The term marketing strategy is bandied around and sounds so seductive that many clients and their hired marketing agents rarely stop to consider the meaning of the term.

Thousands of years ago, Sun Tzu, wrote what is considered the most outstanding book on military strategy ever written, The Art of War. (1) More recently, Gagliardi has adapted the original work on military strategy to marketing. (1)

Understanding the definitions of both strategy and execution is essential for a victorious campaign, be it on a military battlefield or within a client’s geographical business terrain.

Strategy is the science and art of military command exercised to meet the enemy in combat under advantageous conditions.

Marketing strategy therefore is the science and art of marketing execution to meet competitors within a client’s marketing terrain under advantageous conditions.

The key in both circumstances is the phrase under advantageous conditions.

This means, if the marketing professional is going to send his client into a marketplace battle, depleting her resources, and not unlike true war, risking if not her life, the life of her business, that marketing professional had better have a solid understanding of strategy.

The marketing professional who lacks a thorough understanding of strategy will often present a client with a plan of action which in reality falls under the definition of marketing execution. Effective marketing execution must be preceded by the development of comprehensive marketing strategy specific for that client and tailored to her marketing terrain.

Many times a client is presented with plan of action that might include: 1. print advertising, 2. radio spots, and 3. speaking engagements. These steps are actually marketing execution. Too often unfortunately and erroneously marketing execution is confused with a marketing strategy when presented to the client.

A plan of marketing execution that is not based on a predetermined and well thought-out marketing strategy might more appropriately be called “whatever sticks”. Remember that true marketing strategy requires a plan of marketing execution that sends the client into battle under advantageous conditions.

Marketing strategy requires first, the identification of most, if not all, of your client’s direct competitors within the market battlefield. Next a marketing strategy requires a thorough, honest and perhaps painful assessment of your client’s strengths and weaknesses; her position in the marketplace. Finally, the identification of one or several market segments that the client will compete for within her geographical area. Once the target market has been identified, market strategy requires that that segment’s specific wants, needs and desires be identified.

The science and art of marketing strategy relies on this assessment. Marketing strategy compares the relative strength and weakness of your client versus the strength and weakness of her competitors, not only in her marketplace in general, but also as they relate to the coveted target segment.

Marketing strategy therefore require you to answer the question, “Relative to the targeted market segment, how can you position your client’s strength versus her competitor’s weakness?” How can you write your headlines and ad copy highlighting your client’s strengths, so that you can position her and her services higher in the minds of the targeted market segment than her direct competition? This is the science and art of marketing strategy. The better this strategy, the more likely your client will compete successfully for market share.

Finding Your Path Through the Internet Marketing Jungle

Trying to decide how to strategically market your product or service (or yourself) on the internet can be overwhelming. There are a myriad of marketing possibilities to choose from, and more great strategies are being offered almost daily. How can an internet marketer decide on the best strategic marketing plan that works for their business?

There seems to be as many answers for which strategies to use in what situation than there are internet marketing strategies themselves! There are definitely too many strategies for any one marketer to utilize them all. If you have a very large team with access to multiple internet marketing specialists, your marketing strategies can incorporate most available methods. However, most of us do not have access to that kind of resource.

How Do You Choose Your Internet Marketing Strategies?

There are too many internet marketing options to discuss them all in a short article, but there are three general principles that can make a huge difference to your marketing efforts. Following these principles will not just improve the success of your current internet marketing plan, but can help you figure out where to start focusing your efforts in the first place.

Three Principles for Making Appropriate Strategic Marketing Choices

1) Be Capable in your Strategic Marketing

Not all marketers are created equal. We all have a variety of strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately we tend to focus more on how to fix our weaknesses rather than how to harness our strengths. It is true we should all strive to improve ourselves, but sometimes the time and effort placed on learning the internet marketing strategies we are struggling with would be better placed finding and perfecting strategies that we already have an aptitude for.

When a strategy works well for the majority of marketers it does not necessarily mean it will work well for you. If a particular strategy does not come easily to you, it will take more time and will likely not generate the top quality you need to stand out against your competitors. If you are not adept at something, use a different strategy that you can implement effectively with the unique capabilities you do have, or make the investment to outsource if you have the means to do so.

This does not mean we should not learn new strategies! If you are not constantly learning, you will also not succeed. Make sure you are not perpetually spending more time learning something that is difficult for you than you are taking to actually market your product or service. Some great internet marketing strategies are better left for others who have a better aptitude for them. Their expertise will allow them to do it better than you anyway.

2) Care About your Strategic Marketing

Let’s face it; everything we do in marketing is not fun. It is work, and most definitions of work do not include the word ‘fun’. However…take a second and think about sitting in front of your computer to work on your latest marketing project. If you would rather be sitting in the dentist’s chair getting a couple of teeth pulled, you are spending your time with the wrong strategies. Work can actually be enjoyable. At the very least, you should be able to find a few good strategies that beat getting teeth pulled. There are many strategic marketing choices on the internet. Pick the ones you enjoy and care about.

“But my current marketing strategies are supposed to be the best for my product!” “My upline says this strategy has been working for everyone on the team!” If you hate what you are doing, it will show in your work, just as your passion will shine through when you are doing something you love. It will be difficult to put in extra hours when necessary, you will be more apt to give up prematurely, and you will be unable to do exceptional stand-out work if you hate every minute of it.

