Social media marketing – the life blood of small businesses

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Social media marketing – the life blood of small businesses

Social media marketing is a more humane, fun and creative method of marketing. It is savvy, sensitive and therefore immensely popular. Through social media marketing campaigns, companies can expect to build the right marketing buzz, boost their online business and win complete customer loyalty – while making use of low or no cost marketing tools. It is the explosive combination of low cost and high effectiveness that attract businesses, big and small, to social media marketing.

Top 3 ways in which small businesses can use and benefit from social media marketing:

Win targeted traffic: Marketing, effective marketing that is, has always been about effective communication. If you communicate the right messages that appeal to the client, a business deal is struck and you make money. It’s as simple as that. However, up until social media came to the scene, businesses did not really have the tools to communicate with their clients on a personal, one-on-one level. It could not explain how the company can answer the changing needs of clients. With social media, companies had tools to communicate personally with the world. Thus, the company began to acquire a character and warmth that it could not otherwise enjoy. Clients started to know, like and trust the companies they do business with. Blogs and microblogs allowed clients to contact CEOs and Sales teams directly. The company also had the means to feel the pulse of their customers and respond according to the needs of clients. Thus, communication becomes two-way and mutually beneficial. No wonder more sales are made through Facebook, Twitter, linkedIn, YouTube and Wikipedia than through traditional marketing strategies.
Quick results: If you manage to send out a powerful message that hits internet front pages, you can experience the result almost instantly in the form of huge volumes of traffic. Many businesses and entrepreneurs have experienced the effect of viral marketing, where a single message spreads with the speed of a virus and attracts unbelievable amounts of traffic. Imagine what this traffic can do for your online business! Your search engine listing climbs up as more and more people visit your website. And the traffic you attract will be targeted, pre-sold traffic. These are the people who are most likely to buy from you.
Fun and creative: One of the reasons people enjoy participating in social media marketing is the fun factor. For instance, a popular blender brand asked people to send in their video suggestions for blending the most surprising foods. Creative juices started flowing and thousands of people sent in their videos. There were discussions and conversations taking place all over the net, and at the center of it all was the blender! Business went up and the brand made social media marketing history! Small businesses can make use of the entertainment factor that is inherent in social media to attract huge volumes of traffic.

Thus, social media marketing focuses on building positive relationships. By building relationships, business expands automatically. Thus, social media marketing opens the floodgates of business – effectively and with panache!

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Internet Marketing PPT: How to Start your Own Advertising Internet Marketing Online Businesses for Success in the Future!

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Internet Marketing PPT: How to Start your Own Advertising Internet Marketing Online Businesses for Success in the Future!

There is a right formula when you go about creating online advertising internet marketing online businesses and this article will look at what you need to do to make sure that creating online advertising internet marketing online businesses is a success for you.

The first thing that you must remember when creating online advertising internet marketing online businesses is that you must develop a formula.  If you want to different websites, you will want them to be run using similar systems or web hosts so that the work you do on one to improve overall performance could translate to similar improvements on other websites. This will help you create efficiencies and save time in the process.   The key is to make sure that you have online advertising internet marketing online business systems in place as well as a certain routine that you go around doing things.  This may seem vague but it comes down to two things: how efficient you are with your time and how much time you have to spend on each venture.  Having software such as Outlook to manage your time will be very beneficial towards you.

My experiences show that internet marketing entrepreneurs, who are very well in time management for their advertising internet marketing online business, have better opportunities to success than people who don’t realize on their time. Especially in the internet marketing world; there are a ton of strategies and opportunities to make money online from advertising internet marketing online business, time management is one of the most significant factor for highly successful.

You’ll discover my investigation on how to run your advertising internet marketing online business smoothly with automation tools below. I highly recommend you to consider those tools and test them effectively by yourself.

There are many different ways to help keep your advertising internet marketing online business running smoothly for within this paragraph; we will look at some software that can help you manage your advertising in a very organized and smooth manner.  A good piece of automation tools that you can use are called Niche Portal Builder and HyperVRE. The Niche Portal Builder software can be used to help you develop web pages as well to newsletters and what you must do is simply give the software your domain name, keywords you want to use, what your e-mail is, your Adsense ID, and a few other details.  Meanwhile, HyperVRE software can be used for building quality websites with embedded articles, AdSense ads, RSS feeds and links. Also, it allows you to measure the density of keywords in each article for optimization.

