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Do you have a marketing strategy and plan for your business?Without a marketing strategy and plan, you can’t attain your business goals. It’s 101 for a business.Whether you are a startup, entrepreneur, or business, preparing a strategy for the first time, or tweaking your existing plan, this is the first and most important piece of your roadmap to success.A smart marketing plan begins with a smart strategy.Your First Step – A Marketing Strategy:You need to be focused. You need a clear message. You need a process.A marketing strategy is the overarching, big picture plan, the high-level road map to help you attain your business goals. After all, you can’t get there if you don’t know where you’re going!The goal of a marketing strategy is to dive deeply into your business, your sales process, your target market, your message and current marketing to understand your successes and pinpoint your challenges.You need to clarify your goals and objectives that will deliver results.You should identify your niche markets, core messaging, elevator pitch and mission, values and vision statement. This is the foundation of your marketing plan and makes up the specific mix of marketing activities that will drive revenue.During your marketing strategy, you should assess the following:- Organization Overview & Mission
- Current Messaging, Elevator Pitch, Value and Vision Statement
- Products and/or Services
- Goals & Success Metrics
- Brand Positioning
- Target Markets & Ideal Customer
- Marketing Audit: Marketing Budget, Advertising (print/online), E-mail, Seasonal Promotions/other
- Social Media Marketing Audit: Content Strategy (images, videos), Social Media Channels, Blogging
- Website Review & Assessment
- Competitor Site Review
- Search Engine OptimizationYour Second Step – A Detailed Marketing Plan:You need to be seen. You need to be heard. You need to be found.The next step is a to put together a detailed marketing plan from the information you gathered from your marketing strategy.This is an in-depth marketing roadmap, infrastructure and plan that will be used for your marketing. It will include developing content, developing promotional offers, most effective social media channels to be active on, email marketing, building an email list, and budget for Facebook advertising.This detailed Marketing Plan will help your business or organization become more structured, and is something you can implement straightaway in order to see success and become more profitable.A marketing strategy and plan is the KEY to your success. Don’t procrastinate and start them today.

10 tiny steps to building a successful e-commerce website – A true “dummy’s guide” that guarantees online success.Shannon runs a successful pizza joint on Coney Island Avenue, Brooklyn. He specializes in exotic varieties of Kosher Pizza and after repeated requests from office goers for a website through which they could place orders, Shannon finally relented and got a beautiful ecommerce website. He also installed a computer at the cash counter. Each morning, Shannon would just login at the site and keep the admin page open. The moment a pizza order was placed, the details of the order and address would be flashed on the screen. Shannon would hit the print button, prepare the pizza and stick the printed order on top of the pizza box. Today, Shannon also owns the adjoining shop, has installed more pizza baking units there, and has eight delivery boys working for him.So how did he do it? I love the Pizza but have no idea how he makes them. But, as his friend who helped him build the website and online business marketing plan, I can tell you about the ten steps he took to build a successful ecommerce web site solutions. I’ll leave out the name of the pizza joint lest you think I’m advertising for Shannon.1. Know thy nameShannon paid $9.99 and booked a domain name selecting the same name as the existing pizza joint. This makes name recollection really easy and is one of the important steps in building an online store or online presence.2. Know what you wantHe visited a few existing ecommerce store management websites that take orders for pizza. This gave him a good idea of what was possible. It also gave him some ideas on how he wanted his website to look like.3. Take the right foot forward and be careful where you place itAfter seeing a few advertisements that promised instant online nirvana, Shannon paid $72 and opted for one that promised to “instantly build ecommerce site by reputed web development Richmond Company at the click of a button”. In Shannon’s own words, “the result was identical to my first attempt at making pizza when I was 6 years old – a total disaster”.After much thinking and reading various white papers on how to build an ecommerce web site, Shannon visited a few websites which provides ecommerce web development services and freelancing web experts. He finally decided to work with elance.com because of the sheer professionalism displayed there. He posted his request for a website mentioning his requirements and invited freelancing web designers and web masters to bid on building an ecommerce site.4. Select your ecommerce consulting services partner with careAfter carefully scrutinizing the various bids he received, he opted for one bidder who had several years of experience in building ecommerce websites as well as a good feedback from previous customers.5. Heed sound, professional adviceShannon heeded the advice of the freelancer, and purchased hosting space from the recommended web hosting provider. It cost him $99/year. It had loads of space, guaranteed 99.99% uptime, high speed connection to the internet and every resource (such as database support and other things) that the webmaster required.6. Attention to detailAs the website was being developed, Shannon would visit his website and observe the development as it happened. He could do so because the webmaster would upload the completed sections each evening. If Shannon thought some part of his website or webpage did not look right, he would inform the webmaster who would quickly carry out the changes. Shannon supplied the webmaster with all the content that was required. Which basically meant a list of kosher pizzas, toppings, photographs, prices, seasonal offers, other discounts, time required for delivery, delivery area and so on.7. Take it for a spinOnce the site was ready, Shannon, I and two other friends tested the website. We would select a pizza, toppings etc. and once in the shopping cart, make changes to the order, remove it altogether, add another selection and so on. You could say we “stress tested” the website. On the third and final day of testing, we went the whole nine yards and paid for the pizzas that we had ordered. This way we also ensured the payment procedure worked smoothly. Shannon, would login at the admin panel of his website and check to make sure the order details were correctly displayed. Shannon’s ecommerce website was now ready.8. Let the people knowOn inaugural day, Shannon displayed a few large posters on the sidewalk as well as in the pizza joint. He also inserted a few ads in the local editions of various newspapers, magazines and made dozens of calls to clients who he knew would be interested. The first day he received a grand total of 5 orders from his website. Even that delighted him no end. He was as happy as a little child with a candy bar.9. Let the World knowThe next day Shannon remembered the $49 Google AdWords gift voucher he saw in his web hosting account. Not knowing how to use it, “Googled” for details, got the gist of what was involved and once again visited elance.com. This time he put up a project for ecommerce internet marketing his ecommerce website on Google.com using Google AdWords. This was February 2009. Between then and today, Shannon says he spent about $1,500 or so on Google Ads. Today he receives in excess of 300 orders per day from the website alone.10. Keep it tickingShannon has hired the webmasters that initially designed and developed his site to also maintain his site. Maintenance usually meant changing various offers and schemes or adding new varieties of Pizza and toppings.Whether it’s Pizza, cabbages, EPABX, auto accessories or online consulting, it makes no difference to the procedure. Shannon’s success is proof that the 10 steps he followed were the correct ones. The path has been revealed. Whether you choose to follow the successful one or not is up to you. Use it to your advantage when you build your ecommerce store solution or online office. Shannon and I would be delighted with your success.

