Pass-it-on, self-replicating and self-generating, million eyeballs, explosive text, catalyst, market shrink are few very common terms associated with this terminology. What I have found is viral marketing is very difficult to start, very difficult to spread and even more difficult to achieve success. If it is a success you are maximizing with little investment else you may end up badly. There must be some solid reason for customers to help spread your word. Creating a qualitative content as well as enticing them by offering some incentives will be added benefit. Inserting a channel for communication as Hotmail reached its subscribers by having message of free email in the mail header itself proved to be a great tool for success. Other problem people often face over the internet are technical and technological problems; make sure your virus (viral message) has no sophistication associated, it is browser independent and do not require additional software, .exe or plug-ins, neither has attachment which may result that many visitors may not like to download, wait to run exe and thus may not see it. Privacy policy helps to push up the viral campaign (I am referring your piece of message as a virus in this article).

Marketing Strategies

People attention and contribution has been the most precious spectrum behind internet growth. To draw people attention you need to have a very strong tool that will take your voice to masses. You need to make strategies that will take your business to heights, lock out your competitors through pricing models and by exploiting competitors’ legacy distribution channel conflict. Viral advertising and viral marketing technique is one that utilizes the existing networks on the web to promote a piece of information globally to produce brand awareness through self replicating process. Idea is to take a piece of message and circulate it virally i.e. high pass along rate from person to person. It works like a chain reaction, large numbers of people receive the message and they forward this to large numbers of people, the more number of people receive it and then it becomes easier to spread the idea. If the pass-along numbers get too low, the overall growth quickly fizzles. Viral marketing depends on high-pass-along rate from person-to-person.

Some of the first recorded offline / online viral campaigns were developed by Tim Nolan of Spent2000.com fame circa 1996. By placing abstract pairings of catch-phrases, quotes, song lyrics and image mashups, Mr. Nolan developed a method of creating “buzz” around a URL based installation. Phrases like “This city isn’t safe” placed along side a URL created curiosity enough in people’s minds to remember a URL and visit again once they were online.

Hotmail is the best example of most successful viral marketing strategy over full life cycle. In 1996, a new product, free web based email was launched by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. ‘Viral Marketing’ catalyst was involved that would exponentially increase the rate of flow of information; nothing to do with virus but the growth is rapid like virus growth through word-of-mouth. Impact and results of viral marketing strategy over hotmail growth can be summarized as: most important is that Hotmail grew a subscriber base more rapidly than any other company in the world. Now, Hotmail is the largest email provider in the world. Exponential growth of subscribers; unprecedented source of personal information as almost subscribers filled up demographic and psychographic profile. Also, with expense close to 0K spent on branding, marketing, advertising and promotion, very less was spent in comparison to nearly 12 million users. It is not just spending money, but spending money in a smart way will work. Hot mail became email king at reduced cost, less expense using viral marketing catalyst. Hotmail viral message (free email services) message was involuntary and spread through word-of-mouth. The same strategy was adopted by Mirabilis; another example is dancing baby screen saver.

Viral Marketing, web marketing, web promotion and branding tool will help to have good start up even though the new entrants are under capitalized. Social community provides broad bandwidth of high frequency social interactions provides a powerful virus opportunity. Viral marketing strategy is to minimize the friction of market entry and proliferation.

Internet is the best language and tool that will help you make money online in least time in comparison to other marketing tools available. Remember, rapid growth is of no value without customer retention. I am sure right viral marketing and advertising strategy will create market value of the product or services in hand. It is the speed of thoughts that will determine your competitiveness in the market. With market shrink strategy, small companies can make big deals and can be a challenge for brand companies. Proven scalability is the dominating factor in the hyper growth industry. Spread the information analogous to spread of computer virus, major difference is virus spoils everything but viral marketing will take your business to heights.

At the height of B2C it seemed that every starting company had a viral strategy or a viral component, but the truth is that very few achieve success of great heights. Viral marketing is so powerful that it is worth many times more than the campaigning companies and its result are very fast.

Viral Marketing Strategies For Your Websites

Internet is used by many. It is easily accessible. Therefore, by marketing online you have a chance of gaining the maximum attention to your business. First, you need to learn the rules.

