Applying Niche Marketing Principles To Your Business

Writen by Mark Nenadic

A single industry of any type is far to large for any individual business to tackle all on its own. Even the largest corporations cannot cover a whole market by themselves. This is where niche marketing becomes a businessperson's best friend for making potential much more manageable. If you develop your own niche marketing strategy, then your business will offer specialized goods and services, and you will be able to target specific niche groups of prospective clients.

But what does niche marketing actually mean for your own unique business? By understanding your own business niche, it means that you gain the capability for mastering your own special corner of the marketplace. Your niche marketing strategy will bring about a better ability for catering to specific customer interest so that you can capitalize upon it. You'll have your own unique niche in the business world in which you will stand out the most.

Think about your business niche carefully before deciding upon it, as you will dedicate yourself to it rather exclusively from that point on. You'll need to make sure that it is a niche marketing strategy that is indeed achievable.

Once you've chosen how you will be niche marketing, you will need to ask yourself certain questions about how you will develop this into a niche marketing strategy. These questions should include:

 How is my business most effective? What are my special skills and strengths? When answering this question, go over both your own abilities, and the abilities of your company as a whole. List your strengths and skills. You may find this process to be quite enlightening. It includes things that you've always known, but may not have actually recognized for their full potential.

 What do you and your other team members enjoy doing? The more you like what you're doing, the more you'll naturally be able to dedicate to its success. If you don't like your business niche, there may not even be profit available, because you'll be held back on a subconscious level. To begin answering this question, one of the best places to look is at your hobbies and the things that you already do for enjoyment. Instead of only working with your dreams – which may or not be what they expect them to be in reality – look at what you've already tried and already liked. These are the tried, tested, and true activities for you, and are those to which you're most likely to motivate you the most. This passion can only translate to added profit. Not only will this make your company a more enjoyable venture, but it will give you endurance and focus that you may never have known you had. This level of stamina and motivation is vital to starting up a fresh company, or changing a business that already exists.

 What do you need to make this niche work? It's all well and good to choose a niche marketing strategy, but it's another to recognize what is involved to make the theory a reality. You've identified your strengths and what you enjoy, now it's time to assess them with customers in mind. How can you use this information in a way that will make customers buy something? To answer this question, look at your potential customers. What do they already buy, and what are they likely to buy in the future?

Now you're ready to come up with your niche marketing plan. The last step is to make certain that it doesn't interfere or conflict with any business plan that you already have in place. The niche marketing strategy is only valuable if it can be made to function within your own company's potential.

Niche marketing is among the best things you can do to maximize your success potential in a staggeringly large marketplace. Begin today and reap the rewards that are so close to being yours.

Mark Nenadic
Mark is the director and face behind FifteenDegrees-North http://www.15dn.com, where you will find articles and resources to help with SEO, marketing and Web design.

Implementing An Sms Marketing Campaign

Writen by Kath Pay

SMS Marketing can be used to acquire customers, strengthen existing customer and prospect relationships and provide a service to your customers.

The golden rule "Keep It Simple Stupid" (KISS principle) applies to SMS marketing. The most successful SMS campaigns and services tend to focus on incentives and interactivity as well as relevance to the recipient. As with email marketing, your solution provider pays an integral part to the deliverance process of an SMS campaign, so be sure to choose wisely.

1: Choose Your Campaign

There are four main types of SMS campaigns:

a: Promotional Communication (Pull Campaign). This is the most common form of mobile marketing and is similar to retail promotions. A great example of this is the "Text 'n Win" style campaign, which usually uses a variety of platforms to promote and implement the campaign.

b: CRM. This type of SMS campaign is used to maintain and develop relationships with your existing clients and create loyalty. The type of message sent is usually of an informative nature, such as account balances from banks, or it can be ongoing marketing messages and updates.

c: B2E. Business to employee communication can be used to run staff promotions, such as incentive programs.

d: Outbound (Push Campaign). This is generally the first type of campaign which a promoter thinks of as it is comparable to email marketing. As with email marketing, Spam can be an issue in SMS push campaigns, therefore we have constructed a blueprint for a Spam compliant push campaign.

