Public Relations Essentials – Understanding Your Target Audience

admin    Web Marketing     Audience, Essentials, Public, relations, Target, Understanding

Public Relations Essentials – Understanding Your Target Audience

As we know that public relations are the most important tool to make your presence felt in this highly competitive business world. But, we are often ignorant about the essentials of public relations. Public relations essentials include the objective of using public relations, your target audience, etc. Out of them, the most essential aspect of public relations is understanding your target audience in a better way. To understand your target audience better, you should know who your target audiences are. For example if you own a firm dealing in beauty products then you should analyze which age segment your beauty products cater to. After analyzing this only you can use beauty PR in a better way. A slight mistake in this could create havoc for your company. 

To understand your target audience better, you should know their current attitudes, opinions as well as interests. This could be known through market research and by watching the trend of the public demand. On the basis of these information, you should formulate public relations campaign in such a way that it caters to their attitudes, opinions, and interests. It is very important to know your target audience right from the inception of the project and the more you know about your target audiences, the better impact you can create on them through your PR campaign. Knowing your target audience better helps you in the next step of your PR plan i.e. targeting the right media channel. For example if your beauty product is an anti wrinkle beauty cream then your beauty PR should not choose media that has young audience base, as this will not help your cause. After knowing your target audience and preparing a list of potential media targets for your PR campaign, you should rate each of media you are going to use on the basis of how good it fits with your target market, and then go for the ones that fit best to your need. You should not attach much importance to their popularity or circulation.

These public relations essentials are the basic elements of any communication plan. These need to be properly understood to generate a positive impact on your company’s sales figures and to attain your organizational goals. Customers are the backbone of any business, so knowing the target audience well will help you to gain the optimum results from your PR campaigns. It would also help you in generating a positive impact of the organization on not only the regular customers, but also on potential customers.

Keyword Research Part 2 – Understanding Keyword Competition

admin    Web Marketing     Competition, Keyword, Part, Research, Understanding

Keyword Research Part 2 – Understanding Keyword Competition

Competition research starts with analyzing your web pages to determine how competitive your site is both in general and for specific keywords. This is sometimes referred to as page strength. I should note that there are really two aspects to page strength, the general strength of a site and the specific strength of a page within the site. For the sake of simplicity, in this article I will use “web page” for both. The next step is to examine the keywords themselves to see how competitive they are. This is sometimes called keyword difficulty. Determining keyword difficulty is done partially by examining how competitive the pages are that rank well for this keyword, though other methods can be helpful as well. This can be tricky for two reasons.

1. No one other than that search engine designers knows how each search engine determines how competitive a site or page is and the search engine folks aren’t talking.
2. Each search engine has a different way of determining how competitive a site or page is. So, even if you could figure out one, it wouldn’t necessarily be so with the other search engines.

Despite these difficulties the search engines do give us some general information about what makes web pages competitive (what determines page strength). The competitive strength of a web page is determined by several factors including:

• Age – Generally speaking, the older a site is the more value the search engines give it. New sites have a much harder time competing for keywords. Similarly, new pages start off less competitive, but, if the rest of your site is strong, new pages will quickly gain page strength.
• Traffic – The more popular a site is, the more value the search engines give it. Getting more visitors (web traffic) to a website increases page strength.
• Internal Linking Structure – The internal linking structure of a site is both a reference to the navigation menus and other forms of linking from one page of your site to another. This is an often-overlooked aspect of both site design and SEO. Don’t underestimate the value of a good internal link structure.
• Inbound Links – The most prominent piece of the competition puzzle, inbound links (also called back links and incoming links) are a key component in determining a web page’s competitive strength. Generally, the more inbound links you have the better, but quantity isn’t as important as quality. Links from authoritative sites (Sites that are very competitive) are worth far more than links from lesser sites, and links from sites relevant to your keywords are worth more than links from unrelated sites. Also, you do not only need to consider the inbound links to the specific page you are optimizing, the links directed to other pages of your website will increase the overall competitive strength of the website and thus the individual pages of that site as well. (We’ll talk more about this in a future article on link building.)

These are some of the key elements to determining a page’s competitive strength. As you can see this is starting to get complicated. There are some online tools available to help, but there is a wide range of ideas about what is important and how important each element is. Instead of using just one tool, you may want to use several. It will take longer, but may give you a more accurate assessment. In the end, if you keep track of your keyword research and your results, you may find one tool is more accurate than the others and be able to trust that tool over the others. This can help you determine how competitive your page or site is and whether you have a chance at ranking well for a particular keyword at this time. By looking at how competitive the other web pages are that currently rank well for a keyword, you can compare that to how competitive your page is. If your page is about as competitive as the other sites, you should be able to rank well for that keyword after targeting that keywords with search engine optimization. If the other sites are stronger than your site, then you should choose less competitive keywords until you’ve improved the strength of your web page. If the other sites are weaker, then the keyword is a sitting duck.

Other Ways to Determine Keyword Difficulty:
• Adwords: In addition to evaluating the other web pages competing for the keywords you want, it can be helpful when attempting to determine how competitive a keyword is to look at other sources such as pay-per-click search marketing stats. Google Adwords has a tool that will show you the estimated cost per click to rank well in the paid search results for a keyword. If that cost per click is high, that’s an indication the keyword difficulty may be high as well (it’s also an indication that the keyword is valuable).
• Keyword Effectiveness Index: Another way some people determine keyword difficulty is the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI). KEI values are usually available with keyword popularity tools. The KEI compares the number of searches a keyword gets to the number of results that keyword brings up in a search engine. If a keyword gets 100 searches a day and a search on Google returns 1000 results, then the Google KEI will be high, indicating the keyword is probably worth targeting. On the other hand if a keyword gets 100 searches a day and a search on Google returns 1,000,000 results, the Google KEI will be much lower, indicating the keyword may not be worth targeting. A lower search popularity will also effect the KEI Keywords with the same number of results in Google will have a higher or lower Google KEI depending on whether the keyword gets searched for more or less, respectively.