Another piece of software that you can use is called Blog Solution. This software can help you build blogs which is important if you have many different blogging websites that you post to each day.  By doing this they can post automatically to these blogs soon afterward without having to sign in to each account.  You are even able to change the language because of their automatic language translation.  

These are three examples of different pieces of software that can help you out.  Many successful Internet developers are able to maintain several websites by using software to create efficiencies between their different websites.

Hopefully this article on creating online advertising internet marketing online businesses will help you when developing several quality websites.  There are many different types of online advertising internet marketing online businesses but many of them come down to the same sort of broad categories: selling on eBay, retail websites, services websites, and business-to-business websites.  You can work within different categories easily but make sure to take what you learn from each different category and apply its in your other ventures.

Final thought, creating online advertising internet marketing online businesses requires time and dedication on your part but you must make sure that the time you are spending is well invested. When you are dealing with multiple advertising internet marketing online businesses, you must be as efficient as possible to make sure that each advertising internet marketing online business is well-tended. If you spend a large amount of your time on one venture and that doesn’t pay off as planned, this can hurt the other ventures due to neglect and the lesser amount of time you are spending on them.#1 best internet marketing course – learn how to build highly profitable business home internet marketing promotion from scratch and discover great tips on internet marketing of how to make money over ,000 in a month! Get a report now to discover great tips on internet marketing, internet marketing techniques and secrets of how to make serious money online at home easy through your business home internet marketing promotion with multiple best internet marketing strategies (e.g. email promotion internet marketing, affiliate marketing business, and blogging). There are many easy ways to make money online there. You’ll learn a lot of easy ways to make money online at home. Also, you’ll save your time & money for your business home internet marketing promotion!

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5 Web Design Tips for Small Businesses

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5 Web Design Tips for Small Businesses

Do not get your website designed if you do not know the ins and outs of this field. Your website will be your online shop and you certainly don’t want to make your shop look bad. So, you need to know all the vital elements that can make your business website look really professional. Without these vital elements, you will create a website but it won’t be professional or effective. Plus, you will also be able to guide your designer that how your business site should be in terms of layout and formatting. So, let’s discuss these vital elements now to help you create a better site than your competitors.

First, Study Your Competitors:

You need to check and see how your competitors have created their websites. Check out their web designs and share them with your designer to help him or her understand what sort of design will be suitable for your business website. Research is a crucial part of every business. Hence, you shouldn’t take it lightly. Spend some time, go through their sites, study their website layout, see their colors and then determine how you should create your website to stand-out from the competitors and beat them in the race.

Form a Strategy:

After studying your competitors, the next thing you should do is to create a plan. Write down all the important factors that you want to incorporate in your website. It should be a detailed plan that will discuss the layout of your website, color scheme, content formatting, navigation style and so on. Once done, send it to your designer and arrange a meeting to go over all the factors.

Always Take Your Industry Into Consideration:

Make sure your website correctly represents your industry and business. An irrelevant web design will only annoy your visitors and you will end up sending them away from your website. So, this is a very important point that you must discuss with your designer. A website that sells surgical instruments should not have the pictures of clowns and flowers. The design should accurately depict the theme of the business. Otherwise, your web design will look totally unprofessional.

Website Navigation:

Your website navigation allows you to retain your visitors on your site. See, if people are able to find information on your site quickly and easily then they will like to spend more time on your site. If your site has a confusing navigation, then people will first scratch their head that where to go and what to do and then they will finally leave. This way your bounce rate will increase dramatically and your retention rate will decrease.

Similar Layout throughout the Site:

Don’t make the mistake of creating different designs for different pages. All the pages should have the same layout and design. Otherwise, your visitors might think that they have been transferred to a different website. This will distract your visitors and you will most likely end up losing them. So, keep it the same and consistent thorough out the site.