2: Get Permission For Your Push Campaign

Sending a message to a recipient's mobile phone can be seen as a very intrusive act. So, as long as you have permission to do this, you can be assured that your message/campaign will be read by the recipient, unlike many other mediums.

Unlike pull campaigns, which tend to by-pass privacy problems by using other mediums to drive the promotion, thereby leaving the SMS factor to originate with the client, the most important step in a push campaign is to obtain permission. This generally will involve other types of medium, such as website, email marketing etc. Remember though, just because they've signed up for your e-newsletter, does not mean you have permission to send them an SMS.

Along with obtaining permission, you also need to provide a way for the recipient to readily and easily opt out, therefore making a two-way channel necessary. So check with your service provider to ensure they have this capability.

3: Carefully Plan Your Push Campaign

Plan the details! Most SMS campaigns that fail do so because of lack of planning. As SMS campaigns aren't used for branding purposes (one way correspondence), they can be interactive and involve using a return path so that your recipients can reply/confirm/opt-out/enter. Be prepared for them to use it. Have systems in place, plan and cater for all types of responses, including "thanks" messages, viral marketing (make the most of it!) as well as the typical "You've not won", or "wrong code". You need to plan how you will respond to these and manage them. If you don't, the results can be overwhelming.

4: Be Timely & Add Value

One of mobile marketing's great advantages over other mediums is its timeliness, which can be a benefit on 2 levels. The first is that it means campaigns can be prepared and sent in a matter of minutes, rather than days or even weeks. It also works on the premise of immediacy from the recipient's perspective. Therefore both the content and the timeliness of the message play an important factor in whether it's appropriate. Remember, there must be a good reason to send the message to a mobile, rather than using another medium. For example, a muffin shop sending out an offer for free coffee with any muffin purchase is ideally sent at 10am, rather than in the evening.

SMS marketing should be used primarily as a promotional tool rather than an advertising tool. It needs to add value to the recipient, rather than just containing a branding message.

5: Target Your Message

As we have discussed, SMS marketing should be used to add value to the recipient, whether it be in the form of a promotion such as a competition or providing timely information. It therefore needs to target the relevant audience suited to the promotion/offer/information. The most basic targeting should be based on age and gender and continue adding criteria from there. In targeting your audience, you also need to make sure that you are being relevant. Is your message appropriate to the recipient? You may need to rewrite the message according to the different age brackets of your recipients, or consider a different offer/promotion for the 2 genders or age brackets.

6: Test Your Message

Even though SMS can be more interactive than email marketing, it also shares some of email's positive characteristics, such as real-time response tracking and the ability to segment lists. As SMS is just text, there are no cross platform problems to test, just the message, so test it thoroughly. With SMS your message is limited to 160 characters (even less with the obligatory opt-out option), so test different versions of the message to see the best response. As we mentioned above, check that the time of day (and time zone) is relevant to the message/promotion and that the ideal message is being sent to the relevant age bracket.

Conclusion:

The potential pitfall of a push campaign is that if the message is not appropriate to the recipient, there could well be a backlash against the sender, as it could be regarded as Spam-similar to email marketing, only even more so, because of the personal nature of SMS. Remember, when sending a push campaign, you need to provide an opt-out mechanism, which, depending on who your supplier is, is usually an automated process using a return path.

Kath Pay is Marketing Director of Ezemail, a web-based e-communications tool, which enables you to create, send and track your email marketing and SMS messaging campaigns. For more information please go to http://www.ezemail.com or contact Kath at: kath@ezemail.com.

What Are Resale Rights

Writen by Roy Miller

The concept of "resale rights" might be new to you (some people say "resell rights" instead). What does it mean?

