Helpful Questions and Tips on Niche Marketing

My clients and students are surprised and delighted to discover that a refined niche marketing strategy not only attracts significantly more business but also provides richer opportunities for self expression. In this article you will find the questions that can help you discern your own market niche.

Keywords:
niche marketing, market niche, niche market, small business, self promotion, marketing, offer

My clients and students are surprised and delighted to discover that a refined niche marketing strategy not only attracts significantly more business but also provides richer opportunities for self expression. To help you discern your own market niche, try using “where” and “who” questions like the following:

“Where” Questions

Where do you consistently find kindred spirits?
Where are you most credible?
Where is there the greatest need coupled with the greatest appreciation for your work?
Where do the people who need your work most often have breakdowns that would cause them to hire you?

“Who” Questions

Who is naturally drawn to you and to your work?
To whom are the things that seem obvious to you a revelation?
Who is traveling a path that you have successfully walked yourself?
Whose language do you speak?
Whose concerns can you reliably anticipate and address?
Whom is it easy for you to serve?

Knowing and working from your strengths are essential parts of developing your niche marketing strategy

There are probably several ways in which your strengths can add value in the marketplace. Therefore, developing a niche is a process of exploring several possibilities and gradually refining them.

You might think about developing a market niche as akin to planting a garden. You start by planting lots of seeds rather close together. As these germinate, you keep the strongest sprouts and remove the others. As your garden grows, you will continue to thin and prune until only the strongest and healthiest plants remain. Along the way you give away or compost the seedlings and trimmings; nothing is lost.

As you refine your niche marketing strategy, you’ll grow in integrity and confidence. With time, you’ll know with certainty which customers are right for you, and you’ll attract more of them.

Are You Afraid of Using Niche Marketing Because it May Turn Away Business?

As you refine your market niche, you may experience some anxiety that focusing on your niche will deprive you of needed business. What do you do if someone outside of your niche wants to hire you?

Talk to them. See how well you fit. There is nothing about a focused niche that says you cannot work with a variety of clients. The point of a niche is not to confine you, but to create the healthiest ecosystem for your business. Focusing your market niche is like focusing a great searchlight that can be seen for miles around. Your searchlight may attract people from beyond your niche precisely because you have defined that niche.

While you always have the option of working with anyone who is attracted by your focused niche, do beware of trying to be all things to all people. Not only are you likely to fail at this, but you run an increased risk of coming across as inauthentic and insincere. The cost of not applying a niche marketing strategy is not being recognized for the offer that you are and not having a fulcrum from which to leverage that offer for increased effectiveness, service, and prosperity. The longer you persist in marketing to everyone and anyone who could conceivably hire you, the more certain it is that you will burn out, leaving yourself and your clients or customers dissatisfied. In order to make a compelling declaration of what you are up to, you must be willing to say “no” to those clients, projects, and possibilities that are not well within the scope of your passion and your expertise.

It is important to look to the market to see what your prospective customers and clients want. But look with a keen eye for how the needs and desires of the market match your strengths, talents, and passions. Say “no” to the opportunities that are a poor match, so that your vision and resources can be focused on the projects and relationships that are most likely to succeed.

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Labels

In this age, there is a lot of focus on the importance of “getting organized.” There are even professional organizers for hire! Labels are a huge presence in the field of organization, because they enable everything to be tagged and put in its place. From birthday party invitations to mass market mailings to identifying file folders, consumers frequently employ labels in their everyday lives. Labels are a convenient and simple way to increase organization in business and home…

Keywords:
label,marketing,design,business

In this age, there is a lot of focus on the importance of “getting organized.” There are even professional organizers for hire! Labels are a huge presence in the field of organization, because they enable everything to be tagged and put in its place. From birthday party invitations to mass market mailings to identifying file folders, consumers frequently employ labels in their everyday lives. Labels are a convenient and simple way to increase organization in business and home settings.

By using the templates provided on word processing programs, making personal labels has become fairly easy and much less time consuming than writing them by hand. There are several name brand labels and many generic store brands that work with the same templates. Labels are available in several different shapes and sizes and in color, white, or clear. Some are permanent and others are removable. They are tailor-made for optimum print quality on either Inkjet or Laser printers. Labels are available for almost any need that the consumer may have.