Tip: KEI can be used as part of the keyword difficulty research; however, I don’t recommend using solely this information as it isn’t necessarily an accurate indication of how difficult ranking for a keyword will be. After all, just because 100,000 pages are returned as results for a keyword, it doesn’t mean they are strong pages and it doesn’t mean any of the pages are well optimized for that keyword. A keyword could have 100,000 weak sites in the results. So, it could be easy to rank well for that keyword. Similarly, a keyword could have only 1000 sites in the results, but if 100 of them are very strong sites, then ranking well for that keyword could be very difficult

By understanding how competitive keywords are and how strong your website is, you will be able to optimize for keywords that your site can compete for immediately to get some immediate results. You will also be able to properly devise what additional work (primarily targeted link building) you will need to perform to be able to compete for more competitive keywords.

Understanding Sms Marketing

admin    Web Marketing     marketing, Understanding

Understanding Sms Marketing

Understanding SMS Marketing

Introduction

Short Message Service (SMS) is a wireless service available on digital mobile networks. It enables the transmission of text messages between mobile phones and other systems such as electronic mail, paging and voice mail. Up to 160 characters can be sent and received through the network operator’s message system to the mobile phone (Gustafsson & Lenman 2007).

SMS is essentially similar to paging. Paging is the process of a message, which consists of a few digits typically a phone number that the user is then expected to call, to be received by a one-way numeric pager. A pager (sometimes called a beeper) is a simple personal telecommunications device for short messages. A one-way numeric pager can only receive a message (paging) consisting of a few digits, typically a phone number that the user is then expected to call. While paging requires the pager to be active and within range, SMS messages do not require the mobile phone to be active within the range as they will be held for a number of days until the phone is active and within range. SMS messages are transmitted within the same cell or to anyone with roaming capability. They can also be sent to digital phones from a web site equipped with a PC Link or from one digital phone to another. In addition to SMS gateway is a web site that lets the user enter an SMS message to someone within the cell served by that gateway or acts as an international gateway for users with roaming capability.

The SMS is a store and forward service. In other words, short messages are not sent directly from sender to recipient, but via an SMS Center. Therefore there is a need for a network operator. Each mobile telephone network that supports SMS has one or more messaging centers to handle and manage the short messages.

The SMS features confirmation of message delivery. This means that, unlike e-mailing users do not simply send a short message and trust and hope that it gets delivered. Instead the sender of the short message can receive a return message back notifying them whether the short message has been delivered or not.

Short messages can be sent and received simultaneously with GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) voice, data and fax calls. This is possible because whereas voice, data and fax calls take over a dedicated radio channel for the duration of the call, short messages travel over and above the radio channel using the signaling path. As such, users of SMS rarely, if ever, get a busy or engaged signal as they can do during peak network usage times (SPG Media Group PLC 2008).

According to the same study above ways of sending multiple short messages are available. SMS concatenation (stringing several short messages together) and SMS compression have been defined and incorporated in the GSM SMS standards.

The introduction of standardized protocols such as SIM (A small smart card type device that has details of the mobile subscriber including public telephone number and the numbers required by the network to recognise and authenticate the subscriber), Application Toolkit and the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) contribute to an increase in messaging usage by providing a standard service development and deployment environment for application developers and business partners. These protocols also make it easier for users to reply to and otherwise access messaging services through custom menus on the phone. While these protocols are only a means to an end and not new messaging destinations or services, they are likely to lead to a 10-15% uplift in total SMS volumes (SPG Media Group PLC, 2008). Some companies could reach more successful results if manage the SMS marketing processes successfully.

Today, for example, to use SMS, MMS, e-mail, instant messaging (IM), voice mail, and so on, end users must be aware of the underlying technology and their intended recipients’ capabilities. Studies and market trends show that messaging solutions must be easier to use if they are to facilitate communication and increase traffic. This will form the base of a successful mobile marketing campaign constructed on SMS.

SMS Marketing under Marketing Overview

SMS has grown into a mainstream communication tool for consumers, reaching them via SMS marketing has become increasingly important strategy for businesses. Whether between two people planning to meet up or a broadcast message to thousands of users, more and more customers are becoming converts every day, and savvy marketers realize text messaging is a great way to quickly communicate with their audience. For this reason; text messaging is increasing at an enormous rate. One of the primary reasons behind this growth is that text messaging has become increasingly used as a business tool (mobilestorm.com/sms-marketing 2009).

The trend in Jupiter Research shows that SMS Marketing is quickly surpassing e-mail technology as a tool for marketers and also for customer relationship management. Moreover; Jupiter Research says three billion coupons issued to cell phone users will generate sales of almost billion by 2011 (textsmsmarketing 2006).

 Types of SMS Marketing

Types of SMS Marketing can be defined in three different contexts in general; Purchase Context, Technical Context and User Context. These contexts are mostly given preference while enterprises practising the SMS Marketing efforts.

Purchase Context defines SMS as a product based on the way it is purchased. On the other hand, technical context defines the types of SMS Marketing from the mobile operator point of view while user context defines it from the benefit the SMS provides to the target customer. The common point of these types is that the payment type of these SMS can be defined based on the request of the buyer (the sender). The company that wants to send SMS can chooses either to pay the price of the SMS itself or to charge the price to the target customer.

Purchase Context

In SMS marketing campaigns, there are two different SMS methods as a product; a company can either choose to make a deal with the carrier for a promised amount of SMS for a given time (mostly 1 year). This is called bulk SMS. On the other hand, the company can choose to buy SMS packages that are being sold by the carrier in specified amounts like 1.000 or 500.000 or it can be included on the standart price numbers of dispatch etc. This is called piece SMS.

Marketing strategy is obtained by making corporate SMS purchasing agreements either with Mobile operators or with the infrasturcture providers or different SMS reseller companies. The more amounts of SMS purchased, the less money is paid for an SMS. While it is more profitable to buy over million quantities directly from the GMS operator (bulk SMS), it can be a better decision to buy from the providers or resellers since they buy from the operators with over million quantites and resell them in small quantitities with better price (piece SMS). This also creates a new intermediate trade of SMS. In addition to this; wide extensive solution partnership agreements are available among company. At that time; more services are given in a lot of case such as SMS, logo, melody, conversation, entertainment, competition, game, etc.