Generally, resale rights are rights to resell a product. Not rocket science, is it? You usually have to purchase resale rights. The price you pay lets you resell the product to your customers, bundle it with other products to create your own new products, etc.

What "resale rights" means depends on what kind of resale rights you're talking about. Here's a quick overview.

Some rights aren't really of the resale flavor at all. You can acquire "giveaway rights" to a product, which lets you give the product away, but not charge anything for it. But staying focused on resale rights in particular, there are three major varieties:

1. Resale Rights. This is the basic right to resell a product, usually with no right to change the product's content.
2. Master Resale Rights. These give you the right to resell the product, but also to resell the right to resell the product. You still (typically) can't change the content of the product.
3. Private Label Rights. These rights let you change the content of the product. You can edit it as you see fit, and attach your name to it as the author.

You're likely to pay more for master rights than for basic resale rights, and you're likely to pay the highest price for private label rights. But those varieties usually give you greater opportunities to profit. They can be worth the money.

Now that you know what the terms mean, you won't be lost in the weeds when you're shopping for resale rights.

Copyright by Roy Miller

Roy Miller owns http://www.resale-money-machine.com and has just released a new report on jumpstarting your online profits with resale rights. Claim your copy here: Resale Rights Alchemy Report.

What To Look For In An Internet Biz

Writen by Adrianne Geyer

There are literally thousands of internet businesses out there. How could you possible know which one to choose? A good place to begin is with what you are interested in. Is it health and wellness, sports, online gaming, crafts, gift baskets, etc. Selecting an interest will narrow down your search for an internet business.

COMPENSATION PLAN
Once you know what kind of internet business you would like to promote, you will need to look at how well you will be compensated for you efforts. Most internet businesses require an initial fee to get started, which could range from a low startup to a considerable amount.

Matrix Structure
If you had to establish a downline on your own, it could take a lot of time and effort for the little bit of money you may receive from your members. If your internet business included a forced matrix structure, you would build your downline with the members who came in before you, know as spillover from your upline, and also with the members you directly referred to your internet business. Matrix means that you and your upline are only allowed a certain number of people on each level. This creates an environment that when you and your upline continue referring new people and a level is filled, the new members are pushed down into your group under other people you and your upline have previously referred. The matrix will fill from your efforts as well as from the efforts of your upline, which means your income will grow at a faster pace.

If you work alone you will have built a downline of only the members you personally referred. In a matrix, that number will be much greater due to spillover. At the end of the month, the matrix will compress and fill in all the spaces left by the people that are inactive. This will move people up into a vacant spot.

The potential to build an income using a matrix structure is good; but it's not a quick process; it may take several months to see significant results. There are no qualifying or group volume requirements to start earning money. You will begin earning when the first member joins from your website.

Bonuses
When a visitor joins or makes a purchase from your website, many companies pay you a one time, fast start bonus. The visitor will now become part of your downline, and you will begin earning a monthly residual income from each purchase your downline members make.

TRANING & SUPPORT
Other than the product or service, the training you receive is the most important element to starting your internet business. A good support team will teach you step-by-step, how to go about online & offline marketing, how to increase your sales, and other important elements of running your internet business to be successful. Make sure your questions are answered so you understand what the internet business is about and what you're expected to do.

Also keep in mind that you will need to set aside a budget to market your internet business. Choose a business that has online and offline marketing tools to help you grow your business. Many companies provide online training tools and resources to help you get familiar with the products and/or services you will be marketing. Utilize these tools frequently, and find out who to contact when you need help.

I also suggest that you invest in educating yourself about promoting a business on the internet. Make sure the internet business you choose provide you with an ample supply of educational material. You will also want to stay in touch with your upline. If your sponsor cannot answer your questions, then keep going up the list until you find someone who will be able to help you.