For larger projects and for transferring data from a mailing list in spreadsheet format to a label template, many people use Mail Merge, a feature in Microsoft Word that uploads a list of names and addresses and reformats it into easy-to-print labels. Even if only one typed label is needed, label companies now sell detachable labels that can be printed one at a time without wasting other labels.

The uses for labels are unlimited and include archiving and record keeping, shipping, advertising, and organization.

Archiving and Record Keeping

Even in one’s home, the amount of papers accumulated in a year from bills, statements, and reports are staggering. Businesses collect a much higher number of invoices, publications, and correspondence. Sometimes there is the temptation to throw it all away, but the day may come when a receipt or invoice from two years ago is needed and the consumer is so glad that it was saved. One way to get rid of all the clutter is by archiving the information monthly or yearly, according to the amount. Office supply companies sell archiving systems, which include sturdy boxes for storage, labels and programs for record keeping, and an internal filing system for use inside the box. This helps tremendously in keeping track of the important communications that have occurred.

Shipping

Labels are necessary when shipping and mailing various items. Label templates on word processing programs offer a wide array of different labels, such as large labels for boxes, tiny labels for return addresses, and several sizes in between for labeling CDs, videotapes, floppy disks, and more. Full sheet labels are also available so that the user can be creative with their own cut outs, graphics and clipart.

Advertising
Many businesses place their company logo and tagline on their mailing labels to make an impression on the buyer and create brand familiarity. For example, mail order companies know that it increases the buyer’s satisfaction level when they see the familiar packaging and label arrive at their doorstep. Labels are also used in advertising for mass-market mailings of brochures, coupons, offers, and special sales sheets.

Organization

Just about every aspect of life can be improved with increased organization. Labels help the user to achieve order by designating specific spaces for items. There are so many areas in which organization and labels are useful, including safety issues, like keeping track of alarm codes and times to replace fire detection units. Also, labels assist in keeping automobiles current on tune-ups, and family members and pets up-to-date on medical checkups. Household chore schedules, gift wrapping area and supplies, coupon clipping, and rummage sales are just some of the other areas that are greatly helped by the use of labels.

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Seven Ways to Enhance Organizational Culture

For a whole variety of reasons, organizational culture is important to the health or viability of any organization. This article will give you some specific things you can do to act on the importance of your organizational culture.

Keywords:
organizational culture, culture, employee satisfaction, improving culture, organizational change

As a young employee I was transferred to work in an office tower in downtown San Francisco. I wasn’t the only person to arrive in this new office space – the group had changed significantly due to reorganization and many of us were working together for the first time.

My boss, the Marketing Manager, asked me to help him with some unusual projects. First, I organized an ugly tie contest. Next, we created a puzzle where everyone told me their fantasy identity (who they would be if they could be anyone) and I created a quiz. People had several days to try to figure out who was who. This culminated in a party and the revealing of all the secret identities (and prizes for those who had done the best guessing).

Along with many other events, we eventually instituted the first casual Friday in this company (hey, this was 1987).

At the time I knew what was happening and why it was important to the development of the culture in this organization. But I didn’t understand it the way I do now. . .

For a whole variety of reasons, organizational culture is important to the health or viability of any organization.

It is one thing to know something is important. It is another thing entirely to know what to do about it. This article will give you some specific things you can do to act on the importance of your organizational culture.

Get help. Wherever you sit in the organizational structure or hierarchy you can impact organizational culture in a positive (or negative – but why would you want to do that?) way. Admittedly, if you are in a position of leadership, it might be easier, but we can all have an impact. But we can’t do it alone. Form a team of like minded, interested and enthusiastic people, and get them on board with developing and enhancing your culture.

Get a vision. Get your team to discuss the current culture. Define the parts of the culture that are already great and need to be supported. And honestly determine where the culture could use some polishing. Then create a vision of the culture you want to create, taking into account the entire current picture –the warts and the beauty marks.

Get strategic. Your team will recognize that this is important – you’ve picked people who already understand that and you have developed a deeper understanding as you created a vision of a desired future culture. Help everyone understand – the team and organizational leadership – that this isn’t a band-aid, quick fix; but an ongoing, strategic intention to build a more attractive culture that fits the needs of the organization.

Get people excited. Chances are your culture team will be excited. If not, get them excited! Help the team recognize that not everyone else in the organization is going to think that these efforts are worthwhile immediately. Remember that enthusiasm is contagious. Do what you can to keep the enthusiasm of your team high. If their excitement falters, remind them of the vision they created to re-invigorate them.

