Marketing Actions - Making Use of Marketing Tools

Marketing tools are only the first step in making a marketing strategy a success. Having the tools alone is not going to increase your traffic, your business or your conversion ratios. How you use these tools is an essential part of implementing a marketing strategy and having that strategy ultimately successful for your business.

Marketing That Works

Having every marketing tool available on the market when it comes to marketing your business is going to create two problems. The first is that you are going to end up spread too thin when it comes time to work on implementing your tools. The second is that there are going to be a number of tools, which are not effective for your business that you are going to be attempting to use and that are going to show no results despite the time, money and effort you may be putting in to marketing via these methods.

The Importance of a Marketing Plan

A marketing plan is essential to ensuring that a business not only has the right tools but the action plan necessary to ensure that those tools work to bring in the best possible amount of business the type of business that increases conversion ratios and increases profits. Many first time business owners whether they are experienced in the field of their business or not may not be aware of how important a marketing plan is or how to set one up.

The marketing tools that everyone hears about such as video marketing, email marketing, SMS or text message marketing are only tools it is the actions taken with those tools that ultimately markets a business successfully.

Setting up A Marketing Plan

Several elements are necessary in order to set up a marketing plan successfully. The first is data. You need to have data on your market, your competition and your industry. This data should provide you with a number of things. It should provide you with knowledge of your customers, including what appeals to them, knowledge of your competitors, what they are doing and what works for them, and knowledge of your products and services.

Knowing your market and what appeals to them is going to provide you with the basis of your marketing plan. You want to cater to these elements. The competition will provide you with a variety of data on what seems to be working in the way of marketing and presentation. You want to find out what works and then offer something unique to attract attention and set you apart from everyone else.

Setting up a marketing plan does not just involve research and determining the types of tools that are going to be most useful when it comes to marketing your business, it is also about making an effective use of those tools. Making effective use of the marketing tools for your business is an essential part of a successful marketing plan. Taking the time learn the various ways that these tools can be used is an essential part of ensuring that your marketing plan is a success.

Creating an Marketing Action Plan

A marketing plan has several parts the first part is the strategy and goals. The second part is the tools necessary to accomplish these strategies and goals and the third part is the action plan that puts these tools into action. Many people forget this third aspect or they do not place enough importance on it.

In order to market a business properly, it is essential to spend time on your marketing and fully utilize the tools at your disposal. There is no such thing as a marketing tool that can be set and left on its own to work. Each marketing tool requires a set of actions that needs to be seen too on a regular basis. It may be weekly, daily, and even monthly but some action must be taken in order to ensure that marketing strategies and tools bring the greatest benefit to your business and profit to you.

In addition to maintenance actions when it comes to your marketing tools, it is also important to upgrade and change your marketing. If you are using videos as part of your marketing tool set then it is important to make sure those videos are kept up to date and changed regularly in order to encourage customers or clients to view them.

Email marketing should be constantly updated, should include personal information to engage the customers. This requires research and requires maintenance, in other words it requires action. Sending the same email repeatedly is going to leave your customers deleting rather than reading your messages. The same goes with any other type of message such as SMS.

Promotional offers and discounts also have to be updated. This requires active participation something many internet business owners and beginning marketers forget. In order to ensure that your marketing tools work for you devote a certain amount of time per day, week or month, depending on your marketing techniques to working with your marketing tools.

Constant research into which videos, offers, and messages get the most interest and incorporate those elements into future messages marketing is not just a set and forget option when it comes to creating a successful marketing plan. Marketing strategies and plans are more than just having goals and finding marketing tools. It is about taking the time and putting in the effort to make your business success. Businesses do not make themselves and while some businesses may seem effortless, they only seem that way because of the work and effort, the actions that the employees and owners of the business take.

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Small Business Integrated Marketing: More Focus Is Needed, Especially in the B-To-B Space

Small businesses who operate in the business-to-business space do a lot of things right, but marketing is not one of them. This article will explain why this is the case and explore associated pitfalls and opportunities, as well as give you a definition of b-to-b (business-to-business) marketing and suggest some effective solutions to the problem.