Start by learning the marketing strategies you are most interested in, see which ones you like, and master those first. Eventually learn them all so you can find which methodologies you most enjoy and are best at. These will be the marketing strategies that perform the best for you and are more sustainable in the long run.

3) Be Consistent with your Strategic Marketing

For many marketers, the strategy seems to be: ‘Chase the latest and greatest marketing options as soon as they appear.’ They work on something, get mediocre results, then three weeks later when a great new idea comes along, abandon their current efforts and ‘try’ something else. This is not a recipe for sustainable success.

Sometimes the latest hot new marketing trend can work wonders and inject a lot of cash into your business. New ideas should be taken advantage of when appropriate. However, if it’s new it is unproven and may fail. Has it been tested in your niche market? Will it still be working a week from now? If you change your marketing plan more often than you change your socks, you will never get really good at anything. You will be spending as much time learning new things as you do actually marketing your product or service.

Consistency is the key. If your strategic marketing plan is based on solid and proven strategies and you do not give up and start something new every couple weeks, you will become an expert in those strategies. They will get easier, less time consuming, and start running like clockwork to bring you a consistent stream of clients. It is easier and less risky to learn and test new methods when you have a proven and profitable system already in place to fall back on.

Points for Choosing the Right Internet Marketing Strategy

– Develop a good strategic base of internet marketing methods that you enjoy and are capable of implementing effectively.

– Be consistent with these marketing strategies so you become an expert and are profiting from them with minimal effort.

– Try almost everything, including the ‘hot’ new methods that look like they have potential, but don’t abandon the tried and true methods that have already been proven to work.

– If you find new marketing methods that you enjoy and can utilize effectively, add them to your long tern internet marketing strategy and use them consistently until you master them.

Developing an effective strategy to continuously improve your product or service needs to be number one on your business action plan. Why? Because without an effective, and evolving, product marketing strategy (or service delivery strategy), your business will struggle to succeed.

Strategy development can be intense and complex; and the cost of time, resources and money for the development of every element of your marketing strategy for brands can be high.

Most small business owners invest in up-front development of products or services strategies and, once they are launched, they do little to develop that strategy and do little to build it into their overall marketing and business strategy. In fact, the new product or service is often launched, and then expected to ‘take off’ on its own. When the launch fails or sales don’t hit targets, the blame for failure is often pointed to the sales or operations group, or the economy. I’ve even heard the customer being blamed for failing to buy the goods or services being offered.

Product Marketing Strategy: 5 Best Strategies (note: service delivery strategy is used interchangeably)

What many small businesses fail to do is to ensure that their product strategies are continuously enhanced and adapted for market conditions; as well as being adapted as the goods or services move through their product life cycle. A newly launched service (or good) needs marketing strategies that capitalize on the introduction, growth, maturity and declining stages of its life cycle. A positioning strategy that takes into account the product life cycle stage is effective and much more likely to succeed. In the introduction stage of a new product launch, you need to consider pricing, promotion, and distribution strategies. Are you entering a market with similar goods or services, or a new market entirely? For example, pricing strategies for goods with lots of competition might include a market penetration price strategy or a promotional price strategy. Whereas, a pricing strategy for entry into a highly technical field with few competitors could more successfully use a price skimming or market skimming strategy.
As much as pricing strategies need to be closely aligned to product and to product life cycle, consideration must also be given to differentiation strategies. Are features and benefits easily copied or imitated or bettered by competitors? If the answer is yes, you must be able to find another point of differentiation (for example, an outstanding and unmatched warranty program or same day/no charge shipping). Often the goods you launch are unique and differentiated at the beginning of their life cycle, but competitors catch up quickly and can often pass you in the race to win the buyers heart, mind and dollars. Differentiation strategies must be built to keep evolving and to make it difficult for competitors to copy you.
Is the promotional program you developed for your launch, appropriate for the ongoing evolution of the goods or services? For example, do you need more personal selling now? Or will direct marketing mail campaigns help you to establish brand recognition and build demand?
Do you need to re-look the distribution strategy for your goods or services? Is the distribution channel working effectively? Do you need additional merchants or retailers or affiliates? Review and analyze your sales history. Ensure that you have a clear understanding of where your product or service is selling, who is doing the selling, how it is being sold, what the sales lead time is, and all other distribution data. Find where the sales are growing and where they are not. Fix the problems. Test new distribution techniques. Monitor and measure your efforts and try to build a program that will help you not only with one product or service, but with many.
Consider diversification of your goods or services as a strategy for brand growth. Through diversification you can support and build your existing business while spreading the costs over other goods and services; some might be related, but other goods could be unrelated to the existing product line. The best diversification strategy ensures that you focus on brands that have limited competition, add minimal incremental cost to your operation, and that your customers want!

Your product marketing strategy must be continuously improving, and must have an effective brand management focus to move forward; ahead of your competition and ahead of your market. Building, growing and protecting your goods or services sales must be at the center of your strategy. Your purpose in building a strong brand marketing strategy is to grow your sales and to grow your share of the market. Focusing on your marketing mix strategy and strategic planning, and then acting on your plans, will move your business forward.

Marketing in general is a vast and complex beast which requires knowledge and effort to truly master and leverage it to its full potential to grow your brand, let alone your business. Any good internet marketing strategy can effectively help you build your business online. However, as many internet entrepreneurs look to expand their online presence and grow their businesses further, I find that many of them fail to create a complete marketing and business development strategy, focusing the majority of their efforts online. Sadly, this is a HUGE mistake on their part.

