Author: Wael Badawy
Be Courageous
For such a simple statement, this is one of the hardest things for people to do. It goes back to that damn survival instinct each of us is born with. If an animal draws attention to itself in the wild, it might soon find itself the main course of a larger animalís next meal. That fear of being chewed up and spit out has survived all our millions of years of evolution and is alive and well in todayís business environment.
Fight or flight is another instinct many of us havenít yet learned to manipulate. Itís easier to run away from a new idea than it is to stay and fight for it. With todayís leadership-by-committee mentality and intense public scrutiny, the easiest solution is unfortunately the most popular. Companies today often miss the forest through the trees. They tend to concentrate so much on short-term profit that they fail to make investments or take advantages of opportunities that promise long-term profit simply because they require a short-term loss.
It may also be argued that fighting for a new ideaówhether that means pushing for the development of a new product, staving off competitors or supporting a slumping brand rather than letting it dieóis usually undesirable because of such costs.
Certainly that might be true in the short term, but in the long run, giving up too soon my actually cost your company far more in lost revenues, public outrage or shrinking market share. It requires a different way of thinking. Advertising and promoting your business is an investment in your businessí future. Investments are not mere costs. They come with a benefit.
Letís get one thing straight from the very beginning. No company ever dominated its industry by operating with a philosophy of fear. And, ultimately, no company can survive if it doesnít learn to conquer its fear and take chances, make changes.
It is the ability to see past any short-term problems to the bigger, long-term picture that has fueled the meteoric rise of the worldís most successful companies. Nobody knew what Apple was before its history making 1985 Super Bowl commercial.
Apple paid to run that commercial only once, but it ran again hundreds of times around the country and the world during local and national news broadcasts. Stories about Apple and its commercial were front-page news for weeks.
When it comes to advertising, you might wonder what kinds of changes are needed. After all, itís just advertising. If your ads look like your competitorsí ads, if your messages are strikingly similar, if you talk to yourself instead of your customers, if you worry more about your logo being large enough than the message being attention-getting enough, you need to change.
Now this is just the first step, so we wonít get into any more detail here. The object of this step is to let you know that you need to screw up your courage and prepare to make some changes in your advertising that will have a profound effect on your bottom line.
Fear is the greatest motivator. However, instead of motivating people to act, it usually causes people to freeze or retreat. It takes courage to make the kinds of changes that are needed to survive in todayís crowded, complicated and competitive business environment.
Conquer your fear. Be courageous.
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Best Internet Marketing Strategies ñ Success Is Yours
Do you have a list of words that you like? I used to have a pretty extensive list. I had lots of words on there, but unfortunately I have forgotten many of them because I wasnít thinking about them enough. This is depressing because that list was such a simple little pick me up to maintain. I also liked that I liked the words for absolutely no logical reason. For example, the word ìfusiaî was on there and Iím not even one hundred percent sure what color that is, but I like the sound. Incidentally, Iím thinking fusia is a burgundy-ish color.
I once was out to eat with a girlfriend named Kit (actually her name was Katrina and for some reason it was shortened to Kit rather than Kat). The relationship was clearly coming to a close, but we still had a few dinners and drinks in us before the official end. Anyways, that night she told me that she liked the word ìperpendicularî and although I was mentally tainted in my thinking about her, because I knew that we were going to break up, at the moment that she said that, she seemed to me the most beautiful woman in the world. I like words and I like people who like words.
Anyways, I just realized that I also like the word ìstrategyî. Iím not sure why. I like it and moreover, just thinking about it makes me wish I had a strategyÖfor anythingÖexcept marketing. I donít want a marketing strategy and I definitely donít want an internet marketing strategy. Much like my feelings towards Kit in a positive way, I think that I would be negatively influenced by someone who had an internet marketing strategy. I donít even want to think about what Iíd feel towards someone who claimed to have the best internet marketing strategy. So in conclusion, I feel that the word strategy is cool and I also feel that actual strategies are cool, but a marketing strategy to me reeks of exploitative intentions and to me that is just not cool.
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Benefits Of The Business Cards
Sometimes being at the right place and time can do wonders for the business. This can happen in the street or in the mall and starts by just approaching a stranger. New contacts occur everyday and with a little initiative, the person may be able to close a sale or be referred to someone who may need it.
There are many ways that a person can attract customers to oneís business. Some do this by launching a marketing campaign in the form of an ad in the paper or on a billboard. Some donít use marketing at all and just flourish through word of mouth.
On a more personal level if that person travels around, the best thing to carry and give out is a business card.
Business cards are used by people in big and small time business. It reflects who the person is. It gives people an idea of what the person is capable of doing in the event that the service one offers is needed in the future.
Such instruments are easy and light to carry along. It saves a lot of time and trouble for the other person to jot down oneís contact details.
Making a business card is easy. One can do this at home and just print it in the computer. Should the person decide to have it done by a small printing firm, the individual should be sure that the spelling and the design is correct. This will make it easy for people to get hold of the services one can do.
Business cards should always have some important details such as the name and contact number where the person can be reached and the company that one works for. If the person is self-employed, this can also work to get more customers for the business.
Since most people who get business cards simply put it in the drawer with the others, one should be imaginative in letting people recall it.
A few good examples are giving it in the form of a magnet that can be placed in the fridge. Should that person drink coffee in the office, one can have a coaster made that people will surely notice. Since computers are a necessity in the workplace, a mouse pad will also be a good idea to give away.
