2011 September

Archive for September, 2011

7 Simple and Inexpensive Steps to Building a Profitable Marketing System

September 30th, 2011 | Author: Marketing

Country Cottage on Acreage

Do you feel lost in a sea of marketing options? You are not alone. Many small business owners are confused and paralyzed by the thousands of options available to them. Unfortunately this means that many potentially profitable marketing tactics are abandoned before they bear fruit.

Here is a 7 Step Formula to help you focus on your profitable options and prevent you from wasting time and money on ineffective techniques. This simple formula has been borrowed from the marketing habits of billionaire entrepreneurs who have used this simple system to build vast fortunes. Let’s get started -

1) Focus on One Advertising Technique:

Select an advertising tactic that meets your budget. If you are an online marketer with a small budget focus on traffic exchanges or writing articles. If you are an offline marketer with a healthy budget focus on direct marketing and direct response newspaper advertising. Master your advertising technique before you invest more money. Remember we are simply creating a template for your marketing program

2) Map the Steps:

This step is very important. Get a sheet of paper and write out the steps from your initial advertisement all the way through to the customer’s purchase. This series of steps is called your Marketing Funnel.

Your system may look something like this: 1) Prospect Reads eZine ad, 2) Prospect Clicks URL and visits Newsletter Sign-up, 3) Prospect opts in to newsletter, 4) Prospect clicks purchase link from email newsletter, 5) Customer downloads purchase.

Now Move on to Step 3 -

3) Feed Your Marketing Funnel

Now that you understand the steps in your Marketing Funnel – you are in a good position to start feeding it traffic. I suggest that you select your least expensive option, like article creation, low cost pay per click, or sending an email to your existing list.

Your goal is not to make a sale (although that is a great bonus). Your real objective is to examine the efficiency of your marketing funnel. The more traffic you get the better. But remember, you should not be maxing out credit cards at this stage. Let’s take a look at Step 4…

4) Refine and Test Until You See Results

This is where 90% of beginning marketers stumble. Contrary to popular belief, traffic is not the most important thing to your site. The most important thing you can do is understand how your marketing funnel turns a visitor into a customer.

Now look at your marketing funnel and check for bottlenecks. A bottleneck prevents your visitors from converting to prospects. For example, if you find that only 2% of your visitors are clicking on your eZine ad then your looking at a bottleneck. If only 1% of your prospects are clicking on the “buy” button on your order form – you got it – you’ve got a bottleneck.

Do not invest any more money into your marketing until you are satisfied that you have a friction-free marketing funnel. Master this step and you will have a license to print money.

5) Reinvest Profits for Growth

Now is the time to start investing money to drive traffic to your marketing funnel. As you make sales, take the profit and reinvest it back into gaining quality traffic for your system. For example – if your prospect saw your site on a Traffic Exchange, Visited your Sales Page, and Purchased your product – take the profits and reinvest in the Traffic Exchange, perhaps becoming a Pro member to get more opportunities to advertise to the same pool of people

6) Seek out Complementary Products and Services

Once your system is consistent, predictable and profitable, take the process and apply it to a similar but complimentary market. Follow the same steps exactly. Remember do not invest more money into you understand your marketing funnel and see predictable results.

I suggest a complementary market because your system has a higher chance of succeeding. Most likely, the customers from your current business would also be perfect prospects for a complementary product.

7) Rinse & Repeat

Now you have a Marketing Funnel that yields consistent results. At any moment you can look at your system and know exactly how much profit you will make from every dollar invested. You no longer have to “hope” that your marketing works – you now are completely certain that it will perform as you predicted.

Like Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and Steve Jobs, you have built a marketing system that builds wealth rather than sucking your bank account dry. You have a competitive edge that will allow you to succeed at any business endeavor you choose. Remember the fundamentals and reap the rewards.