Social Media Marketing an Innovative Technique for Online Businesses

admin    Social Media Marketing     Businesses, Innovative, marketing, Media, Online, Social, Technique

Social Media Marketing an Innovative Technique for Online Businesses

The ways to do your business has and is changing. The dynamics of business and the preferences of the customers are changing the way businesses have to be carried on, as a result emerged, Social Media Marketing. Today the pathways through which the businesses and customers reach each-other are not fenced to just the regular market place. Even the much important consumer insights are not just only acquired through the regular marketing research. Innovative approach to almost everything is demanded today.

Social Media Marketing (SMM), simply understanding it as, letting people know about your business in a way that is meant for socialization. People, or prospects in the business language, would like to do their dealings not just with the businesses only. Today customers require personalization in almost everything, resulting in a need to create the business environment suitable to feeding their needs. Banks, for example, have a dedicated personnel looking at the task of personalizing their clients. The same applies to various businesses these days. People resort to various channels to find something new and innovative in what they deal for.

Social Media Marketing is one such way that creates a win-win situation for their clientele. In SMM, the business house opens up innovative channels for their prospects to reach them. They, in usual practice, resort to various social networking web spaces for attaining this task. The usual hot-spots for SMM are:

Social Networking Sites – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Orkut. Today businesses are going for personalized services, and the more good terms the service personnel are in with prospects, the more beneficial is it for the business.
Multi-media content have triggered the center to attract youth segment of the prospects. Dedicated web spaces for contribution towards arts, photography, audio-video sharing, and presentation have made it an exclusive arena to be in and reap the benefits.
Interaction Platforms: Blogger, ExpressionEngine, Forum creations, are some of the buzzed spaces for interaction. These interaction platforms are of great help to businesses due to the sole reason of human behavior that people tend to open up or share more in a friendly and informal interactional environment. Their latent needs, shifting preferences can be uncovered during the slightest of affable talks, which may make fortunes for the business.
Collaborative tools are also in increasing tends towards getting in hold of the prospects. The process of coming together on the internet has been excessively made easy with the advent and ease of technology. Social Bookmarking and Wikis have made this activity a way easier and in business terms a lot cheaper and efficient source to reach to the target audience.
Assessment and Outlook: Since the active customerization, web spaces giving analytical and conclusion oriented content for products and services are of great insist list of consumers. Customers are grown intelligent with the passage of time and will look forward to many resources to assess the product in the pre-buying stage.

Reading and knowing how much can SMM helps; the next task for a beginning marketer is to have a clear understanding of what needs to be done. Here it about exactness of understanding and to be creative.

But here it would be a good time to let it be known that, around the world over, businesses of all kinds are trying to firm their grip on the people, and so mass advertising and marketing hammering are already being done. Many times businesses in lieu to optimize, over-optimize themselves which may hinder their brand as such, and subsequently be tagged as naggers!

So the key to success to the SMM program is to use this double edged sword after a plentiful of homework to make sure the overall program gets an A grade.

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Why Businesses Are Embracing Custom Web Design Services

admin    Web Design     Businesses, custom, design, Embracing, Services

Why Businesses Are Embracing Custom Web Design Services

Many companies today are embracing the power of custom web design services to create their online presence. They are taking their traditional website, and through the use of effective web development  are turning them into virtual masterpieces. You may be asking yourself, why? What is it about web design services that is so much better than the template method for creating websites?

Let’s take a look at two reasons businesses are taking advantage of custom web design services:

Customer Relations – This is very likely the biggest draw to using a web development company. By going this route businesses have the option of integrating social networking software. By creating a custom online community for their customers, businesses are not only able to gain valuable insight into their target market, but are able to provide almost instant customer services. Through messaging features and community forums a company can instantly react to any customer concerns or inquiries and head off any negative issues before they get out of hand.

Visibility – Having a a well built, well designed SEO friendly website is a great way to get a business noticed. Once the company has a great web design project launched it will generate buzz from initial visitors, those individuals will begin to spread the word to their extended networks. Nothing creates visibility, and credibility, faster than word of mouth. By having the ability to offer a vibrant and interactive website companies are able to make themselves known online with a comparably small amount of effort.