Technical Context

There are three types of SMS from the technical perspective. These are one way, single shot and two way SMS’s (see in Table 2).

One way SMS is an SMS that sent by the sender to the target customers. With this type of SMS an answer from the target customer is not expected and most of the time not allowed. So there is no customer interaction.

One way Fast SMS (Single Shot) is an SMS which is sent by the sender to the target customer and an answer from the target customer is not allowed. The most important feature of this type is that the SMS is valid for a defined time (mostly a short period like 3 minutes). Becuse of this feature, the SMS must be sent immediately after it is triggered. This type is mainly used to send passwords that are valid for the defined time (Like a password that will be used by the target customer to log in into his/her different accounts over the internet). This type of SMS is not blocked by the filters meaning that a customer can filter the SMS that is coming from a certain sender or number by sending that message to a special filter list of the mobile operator. But this filter is not used for single shot SMS.

Two Way SMS is an SMS sent by the sender to the target customer and an answer from the target customer is expected if he/she wants to join or use the services/benefits that are offered. Since there will be a client interaction, the SMS number that is used to sent this type of SMS must be configured to recieve SMS that will be sent by the customers.

User Context

Premium SMS gives clients the option to earn money on certain text messages and content for which consumers will pay to send or receive. Clients can hold voting contests, like those on many reality TV shows, daily horoscopes, a VIP program, or other instances where new information is time-sensitive, making that information valuable to the consumer.

Mobile Coupons will benefit businesses and customers alike-promoting spending while saving money for consumers. In addition, the convenience and “green” factor (no excess paper or ink needed to produce them) of digital coupons, such as mobile coupons, make them especially appealing to consumers today.

Text-To-Screen is a premium service that allows marketers to create polls and quizzes especially for a particular event.

Marketers have a way to ensure event attendees’ interest while adding excitement to shows, parties, major sporting events or a regular evening at a movie theater. A marketer can use giant video screens that are traditionally at these places to advertise a poll or quiz, compel the crowd to participate and then post the results on that same screen in real time. (mobilestorm.com/sms-marketing 2009)

The SMS Campaign

The SMS system is a small piece of mobile communication and marketing system. For this purpose, like every marketing campaign, SMS campaign should be carefully planned. There are 3 processes that a campaign manager should plan in order to create a successful SMS campaign.

 Every process has its own individual approaches. In step I, campaign manager should carefully plan the target segment, the message that will be addressed and configuring the body of the SMS based on this message.

In step II, the carrier must be chosen in order to reach the targeted segment based the technical and financial criterias. All the replies must be carefully viewed.

After sending the message, an analysis of the study must be made for performance measurement (mobilestorm.com/sms-marketing, mobilesmsmarketing.com 2009).

 In order to create an SMS marketing campaign, a database must be created that consist of the phone numbers of the clients that are targeted. A member or commitment list is being constituted by the enterprises with the help of clients’ needs. However; we cannot observe the same situation at the private sector. The companys, which can constitute their lists, can add new numbers to these lists by using different channels. The channels can be;

inside the company – the companies own database or affilitaions database outside from the company – databases that can be provided from consulting firms, SMS operators, yellow pages etc.

This process is sensitive because of the requirements and outlines defined by the law. Both the individual numbers at the newspapers and the other numbers, which are used by institutional enterprises, help to increase the quantity of the numbers at these lists in the behalf of request or guidance.

SMS Marketing Implications

In the past; the companies, which want to communicate with their customers, were using postcards, celebration cards, fax and telephone. These ways were increasing the costs and were creating problems for transportation. Most of the cards were not arrived to the addresses and the companies were not controlling these limitations. By the use of corporate SMS service, the companies began to trace whether the SMS was received by the user. Furthermore; considerably higher profits were provided at the cost side. One of the most attractive sides of this application for the companies is the high returns of the customers, who are taken these messages.

Corporate SMS Working Process

Client applications have a speciality of working as internet-based environment and desktop execution with local database. The applications, which are served as free for customer usage, can be accumulated in three main titles: Desktop SMS application, web-based Web SMS application and Office SMS application, which can be provide sending SMS from directly Microsoft Excel. After controlling SMS sending offer from these applications out of institutional servers, SMSs are transferred on Internet at the same time to the related mobile operator. Then; these SMSs are transmitted to the mobile phones.  

The corporate SMS system can be classified in 3 categories;

First one is the public enterprises, in which SMS application is an indispensible requirement for each company. For instance; small announcements can be transferred to the people by associations, labor unions, foundations, etc. By the way; it provides an opportunity to get lower costs and make the works rapidly.

The second one is the private sector institutions especially finance (banking), automotive, market, retailers, etc. They announce their campaigns to the related clients at the same time and this provides a returnable and customer fidelity.

The last category is about the education sector, in which corporate SMS was began to see as an essential requirement and called service by the guardians. A private class was began preference by giving the services of lack of continuity, examination results and other reports.

Efficiency of SMS

 What could efficiency of SMS bring to companies? The most important issue is to get the transmission reports of the messagings. We can analyze these reports based on;

People & Responses Total cost of Transmission Results

In a recent study by Nielsen Mobile, 23% of U.S. mobile phone users remember seeing mobile advertising in the last month, and over 50% responded to the ad. (mobilestorm.com/sms-marketing 2009) When we compare this result to another marketing media like TV where the response rate is around 0,3%, it can be seen that SMS can be a very successful media for marketing.

Not only for the mobile advertising however it covers a lot of place in mobile marketing but also constitute a good relationship with the customers are very important subjects to the companies.

SMS Marketing System Analyses

The marketing concepts are changing while these new medias & technologies step into ourlives. An important factor to consider when selecting a marketing technique such as SMS marketing is that method’s ability to reach a wide audience. This is why famous TV programs attract a lot of sponsors, famous celebrities get a lot of endorsements and popular websites get a lot of posted ads. Businessmen know that these programs, celebrities and websites will be garnering a lot of visitors; thence, more people will get to see their advertisements. The same equation applies to SMS marketing. Nearly every person in the world possesses a mobile phone. It’s only natural that companies and businesses will want to compete in this new marketing arena. (sign-up.to 2008)

It is very important to understand the SMS Marketing system and to manage the system after sending messages to the customers even their target is advertising or relationship. Companies have to find out the most valuable customers by detecting the performance with so many analysis and then to decide and apply what are the following actions whether the companies want to succeed their functionality continuously for their success in marketing.

