Branding Yourself As An Authority

Branding is VERY, VERY important. Today, the average consumer is spoilt for choices and only the ‘best’ wins. Now, you may not have the ‘best’ product in the world, yet you can position yourself as the ‘best’ with a few good marketing [...]]]> Let’s explore what are the most important benefactors in marketing.

Branding Yourself As An Authority

Branding is VERY, VERY important. Today, the average consumer is spoilt for choices and only the ‘best’ wins. Now, you may not have the ‘best’ product in the world, yet you can position yourself as the ‘best’ with a few good marketing strategies.

What makes you different from the guy down the street? In order to succeed in whatever field that you are in, do you know that you need to establish yourself as some kind of authority on the product or service that you are providing?

People in the 21st century are inherently skeptical because there are a thousand and one other brands out there. It is much harder to acquire a new customer than it is compared to keeping an existing one.

When you have the expert branding, people are more likely to treat you as an authority and listen to every word you say rather than treating you like a sleazy salesman trying to get into their pockets.

Branding yourself also gives you tremendous CONFIDENCE! After all, when people listen to you and they take notes, you know you’ve hit the jackpot!

Building Your Credibility

Credibility is very closely associated with branding. Branding will help you to get the first sale, but your credibility is what keeps people coming back for MORE! When you have built your credibility in your business as a trusted brand, it takes far less time to get repeat sales from existing customers and the people they refer compared to convincing them from scratch.

Don’t look down on the customer with a buying power of $3 or less. A customer that spends $3 over a period of 2 years can amount to a lot of money. Furthermore, they are likely to recommend other customers to your doorstep!

Remember the story about the foolish milkman? The foolish milkman refuses to service a young chap who lives far down the street. He thinks that it is not worth the trouble. He doesn’t realize that that young chap will someday get married and have 3-4 kids who will consume much more milk somewhere down the line! Never ever discount a single customer!

And that’s not all, when you are credible, you become the ‘go to’ guy when people think of the product or service that you are offering (therefore saving you time and money in acquiring new clients and customers).

Is Your Business Scalable?

Scalability is very important. You can’t do everything by yourself as you only have 24 hours in a day. Can you leverage or outsource your tasks?

In any business model, you must be able to find a business model that scales upwards. In other words, it means that the business will earn you more money the longer you are in that industry.

If the business or the market that you are in requires you to work longer and longer for the same amount of pay, then you either need to innovate a new idea or get out of it as soon as possible.

Build Your Business Flexibly

Nothing is permanent in the 21st century. Now it is not about the strongest that survives but rather the one that adapts to changes quickly!

You must be able to adapt quickly to market changes like rising costs and changes in the demand. If you are not good at adapting, you will miss out on a lot of opportunities.

You don’t want to start changing only when you are running out of money or when all your customers have ran away to your competitors! By then it would be too late!

One of the most important aspects of building an online business is to [...]]]> Online users are always searching for something of value to them. Whether it’s information, products, or services, they are looking for an answer to a question or a problem. Online marketing tactics are especially important with the increase in competition across the internet.

One of the most important aspects of building an online business is to create a business that values and appreciates customers and potential customers. This means marketing tactics that build a strong, trusting relationship with customers are important. Building trust starts with the first encounter with your website and continues with every single subsequent interaction.

According to Nobel Prize-winning scientist Daniel Kahneman, we experience approximately 20,000 moments each and every day. A moment is the few seconds it takes for the brain to evaluate and record an experience. These experiences can be either positive or negative and your website, headlines, content, or responses can make a huge difference in how people record the experience – and their reaction also determines what people do next.

When people visit your site, they quickly scan the headline to see if they want to read more. They continue reading if they are engaged and intrigued and they want to learn more about what you have to say. This is a great place to start building a relationship with customers. Be sure that you say what you have to offer and do not make false promises or you’ll lose customers quickly.

It’s important to build this connection with customers and website visitors to gain their commitment and loyalty. They will also become tremendous assets as their trust grows and they promote and advertise your website to their friends, colleagues, and social network.

Relationship marketing is a valuable marketing tactic for online entrepreneurs. It has been an important part of sales in the off-line world for decades and now it has found its way to the Internet.

But building a relationship online is different than having a face-to-face discussion and opportunity to persuade potential customers to make a purchase.

Some of the most effective tips and methods deployed to begin building a positive relationship include:

1. Make every customer interaction count.

2. Follow-through on commitments and claims about products or services.

3. Offer benefits and product value that responds to the customer’s desires.

4. Treat customers as individuals who are respected and valued.

5. Listen to customers – even complaints can be a gift if handled properly and quickly.

6. Be available and accessible when customers have questions, concerns, or comments.

7. Surround your customers with valuable information by using emails, website content, social media, and other methods of outreach – but do not be invasive.