Typically, companies with 20 to 100 employees or so who are in manufacturing, distribution, professional services and the like do not have a marketing manager, and rightly so; these firms are simply too small to justify that position. So the president or general manager is responsible for marketing. This doesn't work very well because that person has more important things to do such as keeping the place running and keeping the doors open. So, there's little or no time for marketing planning or to implement a plan consistently.

First let's define "marketing" as it applies to the b-to-b space. Simply put, marketing is not advertising. Advertising is part of marketing, but a small part.

The correct definition of b-to-b marketing is that it's the integration and orchestration of all of the tactics that go into bringing a product or service to market: marketing research and competitive analysis; face-to-face selling; online support including an optimized website with an SEO (search engine optimization) strategy; downloadable white papers and how-to's; email marketing; trade shows; sales lead generation; a customer retention strategy; sales tools such as brochures and literature and testimonials; online and offline press and publicity. You get the idea: it's not just advertising.

Most small business owners and general managers know they should be doing something to generate business other than shove their salespeople out the door. But they don't get around to those other things, meaning marketing. Suddenly a year has gone by and their sales and market share have suffered. So they scramble to do something like build a new website or try some online advertising. But they have no plan. As the saying goes, "He who fails to plan, plans to fail."

On the other hand, with a well-crafted marketing and advertising plan the business can actually have a strategy to develop a consistent market presence, generate sales leads, create a better brand and retain existing customers. But can the business afford to do this, and how does it get done?

The first part of the answer is, they can't afford to not put a marketing plan in place because their market is full of competitors who can and will beat them in the marketing arena. It's a market-share battleground out there and the best marketer wins.

Another argument for investing in an integrated marketing plan is this: companies pay for legal, IT and accounting services, right? Marketing expertise is no different.

In terms of cost, it comes down to needs. If there hasn't been a formal marketing plan in place for some time and if the company doesn't know where it stands in terms of its status (market share, perception etc.), some research will be needed and a marketing plan should be developed.

The plan will comprise three main components: the company's business objectives; its sales and marketing strategies; and the tactics and media spend necessary to achieve the objectives. Depending on where the company goes to get this done, the cost will probably be between $3,000 and $7,500 for a plan. Then the plan must be implemented.

Where does a company go to get this done? For smaller businesses, it's best to avoid larger ad agencies; those with 50 employees and above. They'll want to work with big marketing budgets, say, $500,000 at minimum. It's also better to work with an agency that specializes in the b-to-b space; they understand the integration referred to above. While it's handy if the agency is local, it doesn't have to be. It's more important that the agency is a good fit for the company.

Another alternative is to contract a good b-to-b marketing consultant to do your research and draft your marketing plan. But have the second step lined up, too: an agency who can implement the plan, ideally a smaller agency specializing in b-to-b marketing. Check their work and get referrals from their clients.

Whatever route you choose, make sure the firm you choose is very knowledgeable in the online space. Today, almost all marketing in the b-to-b space occurs online: information gathering and downloads of white papers and how-to's; organic search results, online ads, web engagement, SEO, email marketing, press, articles, etc.

Actually, this is good news since online marketing and the analytics associated with it are far less costly than the traditional methods b-to-b marketers have been used to such as trade magazines, lavish literature, direct mail and trade shows (not that those traditional tactics should be abandoned.)

So what is the cost for a full-blown integrated marketing plan, media spending and implementation-management by an agency or a consultant?

The best budgeting method is the "task method", meaning determining what tasks need to be done considering your market circumstances, then assigning costs to those tasks and their associated media. It varies by company. That's something a good marketing agency can do for you. If you have a very limited budget a good agency can develop your plan and focus on its most critical tasks, working with a first-year budget as small as $50,000.

But a full-blown integrated marketing-media plan is highly recommended if you want to be a market leader. As a rule of thumb, the higher your gross sales, the less you'll pay as a percentage of your sales. Roughly, if you're a smaller company, say, sales of $5 million or so, count on spending about three percent of your gross sales, or about $150,000. At $10 million in sales, perhaps two percent, or $200,000. At $20 million, probably between one and two percent, so about $300,000.