Stan “The Ideas Man” Smith is the author of the popular “Billion Dollar Marketing Secret” eReports and the Founder of the Billionaire Marketing Club. Click Here to Claim Your Complimentary Copy of The Billion Dollar Marketing Secret

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The 7 Areas of Marketing Waste – Are You Committing These Marketing Sins?

September 30th, 2011 | Author: Marketing

Who is SocialSonya

If you want to reduce waste and grow your business it can be useful to know where to look. Marketing waste is usually most apparent in these 7 key areas:

1. Activity (over production)

2. People (over capacity)

3. Processes (over complication)

4. Waiting (poor communication)

5. Excessive Communication Costs

6. Trial and Error

7. Excessive Lead Costs

1. Activity (over production)

Too many people doing too many different things. Thousands of brochures produced with no clear plan how to get them in the right hands. Twenty different networking meetings on the horizon, with no time to follow up.

Over production and too much activity is usually a symptom of poor planning. You’re not quite sure what you aim to achieve, but there is budget (or time) to spend and any marketing activity is seen as good activity.

Performing lots of different marketing activities without first having a clear vision and strategy in place is a massive area of waste. Your business may perform well as a result of so much effort (and cost), but how do you know what is working and what isn’t?

Measuring ROI on activity is essential. This will enable you to focus more effectively on the successful activity and completely remove the need for unsuccessful or wasteful marketing approaches to free up capital as profit or to fund other business improvement initiatives.

2. People (over / under capacity)

Too many people involved in the marketing process can also be a big area of waste. In particular, full time marketing managers can waste a lot of time choosing where to spend your money on promotion.

The marketing director or CEO needs to be able to enlist good marketing advice and planning as it is needed and then allow experts outside the company to implement the necessary action. There is no need for an internal marketing manager to oversee this if you use the right marketing consultants. By carefully retaining the services of a marketing consultancy you can gain access to a range of experience that no single individual can ever hope to possess. You can then recruit a more junior but bright person from within your company to liaise with your consultants and yourself.

You can never truly know if your marketing manager is working at full steam and I’m certain that they won’t tell you unless they want more budget to spend on the next CV enhancing fad.

If you are a marketing manager reading this, be honest, maybe you should talk to your boss about a more flexible retained position. This way you can look for other contracts and build your exposure to more businesses which will enhance your ability to perform well.

If you’re a solo or very small business, then the “people” doing your marketing may be just you and you may be suffering from a serious lack of capacity. There comes a time when your lack of time causes waste for your business and holds you back. You must seriously look at the skills gap and address the needs of your business (and your sanity!).

3. Processes (over complication)

Lean Manufacturing (where we learned our trade) deals with the process of moving an order through your supply chain and to your customer. In this instance we’re talking about the marketing process – this deals with acquiring the customer in the first place and how you handle your customers once you have them. For this we use the Lean Marketing Pipeline – would you like a copy? Just send an email to: leanpipeline@aweber.com with “Send Me The Pipeline – I’m Missing Out!” in the subject line and we’ll send you a picture.

To understand your present state you need to map the processes of communication, customer acquisition, customer processing and customer relationships. Then you need to make sure that there are no non-value adding activities. This will enable you to eliminate steps in the process that have literally become bad habits. We have a module called Moments Of Truth in our Toolbooks series, that deals thoroughly with this issue.

Getting your sales and marketing process right will enable you to reduce the cost of gaining new business, dealing with your customers and upselling new services and products.

Other important things to include when refining your processes are measurement tools. Once you begin to measure success against strategic key performance indicators you will have the information to continuously improve and reduce waste even further. If your customer facing processes work well you will also find that customer satisfaction will improve.

4. Waiting (poor communication)

An over hierarchical communication structure can make it very difficult to take action quickly. This lack of flexibility can cause waste in the form of missed opportunities and unnecessary inaction. If the people responsible for implementing marketing for your business are inactive then you are wasting money. We’re not just talking about the hierarchy in your business (you may not have one) – we’re talking about the hierarchies in your marketing consultancy, web developers or ad agency.

