plan ur business

By doing the proper planning up-front, you will save time and money when developing marketing tactics such as advertising, printed materials and Web sites. Plan this information to your benefit. Ignore this information to your peril. Know and share this information with your professional helpers (e.g. ad agency, research firm, graphic designer, consultant, Web developer) before you start your work.
Know your business .McDonalds isn’t just in the food business. They are in the convenience and ease-of-access business. Fast food companies put huge resources into determining what real estate they are going to acquire because it affects how convenient and accessible their restaurants are to their target market. What’s your real business in the eyes of your customers?
Know your target market .Can you determine your target market in general? How about for different product or service categories by age, gender, geographic location, and other relevant characteristics? Toyota knows the differences between the target markets for small cars vs. sports utility vehicles. Have you done any formal research to determine who your target market really is?
Know your competition.What makes you unique in the eyes of your customers? We refer to this as differentiation. What are your strengths and weaknesses versus your competition? What opportunities or threats present themselves when comparing your business to your competition?
Know your objectives .Do you want to increase business - in general? ...For a specific product or service? ...By what dollar volume? ...By what 'unit' volume? For which target market(s)?
Know how to measure your results.How are you going to track your results? This will help you determine the success or failure of your marketing tactic and will help you improve it in the future.When you really know points 1 through 5, then share this information with your professional help before you start working on a project. In general, the more background your professional help has, the faster and better they can work. This saves you time and money.
Know your help.If you have hired professional help, know their specialties, strengths, weaknesses, etc. Not sure how to find this out? Try asking them directly. Talk to their clients. Match your company’s needs to the profile of your professional help.
Trust your help .You have to be comfortable with the final product, whether it be an ad, brochure or Web site. However, if you have done your homework in selecting your professional help, then you should be able to trust them. When you request revisions, explain why - not just how or what you want changed. Remember: you have hired a designer or a copywriter for a reason. They are professionals. When you assume the role of a designer, copywriter, etc, then you are potentially undermining your efforts, thereby increasing the time and cost of developing marketing tactics.
Follow these tips to develop marketing tactics faster and cheaper.

Business Thank You Letters - Your Secret Marketing Weapon

A stamp and fifty words can make you thousands of dollars. No matter how big your or small your marketing budget it, you cannot miss out on the most powerful and inexpensive relationship building tool - a simple business thank you letter.
Sending business thank you notes is an efficient, inexpensive way to:
- Retain customers
- Improve vendor relations
- Increase worker efficiency
- Bring in new business
- Increase frequency of purchases

1) Helps insure one-time customers into lifetime customers AND shortens the amount of time in between purchases. If you provide a service or sell products such as makeup or other renewable items thanking your customer after the first sale can insure you keep the customer for a lifetime.

2) Business thank you cards or letter can increase your customer referrals. A business thank you letter is great non-intrusive way to increase your sales and referrals. Always send a thank you note to a customer or business associate who refers a customer to you (and if it is a big customer, a thank you gift wouldn't hurt). Every bit of business referred costs you nothing in advertising or sales commissions.
Often times a referral thank you, particularly from a business colleague, is best sent with a gift. The most elaborate thank you gift being for the first referral. Think of the commission you would have paid to a sales rep for the sale or the cost of advertising to gain this new customer. Plus, word gets around fast when referral gifts are sent. You will find other people send you even more referrals.

3) Enhance sales during off-season and slow months. Saying thank you with a coupon to loyal customers during your slow season is a great way to boost sales and customer appreciation. It's a win win.
You can include a current coupon with a note or for a more personal touch, you can send a greeting card just write that the card IS the coupon.

4) Increase effectiveness of your convention campaigns.

5) Gets the edge over the competition and keeps your name in front of decision records.
Just a quick thank you card can make all the difference in the world. Include it with the follow up information you promised to send or on its own.
Get free examples of thank you letters for both business and personal occasions such as gifts, weddings and more at http://www.my-thank-you-site.com