Over the course of my career as an entrepreneur, business owner and web designer, I’ve conducted business with many individuals and businesses all wanting to increase their reach, develop a stronger brand awareness and build a strong internet presence. Yet through all their questions, two common fears continually rang through during my discussions with many of them. They either feared the idea of taking on a major internet campaign or they felt that internet marketing would replace their tried and true traditional marketing methods. Both these fears have their roots in the fact that the vast majority of them simply lacked the proper knowledge necessary to see that both an internet marketing and traditional marketing strategy should compliment each other providing reciprocal support of their various strengths. I like to refer to this more complete picture of a marketing strategy as “blended marketing”.

Why Do I Need to Do Marketing

If you plan to generate any kind of income online you need to gain an understanding that your blog or website is simply and extension of your true business. You must develop your business model first before you can properly identify how to apply your blog/website as a useful tool in your overall marketing and business development strategy. Any successful business has a marketing strategy to grow their business. You can’t simply set up a blog or website and expect the business to come rushing in. You must have a strategy in place to help bring in the interested buyers you desire.

Gain a Little Perspective

As a successful internet entrepreneur and internet marketing expert myself, I’ve been using a blended marketing strategy for well over a decade to maximize my reach, increase my exposure and better market to my target audience to grow my online business. I’d like to share with you how a blended marketing strategy can benefit you and provide you with some techniques I use when constructing your blended marketing plan.

To help you gain a better perspective on the concept of blended marketing I suggest you have a quick read of Rena Bernstein’s post over at Social Media Today entitled “Integrating Social Media with Traditional Advertising to Gain Higher Returns”. It is a great read and provides valuable insight into the benefits as well as examples on how effective it can be if done correctly.

What is Blended Marketing

Blended marketing is essentially a mix of both internet marketing and traditional offline marketing methods to create a more complete, overall marketing and business development strategy. Many businesses fail to integrate both internet marketing and traditional marketing strategies together. By taking advantage of the strengths of both an internet marketing and traditional marketing strategy, you will better position yourself and/or your business for greater success.

The idea of a blended marketing strategy is to create a complete marketing strategy which takes advantage of the various strengths of both an internet marketing strategy and a traditional marketing strategy where you work to increase your search engine rankings and internet exposure, while at the same time increasing your reach and exposure offline as well.

Different aspects of a blended marketing strategy can be for example, utilizing an email marketing campaign in conjunction with a direct mail campaign to provide a specific promotion to a select group of recipients. Some email marketing systems provide a service where they will also send a direct mail piece to your email list provided you have addresses for each recipient in your list. This is just a high level example of how a blended marketing strategy can work to ensure broader reach from multiple fronts.

Benefits of a Blended Marketing

The benefits of a blended marketing strategy are vast allowing you truly grow your business at a much more rapid pace than if you didn’t have one. A blended marketing strategy allows you to:

Gain Greater Exposure
Market to the Same Audience Through Multiple Online and Offline Marketing Efforts
Track the Effectiveness of Various Campaign Efforts
Identify the Strengths of both Online and Offline Marketing Strategies
Create Multiple Promotions for Various Marketing Strategies
Generate Multiple Sources to Feed Your Sales Funnel
Create Brand Awareness Online and Offline
Market Products/Services Both Online and Offline
Present Yourself as a Strong, Stable Business
Increase Sales

These are just a few of the many benefits in which a blended marketing strategy can provide.

Creating a Blended Marketing Strategy

Creating a blended marketing strategy isn’t all that difficult if you know your target audience and have identified how to reach them. From that point, you can craft a marketing strategy that will allow you to reach your target audience through multiple fronts to ensure your message is heard.

The first step is to conduct market research (yes you have to do this and you cannot skip this step). When conducting market research you need to identify:

Who Your Target Audience Is
Where They Hang Out
How to Reach Them
What are Their Needs
How You Can Fill Their Need
Will They Buy

What are brand marketing strategies and how can utilizing brand marketing strategies help an online business? Just like a bricks and mortar business, an online business also needs to suggest a positive image to the customer. In spite of what many people believe, branding is much more than creating a company logo and using a specific color scheme. Brand marketing strategies should also include the purpose, focus and image of the business. Let’s discuss some of the benefits with regards to brand marketing strategies.

Benefits of Branding:

Having your own brand helps people to remember your company as opposed to companies using a common name. Brand marketing strategies are about helping the target market to distinguish your company focus and purpose. Consumers are more likely to turn to your business when they are aware of what you do and what you’re all about.
Brand marketing strategies also will help you to become well recognized. People who may not yet have done business with you should still be able to recognize who you are and what you do. If they see your advertisements on the internet, receive your newsletter, receive regular mailings from your company by email, etc. then you’ve established a brand identity. When the tine arrives that they require your product or service then your company will be the first that they think of.
Using brand marketing strategies will help get and retain customer loyalties. It is a fact that people bond closely with brand identities. The astute consumer wants a quality product or service from a company they know they can trust. In delivering great brand identity people tend to remember you and your company. Quite frequently they’ll refer family, friends and associates to you based on their level of satisfaction.
Buyers will pay for image, it’s that simple. Society is very “brand aware.” Commonly people associate certain brand names with superiority and only choose to purchase certain brands for that reason. Brand marketing strategies can reward a business well when done wisely. When a consumer only wants one certain brand of a product or service, they are willing to pay any price to get it. Establishing a great brand using brand marketing strategies will give your company a superior brand image and make the consumer forget about the competition.