If you see marketing as a fundamental part of your business then waiting is rarely a problem. If the CEO or board view marketing as separate from the business, then lower priority will be given to spending and decision making in this area.

Changing communication policy or empowering people closer to your marketing activity with limited (and accountable) financial independence will help to overcome this problem.

5. Excessive Communication Costs

Traditional methods of communication – mail / fax / phone / in-person are relatively expensive, and though still essential, need to be mixed with other more cost effective methods. The Internet is a powerful way to reduce communication costs, but still far too few businesses embrace it as such.

Let’s say that you produce a monthly printed newsletter for your customers. This will involve cost at the following stages: design; copywriting; editing; printing; packing; distribution. Now imagine the same idea using email. The cost areas are: design; copywriting; editing; distribution. Firstly, there are fewer steps (less time) in the email process, but when you look at the steps that are omitted you’ll also find that they are the costs that escalate (stamps, envelopes, printing) as you communicate to a growing audience.

How many times do your people get asked the same questions? Every time they answer a frequently asked question they are performing a duty that does not add value but can’t be ignored. Simply using your website to provide general advice and FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) could reduce your costs (Freephone support line) and free up your people’s time to perform more productive, value added duties.

I’m wondering if… You Know Other People who should be reading this too? So do us all a favour (they get 2 free books – we get a new subscriber – you get to look good) when you Pass On This link… http://www.leanmarketing.co.uk

6. Trial and Error

Trial and error is the inherent waste involved in all marketing. But simply accepting this fact is not good enough. There are ways to reduce the guesswork as well as reducing the cost of targeting and increasing conversions.

The biggest failing of most traditional marketing promotion is that it relies on interrupting people when they aren’t necessarily looking for the product or service you have to offer. Just think what happens when you are watching your favourite TV show; the advertisements are a useful break to make a cup of tea or go to the toilet. They aren’t providing something you were actively looking for by watching TV.

Advertisements in glossy magazines interrupt you when you’re in the middle of an article. They may improve your awareness of a product or service but you’ll rarely welcome the opportunity to read them – you’ll ignore them! The bits of paper and advertisements that are shoved into magazines and Sunday newspapers are also wasteful. If you’re like me then I bet you simply shake the magazine until all of the annoying bits fall out and then throw them in the bin.

You need to find places and procedures for attracting people to look for your solution and find you without interrupting them. A correctly designed and marketed website is the ideal solution.

7. Excessive Lead Costs

What do you currently have to do to find new leads? If you’re in B2C then list brokers are useful, but as soon as you buy a list you’re well aware that the information will be out of date (instant waste). So you pay for your own people or a telesales agency to clean the list. Then you may only get one shot at this list before you pay again. See the problem?

B2B businesses should almost never buy lists. The Internet has opened up a whole range of opportunities for finding information to build your own database.

Every other element of waste involved in promotion (especially trial and error interruptive marketing) is wasting money. You need to look at the important elements of a process and remove the unnecessary. Then with what’s left, ask yourself, “How can we do the same thing cheaper?”

Reducing lead cost can also be achieved by selling more to your existing customers and building referral streams.

Before you make assumptions you’ll need to measure. There are plenty of people who don’t even know how much each lead costs or more importantly how this can be calculated.

So, how many ways can you see for reducing the waste in your marketing? Why not spend a few minutes now to consider how the 7 areas of waste are affecting you?”

Speak Soon,

‘Dangerous’ Debbie Jenkins
debs@debbiejenkins.com

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Guide To Business Marketing

September 25th, 2011 | Author: Marketing

Rick Noel 8 | Internet Marketing Consultant | eBiz ROI

Inspired Business Marketing is about getting to the heart of business problems, and solving them with marketing. Business marketing is one of the most important parts that your business needs to be addressed with careful attention and proactive thoughts. Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.

