Category Difinition of Marketing

There is a reason why it is called “social” media and there are rules that you should follow when it comes to employing “social media” to market and brand yourself and your art. Every day I see small businesses that are ruining their brand by abusing social media. Artists are no different, as they are a “small business” too! Here are some quick rules of social media that you should follow:
1. When a social media account is set up make sure that all of the information is complete and well written. Think of this page or your profile as a business brochure. Whenever possible, have links to your website, contact information and alternative ways for people to find you. Always upload an up-to-date “professional” picture of yourself and make sure that you have a pleasant smile on your face too!
2. Set aside some time each day to visit your social media pages and do some housecleaning. Read the posts, messages and any updates. Return your messages and comments promptly. A half hour a day is all you need to devote to this.
3. Always reply back to someone who has sent to you a post or comment and acknowledge it in some form. If someone makes a comment on your art, send them a thank you note. This can be done right on the page or privately back through their email. Either way thank them for their nice comment, thought or interest. It is the right thing to do.
4. If someone tries to engage you in some form of negativity, political, religious, controversial or otherwise. Do not take the bait! Ignore it and move on. If they persist in this behavior, you may have to unfriend them, block them or report them. Whatever you do, do not engage yourself with someone like this as you will not win and you will only waste your time. Being a part of this type of behavior will only hurt your brand.
5. Be helpful to be people. If you read or see something that someone might be interested in, send them a link. Always be responsive if they ask questions or have concerns, get back to them with an answer. If you do not know, say so.
Think twice before you send anything out. Try to imagine that every friend, follower or contact that you have on your social media pages will be reading your reply or post and that they will form an opinion of you by what you have written.
6. Neatness counts. By this I mean, shortcuts, abbreviations and poor spelling may be acceptable in some forms of social media. Here, it is not wise, as again, this is your “company brochure” and it is an important part of your marketing and brand development.
7. Engage your followers with information, content and ideas. Become an expert in your niche and share it with others. No one really cares what you are drinking at Starbucks at that moment. …

Just about sixty-three percent of consumers will go to the internet to do research about your martial arts business before they contact you. About eighty-percent will start with a search engine.
Once they land on your site your you have about three seconds to capture their attention. If you don’t have some sort of lead generating and capture device your prospective martial arts student will go right on to the next martial arts business and forget about you.
Use compelling offers and give good value to get a lead into your marketing funnel.
When it comes to search engines.
To stay ahead on Internet Marketing trends it’s best to watch the big boys…
The big boys like Google of course – but also big internet retailers. Why? Because the competition for search engine placement is fierce for these companies.
Competing in your local area for search engine placement is easy compared to what these companies fight for!
So here’s what happened…
Back in April of 2010 Google made changes to their algorithm. One retailer, Ham-Go Dot Com, dropped from 5000 visitors per day to just 1200! OUCH!
Search Engine Optimization is something that needs to be kept up on if you want your martial arts business to remain visible.
Why?
– Changes like the one described above.
– New Competition coming into the market.
– And competitors who get savvy.
An 80% drop in your web traffic would not be good thing.
Of course – and 80% increase would be nice wouldn’t it?? So be sure your website for your martial arts school is based on solid marketing principles. Then, maintain your search engine strategy.…

Everyone is in business for a different reason, and my motivation is the love of my work. I absolutely love researching new products and testing out different markets, but that wasn’t true when I was starting out. I was motivated by money, which is not enough motivation for most people to truly reach success. I know what your thinking, “Yeah Right, money will keep me motivated”. Sure, money will keep you motivated for a while, but when you decide to make affiliate marketing a long term career, you better make sure you are keeping yourself properly motivated. Let’s look at a few things that keep me motivated throughout my everyday business routine.
1.) I start by creating a plan about products that spark my interest and are still profitable. There are many affiliate companies on the internet, so if you don’t like the products that the one your currently using offers try a different company.
2.) Keep a positive outlook and figure out what your market needs and wants. Many internet marketers fail, because they don’t want to take the time to understand what their market wants and needs. You cannot just throw up a sales page that was half thought out and think that you are going to make sales. There is a lot of trial and error involved in selling products on the internet, so don’t be surprised if your first attempt fails. Maybe you are falling short on your research and marketing efforts somehow.
3.) Admit to yourself when you are wrong or if your products is failing. There are many different types of people in this world, and everyone single one of them has a different product choice. More time’s than not you shouldn’t be saying that the product is terrible, but my marketing skills are failing.
Affiliate Marketing is a tough ball game, but if you keep the proper mindset and stay motivated, the sky is the limit. Keep your head up and your marketing game tight, I will be looking for you in the winners circle.…