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Great Simple and Easy Times to Trade the Forex Market

Firstly, we will review the daily rhythm of the Forex market, the best times to trade the Forex market and also periods to avoid.

One of the most important aspects of trading the Forex market is to understand what drives price movement. We are often told that the market operates on a 24 hour basis 7 days a week - this is true but it does not mean that that you can apply any technique at any time and expect the same or even good results.

Contrary to popular belief the Forex Market is still driven by human behaviour. Volumes increase when the participants in the Forex market are physically at "the Office" working and volumes and activity dies down when those participants go home and sleep.

Many Forex traders focus so much on technical analysis that they ignore market behaviour completely. The Forex traders who are successful are masters at understanding market behaviour and then merely use appropriate technical analysis to enter the deal.

A fact to consider is that there is no official Forex market as there is a Stock, share or Bond market. Activities in the Forex market occur as a result of activities in all the other financial markets. So we need to study the times when these financial institutions open and close. A study of the trading volumes going through the Forex Market show how important the opening and closing of financial markets are to the Forex market.

Market openings and closing can often impact and change the direction of trading. You, therefore, have to be aware of time of day factors which can impact forex trading. Most of the day's highs and lows come from the Asian open, European open and close, and the US open and close.

The period between the US market close and the Tokyo market has particularly low volumes. Although trends sometimes can occur in the period, poor candle stick formations are common during this period due to the extremely low volumes.

A further study of the average hourly ranges of currencies crosses will confirm the importance of the market openings and closings by the increased volatility created at those times.

1 The Open of the Tokyo market (9:00 am to 1:00 pm Tokyo time)

The Asian market has fewer announcements than the other markets and the announcements appear to have fewer whipsaws. Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore (1 hour later) are other exchanges impacting this market. The Asian Based currencies are best traded in this market (AUDUSD, USDJPY) along with the EURUSD. 26% of the daily highs or lows occur in this market

2 The Open of the European market (7:00 am to 9:00am London time)

The period covering the afternoon Asian and early European session is a low volume period. Volumes start increasing at about 7:00 am London time and this is often the best opportunity to catch some short term trends. Frankfurt is an important exchange that opens in this market. This period often produces the daily highs or lows with 8:00 am London being an important time. 8:00 am often produces the high or the low for the rest of the day. This market behaviour emphasises the importance of time of day trading.

3 The Opening of the London Financial markets (9:00am to 11:00am London time)

The London Financial market is the highest volume Forex market. The period around its open has the potential to produce the best trends. There are also more economic announcements impacting the EURUSD and the GBPUSD during this period. It is the best period to trade, where a scalping transaction can often get you into a +100 trend.

4 The Opening of the US Financial Markets (8:30am to 11:00 am New York)

The Opening of the US market can be very volatile due to the high concentration of announcements in this session (especially on Thursdays and Fridays). Chicago opens 1 hour after New York. The reactions to announcements are more severe with dramatic breakouts and whipsaws happening regularly. The US open happens when the European markets are still open and therefore you have a 3 hour overlap in volumes making it appear as if the US market is bigger than the UK one. In fact it has lower volumes. The USDCAD has its biggest trading volume in this market.

5 The close of the London and US markets (+/- 5:00 pm London time and +/- 5:00 pm New York)

The close of these markets can create trends or trend corrections until the Asian markets open. This period has fewer announcements and has fewer fear and greed type of moves. This is a highly tradable period with some good repeating patterns.

6 Economic Announcement times

Economic announcements result in new financial information about an economy being released. The disclosures often happen at a precise time of day and can cause trends when the news is not in line with what has been expected. Announcements are generally regarded as a high risk time to trade as they could result in higher velocity price moves and whipsaws.

The best way to trade these announcements is not to trade them. If you are in a deal you need to exit the deal or move your stop to protect your trade from disaster. Brokers tend to increase their spreads prior to a big announcement to discourage trading.