Marketing Strategies

Enter into internet marketing company. These successful companies have experienced and skilled personnel at hand for training purposes. Opt for an established one as you will get much to learn from them.

You need to keep in mind that working from your house does not mean you would not have to work hard. You need to show a lot of commitment to become successful. Therefore, do not start your business as a hobby. You will only end up your money.

Many companies have established and achieved great deal of success on this forum. Why would not you? You will have many examples to benefit from. Learn the tricks of the business from the flourishing companies.

Publicizing your business through articles is what many people do. It is very effective too. You can hire the services of content writers. Usually you would not have to pay a lot.

The article should appeal to the audience. Talk about their problems, and how your business can help provide a solution to their problems. This is a great way to attract potential customers towards your business.

The articles can be made available on websites that put up articles online for free. You would have to fret about audience either.

In conclusion, you can make a success out of your business by working hard and doing the right thing that others have done previously.

Different Marketing Strategies

The strategy I would like to discuss in this article is for you to CHOOSE A NICHE and FOCUS on it. You can not market any business effectively if it is “one of many.” What I mean by that is that, if you are trying to run three businesses that are clearly not related to each other, you are going to have a very difficult time being effective in any of them. It takes a lot of time to run and market a business, so if you’re trying to run and market three businesses, it will be difficult to do a great job at any one of them. Also, you will most likely be targeting different groups of people with each business, which takes a lot of marketing effort to reach all the groups. Lastly, it will not be clear to anyone (not even you!) what you actually do.

Marketing Strategies

So, choose one niche and stick with it. Learn all you can about the needs of your market, and determine how you can offer them a solution to their need. Become an expert in your niche, so you will be the “go to” person for help. As you learn more about your niche, you will need to let people know how knowledgeable you are. This can be done through a variety of strategies, without you having to “sell” yourself. As people find out how much you know, you will be the one they immediately think of when they need a solution. That is what you want – your name to be the one that comes to mind when people need help.

If you want to offer a variety of services to provide more income, make sure they are related and of interest to the same market group. For example, if you provide medical billing for dentists, you could offer medical transcription and coding also for dentists. You could offer it all under the umbrella concept of Medical Office Services for Dentists. You see, you would still be marketing to dentists and all of your services are related.

Or you could combine two or more of your interests/skills into one business. For instance, if you love being with new moms, and you have found a line of natural facial products that you really like and would like to sell, you could combine the two and offer to do facials at new mom gatherings. Imagine how well received these would be. What new mom can’t use a renewed feeling?

As you can see, one of the most effective marketing strategies is to focus on one niche and become well-known in the field. By becoming an expert in that niche, your name will precede you and business will begin coming to you. So, I ask you, what is your niche going to be?

Effective Marketing Strategies

All customers are not the same. They have different needs, preferences, and budgets. Segmenting the market into a group of similar customers can help you develop a successful marketing strategy. Similar customers will respond in a similar way to your products, services, prices, and promotion. For example, some customers prefer to purchase online, others like talking in person and some customers like to save on everything they buy. Trying to satisfy every customer with the same approach is not going to be effective and profitable. Because of that you need to segment your market in a few segments which are similar and develop different approaches on how to target these segments, develop offerings for each segment and promote to each segment.

Marketing Strategies

How can you segment your market?

Here are some examples you can use to thnk about the most appropriate way to segment your customers:

- location

- age

- income

- education

- previous buying habits

- how they respond to different advertising promotions

Competition

After you segment your customers next is to make a list of your competitors. Ask yourself the following questions:

- Who are the major competitors in this market?

- How different they are in delivering their products and services?

- How do they make money?

- How much they charge and what they offer to the customers?

After you answer these questions ask yourself what they do better than you do.

Value Proposition / Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Based on your market and customer segmentation now you can develop a marketing approach for your business. How I am going to compete and how I am going to satisfy the customers – your market approach. In order for your market approach to be successful you have to offer something different. You need to develop an effective value proposition or unique selling proposition. The Value proposition describes the way your business is different and how it will offer different solutions compared to competitors. in your vaue proposition you will list your products and service features and the benefits they deliver to your customers.

How you are going to promote your business?