Get a champion. That person may be you, or it may be someone else on the team. In my case, I took on an alter ego of the “phun phantom.” While a moniker might not be necessary, a point person, whether anonymous or not, is important. Culture change is like any other change – it requires champions. The champion needs to be someone who is passionate about creating the new culture. As in my case, this might be a perfect role for a young energetic person, but don’t assign the role. The best champions will rise up and “select” themselves.

Get started. Yes, I have listed the first five suggestions in a chronological order. But that doesn’t mean you can’t so something today, as soon as you finish reading this article or right now. You already know some things that need to change in your culture, so role model one of them starting immediately. Maybe your first step is to invite a couple people to lunch that you think might want to be on your team. Whatever your first step is – do it.

Get momentum on your side. Any change will have a greater chance of success with momentum. Don’t form your team today if you don’t think you’ll be able to get them going quickly. Don’t think of this something that can be done in a couple of weeks. A single event that you hope will permanently change the culture – won’t. In fact, it might have the opposite effect entirely. Get started but be committed to building momentum and staying with it. It will be one of the most rewarding efforts you and your team will ever engage in.

I haven’t given you specific cultural events to try. Why? Because I don’t know what kind of changes you want to create. In my case we were trying to create higher levels of camaraderie and more fun in the workplace. You may have that and may want to enhance your culture in completely different ways. You and your team will figure out what to do. This list is meant to help you figure those things out for yourselves.

These seven things are by no means a complete list – but they are a great place to start. And getting started is the most important next step of all.

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Warning: ‘Casual Marketing’ Leads to Business Casualties

Do you suffer from the ‘casual marketing’ curse? – The very same curse that causes numerous businesses to fail each year? Well here are 3 steps that will help you avoid that curse and put you on a fast-track to success!

Keywords:
marketing,ezine,branding,display ads,radio,teleseminars,communication styles,target audience

Let’s start out by defining exactly what ‘casual marketing’ is. In a nutshell, it’s trying a marketing tactic once, maybe twice, and when you don’t see immediate or expected results, you drop that marketing tactic and either try something else or worse yet don’t do any marketing for a while – hoping clients will just magically appear. This is the old “build it and they will come” disorder. I don’t know if you’re one of the charmed ones or not, but sitting and waiting for clients to show up has never worked for me or anyone I know of.

Now when analyzing reports provided by the U.S. Small Business Association, I noticed a shocking trend. Basically, for every small business that opens its doors each year, another one closes theirs. That’s a pretty scary statistic! And it’s my belief that ‘casual marketing’ is one of the main causes of that statistic being as bad as it is.

So how do you ensure that you don’t wind up on the bad side of that statistic? Well from a marketing standpoint, here are 3 steps to avoid the ‘casual marketing’ curse:

Vary Your Marketing Approach to Ensure the Most Comprehensive Reach

Approach your target audience from different angles using a variety of different mediums. First off, I believe it’s important to note that different people like to be communicated to in different ways. Visual people may give more credence to messages that appeal to their eyes – eye candy so to speak. For example flashy display ads, photographs, and video would most likely be their preference. Auditory people most likely would enjoy hearing your messages. Therefore, marketing campaigns that used tactics such as radio, teleseminars, and audio postcards would probably yield the most success. And lastly kinesthetic people who typically prefer something they can put their hands on. For example, test driving your product or service and physical samples would most likely appeal to them the most.

So being that it’s close to impossible to know the communication style preference of every one in your target audience, which approach do you choose? How about a combination of the three? For example, if you are a car dealership, why not offer a combination of flashy display ads, audio postcards, and test drives? This way you appeal to your entire target audience in one way shape or form.

Additionally, you may want to approach your target audience using different mediums. Don’t be afraid to mix it up here because once again different people tend to be more comfortable with different mediums. Some like print media like newspapers and magazines, others prefer Internet-based mediums such as web sites and email, while still others prefer mediums such as television – and the list can go on and on here.

Marketing Consistency Is Key to Building Relationships
While you may want to vary your marketing approach, it is critical however to communicate a consistent message and image of who you are and how you can solve your target audience’s problem. And for small businesses, the byproduct of this effort should lead to branding.