Offline marketing doesn’t have to be hard. The easiest way to simplify your marketing efforts is to find a marketing strategy that is bringing you in the most response, and focus on that one marketing strategy online. This will turn you into an expert on this marketing strategy immediately.
And this is important. Because if you want to make more money in your business, it’s more important to be a “marketer” of your business, rather than an “expert” of your niche. Without a lot of prospects and customers coming into your doors, you’ll find it extremely hard to profit immensely in your business.
Inside of this article, I want to share with you some of my favorite marketing strategies that you can start using in your business today. I currently use all of these strategies, and they all have been proven to work for me also. Let’s go and take a look at marketing strategy number 1:
1) Operate in a niche
It’s tough to sell and get responses from a broad group of people who could possibly belong to an entirely different niche that you’re selling to. If you want to get the biggest bang for your buck, then it’s important that you operate in a niche market. So what exactly is “niche marketing”? Well I’m glad you asked.
Niche marketing is all about carving out a segment of a large marketplace, and focusing your efforts on these people alone. For example, there are a lot of products on the market today about how to become a better fisherman. Now you could operate in this money, but it would probably take you a long time to turn a profit selling to these people.
The easiest way to start making money selling to fisherman is to carve out a sub niche out of these groups of people. So instead of selling broadly to fisherman, focus on selling to “fly fisherman.” Or instead of selling broadly to fisherman, focus on selling to “bass fisherman.” This one change alone can help you to boost your sales and profits almost immediately.
Here’s another tip for marketing in your small business.
2) Don’t over think
The best that you can do for yourself is to get out there and start getting your feet wet. This small step will prepare you for what’s ahead in your business’s long-lasting success. By “throwing yourself into the wolves,” you’ll learn quickly and will discover 1 or 2 marketing strategies that really work the best for you. And once you find these 1 or 2 strategies, put them to work for yourself so that you can see more sales and profits coming your way today.
But whatever you do, don’t over think. Keep your mind focused on the end result (sales), and get out there and start promoting your products and services. You’ll be more than happy that you did.
Hopefully you will use these 2 marketing tactics to have the most success in your business as possible. I …

Marketing your business online is one of the best things that you can do these days, considering that many people are now looking for products and buying things online as well. If you want to take advantage of this, read on to learn some online marketing tips that will help boost your sales and make more profits online.
Here are some online marketing tips that you might find useful if you want to succeed online in boosting your profits as well as making money with your website.
– Make a website design that is friendly to online readers as well as the search engines. In the online world, you have to make sure that your website design is friendly to users. Make sure you use colors and design that are pleasing to the eyes and make sure also that your website is easy to navigate.
– Choose a profitable niche fit for your business. If you want to make money with your website, choose a niche that you are an expert about. However, it is important that you also have to weigh things out in choosing your niche. Even if it is your interest or your passion if it is not something that many people would want to look up online, then you may find it hard to make money on your website. Choose a profitable niche if you want to be successful right from the start.
– Learn how to research proper keywords. Keywords are important elements of any online campaign, as this will bring potential customers to your website, that is if you launch a good campaign and you identified good keywords for your business. In choosing your keywords, you can use free tools online and make sure you know how to beat competition as well as. You can research their search volume online and make sure that you choose keywords that are in demand but with lesser competition.
– Master search engine optimization. SEO or search engine optimization is one of the basic things that you need to learn to be able to succeed in internet marketing. In fact, one of the main online marketing tips that you have to learn are SEO techniques, strategies as well as tactics that will help you outsmart your competitors and make it to the top spot of the search engine results page where your business will be given exposure to your target market.
– Learn the many ways to advertise and promote businesses online. Indeed, a big part of marketing your products or services online is to advertise and promote your business online. Among the popular ways to promote your business online are pay per click marketing, banner advertising, press releases, promoting it in social networking sites, affiliate marketing, article marketing, promoting it through videos and many other techniques that allow you to provide exposure to your business.
Although advertising online is relatively cheap, bear in mind that with a poor online marketing campaign, it can also cost you a …