The companies naturally think about their current customers primarily, because they know their identities, personalities, conventions, pleasures, etc. There are two types of customers; the current customers and the potential customers, who are not available for the present and may be the candidates.

To create opportunities for the companies and satisfy the customers, companies should perform some endevours. Hereby these endevours undertake with marketing philosophy and to give some detailed conveyance for the SMS marketing efforts. Like every marketing concept, analyzing the result to measure the performance of system. In general before passing through to the analyses, suppose that a company determined their customers and sent them an advertising text message, in which the company’s new products were recognized. Presume that the amount of these customers is 10,000 and just 1,000 of them have demanded the new products after receiving the SMS. However, since this is a cost for the company, cost – benefit ratio must be taken into account all the time. The other 9,000 people can be classified into two groups: the people, who erase the text messages without seeing; and the people, who erase the text messages after seeing. In this direction; these people may not be interested in these text messages for the reason of the improper time, unsuitable content, previous experiences, etc. In that case what should the company analyze to control the activities and the environment for benefitting from SMS Marketing?

From the strategical point of view the companies should be done below analysis for their safety and do the right things for the good marketing relations and satisfaction of the customers;

Basic Statistical Analysis

Statistical analysis is the first step of the success or failure of the system. It includes the response time of the respondents to the text messages, the percentage of the right arrivals, the percentage of the lost messages, etc. In addition to these; these performance results should be traced and understood effectively to take the precautions and determine the SMS strategy primarily. For instance; at Keynote Systems, the average performance for all carriers was 11.8 seconds to receive message and 94.7 percent of all messages arrived at their destination. While these numbers are an improvement over the prior three months, the 94.7 percent availability could represent a significant loss of information and business when the number of lost messages is calculated. (AT&T 2002)

In our example; the company can classify the customers, who have made commercial activities, in 3 groups: high level, mid-level and low level. By the way; the company should also trace these classifications to understand whether there are changes in high levels, mid-levels and low levels. There may be some quantitative changes such as the increase in high levels that also indicates the increase in the expenses or the reduction at all levels that indicates the demand in the market has been declined.

Tendency Analysis

Targeting the audience is one of the most important things that any advertiser should remember. Nowadays, businessmen are considering it more wise and practical to advertise to individuals who will likely become customers. For instance, if a company is selling video games and other hip electronics, then marketers would want to run your SMS marketing campaign on teenagers and other young people who might be interested. (sign-up.to 2002)

Since 80% or more of all cell phone users carry their phone all the time, a text message to their cell phones is the perfect way to alert your subscribers or clients of any urgent information, such as a change of appointment, or product ready for pickup. For this reason; the companies have to understand in which stores and/or products that the customers have paid money by finding out the location of these stores and/or products, what the ranges of these saves are, who these clients are by making data mining, etc. By the way; the company can make identification about the product characteristic and determine new marketing strategy related to the most popular products or services. In addition to this; the products can be served to the people individually.

Capacity Analysis

The main idea of detecting capacity is to answer the question of will the company maintain the investment of sending text messages to the customers. The company has to understand the signals of benefits with the usage of SMSs. Because of the company will produce the products or keep the inventory according to the demands. Whether the demand is low due to the expectations, the company will produce lower parties, keep lower inventories and may reduce or stop the usage of SMS marketing. Moreover; the company may change the marketing strategy. On the other hand; the company may support and increase the usage rate of text messaging by sending them to more people whether the demand is very high. At that time; the company will perform more aggressive role in the market and this will affect the investments of the company.

For this reason; the capacity analysis, which indicates the present situation to meet the present demand and the future situation to meet the following demand, should be investigated and taken into consideration by the companies.

Reviewing Marketing Performance

Mobile marketing can be used for a wide range of occasions like announcing new product, one-day specials, new store openings, special events…etc. Subscribers can be treated as a special group for offers and information that only they have access to, increasing loyalty, purchases, and speed of communications.

While mobile marketing can be used in a lot of areas that helps them customer loyalty, customer satisfaction and incremental sales; the companies should search the performance of their marketing activities to maintain the available situation and then to increase the market share by accessing more satisfied clients. To achieve this; some functions should be generated like market research, market modeling and market consulting.

Ø Marketing research – world-class qualitative and quantitative research, particularly market segmentation that gives the company growth-oriented insights. Ø Marketing modeling – state-of-the-science, profit-focused modeling that offers the company invaluable information about the financial impact of different marketing decisions. Ø Marketing consulting – continuously filtering what the statistics say through managerial, statistical, and financial criteria to provide the company with relevant and doable action steps.

In this regard; the company should determine some indicators to trace the performance of the marketing to understand whether the situation is going on the predetermined strategy or not. Some of these indicators are market share, new product, marketing return on investment (ROI), customer, brand, etc.

Furthermore; there are some criteria for selecting the targets of these performance indicators such as sales potential, growth potential, retention potential, common motivations, problem potential, responsiveness, findability, lifetime value, etc. These criteria should be investigated, considered and evaluated before targeting process. (Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research n.d.)

Sales Analysis

In sales analysis, the goal is to provide accurate management information related to sales activity in order to improve sales profitability and provide facilities for sales forecasting and planning at customer and product class levels.

By sales analysis; we can make the following actions:

Ø Identify the most profitable customers Ø Know which products are selling Ø Analyze market trends and geographic market patterns Ø Know the profit generated by each product Ø Know which divisions of business are selling Ø Identify which salespeople are performing Ø Improve sales forecasting Ø Measure actual performance against quantity or revenue forecasts Ø Analyze tax collections Ø Set targets against customers and / or products Ø Compare against budgets per product group and/or salesperson

By the way; we can decide to maintain and admire the most profitable customers, continue to produce the most selling products, prompt the most valuable salespersons, get precautions according to the trend of the following months’ sales, constitute the budget or make re-budgeting, determine the following targets that the marketing department should provide, etc.