Now you need to communicate your value proposition to your target market – communicate effectively, send clear message about your offering and tell your customers why they should buy your products and services. Examples:

- Advertising: print media, TV, radio, internet ads, search engine optimization, website marketing

- Public Relations: press releases, events

- Sales Promotion: special offerings, discounts, customer loyalty programs

- Community Involvement: sponsorship

Marketing ROI

Key to effective marketing is measuring your promotional activities. Try to measure and keep track of different promotional activities. For example, how many customers do I get from my ad in newspaper and how much did it cost me to get these customers. Now you can compare different alternatives and improve your marketing return on investment in your next promotions.

Developing Marketing Plan and Strategy

If you want to have success in your own online business, you need an online marketing campaign that is stellar. It needs to be so incredible that people are visiting your website from all over the web, and things are happening on your website. And when I say “happening”, I mean getting sales.

Marketing Strategies

There are many online marketing techniques that you can use to improve your business. Most of these ways help somewhat, but it’ll be in your best interest to focus on a handful of strategies that will deliver the most results for you. And today, I want to share with you some of my favorite online marketing strategies that you can use to improve your business relatively quickly.

Here’s online marketing strategy number 1:

1) Go viral

Viral marketing is a concept in the online marketing world that you may have heard of, but don’t know quite how to put it into action. Well, it’s actually quite simple really. One of the best ways to start a viral marketing campaign is with a free ebook. Your ebook should be based on your expertise in your niche, and you should include a short note on the first page of the ebook that says something like:

“You have full permission to distribute this ebook for free onto your website.”

Imagine putting links to affiliate products and your own products into your free ebook, and having the world distribute it freely on the internet. It would go crazy. Soon, you could start a viral marketing campaign that is so successful that it alone could get you 50-100 new email subscribers per day to your website. This is a great way to get free traffic. Here’s another way:

2) SEO

Search engine optimization (or SEO) is a complex subject, but you only need to know the basics if you want this medium to work well for you. You will want to make it a point to learn about keyword density, on-page SEO and off-page SEO, and building backlinks to your website.

The search engines changes their algorithms every hour to fine tune the search results for their visitors, so don’t run off and become some SEO scientist. Stick with the basics, and you will be found for a keyword that isn’t very competitive.

A great way to get into the SEO game is to submit your site to the major search engines. And after you’ve done that, submit your website to the website directories to build up those 1-way backlinks to your website. It’s not hard… the simplest strategies work well here.

Hopefully you will use both of these strategies to boost your internet business’s sales and profits, and I hope that you put them to use sooner rather than later.

Good luck with marketing your business online.

2 Online Marketing Strategies That You Should Use Now

These are marketing strategies specifically designed to help you succeed in business. A lot of people think that marketing is just about selling the product, but it’s not – it actually involves every step from the conceptualization of the business to the actual advertising and selling. Marketing is involved in every stage of the business. Here are a few tips that you might find useful in the future:

Marketing Strategies

1) Niche marketing – as one of the more important strategies, particularly as online strategies, niche marketing is all about focusing your marketing efforts on a single niche or a very specific set of market conditions/ customers. By finding a niche, you will be able to better target your market and find a stable customer base. The problem with this marketing strategy, however, is that it does limit your clientele a bit.

2) Cost leadership strategy -this involves lowering the cost of production in order to be able to sell your product at a rate much lower than the competition. As one of the more popular marketing strategies, cost leadership works well with more commonly-used commodities, since people are always looking for ways to save money on regular expenses. However, using this marketing strategy on luxuries can be disadvantageous, as luxury items often gain their appeal from the prestige that only high prices can bring.

3) Pioneering- this marketing strategy will help you make sure that your target market finds your product interesting. By selling something completely new, you are effectively eliminating the competition from the minds of your potential customers. Product differentiation is all about dominating the market by creating a new playing field.

Three Commonly Used Marketing Strategies

Online or internet marketing.
Offline marketing.
Word of mouth or relationship marketing.

Marketing Strategies

There can be some cross over of these categories mostly between online and relationship and as we get into our topic you’ll see how this is. Also, you’ll find that there can be a wide range of marketing costs between these different types and I know that this is important to all people who are just starting up a new business. Remember that marketing can be the most exciting part of a business start up because you can see your business grow and become successful.