Brand Marketing Strategies Initial Steps Of Branding Yourself

It’s worth repeating that branding is much more than a logo and color scheme or a catchy motto. When using brand marketing strategies there are some initial steps that should to be followed to create a successful brand image.

Step 1: Brand Marketing Strategies Focus On the Competition

A key factor in creating a successful brand image for the network marketer is to set yourself apart from the competition. It’s imperitive to find how the consumer sees the competition and to recognize how the competitor sets themselves apart from others. Identifying the competitors weaknesses and strengths is also important. When the competition’s weaknesses are learned it’s much easier to learn from their weaknesses and can be an asset in helping to portray your business in a more positive manner.

Step 2: Brand Marketing Strategies Recognize Your Strengths

Once the competition’s weaknesses are known the focus should move to defining your own company’s strengths. Running a target market analysis can be most advantageous when what is learned from it is used. The usefulness of this tool will be realized by confirming that your company strengths are actually important to your target market. In knowing your company strengths and what strengths are important to your customers, you now have the ability to market these successfully to the public involving them in your branding campaign. Branding marketing strategies have to be implemented properly to work.

Step 3: Brand Marketing Strategies Be familiar with Your Customer

Getting familiar with the consumer is another key branding marketing strategy not to be ignored. Find out about their buying behaviors, how frequently do they buy? Are their purchases a select few or a wider array of services and products. Asking these types of questions can help to better market to the consumer. Also finding out your target customer’s needs, standard of living, attitudes and mindsets. In discovering and working with these personality qualities another key to marketing success has been found.

Step 4: Brand Marketing Strategies Be Your Brand

Be your brand, live your brand by making certain that your company truly expresses the brand identity you’ve established. In other words if you’ve established quick response time to customer inquires as one of your brand marketing strategies, then you must give response time to your customers. Every member of the company should live your brand and be your brand for your brand marketing strategies to be useful.

How to Make Sales With Branding

After the brand marketing strategies are in place then what? When thinking of the McDonald’s brand what comes to mind? Do the golden arches come to mind or Ronald McDonald? Similarly it is important to choose a niche online and brand our business accordingly. Get recognized for doing well in I area before moving on to another. Here’re some of the things needed to sell online with branding after the brand marketing strategies have been implemented.

1) Your own company website. This shows that you’re in fact a serious entrepreneur. Nothing screams amateur more than somebody showing a replicated affiliate web page. Your own domain hosted website is a wise brand marketing strategy.

2) An auto responder service and opt in form are two “must haves” in brand marketing strategies. Very likely your site’s visitors won’t purchase or join on the first visit. So when they leave your site you may lose them for good unless you capture their name in an opt in form. In doing this you are able to follow up with a series of emails messages. The follow up email messages help to reinforce your brand name in your target consumers’ minds. Remembering to keep the follow up at a respectful level of persistence can win sales.

All serious entrepreneurs must have an auto responder service. In adding to this brand marketing strategy you can increase your chances of capturing visitor names by offering a free gift like a report or eBook.

3) A profile picture of yourself and online signature adds not only a personal touch to your brand marketing strategies but lets your readers see that you are a real person.

4) Sound, if your speaking voice is pleasant then put a voice recording together with your profile picture and signature to help humanize your company website and establish a relationship with your audience. This is a great brand marketing strategy that works well for many marketers.

5) Start a business blog. Your blog can be an add on to your primary domain or if you’re working on a tight budget you can use a free blog service at least until you start to realize some profits. Every brand marketing strategy discussed here can be used into a free blog. The blog should be updated often with fresh, unique content that is relevant to your niche. The message of the blog should remain a consistent one, so off topic content should not be added. The goal is to keep the theme and message consistent. Readers of your blog can be kept updated about your blog’s content by using RSS feeds.

6) A final brand marketing strategy that will be very important to the online marketer is a domain name. A domain name can be registered and forwarded to point to your blog if you don’t use an add on to your primary website domain. Showing your audience that you’ve registered your own domain will show them that you are serious about your business.

Many small to medium sized businesses face a common struggle; a balancing act of plans, strategies, departments and decisions. All of the elements are present, all of the gears in working condition, but business isn’t exactly booming at the pace it had anticipated or forecasted for. What exactly does this growth and sustainability require? In a turbulent economy teeming with congested airwaves and aggressive business practices, it’s about standing out from the crowd. And surprisingly, your marketing strategy has a lot more to do with it than you might realize.

Conflicted business owners can overcome the masses and draw the customers that are right for their product by executing a stellar marketing strategy, not by yelling louder than their competitors or using neon banners on their storefront (or banner ads on your website). My point is, you don’t have to be throwing yourself out there with a bunch of noise all the time. What you need to do is paint a vision for your business, your employees, and your customers. Make promises that nobody but you can keep, and then blow them away with your admirable businesses practices and superhuman skills.

Take a moment to consider this: marketing strategy is the single most important factor in determining the prosperity or deterioration of a business. That’s a pretty substantial claim and I’m willing to prove its legitimacy. Marketing strategy distributes itself throughout all the facets of a business, whether intended by its creator or not. This is possible because the strategy is created and defined by the overall objectives of a specific business, and integrates these objectives with a company’s unique vision and mission. Put simply, every level of a business should be oozing marketing strategy. Really!

