prudential artisan market

Archive for February, 2009

 

How much should I spend on marketing?

This is a common question that marketing consultants gets asked on a regular basis.

The simple answer is that there is no hard a fast rule – it depends on the competitive environment, the stage of business development, the product or service category and the balance of advertising designed to promote the brand vs advertising designed to generate a specific response.

As a result of these factors, marketing budgets are best set based on careful analysis of a number of factors as part of a Marketing Strategy not via the often used % of sales method.

If you are looking to develop a deeper understanding of your marketing budget then there are two good places to start.



Brand Awareness- Analysing the level of advertising that is appropriate to reach your target markets with appropriate levels of frequency and credibility





Specific Response – Analysing the response and conversion rates you are achieving from various forms of advertising



Brand awareness is a direct product of the  Marketing Strategy – by identifying the key target markets and having an understanding of the competitive environment it is possible to establish a picture of the level and types of “brand” advertising required to generate awareness of the brand for new customers and reinforce the message with existing consumers.

Planning the elements of the campaign designed to generate a specific response is more closely aligned with the sales budgets and requires analysis of the response and conversion rates you are achieving from various forms of advertising.

Using response and conversion rates as a starting point allows MJH Group to determine the expected result for a particular level of spend in a particular area and plan the marketing strategy accordingly. This is correlated to the sales budget to help plan the necessary mix of advertising required to drive the response to deliver the sales result.

Online affiliate marketing began as a natural outgrowth of the popularity of “linking” to other sites. To put it simply, online affiliate marketing is a time tested strategy for making money online. It it is a network of online partners who refer business to your website.

It does not matter whether you have a website that sells a product or a website that has nothing to sell. But by adding online affiliate programs, you can not only add value to your website, but also maximize potential revenue.

Affiliate Programs, they say are the ideal way to make your website profitable.

Online affiliate programs began in the mid-1990,s and are currently a popular way to earn money online. In fact, research shows that affiliate marketing is the most cost-effective way to generate online sales. The concept of revenue sharing paying commission for referred business, predates affiliate marketing and the Internet. The translation of the revenue share principles to mainstream e-commerce happened almost four years after the origination of the World Wide Web in November 1994.

The simplest way is to just introduce your visitors to the business opportunities, products and services that they need, and, “make money online” based on commissions from these sales. In fact, online affiliate marketing is a great work from home business available to anyone with a computer and a desire to run their own affiliate business.

However, there is a catch to “affiliate-marketing”. That is to say over 80% of affiliates never get a check over $100, the 15% get the occasional check and it is the remaining 5% who really get monthly checks of any real size from affiliate programs.

To get started in affiliate marketing, you must know the fundamentals. For which you’re going to need an “affiliate marketing guide” to teach you the basics. Once you’ve studied the basics and grasped the “idea”, I don’t think there is any looking back.

Now, there are dozens of books advertised on various websites, making claims of massive earnings that can be achieved easily. Most of these guides are resell rights of other peoples’ ideas which are marketed under the marketers’ name. Now, there will be a time you may be doing the same thing what they are doing now. This is a natural phase most people go through and isn’t that what affiliate marketing is all about!

I am not saying those books are bad. But there are better ones out there. There is The Affiliate Marketers Handbook and the Super Affiliate Handbook. Recently, another book that is drawing much attention, purely because of the number of sales it has generated in such a short time is the Rich Jerk. The name justifies his character. But his ideas seem to work and the book seems to be on top of the charts. Now what more can you say, but to commend on his niche idea.

You can also look for more such good product(s) and which are in high demand from the ClickBank Mall. Just type “affiliate marketing” or affilate marketing guides and you would get instant access to loads to such products. Provide them your credit card details and voila! you can instantly download the book of your choice.

Although most aaffiliate marketing books are good in their own way, what boils down is to how you implement the knowhow you gained from it PRACTICALLY. Although this may take up some some time, it is to be noted that no books nor any marketing courses can come anywhere close to pure practical experience. Some good affiliate guides are given below in the resources section.

Learning to market on the internet as an affiliate is only step one. If you’re serious about online affiliate marketing, then you have to plan and set up a basic affiliate campaign. This is a start to finish campaign to getting started in affiliate marketing. It explains keyword research, finding profitable partners and markets, information on affiliate networks, guides and resources to making money online.

There is relatively an easy way to make a parallel income during the early stages of your online afiliate marketing home business. It can also help you avoid the common mistakes most of us make during that period. I am quoting this from personal experience.

Try and get hold of a FREE Web Page, containing a few successful affiliate programs. You can use it and learn how to run an affiliate campaign, at the same time learning the ropes of affiliate marketing. If you market this well, the chances are you will make money. Your main and only job would be to advertise your FREE website, by submitting it to search engines, e-mail it to friends, colleagues and others. Within a month or so, you shall see some income trickling in.

You also get familiar with search engine marketing, affiliate networks and affiliate directories, and other areas of online affiliate marketing.

It’s early morning one fine summer’s day and on the quayside in our nearest town our weekly market is in progress. Canopied stalls proudly displaying their goods fill the market square selling clothes, china, gardening equipment, wicker baskets, fruit, vegetables and flowers from local farms, Devon honey, handmade crafts, farm butter and farmhouse cheese.

Customers include farmers and their wives wearing jeans and stout boots, often with a collie in tow, office workers in suits and tourists from far and wide.

Although we live in the age of department stores, chain stores, hyperstores and drive-through takeaways, our market has survived against all the odds. Stalls are still run by individual traders, many of whom produce the food they are selling themselves, not multi-national corporations; many indeed are family owned, handed down through the generations, and opportunities still exist here for those not afraid of hard work who are minded to suceed.

In the summer months when visitors, and therefore takings, are plentiful, our market comes to resemble an old-time fair because of the musicians, jugglers and other street entertainers attracted to it. Some of our traders use similar skills to attract customers to their stalls, particularly the crockery seller who will hurl plates into the air and catch them with great dexterity before selling them to you, and suffers very few breakages!

No price is ever given without the word “only” being put in front of it; everything sold on the junk stalls is “genuine” and probably “antique”; lovely fresh collies means juicy vegetables, not energetic dogs, and if a trader says he (or she) is “practically giving it away” then it’s probably because no one in their right mind would want to buy it!

Not all these sales tactics deserve to succeed, and some fruit and veg sellers can be their own worst enemies, complaining when you handle their goods and palming you off with the underripe or rotten, whilst you can handle and choose the produce you want at the local supermarket. Good to say however, these traders are gradually declining with, in particular, the growth of the Farmers’ Market movement across the country.

I think it’s important to recognise that traditional street markets do still have an important role to play in our towns. They make cheap clothes and fresh produce available to those unable to reach out of town supermarkets, or those who simply prefer to shop this way. They also add character, colour and life to the local town, as well as providing a much-welcomed boost in shopper numbers on market days, which of course benefits all our local traders.

We are lucky in that our small town many small independent retailers survive. The fish is fresh from the quayside and the butcher proudly displays the origin of his meat over his counter.

I think that the popularity of Farmers’ Markets demonstrates that there is a growing awareness of the value of locally produced food, where the provenance of any item can be traced. I don’t think that we do all prefer the mass-produced and pre-packed, high in air-miles food that we are often offered at the supermarket.

So – next time you set out for the shops – why not try visiting your local town on market day and check out what’s on offer?