Online / Internet Marketing

Many people today are starting businesses online. Like all business start ups, online or brick and mortar stores, not all who start will succeed and what will determine if they do is their marketing plan. Online marketing combines creative and technical aspects of the internet, including advertising, design, sales, and development. It also uses search engine marketing (such as Yahoo and Google), banner ads on websites, search engine optimization, and email marketing strategies. There are some definite advantages to online marketing. Internet marketing is fairly inexpensive when you compare it to the cost of reaching your target market with traditional marketing techniques. There are many companies that have found that they can reach a very large audience for a significantly lower cost than their standard offline advertising methods. Offline Marketing This is the traditional type of marketing strategy. If you are old enough, if not ask some old guy you know, think back about 20 years, before there was an Internet. All the types of marking that was used then fall into this category.

Newspaper ads.
Radio.
Television.
Bulk mail.
Billboards
Magazine ads.

As you can imagine offline marketing will be the most expensive type of marketing because unlike online marketing, every time you want to get your name out there, you’ll have to pay. So keep in mind how much of a budget you have to commit to marketing. You may want to concentrate more of your efforts to internet and relationship marketing but as always the choice is yours.

Word of mouth or Relationship Marketing

This type, if you commit to it, can and will be your most important marketing strategy. You will build trust in your customers that can’t be built by the other ways. Think about your own experiences when purchasing a new (fill in the blank). If what you want to buy is recommended by a trusted friend the chances you’ll buy is greater than if you just see an advertisement. Trust is HUGE in any marketing strategy. The trick here is building networks of people who know and trust you.

Offline Relationships

Friends.
Relatives.
Business Acquaintances
Community Involvement Coworkers
Fellow Churchgoers
Anybody you meet in town.

When the opportunity presents itself, talk about your business! Tell them what you are doing, your plans, your dream of eventually want your business to look like. Opportunities present themselves all the time, all you have to do is recognize them and put yourself out there! As these people get to know your business and like what you have to offer, they will tell their friends, who will tell their friends and so on.

Online Relationships

Since the advent of the internet and depending on the nature of your business, (if it’s local or more far reaching in who your customers are) this could be the greatest part of your marketing strategy. I’m not telling you anything you probably don’t already know but today the internet is built on relationships. People reach each other on:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
MySpace

And this is only the tip of the iceberg! There are more places to meet and get to know people than you can shake a stick at. Like online marketing. These are the 3 types of marketing strategies and they will work for you and your new business but you must commit yourself to them. It is work but you can do it. Believe in yourself! (if you made it this far, I believe in you too because you have proven that you have the will to succeed) You believe in you and so do I. That’s 2 people – see, your plan is already growing!

Three Types Of Marketing Strategies

Getting a patent is a tricky process under normal circumstances. Under laws of the United States a company or person is entitled to a patent unless the invention was on sale in the country for more than one year prior to the application date of the patent. This applies to both sales and offers of sales. Therefore, companies conducting marketing campaigns must be careful not to destroy their patent rights. In a perfect world, application for a patent should be filed before any sales begin. But then that would hurt the company’s bottom line because that ultimately puts profits on hold. In a competitive marketplace this could spell disaster for the company.

Marketing Strategies

Therefore, it is important for a company to understand just what it is that starts the one year clock ticking. In other words what can they do and what can’t they do in order to avoid their product being put on the timer?

In order to answer that question we have to understand what exactly, according to law, starts the clock running. There are basically two conditions. The first one is that the invention must be ready for patenting at the time of the sale. If it can be shown that the inventor had sufficient drawings that would enable another person to use the invention then this would satisfy the first criteria.

The second criteria is that there has actually been an offer for sale. In other words, the inventor or company that owns the invention approaches another company and offers to sell them the invention. This can either be in the form of a letter to the other company or in an actual physical meeting between the two companies. Usually the meeting follows a letter.

In the form of a letter the owner of the invention will usually draw up a letter stating that they have such and such an invention and go on to say that they feel this is something that would enhance their business. In the letter they would describe what the invention does and how it would help them. They would then ask the other company to get back to them if interested.

When it comes to the meeting the inventor will bring drawings of his invention and present them to the company interested in acquiring the invention. Maybe the inventor even has a working prototype he can show them. This is always a plus. Companies actually like to see that the invention they are interested in works.