People from all walks of life are turning to the internet to research companies to do business with now more than ever. Businesses have always understood that in order to grow and be successful they need to be where their target market is. With a well executed web design project your company website can make itself the new place to be for your target market.

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Social Media For Businesses

admin    Social Media Marketing     Businesses, Media, Social

Social Media For Businesses

Businesses are becoming increasingly interested in social media and its promotion benefits. However, most businesses seem to not be able to get a grasp on how to make best use of it.  Many seem to be very reluctant to go ahead with their social media strategy. The trend is new but catching on very rapidly. Social networking applications are getting their way to everyone’s heart. Facebook, Twitter and blogs are only a few applications to get the words rolling. To gather enough visitors to websites or promote online services and products, webmasters and entrepreneur take advantage of these free applications. Social Media Marketing is a collective term to the promotions that are carried out through the Social Media.

From just “searching for an online friend” in sites like Facebook and Myspace to answering a simple question “What’s happening?” on Twitter, Social Media has moved on to a different spectrum where everything is organised and businesses are creeping in to harness this immense potential.

The internet is very interactive these days. It is giving control to the audience and they are the ones that are setting the trends. If you are not with them, you are losing a great potential market. Social Media is the one that can tear down the communication walls between your customers and your business.

Social media optimization is not just making some basic changes to your web page. It is more about letting the users to share their opinions, share the content and rather giving the user the right to feel belonged to the company. In the process, more users will like the new user friendly experience and reward you with more inbound links.

Confused about different tools of social media? You don’t have to worry a lot. There are lots of them. Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are the leaders. But the list doesn’t end here. All it needs now is to have a good policy and work on that to make your company visible in the social media world. It will drive traffic to your website, build brand awareness, lets you stay connected with your customers, increase your brand value and sales and most important is very cheap in comparison to the traditional forms of advertising and marketing.

Good Website Design for Businesses

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Good Website Design for Businesses

If you are in business in this day and age then you must have a website to compete. Even if you are in a business that doesn’t sell a service or product online such as a restaurant or community service organization people will expect you to have a website that they can visit to just have a look at what you are up to.

Having a website designed, launched and promoted can be an expensive and time consuming ordeal, so it is important that you get it right from the Stara, so you don’t haqve to keep making adjustments. It is also important to rember that having an extremely successful website can put you ahead of the competition by leaps and bounds and make your business venture a success.

There are many factors that come into play when designing a website that true experts are aware of. Effective psychology, art, advertising and even color schemes all work together to make your website effective. Because of the availability of cheaper website design software, more and more people are finding themselves in the business of website design.

For this reason it is advised that you be very selective when choosing who you are going to have design your website. A reputable and competent website designer will have examples of their work and references immediately available for you to look at when you contact them.

If you are serrious about your buiness venture and expect to make any money and get results from your website then it is advised that you don’t let your nephue or the kid down the street do the work for you. Also, it is important to remember that your website will have to be updated occasionally, so you don’t have to overload it with everything that you have to immediately offer.

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Some Tips for Offline Businesses Wanting to Get to Internet Marketing

admin    Web Marketing     Businesses, Internet, marketing, Offline, Some, Tips, Wanting

Some Tips for Offline Businesses Wanting to Get to Internet Marketing

The latest trend in the world of internet marketing is to work on projects for offline businesses.  Most offline businesses are not aware of internet marketing strategies and the vast potential it offers.  With the right tools and strategies, savvy Internet Marketers will be able to make additional income offline by cashing in on the prospects offline business marketing.

Some of these strategies are explained in this article.  For example, the use of coupons for marketing purposes is a strategy that has been used by offline businesses for some time.  However, this strategy requires the business to bear the costs of printing, which can add up to a quite significant amount.  If they use the help of online coupon companies, the costs of printing will be eliminated.  All they need to do is to include the coupon URL in their print advertisement.   

Offline businesses normally use yellow pages advertising as one of the marketing strategies.  However, nowadays that strategy is not as effective as it used to be.  The reason being more and more people today go online to research for products and services, not the yellow pages.