“99% of advertising doesn’t sell a thing.”Sounds like something a local real estate agent might say after paying for yet another ad that didn’t produce, right?You might be surprised to learn that the quote actually belongs to David Ogilvy, legendary founder of one of the world’s largest and most successful advertising agencies.Yikes – if a man regarded as a giant in the ad industry is so negative about advertising’s success rate, how should you feel?The Bad News is the Good News…There is an upside here. If so much of the advertising in your local market is ineffective, you can gain a significant edge on your competition by having a better local advertising strategy than other agents.Advertising vs. Advertising StrategyNotice that I said a better advertising STRATEGY, not simply better advertising. There’s a big difference.A better ad might get you a few more leads in the short term. A better advertising strategy can help you to have a consistent, meaningful message in your advertising, and will position you to get more business from your local market on an ongoing basis.With that in mind, here are three tips to help you define your advertising strategy, and put it into action:1) Have a Strategic Objective In Mind BEFORE you AdvertiseAdvertising for the sake of “building awareness” is probably the fastest way to flush your advertising dollars away.Before you even think about buying an ad, you must have a strategic objective in mind – after all, why should you pay for any type of ad unless it helps you to reach your objective.Here are just a few questions that you might ask yourself before placing an ad to help define what you want your advertising strategy to do for you:- If I could be known for just one thing in my local market, what would it be?- Which part of the local real estate market is not currently well serviced by other agents? Is there potential in this neighborhood/age group/demographic profile?- Which part of the local market is emerging and might be a driving force for sales in future years?- What’s changing in my market right now – immigration, aging population, young families moving in, etc – and how do I capitalize on the change more effectively than my competitors?If you can answer even some of these questions, you will probably be on your way to identifying the basis for an advertising strategy.For example, you may determine that based on trends and current prices, your market will become increasingly popular with first time homebuyers. As a result, your strategic objective may be to use your advertising to become recognized as the local expert in serving first time homebuyers.2) Have a Specific Objective for Each Ad you Place within your StrategyWith a clear objective as part of your advertising strategy, you can now think about investing in ads that support your objective.Here’s a tip – you can create advertising that generates an immediate response while also serving to build your brand in a particular market.Continuing with the above example, if you ran a series of ads in the local newspaper offering a free “First-Time Homebuyers Report” available from your website, you would actually be running a direct response ad (aimed at getting people to download the report) that also delivered a brand building message (the message being that you are the agent for first time homebuyers to call because you are the expert in that field).You can measure the success of the ad by looking at the number of downloads from your site while the ad was running – since generating downloads was the specific objective of the ad. If the ads don’t generate enough downloads to justify the cost, pull them or change them. Ads are only valuable if they get you closer to achieving your strategic objective.3) Be ConsistentAll of your advertising (online, print, directory, flyers, etc) should be similar in both style and substance within your advertising strategy.Yes, a consistent look and style for your ads is important to help you get recognized in a competitive market.But even more important is being consistent when it comes to the messages in your ads. You can’t buy a Yellow Pages ad that promotes you as the leader in client service, and then advertise your “low low price” in the local newspaper, and then distribute flyers that try to promote you as the family real estate expert.Your messages can’t conflict! Again, here’s where an advertising strategy comes in. With a strategic objective in mind for your advertising, you will be able to focus your advertising dollars on communicating a single, clear message to potential clients about why they should call you.An Advertising Strategy is Critical to your SuccessIf Mr. Ogilvy was right, then most of the advertisers out there in your real estate market are getting it wrong. This creates a huge opportunity for you to use an advertising strategy to drive business and outdo your competitors.- Have a Strategic Objective for all of your Advertising – Know what you want to say about your business, and who you want to say it to within your local market.- Have an Objective for Each Ad – Measure each ad’s results against the strategic objective you are trying to achieve – if you don’t, how will you know if the ads were successful or not?- Be Consistent – Make sure all of your ads are focused on helping you reach your strategic objective by communicating a clear message to the market.Advertising can be a tough game, but so can real estate. And in both cases, those with a well thought out strategy will almost always succeed over those that don’t have a plan.