How Colors Effect Marketing Decisions

You develop your brand through the use of brand identity - the logos, colours, and design that conveys your business’ promise. When developing your brand identity through printed material, advertising, or Web sites you should understand the role of colour psychology in selling process. There are many simple rules in choosing the right colour combinations. Colour has its own psychological meaning and a certain influence on our psyche. Here is a review of colour theory literature highlighting the impact of some colours.
RED stimulates to action, represents aggressiveness, and excitement. Red makes an excellent accent colour, particularly when used with neutral colours, but may clash with green, blue and purple. Temper red with other warm tones like oranges, browns, and yellows, and you could easily make your design stand up and shout at the world
BLUE, dark-blue represents sensitivity of feeling conveying peace and tranquility, harmony, trust and confidence.
WHITE (white) backgrounds give impression of professionalism. White is the colour of cleanliness and purity, youth, simplicity and innocence.
BLACK is generally considered a mournful, heavy and depressing colour, but in the right context, can be sophisticated and mysterious. Black is the preferred backdrop for an artist's work and photography. In addition, applications which are technical in nature, or have an underground feel, work well in black.
GREEN represents firmness and serenity. Green is a colour to be used with care, because it generates a strong feeling of either positively or negativity in most people. For some, it is a kind, generous colour, which represents loyalty and intelligence. It is often a logical choice for financial sites, and represents fertility, healing and ecology in many cultures. But keep in mind that for many people, it conjures up imagery of envy, reptiles and insects, and bodily functions!
Different colours combinations and the manner in which they are used also have an impact on consumer behaviour. In on-line business, red, blue and brown and shades have found to be the safest colours for use on the Internet. In business, colour makes the first impressions so be aware and use colour to your advantage!

Business Ideas and Opportunities?

Business Ideas and Opportunities?
Every problem is an opportunity, and the bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity," declared Vinod Khosla, one of the world's leading venture capitalists, in a talk at Stanford University. "No one will pay you to solve a non-problem."
Is this an opportunity? Is this a good business idea? - questions commonly posed by future entrepreneurs. Sometimes developing ideas for businesses seems like an insurmountable challenge. Sorting through ideas to see which may be good ideas can be even more difficult. Fortunately, tools, frameworks and guidelines can help entrepreneurs with both. A good starting point is to understand the difference between an idea, and an opportunity.

An idea is not an opportunity, necessarily
It's a common mistake: many people use the words 'idea' and 'opportunity' interchangeably. Seems innocuous, right? But it can lead to real problems.

What is an idea?
Perhaps it's a flash of inspiration; perhaps you've sat and brainstormed in a workshop - either way, ideas spring forth from an inner source. No analysis has been performed to determine the quality of the idea. In fact, the basic rule to getting the creativity flowing in a brainstorming session is 'there's no such thing as a bad idea'. And during idea-generation, that's true; but in fact, few are really good business ideas. So the goal is to generate as many as possible to provide the raw material for the next stage: opportunity evaluation.

What is an opportunity?
Opportunities, on the other hand, are ideas that have been through an analytical wringer. Take an idea, punch it, pull it, ask the right questions, and if it holds up - it's an opportunity: a chance to build a viable venture.

marketing @ present

The Emergence of Relationship Marketing (RM)
The marketing mix management paradigm has dominated marketing thought, research and practice since it was introduced almost 50 years ago. Today, this paradigm is beginning
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to lose its position. New approaches have been emerging in marketing. The globalization of business and the evolving recognition of the importance of customer retention and market economies and of customer relationship economics, among other trends, reinforce the change in mainstream marketing.
Marketing is no longer just about developing, selling and delivering products. It is increasingly more concerned with the development and maintenance of mutually satisfying long-term relationships with customers (Buttle, 1996). RM is based upon the premise that it makes economic sense to satisfy and retain customers, as the strength and duration of the relationship is directly proportional to the resultant profitability. This contemporary interest in maintaining customers is reforming marketing with an emphasis on the creation of value and the building of relationships. This new marketing refocusing has been explored in consumer services marketing. The thrust has been to examine different aspects of customer satisfaction, relationship strength, relationship longevity and customer relationship profitability. The acceptance of relationship marketing is based upon the emerging body of research, which indicates how customer retention leads to increased profitability. This has prompted companies to treat their customer base as individual assets in themselves. Moreover, if a company builds and maintains good relationships with customers, it cannot be easily replaced by the competitors and, therefore, provides for a sustained competitive advantage.
After the post-industrial or service economy, most of the developed world is now entering a new, information economy. Perhaps it was natural, then, that the new developments first appeared in the maturing service industries of the 1970s and 1980s. Berry et al. (1983) surveyed the factors and developments in service marketing that later gave rise to RM. These factors include the combined impact of low growth rates and deregulation, resulting in "everyone getting into everyone else's business". This naturally meant increased competition. According to the writers, this forced companies to think more in terms of "keeping customers" as opposed to only "winning new customers".
According to Berry et al. (1983) a customer relationship is best established around a "core service", which ideally attracts new customers through its "need-meeting character". However, creating customer loyalty among the old customers is one of the main goals of RM. The authors also mention "frequent flyer" programmes and other incentive programmes intended to encourage customer loyalty by rewarding it.