Offline businesses can also use podcasting and vidcasting to promote their products or services to a targeted audience.  Podcasting is an audio and vidcasting is a video broadcast on niche topics in the form of online subscription.  Effective use of podcasting and vidcasting can help these businesses to reach a much wider targeted audience.  With the internet, these businesses can now reach worldwide marketplace.

In order to help these offline business entrepreneurs jumpstart their online marketing ventures, savvy Internet Marketers can offer to hold workshops to teach these entrepreneurs all about online marketing.  Blogging, search engine optimization, and list generation are just some of internet marketing aspects that can be taught at these workshops.  By holding these workshops not only the Internet Marketers can help educate the offline business entrepreneurs, they will also be able to generate additional income for themselves. 

Not all of these entrepreneurs will jump to the idea of having to do the entire marketing process themselves.  Some of them will find it too difficult or overwhelming to embark on a completely new undertaking.  For those entrepreneurs who are not able or do not have the time to do the entire marketing process themselves we can offer services to them.  

I have mentioned blogging in previous paragraph.  This is another venue of internet marketing that can be used to promote their products or services.  Blogging is not only used for communication purposes, but it can also be used to build community.  With blogging, you can get input from your readers for the blog posted, but you can also build a mailing list with it.

Without the internet, it will take a sizeable amount for these entrepreneurs to get their message across and to send their promotional materials to the people they would like to reach.  With blogging, this can be done for free.  Not only that, the internet will also give them worldwide audience, so they can reach more people.

You can create public awareness using blogs.  However, you can also have the visitors sign up for their newsletter to get information of the latest products and advancements they have made available.  This can all be done for free. 

So, you see, internet marketing can be very useful and advantageous for the offline businesses.  However, only when they’re combining both offline and online marketing methods will they be able to reap maximum benefit from their business.

In order to help these offline business entrepreneurs jumpstart their online marketing ventures, savvy Internet Marketers can offer to hold workshops to teach these entrepreneurs all about online marketing.  Blogging, search engine optimization, and list generation are just some of internet marketing aspects that can be taught at these workshops.  By holding these workshops not only the Internet Marketers can help educate the offline business entrepreneurs, they will also be able to generate additional income for themselves. 

Not all of these entrepreneurs will jump to the idea of having to do the entire marketing process themselves.  Some of them will find it too difficult or overwhelming to embark on a completely new undertaking.  For those entrepreneurs who are not able or do not have the time to do the entire marketing process themselves we can offer services to them.  

I have mentioned blogging in previous paragraph.  This is another venue of internet marketing that can be used to promote their products or services.  Blogging is not only used for communication purposes, but it can also be used to build community.  With blogging, you can get input from your readers for the blog posted, but you can also build a mailing list with it.

Without the internet, it will take a sizeable amount for these entrepreneurs to get their message across and to send their promotional materials to the people they would like to reach.  With blogging, this can be done for free.  Not only that, the internet will also give them worldwide audience, so they can reach more people.

You can create public awareness using blogs.  However, you can also have the visitors sign up for their newsletter to get information of the latest products and advancements they have made available.  This can all be done for free. 

So, you see, internet marketing can be very useful and advantageous for the offline businesses.  However, only when they’re combining both offline and online marketing methods will they be able to reap maximum benefit from their business.

Design Environment And Principles In Businesses

admin    Web Marketing     Businesses, design, Environment, Principles

Design Environment And Principles In Businesses

QUESTION 1

A BUSINESS MODEL WITH WOOLWORTHS P/C

INTRODUCTION

Woolworths specializes in the sale of products in supermarkets. It operates in a very competitive environment where many companies are in the same field. Despite the odds, Woolworths has designed new models that have effectively improved its profitability, market share and expansion

First and foremost the company has designed a new marketing methodology aimed at increasing the sales revenue/ turnover. One of the design principles it has adapted in relation to new marketing methodologies is promotions in form of free samples and trade offers. The approach is setting their sales agents at strategic places who vigorously advertise their products in an open ground. At this point, prices are reduced for those who want to buy the products. The company has also modified the brands of some of its products to look attractive to the consumers. Customers are usually attracted to new brand names that suggest quality, and those with attractive symbols and logos. The other principle the company has used is how it does its packaging. New attractive packaging models are now being used. They have various changes in the shape and physical appearance of the packaging materials, the colour mix of those materials. Lastly, Woolworths has moved from heavy reliance on the media for publicity purposes to other new principles. These include sponsorship of sporting clubs. In return the clubs print their items with the name “Woolworths”. The end result of this new marketing model is increased turnover rates as result of the created awareness.