In this regard; SMS marketing is perfect for local and national retailers wishing to promote products or services, provide incentives, and increase customer loyalty and retention. Retailers can send SMS messages to their opt-in subscribers with coupons code inserted directly into the message. Customers can come into the stores and present their coupons right on their cell phones for redemption. This application is very useful for consumers to sale any product in any time at any location, where it helps to increase the sales of the company.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

When consumers make purchases at market prices, they reveal that the things they buy are at least as beneficial to them as the money they relinquish. Consumers will increase their consumption of any commodity up to the point, where the benefit of an additional unit (marginal benefit) is equal to the marginal cost to them of that unit, the market price. The same idea can be used for the companies. A company, which directs its marketing strategy on SMS marketing, wants to get the financial benefit of the application including customer satisfaction. However; when the trend of the earned marginal benefit is going on a reducing direction, the company may decide to give up SMS marketing and consider another methods. On the other side; whether the marginal benefit is going on a positive direction, the company will begin to behave more aggressive way to use more text messages to arrive more customers. 

Character Analysis of the Customers

The first step in SMS Marketing campaign is collecting and getting permission to gather cell phone numbers as stated before. Although it is perfectly acceptable to simply have a signup form on the company’s website or retail store with the promise to send valuable offers in return for signup; it is much more effective to come up with a creative tactic that offers more like prizes, memberships, bonus and free stuff. As the comapny build its database of cell phone numbers, try to elicit more than just that one piece of information. Ask for the customers about their hobbies, conventions and then create special announcements based on niche interests. Find out demographics and customize the text messages campaign to that particular cell phone recipient.

In the character analysis; clear purpose and goal focusing, communication skills, time management prioritization and planning, conflict handling and mental attitudes’ information should be gathered by the companies. For instance; a goal focused person, who understands the direction of the organization, makes plans and organizes resources, both of people and materials and plans ahead in a strategic manner; can be directed to the gifts of special days and the text messages can be sent to these customers like in this way. Because these people are living in perfect planning days and they do not forget the most important days in their lives. For this reason; the gifts, which emphasize the special days, should be chosen as a content of text messages in SMS marketing strategy at these companies. In a different example; there are also SMART people, who can be described as Specific, Measured, Achievable, Realistic, and with a definite Time deadline. That’s why these people always calculate the time and the cost opportunity, in which the prices are lower at any location. In this regard; the shopping centers’ activities such as discounting days or other kind of promotions may be announced to these kinds of people earlier by the help of text messages.

This needs to be new specialists that improve themselves of psychology and marketing.

Institutional Risk Analysis

“Most of the banks in the US are not broke, not in trouble, but they don’t trust each other because they don’t know which banks are bad. We’ve got to get the bad ones out.”             
William Seidman / American economist and financial commentator

The same situation can be considered for the commercial companies. The expectations will be seen clearly, whether the companies can determine which products are not sold enough, which salespersons are not successful enough, what are the actual and forecasting values of the market, etc. In the same direction; the main idea is to determine which products may not be sold in the following period and what are the actions that can be taken primarily. The methodology of risk analysis can be written as in the following:

Ø Identify risk assessment and prioritize risks Ø Develop strategies to manage risks Ø Develop tactics to mitigate risks Ø Assign responsibility and implement Ø Test effectiveness and evaluate results

Comparative Analysis

Comparative analysis is a tool that uses item by item comparison of two or more comparable issues like processes, products, qualifications, sets of data, systems, etc. For instance; in accounting, changes in a financial statement’s items over several accounting periods may be presented together to detect the emerging trends in the firm’s operations and results. The company, which uses text messages to arrive to their customers, sends SMSs to their available clients primarily. After a time of this application, there are some feedbacks that some of the clients have made trades against the others have not. The results in here should be recorded. In this regard of this situation, the company may change the content of the text messages and then wants to see the results. In this time; the company can take a photo of two different situations and make a comparative analysis by using the quantity of sales, the amount of saved money, the number of sold products, etc. to see the differences and the impact of the contents. After that; the company can determine the following marketing strategy due to the feedback of these results.

Environmental Factors Analysis

The last searching area is to reveal the environmental factors like the changes in interest rates; crisis surrounding in economical, social and political areas; the developments in the rivals; the sales in each product; the demands in the market; purchase power of the public, new investment areas, which are rising in recent period, etc. Furthermore; SWOT analysis, which takes the information as a result of these previous activities and separate them into internal issues (strengths and weaknesses) and external issues (opportunities and threats), is one of the best techniques to understand and evaluate all these activities together. In SWOT analysis, the knowledge is designed to help an organization an understanding how it relates to its external environment. In other words to act as a way of seeing whether the organization is aligned with the world going on around it.

As a result of these analyses, the company should evaluate the available situation and get some remarks for the future. Whether the situation is not good enough or the demands are not expected, the company can trace the following instructions:

a. Constituting an action plan b. Differentiating text messages c. Timing of the text messages d. Differentiating of the product e. Timing of the product f. Determining new marketing strategies g. Finding potential customers h. Evaluating the channels for their potentials, capabilities and reliability conditions

CONCLUSION

Mobile marketing tools are offering easier and more convenient ways with evolving marketing strategies. SMS has been the pioneer in wireless data applications and SMS services were the first mobile data services with a serious impact on the operator’s revenue. The industry has seen tremendous growth and, clearly, messaging will lead the way to profits in 3G as well. Inevitably, the way that revenues from mobile applications are currently shared out will change and become much more versatile.

We can admit that SMS Marketing is a very useful tool for the marketers and a competitive marketing strategy for the companies. However; the main issue is not just to apply text messages to the clients. The focal point is to send the right value of contents, at the right time, at the right location, to the right customers with the right effect. Also; after sending them to the clients; the enterprises should follow the marketing auditing like marketing statistics by applying some analysis whether the text messages are effective or not. If there are some problems with this type of marketing strategy, the enterprise should review its’ all ongoing processes to understand where the problem is.