‘All-the-time marketing’ Is Vital to Your Survival
Marketing should not be a some-of-the-time thing; it needs to be an all-of-the-time thing.
And in the absence of your leadership, your target audience will tend to listen to whoever is doing the talking. And with the vast array of competition out there screaming in your target audience’s ear, your allegiance to ‘all-the-time marketing’ is more critical than ever. Now how you stand out from the pack is a whole other story for another day. Just know that you have to at least be in the game. So always don the marketing hat and learn how to sense and make the most of marketing opportunities.

So let’s be honest now, have you been guilty of ‘casual marketing’? Whether you have or you haven’t, know that that’s not what’s important here, it’s what you do from now on that counts. So decide right now to employ ‘all-the-time marketing’ in your business. I urge you to try this persona on for a while and see how it fits. I’m sure that you’ll notice that it gets much easier over time – it becomes second nature. And better yet, it brings results.

© 2009 Online Marketing Muscle – All Rights Reserved.

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Want A Free Report That Teaches You How To Write Powerful Articles?

This may come as a surprise… That all these PLR articles you can get from these member sites will do you no good at all. Why you may ask? It is because imagine there might be 100,200 or more members in the site and their all using that article you’ve chosen.

That means that same article will be all over the net on different sites. Google knows this and actually penalizes you for having what they call ‘Duplicate Conent’.

As you no doubt already know, writing articles …

Keywords:
article,articles,how to write articles,learn how to write articles,unique conent

This may come as a surprise… That all these PLR articles you can get from these member sites will do you no good at all. Why you may ask? It is because imagine there might be 100,200 or more members in the site and their all using that article you’ve chosen.

That means that same article will be all over the net on different sites. Google knows this and actually penalizes you for having what they call ‘Duplicate Conent’.

As you no doubt already know, writing articles is probably the most effective way to promote your web site. It’s a very simple principle – publishers want a vast quantity of good quality content that they do not have to pay for; you provide that content, with the proviso that at the bottom of your article, they include your resource box with a link to your web site.

It’s a win-win situation. With your article published on heaps of web sites, and in several ezines, it’s enough to set your traffic counter spinning.

But if you use these re-used articles from these membership sites, you are going to get penalized.

Hence, you won’t get indexed at all by the major search engines, you might even end up in Google’s sandbox.

Here’s what you can do about it…

You can hire a ghost writer from Elance or Scriptlance or one of those outsourcing companies.

That is if you have a lot of cash, you can spend a lot of$$$doing this.

There’s no doubt you’ll get some good info, but you have to check which writer you’re going to use.

Not all writers will or can write how you want your articles done.

No matter why you’re writing an article, it’s your responsibility to make it be interesting – otherwise no one will read it. (Except you.)

By writing your own article, it will be unique and be accepted a lot better on the search engines.

You might think that you couldn’t write an article if you tried. Don’t kid yourself, I wrote this one your reading now.

All I did was study some good programs and e-books on how to write them.

And took it from there, it’s really good fun too, with some of this training material, you’ll learn where to find material about your subject, and use it as an idea for your own article.

You must never copy the other article, but you can get some good idea’s from subjects on the net.

Just look up your subject on Google and get some good idea’s and put them into your article.

You will not believe how easy YOU can come up with a 400-500 word article.

Iv’e done about 5 now and can submit them to all the article sites, which love new content.

You’ll have more chance of getting picked up by other marketers if your article is unique.

People, web masters, search engines, article sites all love fresh new content.

It is a well-known fact that ‘Content-Is-King’, it is a big rage at the moment, or actually for quite a long time for the smart marketers.

If you’re not using fresh, new, unique content on your site then you’re way behind the eight ball and you’ll be wasing your time.

There’s an easy way out of this, learn to write your own articles.

And now you can a FREE report that shows you exactly how to do it.

You now should have a good understanding and realize the importance of fresh unique content. Now you can learn how to write your own.

Now what are you going to do with this information, are you going to take action and get those unique articles out there with your URL in them and get loads of other sites promoting you?

Or are you going to put this away and hope some magical Genie will appear and get you listed on the search engines with no effort at all?

Don’t kid yourself, you need to put in some work to get the results you want with article submission and uniqueness.