The other new model innovated by Woolworth is that of strategic planning. The company through its management is now reviewing its mission and objectives and defining the strategies which will accomplish the objectives. In order to achieve the objectives of the new model of strategic planning, Woolworths has identified various principles for this mission. First, the management is now analyzing both the internal and external environment with the aim of finding out how this environment affects its business operations. Through the analysis of the external environment, the company has now expanded by building more of supermarket chains. It is also planning to enter into joint a venture with another company. With these principles of strategic planning Woolworth is sure of expanding its market share as well as improving on its profitability.

Woolworth’s last new business model is service- profit chain. This is a model that emphasizes on people and their importance on the success of an organization. ‘People’ here means both the customers and employees of Woolworths. They have ensured that their employees are satisfied in terms of remuneration packages and the general working conditions, like safety and health. The design principles behind realizing the objectives of the service –profit chain in regard to employees are: overtime payments, supply of protective cloth wear to employees, installation of additional fire – fighting equipments and proper safety and maintenance of machines. This has resulted into a motivated workforce and has seen the improvement of turnover from $m31354.50 in 2005 to $m37734.2 in 2006.

The new model also focuses on the maintenance of loyalty of the customers.  Every business must create and keep its customers. This is the only way in which it can grow in terms of the profitability. The principles that Woolworth has designed for the service- profit chain in relation to customers are: selling high quality products and setting fair prices. The setting of fair prices has made customers to buy goods in bulk a factor that has improved profits. The company also ensures that there are no stock outs and that there is always a constant replenishment of goods. All these are geared towards maintaining the loyalty of their pool of customers thereby increasing its revenues.

QUESTION TWO – “TRUST CONDOM” BRAND

This is a high profile brand of condoms, which are used when doing protected sex. This brand is meant to serve different democratic groups for different functions. The marketers of this brand first target the young who normally practice sex for pleasure. This is the 18 -24 demographic. The rationale behind this is to protect them against sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS. When the target group is the old (say 35 years and above demographic), the reason is to control population through procreation as well as for health purposes.

The young people are supposed to practice certain demographic values like social tranquility. They are supposed to conform to moral principles that govern their behaviour in society. But the marketing of the brand to the young people has brought about sexual freedom thus violating the cultural practices they are supposed to observe like “no sex before marriage”.

The other values that this demographic (18-24 years) are to observe include religious practices. This is a very important demographic value for a population at this age bracket. This means that any products being advertised in the market and which are prohibited among the youth, companies must desist from using certain cultural memes that may attract this group. The marketers of this products usually use very attractive and easy – to – understand memes that can easily woo the young into using trust condom. They very well know that it is the group in dire need of these sexual protective devices. Cultures such as homosexuality are deemed not to be right. The practice is morally unacceptable but the continual usage of cultural memes would tend to advocate for such unacceptable cultural practices.

In their marketing of the condoms, the trust company has applied a lot of cultural memes in ensuring that their message is conveyed. Some of these are pictures of people on billboards, in sexual moods and holding a packet of trust condom while smiling. The messages are very simple – that you’ll have something to smile about after using the device. And for those fearing both sex and condom usage especially the 17 -24 demographic would build an attitude of confidence on the usage of the product. At the bottom of the boards are messages like “Mr. X has his, do you have yours? Any person including the  35 -50 demographic would interpret to mean that using the brand is just something normal. [2]

Once the company has developed a certain meme, it does a lot of market research to test its fame/ suitability before publicizing it. The objective here is to come up with a meme, written in simple English, can attract attention and interest quickly.