Where the law comes in, and this is where inventors can delay the clock, is that the following items do not fall within the two criteria. Solicitation of customer pricing information from distributors and sales representatives; publication of preliminary data sheets and promotional information on invention features; communications to sales representatives; sales representatives providing customers with preliminary data sheets; and sales representatives’ requests for customer samples.

Therefore, an inventor can engage in any of the above activities and NOT start the one year clock running. This allows the inventor to get as much preliminary leg work done for his patent without actually “technically” starting the process.

This is important information for any inventor to have if he is trying to gain as much ground in his quest for a patent as possible.

Patent – Marketing Strategy

1. Why buy?

Marketing Strategies

2. Why buy from me? (Or what makes me better than anyone else?)

That’s it. Sounds simple right? If it were, then everyone that decided to go into business would answer these and be wildly successful.

So, what is the small business owner / entrepreneur to do?

Take your time and dig deep. Use a ‘benefits’ exercise and keep working at clarifying and defining exactly what you want to convey, but do it from the consumer’s perspective. Why should they buy this product or service? And, why should they buy it from me, versus anyone else with something similar.

A great example (perhaps the quintessential example of the last 50 years) is the Domino’s Pizza slogan that promised delivery in 30 minutes or the pizza was free. Why buy? I’m hungry and it will be here in 30 minutes – that’s fast! Why buy from Domino’s? Because it’ll be there fast and there’s the possibility it will be free! No one else even came close to that offer/message and it was extremely effective for the company for many years. (Note: According to Wikipedia, Domino’s chose to stop using the slogan due to the perception of reckless driving after lawsuits were filed by people hit by pizza deliver vehicles.)

Some entrepreneurs and small business owners think that coming up with a great message requires talent, luck or some combination of the two. In reality it sometimes helps to have a little bit of these (when doesn’t it help to have talent and luck?), but when it comes right down to it, you can be successful if you put in the effort to discover the benefits of your product or service and design a message that concisely shares it with your prospects.

A fellow marketer once told me that when he was starting out he would often write 200 or more versions of a message (after digging deep to find the important benefits), and then spend days honing it to get it to where he felt it was effective. Compare that to the way most entrepreneurs come up with their messages and tag lines, by jotting a few things down, asking a friend or family member and then just throwing it out there. And, they wonder why it doesn’t usually work.

101 Marketing Strategies – Two Questions That Define Your Marketing Message

Flashy sales letters might be hottest trend when it comes to direct marketing to consumers (especially online), but bright red headlines designed to capture a prospect’s attention aren’t nearly as effective when it comes to pitching to business clients. Instead, a much more personalized approach to marketing that sees you integrate your services into their business plan will deliver value to both sides. This makes you each a more valuable asset to have on each other’s side – whether you’re selling toilet paper or legal services.

Marketing Strategies

Think about it for a second – professional buyers are used to being pitched on the business value and common sense underlying a particular deal, and will as a consequence be most reluctant to give in to any overt pressure sales tactics. Remember – for the most part, the clients you serve in a B2B market will have their own sales function, and will already be familiar with the tricks of the trade. Sell to these clients as they want to be sold to – not as your current processes permit. That means allowing the buyer to make up his or her mind, with you simply acting as a facilitator to make it happen.

That’s not to say you should be setting a rigorous face-to-face appointment schedule with all of your B2B clients (although some industries may demand this as standard practice). Instead, you should attempt to build and foster relationships with your clients on a personal level, while ensuring you continue to provide goods and services that make sense both financially and in terms of their quality. Email and telephone conversations usually suffice, and the impact of consistently delivering on your promises for clients certainly plays a massive role.

B2B marketing online is a softer process, working best when it’s built in around your existing marketing strategies. Tactics like email marketing can be effective, but only if you target business owners correctly. Getting your website noticed and enhancing your online brand is the first step, but the real struggle with pitching to B2B clients is getting to ‘yes’ and seeing the deal through, which more often than not is a much more involved, personal process.

Even more so than consumers, business customers will quickly spend their money elsewhere if it represents a better value proposition. This means that it’s absolutely essential to build defenses around your business and the services you offer to grow a sustainable, long-term enterprise. Integrate your services into each of your clients’ respective business plan and act like an extended member of their business team rather than a salesperson. This is usually the best and quickest way to achieve true success with commercial clients.

B2B Marketing Strategies