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Organize Your Life With Document Management Software

Over the years, it becomes quite a tedious job to rummage as well as sort through your files. This has led to an increasing demand for document management software. It is now a whole lot easier to organize your paper documents from paper format into digital archives.

1. Itaz doQuments

Itaz doQuments document management software is a document management application that can help you create a more centralized, searchable database for all your electronic documents. Saved …

Keywords:
electronic document management software,document management software services,workflow document management software,digital document management software

Over the years, it becomes quite a tedious job to rummage as well as sort through your files. This has led to an increasing demand for document management software. It is now a whole lot easier to organize your paper documents from paper format into digital archives.

1. Itaz doQuments

Itaz doQuments document management software is a document management application that can help you create a more centralized, searchable database for all your electronic documents. Saved scanned documents must be in PDF, TIFF or PEG file formats so that the document management software can process them. For easy reference, you can put additional indexing information to your electronic documents so that you will use these information to quickly find as well as group your documents based on whichever criteria that you can come up with.

The document management software is available in three editions: from the Standard edition to the Professional edition to the Enterprise edition. You can choose from these three editions the type of doQuments document management software that can cater to your needs and lifestyle. Each edition of this document management software is specially designed for:

- Individuals
- Small businesses
- Large organizations

Starting from this document management software’s Standard Edition, this edition of the doQuments document management software application is especially designed for the home as well as for the use of small offices. It is the easiest one to use out of the three and provides an effective solution in the managing not only of paper but as well as electronic documents.

One of its key features is its ability to provide the multi-user environment – users from multiple computers can have access to the doQuments document management software simultaneously. As for being economical, this document management software is fairly easy to upgrade once you start thinking of getting the doQuments’ Professional or Enterprise document management software editions.

2. Advanced Features

Paramaterized search results ensures you can easily locate the documents that you need in just one mouse click. DoQuments is ideal for companies with large intranet or internet sites as it is possible to integrate them easily.

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PRESENTEEISM: Another Dimension

In the past few years the terms “employee engagement” and “employee disengagement” have emerged to more fully describe the employee’s level of motivation and commitment to their job. An engaged employee is considered to be passionate about their work and emotional connected to their work and to their company.

Keywords:

In the past few years the terms “employee engagement” and “employee disengagement” have emerged to more fully describe the employee’s level of motivation and commitment to their job. An engaged employee is considered to be passionate about their work and emotional connected to their work and to their company.

Disengaged employees are those employees that are at work but their minds are not necessarily on their jobs. The term presenteeism has also been used to describe disengaged employees. There minds are somewhere else. They could be thinking about their children, their upcoming date, a party, last’s night basketball game or be engrossed thinking about their own personal problems. From a productivity perspective this may not be that serious for a person working manually on repetitive tasks. However, in the advanced economies of the world such as those found in North America, Europe, Japan and elsewhere, where the contribution of knowledge workers to the GDP is greater than that associated with production workers in the manufacturing sector. Mental performance is the key determinant of productivity and profitability. In this setting if an employee’s mind is not on their jobs they become a significant liability to their organization. The mind today is the ultimate productivity weapon.

This new paradigm has brought awareness to the serious increase in the rise of mental disabilities. For example, it is estimated that the cost of depression to the US economy is approximately $150 billion a year. Forty to 50% of the cost of absenteeism is on account of mental disabilities in medium to large North American organizations. Prescriptions such as Prozac, Welbutrin, Zoloft, Paxil and others used to treat mood disorders and other types of mental disabilities are among the fastest rising category of drugs. To respond to this situation, managers are increasingly challenged to create workplaces that will support a mentally healthy environment.

We also know that there are anywhere from 10%-15% of employees who suffer from depression and who are not absent but who are in fact are at work. This group of employees is incapable of working at peak performance. They are at work and they fall squarely into the disengaged or presenteeism category of employees. To add to this new research in the October 2004 issue of the Harvard Business Review showed that there was an additional dimension to presenteeism. There is another threat to productivity that can be added to the presenteeism group: physically sick workers who show up at work but are not fully functioning. In a research study commissioned by Lockheed Martin in 2002, the single largest group of employees who were at work and were suffering from allergies and sinus problems had a prevalence rate of 60% and were costing the company close to $2 million in lost productivity, followed by chronic lower back pain at 21% and $859,000 in lost productivity, arthritis at 20% and $860,000, depression at 14% and $787,000, dermatitis or other skin conditions at 16% and $610,000, and flu at 18% and $607,000 in lost productivity. This research estimates that presenteeism costs the American economy about $150 million in lost productivity.