Some Popular Definitions
Relationship Marketing is to identify and establish, maintain and enhance and when necessary also to terminate relationships with customers and other stakeholders, at a
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profit, so that the objectives of all parties are met, and that this is done by a mutual exchange and fulfillment of promises (Grönroos, 1994; Mattsson, 1997).
Relationship Marketing can be viewed as the building, maintenance, and liquidation of networks and interactive relationships between the supplier and the customer, often with long-term implications. As a consequence, marketing becomes first and foremost relationship marketing (Gummesson, 1990).
Relationship Marketing is the process of co-operating with customers to improve marketing productivity through efficiency and effectiveness (Paravatiyar, 1996; Mattsson, 1997).
Relationship Marketing is the process whereby the seller and the buyer join in a strong personal, professional, and mutually profitable relationship over time (Pathmarajah, 1991).
A Paradigmatic Shift
Relationship building and management, or what has been labeled relationship marketing, is one leading new approach to marketing which eventually has entered the marketing literature in eighties. A paradigm shift is clearly under way. In services marketing, especially in Europe and Australia but to some extent also in North America, and in industrial marketing, especially in Europe, this paradigm shift has already taken place by that time. Books published on services marketing and on industrial marketing as well as major research reports published are based on the relationship marketing paradigm. (Berry; Ballantyne; Gummesson; Gronroos; Hakkanson; Payne)
Relationship marketing has often been contrasted to Transaction Marketing (e.g., Baye, 1995; Jackson, 1985) which is about developing, selling and delivering products by means of short-term, discrete economic transactions. Because the lifetime value of the customer is not taken into account, customer attraction but not customer retention is at the heart of transaction marketing exchanges. However, it is now proposed that closer attention is paid to the long-term financial benefits, and other benefits, of retained customers the main reason being that competition in the marketplace has intensified. To achieve growth, it is argued, organisations must change their paradigm to that of relationship marketing.

As RM is a term used in a broad manner, there is probably a need for the marketing practitioner to understand what it is, its impact on the organisation (not just on the marketing aspects), its applicability to an organisation, and its benefits to customers.
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There is a need to understand that RM is an overall strategy for the organisation and not just a sales tool with a short-term orientation. RM requires a long-term plan, and anything long-term requires a strong organisational commitment and appropriate investment

There are several reasons why retaining customers is so profitable -
· Sales and marketing and set-up costs are amortized over a longer customer lifetime
· Customer expenditure increases over time and repeat customers often cost less to service
· Satisfied customers provide referrals
· Satisfied customers may be prepared to pay a price premium
The Success Mantra
The relationship of marketing is based on a totally different philosophy from the marketing mix management approach. The relationship philosophy relies on co-operation and a trusting relationship with customers (and other stakeholders and network partners) instead of an adversarial approach to customers, on collaboration within the company instead of specialization of functions.
Customer service faces a number of problems of implementation, such as the functional separation of marketing from logistics. The marketing department, on the one hand, is the service promise maker; the logistics function, on the other, is the service promise provider. Also important is the personal commitment of individuals to provide service, which may be variable due to misalignment of strategic intent, confusing communications, and ill-trained and poorly-committed staff.
In order to execute relationship marketing, the Ps of the marketing mix, such as advertising, pricing and selling, can and should be applied, but in addition, a host of other resources and activities are needed. Most of these additional resources and activities, relating, for example, to delivering, installing, updating, repairing, servicing and maintaining goods or equipment, or to billing, complaints handling, customer education and other activities, are not considered part of the marketing function. Most of the people involved in such activities are not part of a marketing and/or sales department. Nevertheless, their attitudes towards customers and their behaviours and ways of executing their tasks are imperative to successful maintenance and enhancement of customer relationships and other types of market relationships. In many situations, their impact is more important to long-term success in the marketplace than that of the full-time marketers.
At present, the promise of RM remains just a promise. The concept is simple. We engage with the customer, discuss their problems, wants and needs and create the product or service that satisfies those requirements precisely