Small business marketing is a highly creative process that needs to be researched, brainstormed, and nurtured. Effective small business marketing is about creating repeatable processes and systems that consistently apply these principles and strategies. While major corporations have sufficient resources to kick off a thoroughly planned marketing campaign, small business marketing is often on a budget.

Having a marketing strategy can be the life or death of a business. The strategy has three components. Find providers of marketing strategy, ideas and services, resources for small business advertising and business to business marketing assistance. Because with the right marketing strategy, your cash flow will increase. Marketing Strategy strips away the confusion and jargon that surrounds what ought to be one of the most straightforward areas of modern business. If you want your small business to grow, you need a marketing strategy that works.

Advertising is one of the most important investments a company makes for growing its business. Develop a marketing plan and an advertising campaign no matter what your budget. Advertising is a powerful machine for the people to know what’s on the market. Deliver your advertising message effectively and right on target.

For any business to succeed there must be skilled office, marketing, sales, financial and management personnel. One of the easiest ways to bump up your sales is to spruce up your packaging. The integration of marketing and sales is imperative for successful business. Don’t advertise like a Big Business Big businesses advertise to create name recognition and future sales.

The practice of Business Marketing is essentially the management of value creation and delivery. Clearly, the goal in consumer and business marketing is shared: to create customers and capture profitable revenues. Inspired Business Marketing is about getting to the heart of business problems, and solving them with marketing.

That’s right, small business marketing is a system. Small business marketing is your communication to your customers and your promotion to your prospects. Successful small business marketing is about taking action. The name of the game in small business marketing is… Sales.

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The Fundamental Role of Marketing In Business

September 23rd, 2011 | Author: Marketing

Pokemon - Episode 10: Bulbasaur And The Hidden Village (1/2)

One of the things that I think most people in the marketing world take for granted is that everybody understands the fundamental role of marketing in business. Through my daily interactions with other business owners over the past several years, however, I have been amazed at the relative lack of understanding about the importance of marketing. More often than not, marketing is a back seat, tertiary thought that comes after their product/service and daily operations, if it’s even that high of a priority.

One of the phrases that my business partner, James Orr, has coined in the real estate investing realm is that “everything starts with motivated sellers.” Without motivated sellers, there are no properties to buy, rentals to put tenants in, fixer uppers to flip, or deals to wholesale. This is such an important aspect of real estate investing that it’s almost a mantra for the way that James and scores of other successful real estate investors run their businesses. The key to getting in touch with motivated sellers happens to be marketing.

I guess that a good place to start in this discussion is to define what marketing is. Google define tells us that marketing is “the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to satisfy customers.” Marketing really does consist of more than what most people think it does. Marketing is more than just the activities that drive sales. Rather, marketing encompasses all the activities that seek to identify what consumers want and how to promote and deliver those goods and services.

Before an individual or company ever even makes the decision to produce a particular product or service, they should first spend the time to determine if there’s even a market for that offering. If there is a demand, they then need to figure out how to get that offering to the consumers that want it, how to tell consumers that it’s available, and how to price it such that there is money left over for a profit. This is all part of the marketing process, and really should occur before the product itself is even produced.

In more common usage of the term, “marketing” is often seen as only the promotional aspect of a product or service that is already available. This part of marketing consists of making the consumer aware of what you’re offering, and convincing them to buy it. There is a tendency in corporate environments to separate the marketing and sales functions into disparate departments, which is often a mistake. The purpose of the promotional element of marketing is to drive sales, and therefore the two functions are intricately connected. A good example of the disconnect between these two departments is when companies that sell capital equipment have vastly more people in their marketing departments than they do in their field sales force. Another example is when marketing and product development folks ignore the input from the field sales personnel. This input is often derived from actual customer contact, which most employees of large organizations don’t experience.