7 Weekend Gaps

Weekend gaps are quite common in Forex trading. A recent analysis of the weekend gaps since the beginning of 2009 shows that on average 80% of weekend gaps are closed within a day. The average gap is +/- 19 pips.

The way to trade the closing of these gaps is to enter a deal on the Monday morning with the Friday close price as the target. Your stop would generally be the same size or double the size of your target in pips.

Additionally we need to focus is on simple and easy ways of trading the 'time of day' Forex market.

1. Straddling the price range

Often market behaviour prior to an important announcement or event, will cause the market to trade sideways in a narrow range of uncertainty. Nobody knows which way the market will move prior to the new information becoming available. Once the information is available, the market will trade in a particular direction.

The most common way of dealing with this is to place a Buy order above the consolidation and a sell order below and let the market decide which one will be activated. This approach can be used for any type of consolidation. The 5 to 15 minute charts work well with this approach

2. Straddling a specific candle

When the market is trending at the time of the potential trend starting event or time, you can merely straddle the candle just before the event. The amount of the straddle could be 5 to 10 pips above and below the high and the low of the previous candle. The 5 to 15 minutes charts work well when using this approach

3. Trading away from a specific price level.

Sometimes the price does not head in a specific direction at the time anticipated.

Traders can use a specific price level such as the 8:00am GMT level as Sell and Buy Zone divider. You would then buy when the price is above the price level or sell when the price is below the price level UNTIL the price finds its trend for the day. This can be monitored on the 5 to 15 minute charts

4. Scalping to find the market direction

Traders often use scalping to find the market direction. There are many ways of scalping. A common method is to use a moving average (3 offset by 3) which provides great scalping opportunities until the market eventually finds its direction. This approach is best used in more liquid markets such as the opening of Asian, Europe and US. You can use the 5 to 15 minute charts for this approach.

The objective of this review is to create an awareness of the importance of time of day in Forex Trading. Technical analysis is a good tool for getting you into deals and exiting deals. Technical Analysis alone is not Forex trading. You are not going to make money using technical analysis on its own.

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Why Insight and Flexibility is More Important than Perseverance in Marketing

Marketing successfully requires not only insight into how a product or service can be successfully marketed but also flexibility into the marketing of a product or service.

This is one of the marketing principles that doesn't seem to be taught successfully. Too many times, the "marketing gurus" will promote a type of marketing that has worked for them to the exclusion of all other types of marketing.

Now the type of marketing they promote may very well have worked well for them, but it is folly to believe that one marketing method and one marketing method only will work for every product or service everywhere. This just is not the reality as marketing methods can be as unique as the products and services that are marketed.

Innovation, creativity and flexibility are needed in any type of marketing efforts. Trying several types of marketing is usually the best method of eliminating marketing methods that fail, and determining which marketing methods are successful.

Online business or any type of business for that matter demands perseverance and determination. Perseverance and determination are also promoted heavily by the marketing gurus. However, perseverance and determination does NOT mean sticking with a marketing method that is incorrect for the product or service or NOT producing any results. It does not mean continuing self-defeating marketing methods over and over at a loss each and every month.

To prove a point about the misconceptions sometimes promoted by the marketing gurus and the misconceptions others may have about perseverance in general, I've used two actual case studies below:

A. Case Study #1 is a young male who started an online business many years ago promoting marketing resources and marketing strategies. He had many fine offerings that were of great value, as he spent much time and energy researching and developing resources. He read many manuals from marketing gurus, who stressed a lot on list building and e- mail marketing.

This young man, following the marketing guru's advice, spent much time and energy for years, e-mailing others relentlessly, swapping ads for further exposure, writing articles in other newsletters and e-zines, and trying every "trick" of e-mail marketing to no avail. He also persisted in this strategy as he had taken to heart the principle of "never quitting" quite literally, which the gurus had promoted so heartily to him.

He lost quite a great deal of time and money until he noticed that his Web site had been ranking quite well in the Search Engines (after all, he had great content). Most of the few sales he had been making were coming directly from his Web site, despite the fact that he did not believe in (and dreaded) Search Engine marketing! He rethought the whole process and his approach, and began focussing on marketing his resources strictly from his Web site, applying his perseverance and determination to that, with incredible success ever since!