Marketing Strategy

Does it seem far-fetched? Let’s examine the relationship between marketing strategy and four key aspects of any business: market research, the marketing plan, corporate identity, and the economy. First, let’s get the formalities out of the way and set forth a definitive explanation of what marketing strategy actually is. After scouring several websites for the official definition, I settled on a less-official but more effective description of marketing strategy:

Marketing Strategy:
A strategy that integrates an organization’s marketing goals into a cohesive whole. Ideally drawn from market research, it focuses on the ideal product mix to achieve maximum profit potential. The marketing strategy is set out in a marketing plan.

While your marketing strategy is, essentially, a document; its purpose is far more load bearing. Included in the strategy should be your mission statement and business goals, an exhaustive list of your products and services, a characterization or description of your target clients, and a clear definition of how you integrate into the competitive landscape of your industry.

Marketing Strategy v. Market Research

This relationship establishes an order of operations: the first phase in any marketing or branding initiative is research. (See our white paper on this subject: Market Research for SMB’s). No matter the scope of your research, whether it is a broad canvassing of your current client list or unveiling specific, detailed findings about your target market, the outcome will have a direct effect on your marketing strategy. It’s imperative to find out everything about whom you are trying to reach. What generation are they in? How big are their families? Where do they live, eat, and hang out? How do they spend their free time and money? All of this information will influence and alter your marketing strategy.

Research alone will not benefit your business without a solid marketing strategy. Often, business owners narrowly define market research as the collection and organization of data for business purposes. And while that is technically an accurate definition, the emphasis lies not on the process of research itself, but the impact it commands on future decisions regarding all levels of a company. Every business decision presents different, unique needs for information, and this information then shapes a suitable and applicable marketing strategy.

Research can be a grueling, confusing, and tedious process. From establishing or cleaning out a database to creating surveys and conducting interviews, you can receive a lot of information about your clients and potential clients and wonder what to do next. Before beginning to formulate a strategy, the information and data collected must be organized, processed, analyzed, and stored. Rest assured, with a little creativity and a lot of effort, this will all be molded into a structured, effective, and easily adaptable marketing strategy. Furthermore, continuous and updated research will ensure your strategy is a current and relevant reflection of your target market, marketing goals, and future business endeavors.

Marketing Strategy v. Marketing Plan

In this relationship, the marketing strategy is essentially a guide to judge the performance and efficiency of a specific marketing plan. In simple terms, a marketing strategy is a summary of what you offer and how you are positioned in the market (in relation to competitors’ products and services), and your marketing plan is an organized list of actions that you will enforce to achieve the goals outlined in your strategy. The plan will encompass the steps to a real-life application of a marketing strategy, bringing life to your mission and vision. It’s your time to show and sell your products and services so that your target market can experience them in the presence that you truly imagined.

Often, businesses lack a balance of creative personality and logic personality. While a business owner might have the creativity to dream up a stellar product, business model, and brand, they may lack the entrepreneurship and discipline to bring it all to life through research, planning and execution.

Marketing Strategy v. Corporate Identity

It’s no surprise that some of the most successful and recognizable companies in the world are those who establish distinguished, one-of-a-kind cultures that permeate through every channel of a business and reach customers on a human level. The culture of a corporation, its psychology, attitude, approaches to business, values and beliefs, lays the groundwork for a unique and compelling corporate identity. There is a powerful and undeniable connection between the health of these companies and the identities that their culture has provided.

When it comes to share market investing, many traders are only familiar with the old “Buy and Hold”‘ strategy. Little do they know that there are many Stock Market Strategies that can be easily learnt, that can increase their probability of success in the share market.

Whether you are an investor or a speculator of the share market, below are some handy stock market strategies that can improve your overall performance.

Market Timing Strategies

Timing the share market is a strategy that’s purpose is to identify ideal times to invest money in the share market, to buy stock and when to sell. It is true that if the overall share market is strongly trending, that your probability of successfully investing your capital in a stock which is also strongly trend is much greater.

By investing your money in the share market during conducive market conditions and preserving your capital when the market conditions are not, it stands to reason that you can side step some costly trading losses and greatly increase your overall profits.

Stock Option Strategies

One way that a stock trader can either increase or decrease the leverage and risk in his/her trading investments, is to use Stock Option Strategies. One misconception of options is that they are a risky investment because of the leverage they can provide. But the truth is stock options were originally created to remove some of the risk involve in holding stock, and if used correct, they certainly do provide that.

A trader can choose from a range of option combinations, or stock and option combinations, for a range of desired effects. Depending on which option strategy chosen, a trader has the ability profit when the asset rises in value, remains the same or declines in value. There are also stock option strategies to protected the value of your stock assets.

Stock Market Investment Strategies

There are many stock market investment strategies that a trader can use to both take advantage of conducive market conditions, and also to preserve investment capital. Some of the more common strategies are:

Portfolio Management Strategies > Capital Allocation, Portfolio Diversification.
Position Entry Strategies > Progressive Position Entry, Re-test Entry.
Position Management Strategies > Profit Taking Strategies, Free Trade Strategies
Position Exit Strategies > Stop Loss, Systems Exit.

Choosing the Right Strategies

As you can see, there are many stock market strategies out there that can greatly increase the chances of success in the share market. Strategies that minimize risk are always a wise place to start.