8. Make your website user-friendly and easy to navigate for new and existing customers.

9. Create a blog about your business where discussion is more casual and inviting.

Relationship-marketing is not just a fad. It’s here to stay and people want to know that they are valued and appreciated as an individual. Creating long-lasting relationships helps to ensure long-lasting customers and repeat sales. It also encourages existing customers to refer their colleagues, friends, and others to your website.

Don’t take a single customer for granted. Each and every interaction with a customer is a gift and should be valued.

Blogging

This is the way to create an online presence without the technical issues of owning your own website (that comes later). For a start, you can [...]]]> A lot of people hit a brick wall when it comes to deciding what products and/or services to offer over the Internet. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Blogging

This is the way to create an online presence without the technical issues of owning your own website (that comes later). For a start, you can opt for blogs with free hosting that come with already installed features and easy setup. Blog about anything that you find interesting and will be interesting to other readers. A blog with a niche will perform better a personal one. Blogs can also make money with programs like Google Adwords and AdSense. Pay per Click advertising also works for generating revenue.

Internet Research

Anyone who can navigate the Internet and find out almost anything, can market themselves as an Internet researcher. Large and small companies will pay you to find out information for them, and create reports from the research.

Selling Products

If you have a hobby like making and selling crafts you can expand your business online with a website. Set up a website that caters to your product offerings. Market these products online to drive traffic to your website.

Selling On eBay

With this idea, you set up shop on the Internet. You can sell products you created or items you own that you want to sell. Many now make a living selling on eBay. As your business grows, you can expand to involve other product markets.

Freelancing

Many online and offline businesses are looking for help. Freelancers lower the overhead of the company thus becoming more profitable for many jobs than hiring someone to work in the office. Depending on your talent, hire yourself out as a freelance writer, graphic artist, website designer or programmer.

Virtual Assistant

Virtual assistants are the going trend for many businesses. In the beginning, virtual assistants performed the administrative duties of a company from their home. Now, VA’s can be found in all career specialties like medical, real estate, marketing and publishing. They perform tasks above administrative work such as website administrator, report creation and Internet research.

Membership Sites

You see more of these around these days. With a membership site, you choose a niche, such as online marketing. Customers pay to join at a certain level (gold, silver, bronze) and are rewarded with certain perks for their membership that include newsletters, videos or articles on marketing and services to help expand their own business. You create the website and supply the materials yourself or through outsourcing each month to your members.

Running a successful internet business can look so simple when you are on the outside looking in. You look at a successful internet entrepreneur and he doesn’t look like he is doing anything special but he is living the good life. It really doesn’t look like he is working all that hard. He seems to [...]]]>

Running a successful internet business can look so simple when you are on the outside looking in. You look at a successful internet entrepreneur and he doesn’t look like he is doing anything special but he is living the good life. It really doesn’t look like he is working all that hard. He seems to be enjoying life immensely.

All he is doing is sitting comfortably in front of his own computer in his own very comfortable home a few hours a day. He talks on the telephone and seems to be enjoying every conversation.

Apparently, running a successful internet business is the proverbial ‘piece of cake’! Right? WRONG!!! Wrong, wrong, wrong!

You are looking at the results of a very, very long and tedious process that consisted of many very long, late-night hours and a lot of blood, sweat and tears over a period of several years.

It is more than a little bit likely that he first placed four corner stones first as he began the long process of building his successful Internet business. Those four cornerstones upon which he built his success are:

Having The Right, Healthy Mindset

The success of any business both of the online variety as well as the offline variety require the right mindset from the get-go.

A right and healthy mind set will not guarantee success but a wrong and unhealthy or unrealistic mindset will most assuredly guarantee failure. So the right mind set is the first corner stone that must be laid upon which a successful business can be constructed.

What is a right and healthy mindset? There are things that it is as well as things that it isn’t.

A right and healthy mindset IS the willingness to work as hard and as long as is necessary to achieve the goals that has been set. A right and healthy mindset ISN’T the belief that success will be easy, quick or painless.

Those who believe that they can make an internet business enterprise thrive without having to actually put in any time or effort are simply doomed to failure from the beginning.

There are schemers and scammers out there in cyberspace that are just waiting eagerly for those to come along who are looking for easy riches.

A right and healthy mindset IS the willingness to take the time to make a good, solid business plan that is based upon sound business principles.

A right and healthy mindset ISN’T just jumping in feet first and hoping for the best. The best that can happen under those circumstances is that you get out with anymore than two cents to your name.

‘Flying by the seat of your pants’ is NOT a plan…it is just plain suicide in the world of internet marketing. If you don’t have a formal education in business, you need to find people who do have that kind of education and seek then follow their advice.

Recognizing And Using Leverage

There are dozens of business models out there. Some are more successful than others but they all come with their own set of pros and cons.