What Can We Do?

1. Human Resource Departments need to begin to collect and use the absenteeism and other health statistics in a strategic way. This means being proactive in their organizations to begin to educate their own managers.
2. Train managers to manage for performance as well as managing for health. If they see a performance change in an employee who is considered a good performer, managers need to be given the language to enter into the appropriate conversation with their employee to discern the problem. The manger is not being asked to be a doctor or psychiatrist. She is being asked to point the employee in the right direction, i.e. going to EAP or whatever is the most appropriate course of action to restore the employee to fully productivity.
3. Educate your employees. This can be done using lunch and learns. Use your own internal health statistics to determine the priority for the programs.
4. Ensure that your absenteeism policies are not encouraging sick employees to come to work.
5. View employee productivity from a systems perspective. Employee health is inexorably linked to productivity. Therefore all managers should be held accountable for both their own business performance measures as well as for their unit’s absenteeism. In other words the health of their employees is now their responsibility and not the responsibility of their health department. We worked with a client where this was instituted. The health of the employees in their department was discussed along with business issues at the weekly departmental meetings. Absenteeism decreased and productivity increased.
6. Assess your company drug plan. Does it support a healthy workplace or is it acting as a disincentive. You may be surprised what you find. Make sure that in your assessment you consider the whole system. Look at the cost side and also look at what is gained by supporting for example, employees who may be suffering from allergies and with the correct medication are able to be fully productive.
7. Introduce health promotion programs. There is a litany of programs and you have to choose the most appropriate for your organization. For example, EAP, flu shots, blood pressure testing, exercising, smoke cessation, weight loss and stress management programs.
8. But before you lunge into any of these programs make sure you understand root causes of the disabilities in your organization. For example, how much are organizational practices and leadership behaviors contributing to stress, chronic back pain and depression. Although health promotion programs can be effective, their effectiveness is dramatically reduced if organizational causes are not addressed first. The use of a leading edge diagnostics such as the Entec’s Employee Engagement Survey that measures both organizational factors and employee health factors can be an invaluable first step to identify causes of employee ill-health and to create a framework for improving health and productivity.

Better management of employee health can lead to improved productivity and this in turn can create a competitive advantage. With scare resources you may discover that reallocating funds towards health from training dollars will achieve greater productivity gains.

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Save Face, Time, and Money on Your Next IT Project

Well-managed communication can increase the rates of success on your IT projects by improving relations between you and your customers and decreasing the odds of hasty last-minute enhancements, thus saving face, saving time, and saving money.

Keywords:
communication specialist, communicator, freelance writer, communication plan

How many times have you been involved in a project where a newly-released piece of software required an immediate enhancement because the right people were not “in the loop”? This is an example of how poor communication costs money and damages the reputation of an Information Technology (IT) Team.

Well-managed communication can increase the rates of success on your IT projects by improving relations between you and your customers and decreasing the odds of hasty last-minute enhancements, thus saving face, saving time, and saving money.

Most developers are familiar with technical writers, who produce documentation. While these writers are important to your project, they do not typically handle communication. That requires a person well-versed in communication planning and execution: the communication specialist.

A communication specialist will:
• determine your communication objectives (educate?, gather specifications?, change behavior?)
• identify the people who have and need information about your project,
• identify the best way of reaching these people,
• and build a list of key messages.

The communication can occur through many channels, such as focus groups, face-to-face meetings, status reports, newsletters, email messages, web sites, PowerPoint presentations, or phone hotlines. Communication can also be executed in less formal ways, such as establishing mail lists and selectively copying the appropriate people on relevant email.

The communication specialist brings all this together in a communication plan.

Then the communication specialist will execute each communication, according to the established timeline. And of course, he or she will adjust the communication plan as the project evolves.

Well-planned and managed communication is crucial to how your organization is perceived and it will have a direct impact on your project. Adding a communication specialist to your next IT project will increase your odds of success.

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What Are 7 Psychological Triggers That Make People Buy?

Did you know that there are seven psychological techniques that literary persuade people to buy?
When we first used these techniques in a client’s mailshot, we increased the response rate by 257%! You can use them not only in your mailshots but also in your ads, headlines, and even sales letters.