It’s worthwhile checking out some of these strategies, and working out which suit your trading style, and incorporate a few at a time. With a bit of stock market knowledge, you can use stock market strategies to your advantage again and again, grow your trading account, and far exceed overall market performance.

Online Marketing Strategy With A Powerful Formula

The online marketing world can be very competitive at times when it comes to creating an audience.In the beginning all of us have struggled at some point to find the right online marketing strategies who were looking to build a business online. Everything we need to learn & implement is broken up into pieces then scattered for us to run wild to find. Hopefully this will put an end to your run around marathon, here are some key points we will be touching:

What type of online marketing strategy you should use?
What strategies you should focus on?
Common Short-term, mid-term, long-term strategies
Advantages/disadvantages of short-term, mid-term, long-term strategies
Online strategy formula & how to use it

After reading over these key questions & points, their will be a solid blueprint for you to follow and grow any network marketing company. The true benefit will come by implementing what you read within this article. Now it’s time to jump to fun parts of this content.

What Online Marketing Strategy Should You Use

This is a very common question that is asked from most beginning online marketers who are looking to grow network marketing company online. In fact it’s never a surprise to many of the network marketing guru’s who have managed to build a successful business online & offline. It becomes an applause for the beginners who come online to market because we have a large-scale of Network Marketers who try to build their opportunity only offline with minimum amount of exposure.

Little do Network Marketers know it takes a proper marketing formula and/or system to create unique branding for themselves and network marketing opportunity. This formula and/or system that is used for branding purposes is called attraction marketing. attraction marketing is used very commonly among the Network Marketing Guru’s. So here’s what every Network Marketer need to look for within their online marketing strategy… the proper attraction marketing system.A very good formula to memorize is this “attraction marketing+network marketing=perpetual marketing”, But also understand that with this one formula comes with a plug-in of online/offline marketing strategies.

What Marketing Strategies Should You Focus On

To help you have a better conception of what is being explained to you, I will explain to the percentage of concentration for your market in regards to attraction marketing. Most commonly a large amount of 10% of 20% percent is missing within large amounts of the Network Marketers establishment. And this is because that they have not yet learned the proper 80/20 rule of network marketing.

Your Online marketing strategy should consist of 10%, while the other half of the 20% will consist of offline marketing strategies. The large factor of 80% percent is made up of making solid strong connections most of the time from both online/offline. For most Network Marketers who follow the 80% of the rule find themselves making connections more online(70%) than offline(30%).

Remember to never eliminate offline attraction marketing from your strategy, If it’s just passing out a card or attending marketing meet-up in your local area then so be it. The best type of cards to use are both drop/sizzle cards for offline attraction.This will allow you to be visible offline also.

Common Types Of Online Strategies

There is a variety of online marketing strategies that can be used to grow your business. Within the mist of paths to take within the online world.. is usually a point that we most commonly become stuck with. Most Marketers can never make up their mind with what type of online marketing strategy they want to spend the most time with. But here’s a keynote for you: “learn the basics of all of mass majority of online marketing strategies”.

By learning the basic ropes of each strategy, you will have an idea of what marketing strategies interest you. For example outsource information for each online marketing strategy from online search engines,blogs,forums,social media sites etc.. before making any type of investment for the strategy. Now to keep you in the loop, I want to provide you with the most up to date attraction marketing strategies used online. Within this enlistment you will know of the short-term, mid & long-term attraction marketing strategies:

Short-term

P.P.C. ( Pay Per Click )
P.P.V. ( Pay Per View )
Solo Ads
Voice Broadcasting
Any type of paid advertising

The advantages of short-term attraction:

When creating a starting point, it is one of the quickest way to obtain very fast results for your business.
Minimum amount of time invested when creating short-term attraction

The disadvantages of mid & long-term attraction:

Can be very expensive to produce results if not done correctly
Cannot stick to one way of advertising content and/or information
Advertising only attracts & sticks to audience for a brief amount of time

Mid & Long-term

Article Marketing
Video Marketing
(S.E.O) Search Engine Optimization
Email Marketing
Blogging

Advantages of mid & long-term attraction:

When content is structured correctly, You can position work for a consistent rewarding with less effort
Content always sticks
If structured properly, You can target a consistent audience without spending a large amounts of time

Disadvantages of mid & long-term attraction:

Have to spend a large amount of time structuring content
If not done correctly, You can just be wasting time and not even know it
You must invest into proper tools to optimize your content to make it stick

The Attraction Marketing Picture

Overall, you want to be use an attraction marketing formula that will help you mark a blueprint to success. If you can learn all of them that’s great, but try to learn one of each when starting out. For example you may want to start of with an interest to master Pay Per Click for short-term, video marketing for mid-term & search engine optimization for long-term. For recommendation purposes.. take full training on search engine optimization, This will eliminate the majority of your headaches.

“What is the best money I can spend in marketing to grow my business?” Without a doubt, this is the question I’m most frequently asked by small business owners. It may seem like a question that is promptly followed by an “it depends” type of answer, however, it’s actually quite easy to pinpoint one tool that is relatively inexpensive, delivers a high ROI and, sadly, is not commonly found in a small businesses’ toolbox. It’s a marketing strategy.