Hey guys, I’ve got some more email marketing tips for you today. Today we’re going to look at how you can get more mailing list subscribers, and more importantly why you need as many subscribers as possible. So let’s get started.
First of all, why do you need to get more mailing list subscribers? Well, as some of you may know “The money’s in the list”. What this basically means is if you have a strong mailing list you can make a lot of money from it. The people who subscribe to your list are often your most loyal subscribers, so treat them well and they will treat you well in return. For those that want to know how to build a list fast, we’ve a few tips. Firstly, offer your website visitors an incentive to subscribe to you. You won’t get many subscribers if you don’t give anything to them in return for their email addresses, so give them a free eBook or seven day course. This will drastically increase the amount of opt ins you get, so get that sorted asap.
Another way of getting more subscribers is by setting up a squeeze page and using social media to drive more traffic to it. Using Twitter and Facebook you can gain new subscribers, and often fast (Especially with Twitter). The thing with Twitter is your marketing on it can be fully automated with the right tools. Therefore you simply press a few buttons and the software will add and message a load of people for you. These people are then directed back to your site and you should get some subscribers from every add load you send out.
If you want to really make money online you need to build your list. Make sure you reward your responsive subscribers as they will make you money in the long run. Good luck with doing just that.…

Every business owner that I know are always looking for that extra boost that will take their business to the next level. And believe it or not, there are a lot of things that you can do to make this extra “boost” happen for you. It all lies in how you market your business, and the marketing strategies that you are using.
If you’re still stuck on the traditional forms of marketing like cold calling, door to door, or telemarketing, there’s a good chance that your business won’t be as profitable that you’d hoped it would be. Using techniques like these are harmful for your business, and they just waste time and produce very little response.
But if you want to boost your sales instead of being miserable about not having a lot of customers, then this article is for you. Inside of this article, you will learn about some great marketing techniques that will allow you to earn as much profits as possible so that you can start earning the big bucks in your business that you desire. In fact, let’s take a look at some of the strategies that you could be using to make money in your business today.
1) Direct mail
This is a classic strategies that still works today. The most important part of any successful direct mail campaign is the list. You could have a mediocre product and a weak sales letter, but if your list is really good… you will still get sales even for a bad promotional effort.
Where you get your leads is important. Start at your local library and ask them about something called the SRDS. It stands for “standard rate and data service”, and it contains a multitude of responsive mailing lists that you can buy and use, to start marketing your product right away.
Don’t be afraid to use the SRDS. It’s just another tool in the game of money – and a very effective tool at that. You can even search it on the internet at . This may make things easier for you. Here’s something else that you could be doing in your business.
2) Joint venture marketing
With joint venture marketing, all you’re doing is sharing a partnership between yourself and another business owner in your city. This kind of alliance is something that can make you a lot of money if you know what you’re doing. You don’t want to approach rival competitors for JV opportunities, because they can take your existing customers away from you.
Instead, seek out businesses who have a similar target audience that you have. This way you can offer them around a 60% commission for every sale made. This is something that will raise the eyebrows on your potential partner. Make sure you learn how to write a joint venture proposal letter, because it’s something that you will want to master if you want a potential partner to take you seriously.
Use both of these 2 tips to earn …

If you have a website in order to generate a steady income, or plan to create one, you need to know how social media marketing can be used to your advantage. Making your online presence known is but one of the best ways to bring in faithful customers.

Start a conversation with your customers. Getting feedback from a customer is the first step to starting a conversation about improving your business. Talking openly with your customers is necessary to improve your products. Make it your mission to learn everything you can about their needs, and use this information to make your next move more effective, or improve your company as a whole.

Offer exclusive deals to customers who sign up for your social media sites in order to attract customers to those sites. They’re more likely to follow you if they can get deals only by doing so.

Look into adjusting your Twitter account to ensure the posts on your blog are tweeted automatically. An option for you is to pick a few bloggers that always post professional looking content and link to their posts. Your Twitter followers will appreciate the quality content, and the bloggers will welcome the exposure.

If you decide to use YouTube for videos, be sure there is a link back to your site, as well as buttons for Facebook or Twitter. This allows you to reach a broader base of customers, and your YouTube users will more than likely pass on your videos to others.

Yahoo offers an excellent opportunity for promoting your product in their question and answer section. Users submit their questions here and other users can answer them for free. Look for unanswered questions that relate to your products and services, and find a way to organically recommend those products and services as part of the solution. You could quickly become an expert by providing quality answers, in a particular category.

All your blog posts should show up on your LinkedIn web page if you have the blog feed. An article can be posted and will immediately update on your LinkedIn page. This will allow you to save time and you’ll enjoy more exposure on LinkedIn.