The reasons of failure/triumph should be investigated. After the determination of these, the cautions should be taken into a contingency plan, the actions should be revised and the new applications should be done. If all these processes such as taking pre-cautions, monitor the applications in an analysis approach, etc. are taken into consideration in a systematical approach, we think that SMS Marketing will become a very powerful and indispensible tool for the applicant enterprises. On the other hand, most of the forecasts show that data-related services are increasing its value especially in the means of revenue of the mobile operators. Moreover, picture messaging and visuality has taken off, and MMS is a natural progression of these facts. The fact that the consumer preferences are moving fast towards visuality especially with services like Youtube, Video Messaging Services can be the new concept for the mobile world and the mobile marketing strategies.

Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a new form of communication that combines rich content, such as audio and video clips, photographs and images, with text messaging. It is an end-to-end application for person-to-person mobile messaging, mobile-to-mobile, mobile-to-Internet and Internet-to-mobile. It is good news for service providers, as they can now improve their existing text-based services by adding rich visual content. MMS will be a key mass-market revenue generator for content providers, mobile operators, application developers and advertisers, while for users it will provide a way to capture a moment of time and share it with others.

From the users’ perspective, a successful MMS launch needs the terminal to be set up ready to use from the minute he or she walks out of the store with it. An operator can meet this expectation by offering automatic terminal provisioning over the air through its own network and today, Turkcell, the leading operator in Turkey is offering this service over the air. In addition, operators need to educate end users, not only on how they can send and receive MMS messages but also how they can discover and subscribe to MMS content services. Operators can create service packs, set-up content service demos provide customer training and competitions in retail stores, as well as at relevant events such as festivals and concerts.

 REFERENCES

Gustafsson, Å. & Lenman, AEricsson’s enriched messaging architecture, Ericsson Review No. 2, 2007.

SMS (Short Message System) Mobile Technology, International, White Paper SPG Media Group PLC, 2008.

http://www.marketingpundit.com/MktgLessons_files/Introduction_to_Marketing_Planning.pdf

Piercy, N. & Giles, W “Making SWOT Analysis Work”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Volume: 7 Issue: 5/6, 1989

How to Conduct a SWOT Analysis, Dr. E.J.Keeley, Executive Director, Institutional Effectiveness and Research

Codling, S. Best Practice Benchmarking, gowerpub.com, 1995

Kotler, P Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation, and Control, Prentice-Hall, 1988

http://www.marketingteacher.com/Lessons/lesson_objectives.htm

Borden, N. H “The Concept of the Marketing Mix”, Journal of Advertising Research, 4, June 1994: 2-7

http://www.businesslink.gov.uk

http://www.mobilestorm.com/sms-marketing

http://www.textsmsmarketing.com

http://www.mobilesmsmarketing.com

http://www.plusone.com.au/smsstudies.php

http://www.mobiltim.com.tr/sms_cilginligi.pdf

MMS entering into the next phase, White Paper, Nokia Corporation, 2003

http://www.sign-up.to/0308.php?k=sms-marketing&PageID=8631

Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research, Bringing Science to Marketing

http://portal.bsnl.in/Telecomguide.asp?intNewsId=483&strNewsMore=more

McDaniel, C.D. & Gates, R. H Marketing Research Essentials, Published by Taylor & Francis, 1997

More Marketing Process Articles

How Seo Understanding Your Target Audience?

admin    Web Marketing     Audience, Target, Understanding

How Seo Understanding Your Target Audience?

You’ve got your website up and have been doing your due diligence regarding internet marketing. After reading untold books and doing research, you’ve come to the conclusion that SEO is the best option for your site. Before you take that step, however, you need to consider your target audience.

More than a few internet marketers may want to shoot me for saying this, but the truth shall set you free. Not all internet marketing methods are appropriate for every site. While the marketing technique may be executable, that doesn’t mean it should be undertaken. for more detials:-www.huge-niche-keywords.com.One of the key issues in making a determination of whether it is viable or not is to consider the target audience of the site.

The target audience is simply the prospects you want to get in front of with your site. Let’s assume I have a site selling an ebook about the Mayan clock and then end of the world coming in 2012. My audience is people who are interested in such prophecies. From an SEO stand point, I would want to target phrases like “Mayan clock”, “2012″ and so on.

In this case, my target audience is both easy to identify and are going to be active on the web. As such, my site is a prime candidate for an SEO campaign. Ah, but what if both scenarios are not true for a site? Let’s assume I have a manufacturing company. It makes a particular set of pieces that go on the landing gear of large military transport planes. I have a website and am considering an SEO campaign. for visit detials:-www.offline-promotion.com.Is this a smart move? No! Why? My target audience is not on the web nor is it going to act upon my site even if it happens to find it.

Think the process through. Who is my target audience? The government and the air plane manufacturers. Do you really think Boeing goes online to find a parts supplier? The Air Force? Probably not. Instead, my target audience is more likely to find me at conventions, air shows and seminars. Moreover, I may have to actively contact them to pick up business. In this case, running an SEO campaign is really not worth the money it will cost.

www.thesearchengineprimer.com
www.search-engine-premiere.com

The above represent two obvious situations, but what if you are unsure about your site? The answer is simple. First run a pay per click campaign on Google, Yahoo and MSN to see if leads are produced. If they are, then you can consider a full blown SEO campaign. If they are not, you just saved yourself a bundle of time and money.

More Target Audience Articles

International Business Expansion – Target Your Global Market Understanding Their Demographics

admin    Web Marketing     Business, Demographics, Expansion, Global, International, Market, Target, Their, Understanding

International Business Expansion – Target Your Global Market Understanding Their Demographics

Small businesses can feel greatly challenged if they are based in one country and selling to foreign clients another country. An intimate understanding of your foreign clients will lead to more sales. How can you get an accurate analysis of the demographics of your foreign markets?

It is often hard to really get into the demographics of your international markets. It can be hard to stretch yourself to fully understand cultural differences and the consequences these differences may or may not have on your sales and marketing strategies.

This is also a factor which complicates a single language markets made up of many different cultures. You not only have one set of specific demographic characteristics. You can literally have dozens.