Why is a marketing strategy the most powerful tool for growing business? The straight-forward answer is that a solid marketing strategy will address current challenges and map out paths by which a business can grow in the future. It will audit a business’s brand and message, but isn’t limited to branding alone. Rather, a marketing strategy is a combination of big picture and detail analysis that incorporates a wide range of marketing channels tailored for that business’s industry, market, and budget. The majority of marketing strategies I write for small businesses include a high number of items that can be performed for free by current in-house staff, resulting in a plan that won’t lead to a fortune spent. In fact, a good marketing strategy is an investment in saving money because it targets a business’s efforts and helps avoid waste.

At this point I need to qualify my earlier statement; the best money spent in marketing is a smart marketing strategy written by an experienced marketer on behalf of a specific business, not something sketched out by a rep at a service shop (think printer or web firm) or from a generic, ‘small business strategy’ check list. For a marketing strategy to be truly effective, it needs to be a customized effort involving research, analysis and a careful matching of opportunities with the business’s resources and budget. This can never be a quick or off the shelf effort – a smart marketing strategy takes some time to develop properly. My own typically take less than a month and are generally under $2,000.

It’s important to keep in mind that while a smart marketing strategy won’t force a business beyond its means, it will present a mix of opportunities that meet immediate goals and show paths for growth. A marketing strategy’s advantage is that it paints a picture of a business, highlights who that business is targeting, focuses its marketing budget, and develops a schedule for reaching out to buyers. It accomplishes this in 7 key ways:

1. Develops Brand & Message

A brand is simply a business’s public look and message. Businesses all have the beginning of a brand – an official name – and some have taken steps to identify a logo, tagline, and possibly a general color scheme or style guide. In small businesses, these are often a reflection of the owner’s personal taste rather than an evaluation of the market and targeted buyers (years ago I had a client who chose her corporation’s color scheme from her kitchen wall’s paint chip). They may be a result of a family brainstorming effort or an owner’s flash of inspiration. Sometimes they are geographically influenced or an attempt at gimmickry. The point is that while it’s rare to find a small business that developed its name, logo, and message as the result of true market research, it’s a universal rule that, for good or bad, small businesses will refer to these items as their business’s brand.

And this is where a marketing strategy steps in. A smart marketing strategy will thoroughly evaluate a business’s brand through experienced and unbiased eyes. The marketer is not (hopefully) a member of the family and most likely hasn’t seen the kitchen’s walls. Instead, an experienced marketer will audit the brand as both a buyer and a marketer, and evaluate its ability to quickly convey the business’s story, whether or not it targets the appropriate buyer, and if it is unique enough within the marketplace to set the business apart from the competition. The marketing strategy will highlight any brand challenges, inconsistencies, or weaknesses before suggesting modifications and improvements.

Unfortunately, ‘brand’ seems to be a point at which many small businesses abandon their strategic efforts. A business’s brand is essential and well worth a hefty effort, but ‘branding’ isn’t enough of an action item to grow a business and isn’t where a smart strategy ends…

2. Audits Current Program

Which segues nicely into the next stage of a strategy: auditing the current marketing program. This stage goes beyond branding to review all of the business’s marketing efforts and is an essential component to any smart strategy. It’s at this stage that wasted money or effort is discovered, missed opportunities highlighted, or where I find that a client had started down a positive path in the past but either abandoned it too early or was off in its message. Has the business’s marketing program been well thought out or has it been a shotgun approach through a series of one-off efforts spread over time? This is where we find out.
My audits look for strengths as well as holes and weaknesses in a business’s marketing program by dissecting the marketing channel mix, promotional locations (both online and traditional), frequency, and more, then matching the entire program to the targeted buyer profile. I spend quite a bit of time looking through the business’s marketing tools such as its web site, brochures, newsletters, and social media and evaluate the business’s staff resources, factoring any strengths into the final evaluation.

3. Profiles Buyers & Marketplace

It may be hard to fathom but there are small businesses that face each year without knowing much about their own marketplace and the very buyers upon which their livelihoods depend. As a marketer, it baffles me how any business can hang its shingle without taking the time to first evaluate who it will sell to and from whom it will grab market share. Questions such as, “how many buyers are out there?”, “how do they like to be reached?” and, “who am I competing against?” are all fundamental to business success because it’s only through this knowledge that a company can adapt and grow. The only way to create this profile is through research!

I start by pulling information directly from my clients through a combination of interviews and surveys filled with carefully crafted questions. I’ll ask then re-ask until I’ve developed a complete profile from my client’s perspective. My work then turns to generating a buyer profile from a marketing perspective that stems from my client’s high level buyer description. I’ll dig and research until my profile is complete, then compare my profile with that of my client’s. Hopefully we’re in synch, but if not, I’ll point out where we differ and evaluate where my client can hone his or her efforts.

At this point I’ll also want to look at the marketplace from my buyer profile’s point of view, and will “shop” the competition. I’ll look at the business’s geographic reach and investigate both demographic data and local economic growth plans. All of this data will play into the final evaluation of whether my client should continue in its current market or branch out into an area that’s buyer-rich.

4. Evaluates Competition

“Who is my competition and how do we differ?” That’s a question every business owner should be able to answer at any given time! Business owners should be aware of who is snagging market share from them and how each competitor compares in services, quality, customer service, messaging, and overall marketing efforts. It’s wonderful to be the best service provider available, but that won’t mean anything if the competition is signing more buyers!