The prime purpose of one of my blogs is to test marketing promotions using a vast array of messages, media, and markets, which are often referred to as the three M’s of marketing. Before we conduct a test, we first do some background research to determine if there is even a market for what we’re considering selling, and we analyze whether or not we can at least break even on the marketing test using certain realistic assumptions about sales ratios. Pricing strategy is also something we discuss a lot before launching a new test. The actual development of sales copy, writing and placing ads, setting up measurement systems, etc., comes later in the process. Making sales and tracking metrics, then tweaking the marketing, comes next.

Sadly, many business owners don’t understand the importance of marketing. Because of this, they fail to plan for rough spots in the business cycle, such as off seasons, economic downturns, and other events. As the cliche goes, “failing to plan is planning to fail.” Every business should have a marketing plan of some sort, and it should be in writing. Companies that don’t “do” marketing will invariably fail.

In short, without marketing there are no sales. And without sales, there is no revenue. And without revenue, any business will quickly succumb to the statistics that show that nearly 2/3 of all businesses fail within their first 4 years.

About The Author: Jassen Bowman is an Internet marketing consultant and helps run a blog dedicated to testing various marketing methods, media, and messages. Visit the Ruthless Accountability Marketing blog to learn more.

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The 7 Myths of Marketing a Service Business

September 20th, 2011 | Author: Marketing

Work From Home Ideas Website

Myth 1: Marketing is a cost, not an investment

When you spend time and money randomly on marketing, then it probably is an expense because you’re not generating a return on the resources invested in it. Many people make the mistake of emulating the marketing tactics of large companies (such as image advertising) that just don’t produce good returns for small businesses. The fact of the matter is that small businesses have to produce BETTER marketing than large businesses because they can’t afford to make mistakes by dropping hundreds or even thousands of pounds/dollars onto campaigns that don’t work. What often happens is that business owners spend lots of money on ineffective campaigns, then erroneously conclude that marketing is an expense, or not worth doing at all.

However, the secret to marketing success is to create a marketing system. A system of activities, strategies, tactics and automation that reliably and predictably create measurable results and positive ROI. I call this the “marketing slot machine”. It’s a slot machine that for every £1/$1 you put in, you get £1.50, or £2 or £5 or more back out. Once you’ve created this system (which requires a small amount of experimentation and testing), you should be able to turn it on and off at will, and invest as much as you can to gain maximum returns.

Myth 2: Marketing is expensive

Marketing is only expensive (and therefore an expense rather than an investment) when it is either unaccountable or ineffective. There are myriad ways to market you business inexpensively that are highly effective, once you know how. The key is to understand the elements or variables that go into each activity or campaign, and how they affect the ultimate outcome. This is where most people go wrong, and that’s why their marketing fails to produce the results that they’d hoped for. Often the message is weak or confusing, it’s being sent to the wrong people, or they fail to follow up. Get the formula right, and marketing can be very inexpensive – I spend less than £100 per month on marketing and I’m getting great results.

Myth 3: Marketing means I have to be pushy and salesy

Good marketing, done the right way is neither pushy nor salesy. It’s a complete myth that pushy, “gift of the gab” people make the best sales people. Why? Because they spend most of the time talking about themselves or their products and then manipulating people into buying from them. Whilst this used to work, and still does occasionally, it often results in buyers remorse and a general sense of uneasiness on the part of the buyer. Much of the time it creates resistance and a feeling of wanting to run for the hills – have you ever felt like that?

Ironically, the best marketers and salespeople are those who listen. They listen to what potential clients are saying and see if there’s a match between what they offer and what the buyer needs. They build relationships and educate their prospects about how they can help them. The art is to get in front of people who have demonstrated a need or want for what you offer, and who will gladly learn more about what you do and how you can help them.

Myth 4: Marketing produces instant results

Some people believe that if they keep running their adverts/campaigns that they’ll “increase their profile”, and somehow, magically one day, a stampede of clients will come rushing to their door. I don’t subscribe to that theory, because I believe that all marketing should produce a measurable result that can be observed in a fairly short time frame. If you’re marketing efforts are not producing obvious, tangible results then you need to look at the elements that aren’t working.