The best place to start is to determine specific demographic information for each of your target markets, and to move on from there. The process actually gets easier the more cultures you learn to adapt to. Your company will get faster at understanding how to adapt to each different culture.

An interesting example was how MTV adapted its music to each country. There are two main factors that came in to play.

Music is culturally different in each culture.
MTV targets a younger audience and youth do not have the same lives in different cultures.

MTV realized early on that they needed to adapt their music to the culture in each country. This is fairly easy to understand.

But what was interesting was that they realized that in some countries the vast majority of households only had one television set. Therefore their television shows would also have to be culturally acceptable to other generations. If the older generations were offended in any way, MTV would not be turned on.

Demographics do need to studied and defined for each culture. Gaining insight into the differences in demographics and it consequences on your product’s foreign market is a very enriching experience. The value of this knowledge also lies in the potential leverage for more foreign business opportunities.

Fully understanding your international markets will show you the opportunities for your international business growth.

Understanding The Booklet Marketing Process

admin    Web Marketing     Booklet, marketing, Process, Understanding

Understanding The Booklet Marketing Process

Booklet printing is not the first choice usually when it comes to marketing, but they are still being used today as effective supplements to big marketing campaigns. When you print booklets for marketing, there is a slight difference in the way it is developed, printed and deployed when you compare it to other mediums. In this article, I will help you understand the marketing process when you use booklet printing as your tool. Let me start first with the most important, and that is the content of the marketing booklet.

1. Developing the proper content – Color booklets for marketing are markedly different from other kinds of booklets. Usually the booklet content for marketing is more concise, and more directed for a target audience. All the information within the color booklet should be able to capture the reader’s interest and ultimately impress him or her. It must never be boring and it must never get too long.

That is why when you develop booklet content for marketing, you must do your market research right and see what your target market really needs to read about in your booklet. Make sure that all the information they need is included in the content, and of course the style of the content must always be interesting for the readers.

2. Composing the proper layout – The proper marketing layout for booklet printing for marketing is basically a practical and straightforward concept. The booklet must always have clearly defined sections that logically progress to an ultimate goal for the reader. It helps to have a table of contents in color booklets so that a reader can navigate easily and see the information that he or she needs. If you want, you can even use some booklet templates to help you with your layout and create a good color booklet for marketing.

3. Checking and proofreading – Marketing booklets should also be almost perfect. Since people can be very judgemental about printed marketing booklets, there must absolutely be no errors in the text and the images in the color booklets. That is why you will need to check your booklets for spelling errors and your images for errors in resolution and clipping. Make sure that you proofread your initial drafts three or more times before booklet printing to create great booklets that are almost perfect.

4. Printing marketing booklets – Now, when you print your color booklets for marketing, the general rule must be to print them professionally with the correct materials. People can really be critical about the quality of your booklet printing. So hire a professional booklet printer and tell them to use the best paper materials and inks in your booklets. There are a lot of professional booklet printing companies out there, especially online. So just look for the one with the right quality and price for you and your booklets should look ideal for marketing.

5. Deploying those booklets – Finally, once printed, marketing booklets must be deployed properly. You need to use multiple distribution techniques to make sure that your booklets can be distributed to a lot of people. Besides giving them away like flyers to people, you should also try leaving your booklets at public places and racks as well as mailing your marketing booklets via the postal service. Do everything that you can to give away your marketing booklets so that they will reach as much people as possible.

Great! Hopefully now you understand how to booklet printing works for marketing. It is not the most common of tools, but it can be quite impressive and effective unto itself. Good Luck!

Find More Marketing Process Articles

How To Use Twitter, Tip #2 – Understanding Twitter Lingo

admin    Twitter Marketing     Lingo, Twitter, Understanding

Ok ladies and gentlemen…It’s time for a crash course into Twitter lingo. Whenever your become part of a “community” it’s very important to understand the language that is used by the members of the community. The terms listed below will be the ones you primarily use in your day-to-day twitter activities.

@username – This shows that you are replying or directing a message to that specific person on Twitter. You’ll use this one the most. People love personal interaction and doing this often will help you stand out in the minds of others!

RT @username – When you really like a Tweet you may want to send it to your followers as well, so you RT (Re-Tweet) and then give the originator of the tweet the credit that they rightfully deserve. So…when you see a tweet that someone else posted (that you like) then simple use the following protocol.  “RT @username (the tweet they posted)”

#topic – The pound sign indicates what is known as a hashtag. It’s used to follow a group of people on a specific topic via keyword, such as a news item, local event (such as a seminar), or like interests. The most popular example of this is #followfriday This is where you tell your followers about people you really enjoy following. Be sure to check out #followfriday as you’ll be sure to meet some wonderful people!

DM – This is a “Direct Message” to a person. No one else can read this except you and the person you DM’d. Think of it like sending a personal e-mail to and individual. Use DM’s when you don’t want anyone else in the twitter community (except the person you’re talking to) to be included in the conversation

Tinyurl.com or Bit.ly – These are URL converters from long URLs to short ones. Let’s pretend that you want tell other tweeters about your website, but the url is something really long like: http://www.ReallyLongUrl.com.  You can use Tinyurl.com and bit.ly to shorten the url you’re promoting so that you can stay within the 140 character limit that twitter requires. These 2 free services will be your best friends with regard to promoting other websites. I personally suggest using bit.ly because you can track clicks.

Tweetup – This is when local people meet in one place and Twitter the event. This is a way of meeting other Twitters face to face and also combining Tweeple forces. If you want to be well respected in the twitter community, I suggest finding other people local to your area and doing a tweet up

Tweeple – Just another word for Twitter members.