For this stage of a marketing strategy, I like to shop the competition from a buyer’s perspective before comparing my findings to my own “client shop”. Since I’m an outside consultant, it’s fairly easy for me to assume an unbiased buyer’s approach to most shopping efforts, be it B to B or B to C, and I look for easy shopping situations, who could satisfy my buyer needs, would entice me to make a purchase or conversely would turn me off as a buyer. I use these results to suggest ways my client could improve his or own business’s message and to…

5. Determine Marketing Mix

This stage of a marketing strategy is a game of, ‘find the buyers’. After all, what is marketing if it isn’t an effort to communicate with buyers and lure them to a business? To me, this is the truly strategic stage of a strategy, but one that could not exist without all the previous steps. It is at this point that the strategy should answer questions such as, “should a business adopt the latest trends or stick to more traditional methods?” or, “what will provide the biggest bang for a limited budget?”

It’s also the stage where experience really pays off as there are many, many ways to spend money in marketing and only so many options that will reach the right buyers. I enjoy this stage the most and spend time looking under rocks to discover new options and find cost effective solutions. No two strategies should be ever be the same at this stage, making this the most custom portion of the entire process. A good strategy will look beyond paid search and Facebook ads and find new ways to present the business – within budget.

This is also the most flexible portion of a smart marketing strategy. I like to include a variety of options that range from ‘incorporate immediately’ to more longer term efforts that make sense once the business has grown or has put other marketing tools in place. A good mix will pull in multiple marketing channels and allow a business to reach buyers on many levels.

6. Finds Internal & Low Cost Options

Many businesses have low cost and free marketing options already at their disposal and may not realize it. A good marketing strategy reviews a business’s internal options, evaluates the business as a whole, and discover resources that can be used in the marketing plan. I like to empower my clients and give them the chance to save their budget for bigger ticket items down the road.

7. Designs 1 – 5 Years Marketing Plan

I wrap up every marketing strategy with a 1 year, month by month, marketing plan. This marketing plan lists carefully selected marketing efforts determined in the strategy and provide a schedule for when they should be launched and evaluated. For smaller businesses, I try to stick to the low cost options that can be maintained internally with optional efforts that may cost more money or should happen after an early goal has been achieved. More expensive or involved opportunities are generally reserved for a 2-5 year plan and are contingent upon achieving goals.

Many of you understand the basic concept of marketing. However, to ensure we are all on the same page, here’s a brief refresher.

Definition of marketing: Marketing is the essential process of effective communicating the value of your product and or service to your target customer base.

The goal is to peak their interest enough, allowing them to take action and buy your product or service. You are really doing an amazing job if your customer then refers another customer.

If you are a business and you don’t believe in the process of marketing, I highly recommend you re-think your overall business strategy. You absolutely need marketing to attract a relevant customer base to sell your product or service and have a real chance at making a profit.

Now that you’ve taken a brief refresher as to what is marketing and the importance, the next step is developing a marketing strategy.

What is a marketing strategy?

A marketing strategy will help your organization to develop the most optimal process, focusing your scarce resources on convertible opportunities.

Your goal with a marketing strategy is to increase the total sales your organization achieves within the target customer base and establishing a competitive advantage that’s sustainable.

When you are developing a marketing strategy, you have to consider the comprehensive marketing goals of your organization. This includes long-term and short-term marketing goals.

You may have to take small bites before you are able to swallow the amount of success you are sure to achieve with an effective strategy. This information will allow you to develop a complete marketing plan. You can’t get anywhere without a solid plan.

Communication as part of a marketing strategy

In order to develop an excellent marketing strategy, you must conduct research within the target market to know exactly how your customer prefers communication.

Remember, marketing is effectively communicating the value of your product or service to the customer. If you don’t have a clear understanding as to how to best communicate with your target customer, your marketing strategy will be ineffective.

What does this mean? Conduct research to determine if your customers need a visual aide, auditory aide, and or things they can touch and feel in order to become connected to your product or service.

For example, I’m auditory. It’s helpful for products and services I’m interested in to have a jingle to their slogan to help me remember to purchase their item.

When I’m in the store, if I walk past an item I need and I can see the product and then recall the jingle, I find myself making a purchase more times than not if I need the product or service at the time.

In your strategy, you may have to develop a combination to meet the needs of your target market. Nonetheless, discover the way your customer needs you to communicate value.

Product mix as part of an effective marketing strategy

It’s critical to ensure your strategy has a keen focus on the product mix that will cause your customer to react. What does this mean?

A product mix will take into consideration the various lines of products offered to the target market. Let’s take it a step further to ensure an understanding is achieved. For example, if you operate an athletic shoe store serving the entire family, what type of products must you offer to ensure you have a profitable product mix?

Athletic shoes are a given. Then to compliment the shoes, you will offer shoe strings. Another relevant offering would be socks and shoe cleaner. It’s important to anticipate the needs of the target consumer. Athletic shoes require certain attire. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to add athletic apparel to your product mix.

Also, consider the type of athletics your target customers are interested in. Perhaps your customers are runners, basketball players, baseball players, and or football players. You must have a mix that is relevant to your target market.

Your product mix must be right. This will ensure you realize maximum profits from your target customer. You must be willing to put in the work as this knowledge will not come without conducting extensive research.

Why is a marketing strategy so important and why do you need one?

Regardless of the size of your organization, you need a marketing strategy. The benefits far outweigh the time and financial investments to be made to create the most effective strategy.