Other cultural memes in their marketing of the trust condoms rotate around health and safety in their usage as well as ease of use/ comfortability. On their packaging is a picture portraying how user- friendly they are. Infact even the picture itself gives such a conclusion in one’s mind. Other messages such as “studded with extra protection” meant to attract attention and create interest on the users have also been printed. Here, the complex and health and safety guidelines on how they should be used can easily be ignored by the users. Dangers on usage and erosion of the demographic values as a result of its usage are easily ignored. Anybody looking at such a meme would conclude ‘oh, I need it”

The values discussed above are quite important for the respective demographics. It is important for the 17 – 24 demographics to abstain from sexual behaviours. At their age, these are people who should be building their future careers, through education. Also at this age bracket, one might not be able to decide on what is good or bad to do, moral and immoral etc. The cultural memes of the trust company in marketing their trust condoms therefore interferes with the adherence of such demographic values.

On the other hand, procreation is a very important value amongst many people’s cultures. Even biblically, it was God’s wish that people must multiply. The cultural memes therefore tend to interweave with this value especially within the 35 -50 demographic. In conclusion, companies usually employ cultural memes when they know that fair marketing strategies based on the truth may not successfully sail through. And that is why Trust company employs such techniques to market their “trust condom brand”

QUESTION THREE (ABC)

The ABC Company is a flower manufacturing company in the UK. The products are used domestically and others sold across the Asian countries and the U.S started only recently i.e. 1992, ABC Company’s performance in the sector has made it one of the top ranking flower manufacturing companies in the world. Their success is owed to a number of factors, as discussed below:

HIGH QUALITY PRODUCTION

The flower manufacturing industry is one that requires high quality production for any company to thrive in it. ABC p/c has laid emphasis on quality production that has eased marketability and demand of its flowers world wide. Even at high prices, the firm still maintains a steady sales turnover rate. This has impacted favourably on its profits as profit is a factor of sales volume and selling prices. In the year ended 31st December 2005, the company sold 300,000 tonnes of flowers. For the period ended ended 31st December 2006, sales rose to 450,000 tonnes. This alone was a 50% increase (i.e. 450,000 – 300,000/300,000X 100%) from the previous year.

FINANCIAL OPERATIONS

The sustainability of ABC p/c is owed to a financial restructuring on its operational and financial operations. First, the management has embarked on a cost saving plan for its operational activities by cutting irrelevant costs. It has established the cost accounting department headed by a cost accountant. The roles of the cost accountant would be among others budget preparation, cost analysis and the application of costing techniques such as the CBA (cost Benefit analysis). It has also incorporated a Management accountant whose role would be to prepare management reports.

Still on the restructuring of its financial operations, ABC plc has moved from external borrowing to the use of equity to finance its assets. This has reduced its financial risk associated with the usage of fixed capital rather than equity. The triple bottom line effect of this positioning is that the profits (economics) have increased due to a reduction in financial costs (interest). It has also increased the confidence of the investors (people) who channel their investments on lowly geared companies. In the year ended 31st December 2005, the leverage (gearing) ratio was 14% but it improved to 11% in the period ended 31st December 2006.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

ABC plc has started analyzing the impact of their actions on society, showing concern and responding appropriately. They have based the argument for social responsibility on the premise (assumption) that organizations have an obligation to care for society. The concern for social responsibility has impacted positively on the environment. This is because the managerial principle on the environment has been the control of pollution as a result of its activities. The flower production industry usually depletes water reservoirs but to them, technologies have been devised such as water recycles. This has resulted in the saving of this limited resource. Apart from having a positive impact on the environment, the society has also benefited as this is the water they use for their activities like irrigation.[3]

Most of the flower farm’s work is purely manual and does not require a lot of expertise. Instead of employing its workforce from far ABC p/c employs the local people to work on its farms. As a result, the financial capabilities/ strengths of the community have been boosted. To further assist society, ABC p/c has embarked on the construction of schools and hospitals and roads.

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

Finally, the management of the company has embraced corporate governance as a tool for sustainable development. Corporate governance is the process through which corporations/ organizations are well government to achieve the desired purpose, goals and objectives. ABC p/c has applied this management tool through the practice of transparency and accountability in its operations. It has also established a positive and more accommodative corporate culture. This has had positive effects on the employees who in turn have felt motivated and improved their efforts/ capacity.