Twitterholic – Someone who’s addicted to Twitter. This could be you.

http://RenegadeSuccess.com

Understanding Internet Website Marketing

admin    Website Marketing Companies     Internet, marketing, Understanding, website

With the rising popularity of self-help books comes the increase in people who feel empowered to do what the book says. While there really is no sure-fire way of getting rich quickly, some people who pose as business gurus advocate certain procedures on how to double wealth immediately by engaging in business. And internet website marketing is definitely one platform for these businesses.Actually, starting a business is not that easy. It involves a lot of conceptualizing, planning, and funding. There are lots of things in businesses that must be learned thoroughly before it can even be started. Moreover, businessmen have to have enough money to run a business. Running a business on a tight budget will only become a risky venture because businesses must be sustained by a continuous flow of fund. Good thing, with nonconventional forms of business such as internet marketing, funding is less of an issue.Internet entrepreneurs only have to fulfill a couple of requirements in starting their online business. And these requirements need not be expensive—not even paid. The first thing that must be taken care of in an internet business is to establish a website for the business. It acts like an address wherein people from all parts of the world can access the website. Once the website is established, it is time to beef up the site by adding contents and updating it regularly. Also, a neat and easily navigational website will add to the appeal. This way, the internet website marketing plan will be grounded on solid foundations.Consequently, advertising follows this. What better way to promote a product than using social networking sites to reach the target market of the products involved. Facebook and MySpace still have the upper hand in the total shares of social networking sites. Start by sending messages to people in your immediate network. Ask for feedback and let them help spread the word about the business. Twitter is also another novel way of marketing products in the internet. Business owners can update their followers by keeping them posted about latest additions, promos, and information about new products.Online websites can really catapult an unfamiliar product to being the most sought-after brands of today. The very nature of the internet as being shared by users all over the world, it is very easy to disseminate information about a product and the word spreads swiftly like wild fire. Therefore, it is important to give much thought on product development first before thinking of how to advertise the product in the net. A poorly developed product with lots of loopholes will instantly kill a product and taint its reputation. Later improvements will do less to salvage a product formerly perceived as incompetent.Hence, for business people out there looking for a promising venture, it is about time that you get involved with internet website marketing. But remember this word of caution: keep in mind that a product that comes out from a half-baked plan will easily be eliminated from the competition.

Understanding Image Ads and Making Google Adsense Dollars

admin    Google Optimization     Adsense, Dollars, google, Image, Making, Understanding

What are image ads?

Image ads are graphical ads. Unlike traditional banner ads, image ads are also targeted to the appropriate audience, just like text ads. A publisher that has a combination of image ads and text ads has a greater revenue generating potential.

Image ads are only for Adsense for Content pages and not available for Adsense for Search results pages.

There are 5 major formats of image ads. The Leaderboard, which is about twice the size of a banner ad, the banner image ad, the skyscraper, the wide skyscraper and the medium rectangle. Google’s technology determines on a page by page basis whether image ads, text ads, or a combination of both will make you more money and then delivers the appropriate format.

You can choose to run only image ads, but Google recommends selecting both, thereby giving them a better chance to target the right advertising for your page, generating more revenue for you.

Bottom line: taking these two methods together will give you the best chance at making the most revenue.

How to Make Google Adsense Dollars at Writingup.com

To get started blogging at writingup.com, first you’ll need to create a Google Adsense account. If you’ve already done that, you’ll just give them the same publisher id you got when you originally signed up with Google Adsense. Since you can only have one Google Adsense account, you will always use the same publisher id on every site you add. Next, you’ll create an account at writingup.com and within minutes, start blogging!

You still have to follow the Google Adsense rules as to the type of content not acceptable but other than that you have carte blanche as to what to write about in your blog. Paste your writingup.com URL into your email signature and every time you send someone an email, you will be referring them to your blog, thus increasing your traffic on writingup.com.

Comment on other publisher’s blogs. If you interact with the blogging community, you are more likely to have your blog read more often. Again, traffic.

Writingup.com has a list of successful topics you can write about. You don’t have to choose from that list of course, but it’s quite extensive and if you look it over, you’ll probably find something that interests you. They are successful topics because they turn up in search engines a lot. More traffic.

need a website? want to be #1 on Google? visit our florida web design company homepage

Understanding The Importance Of Microsoft Certification Training Courses

admin    Misc     Certification, Courses, Importance, Microsoft, Training, Understanding

If you want to constantly grow and succeed in your career, you will need to learn new skills. You will need to be updated with all the latest technologies that are being introduced in the market.  

How can you do that? The answer is quite simple and that is by “training courses”.  

Benefits of Certification Courses 

Nowadays, there are number of training programs which aim to equip the corporate employees and others with every bit of information that is required for their job.  

Getting into certification courses is very easy these days. However, before you take the first step, it is important to do some research work on the various available certification courses.  

You will need to define your skills and decide where you want to take your career. You will then need to look for certification courses that are applicable to your goals.  

When you look for certification courses, why not try the best in the market?  

You might want to look for the Microsoft Certification courses that can open a lot of job opportunities for you. Learning new skills and enhancing your current skill-sets can take you way higher in your career.  

There are plenty of Microsoft training programs offered by many centers in India and in other countries. As a matter of fact there are many IT training companies that offer Microsoft certified training programs for the corporate employees.  

How do the IT Training Companies Work? 

These companies research and design the training programs for every single client company. The client company requirements are minutely studied and the trading modules are designed accordingly.  

These programs are highly beneficial because it enhances the skills of the employees, increases the productivity, improves the efficiency and as a whole. Added or new responsibilities can be assigned to the employees who have successfully undergone the training.  

India has the second largest number of IT professionals in the world after the United States. In fact, it is the world’s largest exporter of IT-related services.  

Companies offering Microsoft training programs target Indian IT employees for the certification courses. These companies have different kind of educational modules which enhances the IT skills of an individual.  

There are more than 1500 Microsoft Certified Partners for classroom training programs, and there are more than 1000 online courses in the Microsoft Learning Catalog.  

You may choose to enroll your name in the classroom training programs or may choose to learn from the online classes. Many a times, an individual takes on both the option of studying in the classroom and also online courses at their own pace.  

Different Types of Microsoft Courses 

There are many different types of courses offered by Microsoft. These courses mainly include: 

 There are many other Microsoft Certification Courses available with various recognized institutions. It is important to identify the course which will enhance your skills and prove to be advantageous for your career.  

Microsoft Courses are conducted by Microsoft Certified Trainers when you opt for classroom training. However, in case of online courses, you can work at your own pace and work on virtual labs. These MS certified courses can give that subtle boost to your career options. 

need a website? want to be #1 on Google? visit our florida web design company homepage