Having said that, marketing is not something you can usually achieve overnight success in. It’s somewhat like rolling a snowball down a hill – there’s a cumulative effect and momentum increases over time. To create the cumulative effect and momentum requires sustained and consistent effort. Marketing isn’t something you do occasionally, and then put on the back burner. It’s something that you need to do constantly, bit by bit, in the same way that a sportsperson needs to train every day to be good enough for the Olympics.

Myth 5: Once my diary is full, I can stop marketing

It’s human nature that once you’ve got some well-paying work you feel rather pleased with yourself, and focus most of your time on servicing your new clients. However, if you have a sales cycle that’s usually more than a couple of weeks long, then you’re going to come a cropper once the project finishes. Because if you don’t continue to do your marketing whilst you’re working on the project, then at the end of the project you may find that your sales pipeline is empty and you have to start up your marketing all over again. It may then be a number of weeks before people start to progress down your sales pipeline towards actually doing business with you. This is what is commonly referred to as the “feast and famine” syndrome.

If you prefer to avoid these peaks and troughs of income producing activity, then you need to think about how you can do a little bit of marketing on a consistent basis. Even better – create a marketing system that easily and reliably entices prospects into your sales pipeline without huge amounts of effort from you.

Myth 6: My business is small, so I don’t need a marketing plan

I tried some marketing plan software once. It asked me a lot of questions about market share, mission statements plus product, price, promotion and place. Great fun, if your mind likes to chew on such imponderables. As a graduate of a business studies degree I knew exactly what it was referring to, but had no idea how that was useful to a small business. And guess what – that’s because it isn’t!

No wonder then, that most small businesses don’t have written marketing plans, when traditional style marketing plans seem convoluted and esoteric. However, this doesn’t mean that a marketing plan in your head is any better. The question is whether this results in any organised activity.

And to me, that’s the essence of a marketing plan – a blueprint for organising your marketing activities. It doesn’t have to be high-falutin’ or fancy, or be filled with marketing-jargon, but what it does need to do is focus resources on specific action steps that need to be taken to achieve specific goals. There’s a world of difference between carrying ideas around in your head, and writing them down into an organised plan of action.

If you don’t have a written marketing plan, then I urge you to consider this: research suggests that businesses that create a written marketing plan increase their revenue by about 30% after having created one.

Myth 7: External marketing help is expensive

If you enlist the help of what I refer to as “traditional” marketing consultants, then it probably is expensive. You’re probably looking at thousands down in one shot, rather than hundreds and probably no guarantees of success. It’s quite possibly a stark choice between taking the family on holiday, or paying for your PR or marketing consultant.

If giving up your family holiday doesn’t appeal, then you may choose to go down the route of taking training courses, reading books, attending seminars, enrolling on e-courses and all manner of other self-study options. The problem with all of this, is that there is rarely any hands-on, customised support for you and your business. And, there’s no accountability – or as I like to say – a friendly kick in the pants to keep you on track. It may also take you quite literally years of trial and error to find out what works for your business. And that’s assuming that you even implement what you’ve learnt, which, sadly, most people don’t.

However, a new alternative has emerged in recent years – marketing mentoring or coaching. Rather than paying thousands to have a marketing consultant do it all for you, or struggling up the learning curve by yourself, you now have the option to work with a coach or mentor who can advise you, guide you and show you how to do your marketing for yourself. Plus they’ll make sure you stay on track. If attracting more clients is important to you, and you haven’t yet created your own “marketing slot machine” then I highly recommend you find a marketing coach who will help you create a marketing system that works for you.

