money. The more visitors I had, the more money I'd make. The pages that I had created purely out of interest and paid for out of my own pocket could pay for themselves, or possibly even turn a profit. That's what was so exciting about those three cents. The great thing was that it was really easy, because Google was doing all the hard work for me, through their free AdSense program. All I had to do was give them space on my pages to display the ads. They chose the ads, tracked the clicks, and charged the advertisers. Even better, they analyzed my pages and selected ads that were relevant to the topic of each page. All I had to do was keep my pages updated and do my best to attract a steady stream of visitors, which I was already doing. The truth was, anyone could do what I was doing! Just as exciting was the day a few months later when the first check from Google arrived in my mailbox. It was a small check, but it was real. I almost framed it instead of cashing it! That's what this book is all aboutthe excitement of making money with Google without having to be a computer expert. You'll need some Web pages. Don't worry, there's no programming required! All you need is a computer and a connection to the Internet.
"My wife (mama mia) and my son (tafa) are everyting for me."
"Eventhough some times i mad, but my wife not angry with me."
"so many thanks to god for sending me a patient wife."
"My son still 2 years old wich sometimes very cute and sometimes make me tired."
OK lets go back to teh affiliate program or adsense...
INTRODUCING AFFILIATE MARKETING
Before we start, let me tell you the way it is:
• Everybody can't make $5,000 to $10,000 a month doing affiliate marketing. There is too much competition.
• There is no easy money that will fall into your lap without you doing anything. (And in case there was any easy money I would keep that information to myself and not write it in an article read by thousands of people.)
• You will find the best working affiliate opportunities only by finding them yourself, either through testing and research or networking and business development Affiliate Marketing Definition A business relationship with a merchant or other service provider who allows you to link to that business.
When a visitor clicks on the link at your site and subsequently makes a purchase from the merchant, you receive a commission based on the amount of the sale, a referral fee or a pay-for-click fee.
Affiliate marketing can be an excellent resource for income. Whether it be part-time with a supplemental income or full-time with a large income flow is entirely your choice. It all depends on the time and effort you intend to commit as goes with any other business.
I have created Affiliate Marketing Information Network to try and help you find who, what, when, where and why of it all. I have spent a lot of time researching affiliate marketing and everything you find from here is only a very small example of what is out there. Research, Research, Research is the key factor for Affiliate Marketing as with any other home business also.
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