5 Steps For Taking Your Product To Market
Getting your product on the market requires exceptional product knowledge, creativity, imagination, persistence and energy. Here are five steps that can be implemented with low, or no cost. Now, in some cases, your "product" may be you! Are you a professional speaker? Success coach? Entertainer? ... Take these steps and get your product on the market in record time.
1. Create a Marketing Plan
An excellent marketing plan is essential and serves as the blueprint for your business success. Begin by confirming that there is in fact ... a market for your product. Many overlook this and end up making one of the most expensive mistakes of their lives. If there is a market for your product, get the most recent market synopsis for your business. Do your research online and at your local library or bookstore. There is a plethora of information and literature available to help you succeed. Speak to individuals who operate businesses like yours.
Next, do your homework. Write down your specific goals, objectives, and desired outcome for your business. After you've done this, you're ready to create your marketing plan. Be sure to include your:
- Product description
- Target market
- Customer demographics
- Price
- Competition
- Promotion
- Advertising
- Profit percentage
- Product Guarantee
- Product/liability Insurance
- Budget
2. Set a Launch Date
What is the exact date your product goes on a shelf, in a rack, in front of an audience, or online? Write it down. Your launch date not only gives you something to aim at, it helps keep you accountable. Your Launch Date is considered your debut, or grand opening. It is the day your customers line up throughout cyberspace -- or around the block -- to be the first in line to buy your product.
The launch date is typically set far enough ahead for a full-steam ahead marketing effort. Setting a launch date six months in advance is the minimum I would suggest for a strong marketing campaign. Anything less would compromise your efforts and results. Six or more months out increases the likelihood for great previews, reviews, blurbs and other publicity mediums. And be sure to arrange radio phone interviews and personal appearances with radio and television stations.
3. Work With a Business Coach or Small Group
Everyone can benefit from the guidance and support while putting their product on market. A business coach or a business support group can help you reach your destination. You can't help but benefit from the shared experience and knowledge of others. These resources can also help you hold yourself accountable for reaching your daily goals and objectives. The primary goals include helping you grow -- and stay -- in business. You can meet once a week, once a month, or even once a quarter. It's up to you.
4. Take Action Every Day
This tactic requires discipline and is one you cannot afford to overlook. You must do something everyday which moves you closer to putting your product on the market. Be sure you are advertising and utilizing both online and offline resources to do so. Go out and network and establish business relationships in your community. Join your chamber of commerce. Approach your niche market everyday with the intent to advance. Be creative, daring and tenacious. Pick up the phone and tell the people about you and how your product can change their lives for the better.
5. Sell, Sell, Sell!
Sell, sell, sell. But not without a specific strategy. Depending on your product and respective marketing plan, you may want to focus selling to individuals first, then small businesses. As you reach your goals, you are more than likely to open up to retail or wholesale. Business-to-business selling is fundamental in the success of many products. Todd Mogren, a successful Internet Marketer says, "We began selling to individuals. Lots of our growth today is coming from businesses, including IBM, UCLA and Ford."
Illustrate the low cost and benefits of your product. Break down the price to its smallest increment and make the benefit clear. For example,
"Enjoy delicious, high quality, coffee delivered to your home for less than 80 cents a day."
Get the picture?
If your product is a mail order item, factor in the appropriate expenses so when you package and ship it, you're not taking away from your profit. Your local post office can recommend the best mailing options. Visit www.usps.com They have excellent packaging tips. To your success! Article complements of, and as originally published in, Shamiracles Marketplace
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Friday, August 10, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Gear Up Your Site For Social Media Marketing
Gear Up Your Site For Social Media Marketing
By Deepak Dutta
The year 2006 saw the emergence of social media. If you are engaged in operating a website, you must realign your site to exploit the popular social media sites for increased traffíc.
You should also introduce social media components to your site because web users are experiencing these new forms of interactions on more and more sites and they may have an expectation of the same from your site also.
If you want to attract repeat visitors and want them to stay longer, your focus this year should be on the social aspects of your site.
Social media uses technologies like RSS, blogging, podcasting, tagging, etc. and offers social networking (MySpace, Facebook), social video and picture sharing (YouTube, Flickr), and community-based content ranking (Digg, MiniClip) features.
The central theme of these sites is user generated content used for sharing among the end-users. The social aspects of these sites are to allow users to setup social communities, invite friends and share common interests.
You don't have to change your site completely within a month or so to take advantage of these new technologies. Introduce small changes incrementally throughout the year and you will be on your way to meet these new challenges.
The first step is to declare who you are to the online community. People should be able to relate to you. Unless they know more about you, you will be just an unknown identity and most people don't like to deal with unknowns. Create an About Us page and líst your achievements and skills.
Create a MySpace page and link your bio in the About Us page to the MySpace page. Also provide a link back from the MySpace page to your website. Spend an hour every week to develop your online social network in MySpace. Invite a few of these new friends to write blog articles at your site about your products or services.
Install frëe blog software and start publishing at least one article in your blog. Provide an easy bookmarking feature to social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us. This is done by providing an action button for each article on your site. The action button takes users to the submission page of the bookmarking site.
Also, provide an action button for direct posting of blog articles to Digg. Digg is a popular news ranking site. A well dugg article will bring thousands of visitors to your site.