The idea is to get the most bang for the buck. You need to use all of the power of the Internet to make your e-business successful. You really cannot afford to leave any stone unturned.

If you are a real go-getter, the temptation is to do everything first and that isn’t possible. You need to make a realistic plan and build one thing upon another until you have a good solid base from which to operate.

Once you get a website built, you will need to begin leveraging SEO (search engine optimization) and gaining page rank.

One thing does lead to another, of course, but one of the quickest ways to leverage SEO is to add a blog to your website. This is a way that you can get much more quickly indexed by the search engines.

Leveraging also includes branding yourself, your website and your products. One of the quicker ways to begin to get yourself branded is by investing in PLR (Private Label Rights) products and changing the names of those products to include your own name or logo. (Don’t forget that there must be some rewriting done.)

This is probably the quickest way to become branded as well as gain credibility on the internet.

Remember that reputation and credibility are everything on the internet. Don’t take any shortcuts and never damage or allow others to damage either.

It Is Not What You Know, But Who You Know

That is an old saying. “It is not What you know, but Who you know that counts”. Setting a cornerstone of good solid relationships is an important aspect of building a successful e-enterprise.

Working hard at building good solid business relationships is worth every minute of time that you invest in it. Business relationship building should be one of your top priorities.

In order to build business relationships, you insert yourself into business situations where you will meet others who have businesses that are similar to or complimentary to your own business. You develop relationships over a period of time.

There are several ways in which to accomplish this task. One way is to participate in teleseminars or webinars that are related to your business.

You will learn a lot, of course, but equally important, you will come in contact with those who are already succeeding in the niche market that you are working in.

Of course, attending real brick and mortar world seminars is an even better way to begin to build friendly business relationships with not only your peers but also with those who are in a position to help you.

Find A Capable Mentor

It isn’t likely that there is a more valuable asset that a new e-entrepreneur can have than a good and capable mentor. Someone who has already made all of the mistakes can help you to avoid making all of the mistakes yourself.

They have the wisdom that comes from experience to point out pitfalls and to help direct you toward the better of choices.

Of course, these successful internet marketers are not going to be interested in wasting their time on a person who has not already worked hard to lay those first three cornerstones themselves.

These potential mentors are looking for newcomers who show that they have a right and healthy mindset, who are working hard at leveraging and who are well aware of how important it is to know all the players and the RIGHT people.

It short, the newcomer most likely to get a mentor is one who is already working hard and helping himself and not looking for someone who can just smooth the way for him.

Even big international businesses can fail at new business ventures. Failure is always an option but the possibility of success can be optimized.

You can optimize the possibility of success by:

Having a good solid business plan in place [...]]]> The thing about starting a business, any business, is that there is no guarantee of success under any circumstances.

Even big international businesses can fail at new business ventures. Failure is always an option but the possibility of success can be optimized.

You can optimize the possibility of success by:

Having a good solid business plan in place BEFORE you launch your online business.

There is an old saying: “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail”. A detailed set of plans for success needs to be made. You need to have the steps from getting from point A to point B listed in great detail that include realistic cost estimates for accomplishing each step.

Expecting to work very hard to accomplish your goals.

You must never expect anything to be easy. You will be right most of the time because things are rarely as easy as they look. Each step toward success requires work, time and patience. Sometimes things don’t work out right on the first try. You have to be willing to try again and again until you do succeed.

Not falling for ‘get-rich-quick schemes.

The internet woods are full of those who prey upon those who are looking for quick and easy ways to
become rich. Those ways do not exist. Get over thinking that there is an easy way. There is NOT.

Remember those statistics! Ninety percent of all new internet businesses fail in the first 120 days. You don’t have to be part of that majority. You can become a part of that 10% minority of successful internet business
enterprises.

Wrong Perceptions About The Internet

The 90% failure rate of new Internet businesses really isn’t all that surprising when you stop to think about the people who are starting internet businesses.

For some unknown reason most people think that running a successful internet business is as easy as getting a [...]]]> This is a continuation from the previous post.

Wrong Perceptions About The Internet

The 90% failure rate of new Internet businesses really isn’t all that surprising when you stop to think about the people who are starting internet businesses.

For some unknown reason most people think that running a successful internet business is as easy as getting a website built and hanging out an ‘open for business’ sign. They couldn’t be more wrong.

Running a successful internet business of any kind requires self-discipline. People will start an internet business and think that they can party all night, sleep until noon and then make a living in 3 or 4 hours sitting in front of a computer. They some how think that the world is just going to line up on their website and
hand over money. It isn’t going to happen.

Internet businesses do not run on auto-pilot. It is true that well established internet marketing gurus do not have to put in long, tedious hours on their businesses but it is a privilege that that has been earned by putting in a lot of long and tedious hours.