Keywords:
how to sell, psychological sales, increase sales, increase newsletter

Trigger #1: Reason Why

Tell people WHY you’re doing something. Don’t be a mystery for your customers. People are more likely to buy from an ordinary person they know something about.
Are you giving 25% discount on your product? Give the people honest reason why. Are you limiting the number of products you want to sell? Tell people why.

If you tell your visitors about the reasons of doing something they will be more likely to trust you and to buy from you.

Trigger #2: Specifics

Tell the specifics. “How I made $1,057 in a week” sounds more believable than “How I made $1,000 in a week”.
People are sceptic. If you include specifics people will be more likely to believe you.
If you state a fact, make it specific. General numbers never sounded plausible.

Trigger #3: Curiosity

We all are extremely curious. We want to know answers to our questions. Tell people not to open this email and they will open it. Because they want to know what’s inside.

Headlines like “Discover the hidden secret of free offers” are always producing great results. You immediately want to know “What secret?”.

Curiosity trigger is a great way to get your email opened. It also works great in ads and in articles. Like the title of this article: “What Are 7 Psychological Triggers That Make People Buy?”

Trigger #4: Fear to Lose Something

People are most likely to buy from you if they are motivated by fear to lose something than if they are motivated by desire to gain something. That’s why deadlines and limited production numbers works well.
Use deadlines in your copy. Run 3 days specials or limit the number of products you want to sell. Make people act now by letting them know that it is a limited time offer.

Trigger #5: Questions

Ask questions. By asking questions you get people involved, they automatically start to think to answer your question and become more responsive to your message.
What headline would grab your attention?

“You are wasting money on ezine advertising” or “Are you wasting money on ezine advertising?”

Trigger #6: Stories

Nothing can be better than a good story. It’s easy to influence people just by telling them a good story.
A lot of famous writers used this method in their sales letters. You can tell a true story about your customer. Or about yourself.

A real life story about something the product has done to improve someone’s life will build your credibility and motivate people to buy.

Trigger #7: Facing a Problem

Every product is a solution to particular problem. Don’t rush into presenting the solution you have, make sure you first make your visitors to face the problem.

Present the problem and agitate it so people would feel the pain of situation. Spell out the problem, tell them how it feels. Only after you’ve got readers interest present your product that provides the solution.

Apply these seven psychological techniques to maximize your sales and increase the response rate of your ads.

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Who’s Your Target Market? Hint It’s Probably Not The Guy At The 7-11

Like most, my first few attempts at network marketing failed miserably. Looking back, I now realize this is because of how I was taught.

Keywords:
Target Market, Marketing, MLM

Like most, my first few attempts at network marketing failed miserably. Looking back, I now realize this is because of how I was taught. The most poisonous of the crap your upline tells has got to be that everybody is a prospect. This idea alone is probably responsible for more failures in this business than anything else. You want to lower your self-esteem a couple notches? Try using the 3-foot rule more than a few minutes.

So if everybody is not your prospect, then who is? Many these days are focusing on people looking for home-based businesses, but is this really going far enough? My own experience with this has shown me that many people looking for legitimate home businesses consider network marketing taboo. I’ve seriously had people ask me, “Is this MLM?” When I say it is, more often than not, the line goes dead. They have their reasons, many of them valid, but that’s a whole other subject.

I’ve also encountered people who were looking for business opportunities who wanted nothing to do with selling. What? Show me one business that stays afloat without selling. Too many of these people believe the hype that’s out there. You know, like “No selling involved?” This alone makes them less than ideal candidates to be considered a target market for network marketers.

Who then? Who understands network marketing requires work and discipline? Who has made their names list, done business presentations for their families and friends and, because they were taught to find a way to snake their business opportunity into every conversation, now find themselves not being invited to family gatherings and such? Well, considering more than 95% of network marketers fail within three to four months, the answer should be somewhat obvious. The target market for network marketers is fellow network marketers.

I’m not saying to persuade those in other companies to join your opportunity. More than likely, that would also end in frustration. However, with a 95% failure rate, there are a whole lot of people out there who believe in network marketing but haven’t been given the proper support or training. This is where you come in.

If you target these disillusioned, but motivated souls, you’ll find a gold mine. By teaching them solid, no nonsense marketing techniques, many are likely to succeed, which translates into more success for you.

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