B. Case Study #2 is a middle aged female who approached the marketing somewhat differently, as she had read a manual from a different marketing guru. She was promoting a customized service, rather than a product, and the guru, whose advice she followed, firmly believed in Search Engine marketing, and Search Engine marketing alone. She spent literally tons of money, and tons of time, getting her Web site to the top of the Search Engines.

Like Case Study #1, she felt that if she only gave it enough time, and persevered, sales would be made. As time went on, she discovered that most of her sales were being made through her e-mail marketing. Her articles, ad swapping, and other e-mail marketing efforts (she published routinely her own newsletters and e-zines), were leading to more clients than those which were attained off her Web site. In her case, e-mail marketing was the "key" to success, but she also was following the mandates of the wrong marketing guru.

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Marketing Is A System, Not An Event

Small business marketers love the chase. Love the new fangled way to make the phone ring. They love to think of a marketing promotion as a single event. But it's precisely this view of marketing that holds most small businesses back. They fall prey to the "marketing idea of the week" and never fully explore what it takes to create and build a completely functioning, consistently performing, marketing system.

In this article I am going to outline the basic steps that any business can follow on the way to creating their very own marketing system. But first let's explore this word system in the context of marketing. Small business owners have no problem thinking systems when it comes to say, accounting or hiring. When it comes to marketing though, all bets are off. It's as if they are waiting for magic fairy dust to fall upon them with the next great marketing innovation.

Look, effective marketing is little more than creating and operating an effective marketing system. Now, when I use the word system I mean several things. 1) The system is documented - You can't have a system or a step in a system unless you write it down. 2) The system is built on sound marketing principals and 3) You constantly measure, innovate, and refine the system.

Okay, so on to the system building steps.

1) Narrow and define a target market - Small business owners love to say yes. "Sure we can do that." The next thing you know the target market is roughly anyone they think will pay them. You must commit to a narrowly defined target market and you must focus all of your attention upon serving that market like no one ever dreamed of. A narrow marketing focus might be - Estate Attorneys - as opposed to Law Firms.

2) Discover and communicate a core message for that market - Until you can show how your firm is different and offers something unique, you will always compete on price. You must find a way to tell your newly defined narrow target market why you have something to offer that they value. Your core message might be - We show estate attorneys how gain all of the business they can handle - as opposed to: We help law firms.

3) Develop multiple forms of permission based lead generation - No one like to be sold to and more and more advertising is falling on numb ears and eyes. Your lead generation system must be built on several fronts, such as public relations, referral marketing, strategic partnerships, and targeted advertising. Your lead generation message must offer the target market a reason to want to know more. Forget about the sale, look for ways to build trust.

4) Construct a lead conversion and customer reselling process - No amount of leads in the world will help your business if you don't efficiently turn those leads into clients. You must have a plan that maps out what you will do when phone rings, when you make the sales call and when it's time to do more business with the clients you already have. Most small businesses completely ignore this aspect of their marketing, but this is where the real success in marketing lies.

5) Create educational based marketing and presentation materials - Forget about the glossy sales brochure, use your marketing materials to teach how your firm is different, how you solve real problems, how you work, why you work, what you believe and your marketing will be much more successful. Your web site must come from this point of view as well.

6) Define the most important marketing success indicators - Setting marketing goals for such things as leads, appointments, sales, phone calls, referrals, impressions, mentions and anything else you can think to measure is how you turn marketing into a game and how you keep score of the game. Everyone loves and game and the only way to improve something is to measure how well you are doing in the first place.

7) Build an annual marketing calendar and budget and stick to it - Once you have spent the time and energy to think through steps 1-6 you need to commit your plan to a marketing calendar and then allocate (or at least think about) the money it will take to implement your plan. Once you create a calendar it is much more likely that you will look at the tasks assigned to each month like a "to-do" list. So, instead of whining that you should do more marketing, you simply scratch each item off your list and plan for the next. It's an amazingly simple but effective device.

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