It didn’t happen overnight for them and it won’t happen over night for anybody. Most people are totally unprepared for the time investment that must be made in order for an internet business to become successful.

Lack Of Business Knowledge

All businesses have two things in common. They are BUSINESSES and they must be run like businesses! The people who are in charge of a business need to understand the accepted practices of business. They need to understand simple and basic ideas like acceptable over-head expenses in relation to projected income. Internet entrepreneurs need to understand profit and loss and what constitutes each. A college degree in business in not essential for an internet business entrepreneur go be successful but it sure wouldn’t hurt. Just some basic business knowledge is absolutely vital.

If you have a hard time balancing your personal check book, you probably should keep your day job and forget about starting an internet business. It is true that you can hire accounting firms that will tell you WHEN you must make tax deposits, for example, but these firms will not be able to tell you IF you need to make them.

Accounting firms can tell you whether or not you made a profit but not how to make it. If you have no business background you need to, at the very minimum, get some good business advice before you even consider opening an online business.

The fact is that all successful businesses operate on sound business principles. Successful businesses aren’t accidents. The proof is in the numbers….only 10% of new internet businesses are successful or are even still in existence after the first 120 days of operation.

It is not even reasonable to expect to make a profit from a new business enterprise for many, many months.

You must have sufficient resources available to not only launch your business but provide for your own personal needs for an extended period of time. It’s called ‘capital’ and there is no way around the need for enough of it.

Not Having The Right Mindset

You have most likely heard the phrase, ‘He has an attitude!” This is usually a derogatory remark made about a person with a disagreeable attitude.

But the word ‘attitude’ is an important one when discussing internet marketing start-ups. A good attitude…a good mind set can’t insure success but a bad attitude and a bad mind set can certainly guarantee failure.

Here are some wrong attitudes that will absolutely guarantee failure:

“I can work when I want to. ”

Wrong, wrong, wrong! You can’t just work when you feel like it. You have to expect to put in many long and very tedious hours of very hard work to make a new internet enterprise succeed.

“I can get rich quick!”

You couldn’t be more wrong and you are not only wrong but you are putting yourself in danger as well. There are bazillions of crooks out there on the internet who are waiting for their next easy mark and if you are looking for a quick way to get rich, you ARE the next mark. It is possible to make a very comfortable living with internet marketing enterprises but if anybody ever tells you it is quick or easy, they are lying to you.

“I don’t need a business plan.”

There you are…wrong yet again. Internet business is still business. All of the same business principles apply to online business as apply to brick and mortar business. It is imperative that you have a plan for success that is based upon these sound business principles.

“When you have an internet business of your own, you don’t have a boss.”

Wrong again! You are your boss. If you aren’t a good boss who sees to it that work is accomplished on time and in full, you will doom yourself to certain failure. Unless you are a boss who sets up a working schedule and establishes goals that must be met, you will find yourself working at a job under a boss who does do those things and maybe for minimum wage.

In the next post, we’ll look at how to avoid failure in your internet start-up.

Every one of those people knows somebody [...]]]> Everyday out there in the real brick and mortar world, millions of people drag themselves from their warm beds, take a shower, grab a cup of coffee, and head off to their jobs, grumbling to themselves that there has got to be an easier way to make a living.

Every one of those people knows somebody who has quit the ‘get-up-and-go-to-work’ grind and is making a very good living by working on their personal computers from the comfort of their own homes.

Working from home sounds like an ideal solution to them. Many of these dissatisfied souls will quit their jobs and plunge head-first into internet marketing with no preparation, no knowledge of what they are doing, no education, and no hope of success. Failure is their only option and they don’t even suspect.

The fact is that according to many sources, more than 90% (ninety percent) of all Internet business start-ups end in failure within the first 120 (one hundred twenty) days. Yes, you read that right. NINETY PERCENT!

This failure rate should be a warning to those who are considering trying their hand at making a go of working on the Internet rather than at a job in the brick and mortar world.

Of course, success is possible. There IS that other 10% (ten percent) that do succeed. The thing is success doesn’t happen by accident. And success isn’t just a crap shoot. Success happens because of some very important factors.

Success happens because people have the right ideas about internet marketing and how it works. They do not expect to get rich quick or be able to make a killing over night and retire to a tropical isle. It is strange but some how the same people who wouldn’t dream of starting a real world business, think they can make a go of an internet business even though they have no business background.

People will go into an internet business with the idea that they no longer have to get up and go to work. They think they can simply work when the feel like it and still make a good living. They simply do not expect to have to work hard or work long hours.

The reasons many Internet start-ups fail can be boiled down to these three:

1. Wrong perceptions about the Internet
2. Lack business background
3. Not having the right mindset

We’ll look at these reasons in detail in the next post.