Jane Hendry helps professionals, consultants and coaches to create marketing systems that easily and consistently attract their ideal clients. To get your f*ree Attraction Marketing Starter Kit please visit http://www.attractioneers.com

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Trade Show ROI: Why Trade Shows Give You the Most Bang for Your Marketing Bucks

September 20th, 2011 | Author: Marketing

Rick Noel 8 | Internet Marketing Consultant | eBiz ROI

No matter how much money you have in your marketing budget, it seems there’s never enough. From the marketing department at Microsoft to the small nonprofit start-up, there’s always the desire to expand your budget for more effective promotion.

On the surface, trade shows may not seem to be the best use of those marketing dollars. But when you factor in some basic components of effective marketing strategy, such as target audience, immediate one-on-one personal attention and follow-up, there are few marketing strategies that produce such a strong return on investment.

Now, a good marketing plan will include more than just attending trade shows. For maximum exposure in your market, you must have a multi-faceted approach: network marketing, marketing materials, a website and trade show marketing These tools and strategies are just a handful of effective marketing techniques, and generally perceived as the most essential. And while each technique has its strengths, none will give you the return on investment that you will receive from exhibiting at a trade show.

Network Marketing

This is one of the oldest, most effective, time-tested methods of marketing. Before there were business cards and brochures, offices and telephones, marketing strategy and advertising budgets, business owners promoted themselves by literally speaking to customers one-by- one. Idealistically, speaking to one person and asking to be referred to friends who may match your demographic creates a ripple effect and brings customers to your door.

The downside of this age-old tactic is the time involved. As a professional, time is money. In order to network, you must attend meetings and go to events that may be of interest to your target market and personally introduce yourself to people one-by-one. In addition, you often pay membership fees for some of these networking functions. The problem is, these meetings and events are smaller gatherings of people, and you are not going to be able to cover the ground that you would at a larger gathering.

Marketing Materials and Website

Most businesses arm themselves with business cards, brochures and other print marketing materials to distribute to the public. And increasingly, the essential need for a website has become standard for any smart marketing plan. Without these basics covered, you will find it quite challenging to compete in your market, no matter what type of business you are in.

The print materials are a good start but allocating the costs of reproducing and mailing them, and the process of constantly updating them, are no small tasks. Websites are an incredibly powerful marketing tool because any business – whether one employee strong or tens of thousands strong – can present you to a global audience. But like the printed materials, the site must be maintained and continuously updated to truly have impact. In addition, because neither of these tools lack interactivity with the prospect, you are not immediately able to guide their interpretations of the information or answer their questions.

Trade Shows

There’s two reasons trade shows draw millions of people from all around the world each year – a targeted audience and face-to-face, one-on-one contact.

The trade show is similar to network marketing but on a much larger scale. You have a large target audience swirling around you, so you conquer the first big hurdle of marketing – weeding out the people who are not interested in your industry (because they aren’t going to attend the trade show). And face time with your prospects enables you to further pre-qualify them to set a smooth landing for a follow-up or a sale.

The only possible objection with trade shows is the expense of them. When calculating your trade show budget, you must factor in travel expenses such as airfare, ground transportation and accommodations, meals, snacks, giveaways, the cost of being out of the office, the cost of your trade show display, and trade show exhibit fees.

The costs can really add up and, on paper, may make your finance manager reach for the antacid. But there is no other marketing opportunity that affords you personal contact with such a concentrated target market. In the end, attending a trade show is likely to produce the largest pool of qualified leads when compared to many other marketing tools – giving you the best return on your marketing investment.

Trade shows are a crucial ingredient of your marketing strategy. While networking, printed marketing materials, your website and trade show marketing are all interwoven to execute an effective plan, the trade show provides the highest volume of potential customers and is the most direct. Attend trade shows on a regular basis and the results will likely eliminate any second guesses you may have about the money spent.

Mat Kelly is the president of ExhibitDEAL, the Original Exhibit Wholesaler specializing in trade show displaysand accessories. The company has different types of trade show displays to fit every need and budget. For info, visit: http://www.exhibitdeal.com/

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Guide To Business Marketing

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