Adrianne Geyer has a degree in Computer Networking and has been a full-time Internet Marketer since July 2000. To learn more about how to build an internet business, download and print a copy of her free ebook at the following link: Free Internet Biz eBook

You Know Youre Too Ethical When

Writen by Judith Kallos

Yeah, TOO ethical!? Lately, with some of the issues I've had to deal with in my day to day business activities it seems I am one of the rare few who is concerned about proper ethics and naturally is inclined to react with integrity.

The last straw was when faced with a dilemma of one of my client's competitors "cheating" for positioning online by using tactics obviously against the terms of service for most search sites, in this case Google. I explained that they had great listings (only one slot below the cheaters) and that our plan was for long term successes while the other guy's could end at any moment. I then had to listen to this client lecture that I was too ethical when I would not use these same tactics to help gain listings for their site. They then commented "We'll have to work on you!"

Work on making me less ethical? Work on getting me to agree to break the rules? It seems as of late my solid methodology of strong business staples, knowledge acquisition and long term strategizing seems to be making me a real PIA. See, I am not one of those who will say what a potential client wants to hear just to get the call back stating "send us a contract." Nor do I cater to the hype and online schemes of quick results or easy income just to book another billable hour. Silly me.

How about all those online auctions where the item's price is $1.00 only to find out they charge you the balance of the product's cost in "shipping and handling" fees? I sure wish eBay would nip that in the bud! Shipping and handling should be shipping and handling, not a combo of the product's price just so the seller can be listed as the least expensive – when in fact they are not.

I contacted one such seller online about this strategy and was typed to as though I was the idiot – "do the math" he said. Is everything online turning into the best man wins that figures out how to use deceptive practices or sugar-coat reality to the point of making your teeth ache just to make a buck? On second thought, don't answer that...

I've been doing this long enough to know all the red flags, hype and pitfalls. And some of them do work in the short term - with certain demographics. I also know the right way to do things and that if followed you will succeed - but you may not have the instant results all the fast, cheap and easy noise online claims is possible. When you deviate from the line of what is right, it will always hit you in the back of the head. Yes, sooner or later – sometimes later – but what comes around always does go around – even online.

I may have lost a client to an unscrupulous "black hat" SEO firm using trickery and linking schemes to inflate results for the near term. But for the long term, these issues as well as many others I run into are simply not in my character to cater to when I know what is right – and I won't.

You know you're too ethical when:

=> You give your clients the details and real-world view of what is required to achieve online success – whether it is what they prefer to hear or not.

=> You do not minimize what is involved in efforts, time or cost to reach their goals.

=> You are clear and realistic about your own skill set and only offer services you excel at.

=> You provide referrals to other juried businesses whose expertise is outside your realm of experience.

=> You charge a fair price for your offerings reflecting the quality of the product/service offered.

=> You point out to clients in detail when their goals are unrealistic and why.

=> You don't hide your product's actual cost in other "fees".

=> You have your terms, policies or modus operandi available online for client review 24/7 and you back them up.

=> You back up your work, offering refunds when necessary and don't charge to remedy oversights or errors on your part.

=> You do not buckle to clients or customers who demand you deviate from what you know is right just to get their business.

=> You don't e-mail anyone without their explicit permission to do so - period!

My business is all about ethics and integrity in an industry of hype and misinformation. I've not signed every potential client that has come my way, but that is O.K. I know that for those who are smarties and hire me that they made the right choice for all the right reasons – not because I was willing to compromise my ethics, cut corners or break the rules just so either of us could make a buck. In the long term, we both succeed.

It's so nice to be able to look at my cute little face in the mirror each day when I go home. For those who haven't been able to do that lately, add a dose of integrity to your life – you might find honesty refreshing and actually freeing compared to sinister deception for commercial gain.

"Never give in! Never give in! Never, never, never. Never -- in anything great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense." ~ Winston Churchill

About the Author:
Judith Kallos is an authoritative and good-humored Technology Muse who has been playing @ http://www.TheIStudio.com for over a decade. Check out her popular Technology Cheat Sheets @ http://www.LearnAndThrive.com