Make sure you track your progress. You should keep track of your traffic and how many brand new subscribers you get each week. In order to identify the most effective decisions you have come up with so far for developing better strategies, work to link the figures with your actions. If you fail to take note of results, you may never know whether or not social media can work for you.

Offer exclusive coupons and discounts to those who follow you on social media sites. This will let your clientele feel privileged, and you can boost your sales.

At first, you’ll notice a small rise in traffic. It will build gradually as you draw in customers throughout the area you are targeting. If you do this correctly and sell the right kind of product, your customers …

Marketing online is vital to business success. Video marketing will help you reach a wider audience. If you’re not sure how to use video marketing to promote your business, keep reading.

Make sure your videos have been optimized. When you upload videos to more than one site, you should have unique titles and descriptions for every one. Be sure to use targeted keywords, as well. You should also include information in case a potential customer needs to contact you.

There should be a screen grab of your website within your video. This will allow viewers to see how your website is set up. How-to videos also could benefit from website screenshots. Take your screenshot, and use video software to include it in your video.

Your titles are very important. A title that’s powerful and relevant to the video will draw people to it. This is your best bet for catching and holding their attention. Take time to make relevant and creative titles for great video marketing.

Make sure you understand that making your videos is only half the battle. Promotion is also a huge part of the process. Appropriate marketing efforts of your videos will result in a ten-fold increase to your total number of click-throughs. Include quality information, but don’t be shy about letting others know what you have done.

Use a team of others to help you think of video content. You don’t have to include coworkers if you don’t want to. You could instead choose to include family, friends or an affiliated organization. Put their names in the credits at the end of the video.

Don’t stray from your topic. It’s easier than you think to stray off course, especially when you aren’t properly prepared. Make an outline and stick to it. Keep your videos focused and you will have success at video marketing.

Don’t overlook YouTube. Begin your campaign of video marketing there! One reason is because you’ll obtain free video hosting. This is also a very popular website. In addition, it’s the second largest search engine, as well as the largest video site.

Come up with a good introduction and conclusion for your video. You need to indicate who you work for, as well as, your name. The video should end with your company name and an invitation to click a link to your site.

Make sure to mention your other social links within your video. Someone who accidentally finds you on YouTube might not have the slightest clue that you are also on Facebook. Promoting other sites drives your business to them. When you link your social media to your videos, traffic will increase to both.

If you aren’t great with video, get others to do them for you. Have a contest with customers to make the best video. Also, let the contestants know that video that wins will be a commercial on your site.

Now that you have read this article, you realize how useful a video can be to your business. Using …

The Internet offers a wealth of marketing opportunities for a savvy business owner. One of your best options is video marketing. When you create videos promoting your product or service, you can spread the news of your excellent wares around the world. The following tips will get you off on the right foot.

Don’t be fearful of video marketing. Anyone with a camera and a sturdy tripod can make a video to post online. Demonstrate to your viewers the production and design processes that go into the finished product, or explain more about your organization and its values.

Keep your business relevant to today’s audiences through video marketing. Have your customers send questions related to your products, select the best questions and answer them in your weekly video. Make a contest out of it by giving away some freebies to the customers whose questions you use.

Keep in mind that YouTube has editing tools available. For example, you have the option to add annotations throughout your videos. As a result, you can publicize a link, give out useful facts or provide viewers with a discount off your product.

Don’t think that anyone is going to watch a 20 minute video. You can go that long only if you’re doing a very in-depth how-to video. If you just want to get your name out there or give them a deal, do not go longer than 10 minutes.

Making a video is just part of the battle. Getting lots of viewers is all about how you promote your videos. Appropriate marketing efforts of your videos will result in a ten-fold increase to your total number of click-throughs. Make good content, but also make sure people know it is up.

If your customers do not understand how to properly use your products, a video may be called for. This will help resolve any problems your current customers have, and it will also encourage new customers to purchase your products because they know that you will answer their questions.

If you want people to purchase something, it is important to have a visible and working link. Better yet, place the link within the video itself. That way, the link will stay with the video if the video gets shared or embedded elsewhere.

Don’t forget to include a form for your opt-in mailing list on the page where the video is found. People may want to sign up to get more information on the topic the video is presenting, and this is the perfect time for you to slip in your sales pitch.

Do not place the brunt of video marketing on your shoulders. It’s not possible to think of every great idea on your own. Brainstorming with family, friends, and staff can help with idea generation for content focus. Meet up and do those sessions often, to be sure you are working at the top of your game.

When you market with videos, you reach a global audience. The widespread availability of the Internet …