Provide a forum at your site for users to discuss your products and services. Don't delete negative comments because they provide insights into the improvements needed to serve your visitors better. However, censor hate speeches and meaningless bantering. Register your forum at BoardTracker. BoardTracker is a forum search engine.
If you are offering products, allow users to review and rate your products. This will help you in inventory management because you may want to discontinue low rated products.
Provide RSS feeds for your new products, blogs, forum postings, etc. An RSS feed provides teasers of your contents. Users will use RSS readers to scan your teasers and visit your site for more information if the teasers draw their attention.
Publish all your feeds at Feedburner. Feedburner provides media distribution and audience engagement services for RSS feeds. They also provide an advertising network for your feeds. If you have quality content, you will be able to monetize your content using their services.
Create short how-to or new product videos and post these videos in social video sharing sites like YouTube and Google video. Provide a few start and end frames in these videos to introduce your site with your site url. Post these videos using catchy titles, teasing descriptions, and appropriate tags to make them discoverable.
Provide embedded links to your posted videos on your site. This will save your bandwidth and storage space because the videos reside on the video sharing sites.
Besides videos, use social photo sharing sites like Flickr to share pictures related to content on your site. Use the same title, description and tag techniques discussed earlier for social video sites.
Provide a Send to Friend feature for all products and services you offër. This feature is a link that sends the article, product description, etc. to a recipient via e-mail.
For starters, Yahoo provides a service called Action Buttons that adds links to your website for users to share, save, and blog about your website. The Yahoo action buttons use del.icio.us for social bookmarking and the Yahoo blog site for blogging. It also has a print feature.
Social media is not a fad. It is here to stay and bring in profound changes to web surfers' experiences. It is the right time for implementing features that will make your site social media friendly. Also, using marketing techniques that utilize popular social media sites, you will be able to bring traffíc to your site.
By Deepak Dutta
The year 2006 saw the emergence of social media. If you are engaged in operating a website, you must realign your site to exploit the popular social media sites for increased traffíc.
You should also introduce social media components to your site because web users are experiencing these new forms of interactions on more and more sites and they may have an expectation of the same from your site also.
If you want to attract repeat visitors and want them to stay longer, your focus this year should be on the social aspects of your site.
Social media uses technologies like RSS, blogging, podcasting, tagging, etc. and offers social networking (MySpace, Facebook), social video and picture sharing (YouTube, Flickr), and community-based content ranking (Digg, MiniClip) features.
The central theme of these sites is user generated content used for sharing among the end-users. The social aspects of these sites are to allow users to setup social communities, invite friends and share common interests.
You don't have to change your site completely within a month or so to take advantage of these new technologies. Introduce small changes incrementally throughout the year and you will be on your way to meet these new challenges.
The first step is to declare who you are to the online community. People should be able to relate to you. Unless they know more about you, you will be just an unknown identity and most people don't like to deal with unknowns. Create an About Us page and líst your achievements and skills.
Create a MySpace page and link your bio in the About Us page to the MySpace page. Also provide a link back from the MySpace page to your website. Spend an hour every week to develop your online social network in MySpace. Invite a few of these new friends to write blog articles at your site about your products or services.
Install frëe blog software and start publishing at least one article in your blog. Provide an easy bookmarking feature to social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us. This is done by providing an action button for each article on your site. The action button takes users to the submission page of the bookmarking site.
Also, provide an action button for direct posting of blog articles to Digg. Digg is a popular news ranking site. A well dugg article will bring thousands of visitors to your site.
Provide a forum at your site for users to discuss your products and services. Don't delete negative comments because they provide insights into the improvements needed to serve your visitors better. However, censor hate speeches and meaningless bantering. Register your forum at BoardTracker. BoardTracker is a forum search engine.
If you are offering products, allow users to review and rate your products. This will help you in inventory management because you may want to discontinue low rated products.
Provide RSS feeds for your new products, blogs, forum postings, etc. An RSS feed provides teasers of your contents. Users will use RSS readers to scan your teasers and visit your site for more information if the teasers draw their attention.
Publish all your feeds at Feedburner. Feedburner provides media distribution and audience engagement services for RSS feeds. They also provide an advertising network for your feeds. If you have quality content, you will be able to monetize your content using their services.
Create short how-to or new product videos and post these videos in social video sharing sites like YouTube and Google video. Provide a few start and end frames in these videos to introduce your site with your site url. Post these videos using catchy titles, teasing descriptions, and appropriate tags to make them discoverable.
Provide embedded links to your posted videos on your site. This will save your bandwidth and storage space because the videos reside on the video sharing sites.
Besides videos, use social photo sharing sites like Flickr to share pictures related to content on your site. Use the same title, description and tag techniques discussed earlier for social video sites.
Provide a Send to Friend feature for all products and services you offër. This feature is a link that sends the article, product description, etc. to a recipient via e-mail.
For starters, Yahoo provides a service called Action Buttons that adds links to your website for users to share, save, and blog about your website. The Yahoo action buttons use del.icio.us for social bookmarking and the Yahoo blog site for blogging. It also has a print feature.
Social media is not a fad. It is here to stay and bring in profound changes to web surfers' experiences. It is the right time for implementing features that will make your site social media friendly. Also, using marketing techniques that utilize popular social media sites, you will be able to bring traffíc to your site.
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