In summary therefore, because of these positive steps of high quality production, social responsibility and corporate governance the ABC p/c has adapted, it has been able to cut a niche and gain a competitive edge.

REFERENCES:

Robin Wood (2001) Managing Complexity, Prentice hall publishers, New York

Michael Lovas (2004) Credibility Marketing, Mc Graw press, UK

Marketing Articles on Positioning (2007) retrieved on 4th may

Wikipedia the free encyclopedia (2007) strategic planning, retrieved on 28th April

Wikipedia the free encyclopedia (2007) cultural values, retrieved on 4th may

Stephen C. Harper (2003), Business, McGraw-Hill Publishers, New York

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Online Advertising For Small Businesses

admin    Web Marketing     Advertising, Businesses, Online, Small

Online Advertising For Small Businesses

If you have a small business then online advertising can help drive traffic to your website. If your business is not yet online, then you would be well advised to have an internet presence since an increasing number of your customers, irrespective of the business you are in, are going online to look for their products and services.

How you do that is another subject, but any business, small or large, has the same problem online: attracting visitors to their websites. People do not just arrive at your site as they would if they were walking round a shopping mall. Sure, your potential customer base is world wide, but the internet is so large that you are unlikely to get any casual visitors that are not seeking your website in particular.

To find out your competition, go to Google.com and enter the keyword for your site or product into your web browser and have a look to the right of the blue line just above the results – that will tell you how many more sites are using the same keyword as you, and that is your competition. For the keyword ‘health foods, for example, that number is over 8 million.

Nobody is going to find your website among another 8 million by chance. You have to direct them to your website by advertising, and here are the main ways for you to achieve that:

1. Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC). You bid so much for an advert to be shown on the search engine results page for specific keywords, and then pay each time somebody clicks on the advert. The higher you bid, the nearer to the top of Page 1 of the search engine results pages for that keyword your advert will be shown. However, you also pay the amount of your bid for each click, so make sure that your advert is very specific without any ambiguity that could get the wrong people clicking.

If you are selling only 500 mg soluble Vitamin C supplements, don’t advertise just ‘vitamins’ or even ‘Vitamin C’. Advertise ‘Soluble 500 mg Vitamin C Supplements – $xx per 100′. Then the person clicking on your advert will know exactly what you are offering and what they will be paying, thus maximizing your chances of a good click through rate (clicks resulting in sales).

2. Search Engine Optimization: if you can optimize your site well enough to get a good listing in the search engines for your keyword, that is totally free advertising for you day in day out. It is worth doing this to the best of your ability, since although it could take time for your site to be listed, once it has been listed it will remain so for a considerable time, providing you with potentially masses of free traffic.

3. Article marketing can also provide you with free traffic. By writing articles on your niche, and submitting them to article directories, you will not only get a back-link from each directory, so helping your Google PageRank (and hence your search engine listing) but hopefully will also receive a visit from every reader that is so impressed by your article that they want to know more.

The reason for this is that the directories allow you a link back to any page you want on your website from your resource section, in which you can say something about you and your site in addition to providing your URL. Once more, free advertising of which you should take maximum advantage.

4. Ezine advertising can be very profitable, since every niche has at least one ezine relating to it. Check out the internet for ezines relating to your niche using the search term ‘yourniche ezines’ and then contact the owner. Ask for details on advertising, or request a free advertising slot for a free article in return. Many owners of ezines will give you a free advert in return for a good article on the niche.

5. Finally, start a blog. Wordpress and Blogger provide you with free blogs that you can use for any purpose (except certain banned topics). You can use your blog to provide weekly courses on your niche, thus building a regular readership or just to provide updates each time you add content to your website. Put your advert on your own blog, and you could find a lot more traffic visiting your website.

It does not matter how large or small your business is – these suggestions do work. However, they tend to be more successful with small businesses for the simple reason that larger firms tend to ignore such advertising techniques and throw money at more direct ads. The fact that they are missing opportunities appears to miss them.

You, however, can profit enormously by advertising your business as much as possible online. It is possible to this without your business having an online presence, but it is far more effective if you have a website, so get started with that first and then profit from it.