There is also another way of making oneself noticed by other people. That is carrying the business cards of other people and giving it to those who need it. When this happens and the person asks how the card went to that person, the individual will be remembered and oneís services will surely be called upon in the future by these two potential customers.
Businesses survive due to a regular customers and having new clients. This will bring additional revenue for the company and allows the company to flourish. By using the resources one has such as the use of business cards, this will happen.
These small hard pieces of paper are things that one can give out at anytime. Be it in a convention or some other function related to work or in parties and other social gatherings that will really help increase customer traffic. Small things do come in small packages and bringing this handy thing around can really help the person a lot.
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Agriculture Directory is an Essential Aid in Modern World
An online agriculture directory is an excellent aid that can support modern day farming. These days, agriculture resembles an industrial activity, very different from the farming practices of our forefathers.
Today’s cultivator needs equipment like tractors and harvesters, input materials like seeds, pesticides and weedicides, services like soil analysis and expert consultancy on different matters.
The term agriculture today includes more than cultivating the land for grains. It also means horticulture, grazing, vineyards, timber growing, dairy farming, poultry farming and fish farming, for example. Considering this wider meaning, the materials, services and information needs of the modern day agriculturist is wide-ranging.
An online directory that provides instant access to sources of supplies and information is indeed a great support facility for the agriculturist.
Topics Covered by an Agriculture Directory
The topics covered by an agriculture directory these days are wide-ranging. Extracts from the main categories of a major agriculture directory illustrates the variety:
- Bees and Honey
- Cattle
- Horse
- Insurance & Financing
- Import Export
- Rabbits
- Barns & Structures
- Arts & Crafts
- Seed Companies
- Equestrian Sport
- Agritourism
- Equipment Dealers
- Government
- Fencing
- Sustainable Agriculture
- Plant Diseases
- Education
- Forestry
- Veterinary Medicine
- Rural Sociology
The above is only a sample meant to illustrate the variety of topics relevant to agriculturists.
Basic Functions of Agriculture Directories
Serving the needs of agriculturists is a prime function of the directories. Agriculturists need seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, weedicides, tractors, harvesters, soil analysis services; best practices case histories and other inputs for their agricultural activities. They also need marketing support in the forms of information on markets, lists of marketing agencies, government support programs and so on. A good agriculture directory provides links to relevant resources for meeting these requirements.
Agriculture is not just cultivation and todayís agriculture directories also include links to such resources as horse racing, farm tourism, government regulations, rural arts and crafts and so on.
Promoting the agricultural activities in a country is another objective served by national agriculture directories that focus on the suppliers in one particular country. . Exporters in the country would be supported by information about export possibilities, lists of overseas importers, details of government support programs and so on. Importers in other countries would be better able to source their requirements with the help of such regional directories
Different Kinds of Agriculture Directories
Considering the many areas covered or touched by agriculture, it offers scope for many niche directories. We look at a few and their significance below.
EQUINE WEB SITES: Includes links to horse breeders, riding stables, horse racing and such equine topic related web sites.
REGIONAL DIRECTORIES: National directories listing agricultural suppliers located in a country are quite common.
AGRICULTURAL RESOURCES: With links to universities, publications, weather, news and other resources of value to agriculturists and related businesses.
Here again, we have only touched upon the variety. If you look around, you would find a resource that caters to your particular agriculture related niche.
Conclusion
Agriculture is not confined to cultivating the land. In todayís context, it includes even such apparently different activities as equine sports, farm tourism and rural arts, in addition to conventional resources like seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, tractors, harvesters, etc required by cultivators. The agriculture directory of today will also include links to resources needed by animal, poultry and fish farmers, horticulturists, forestry and other activities covered by the term agriculture.
Agriculture directory resources will also cover support activities like insurance, finance, marketing, education and news. Agriculture today is more like an industry that needs information and technology, in addition to conventional inputs outlined earlier.
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Adwords Keyword Research for Beginners
When you embark on your first PPC journey, you need to keep a small number of keywords at first. Keyword lists that are thousands of words long should be left to the more experienced PPC marketer. Ideally, a beginner should use around 100 targeted keywords, anything more will probably prove too cumbersome for you to manipulate. If you can’t harness the power of large keyword campaigns, they will suck your bank accounts dry. There are some very simple free techniques that you can use to find targeted keys words with low competition. One process of finding low competition niche keywords utilizes Google and excel. More specifically you want to use Google’s keyword tool, just type this into Google, and it will appear in the search results.
Upon landing on the main Google keyword tool page, you will find a white box(field) where you want to enter your particular keyword(s). Enter one keyword for now to get an idea of how this works, and press enter. After pressing enter, you will be directed to a page of keywords that will be closely related to the keyword that you entered. For the purposes of what we want to do, you will need to scroll to the middle of the page where the text Add all 150 is highlighted in blue bold text. Below these words you will see the words download all keywords with text,.csv(for excel) and .csv. You want to click on .csv(for excel). By doing this, you will export this data into an excel spreadsheet. The data, which only appears as green bars on the main Google page, will be transformed into numeric data that has much more value for you.
Once the data is in the excel spread sheet, you can begin some simple analysis on it that will benefit your PPC campaign a great deal. In the excel spreadsheet, there are going to be columns of data, A-D. The columns are going to be, from A-D, Keywords, Advertiser competition, the previous month’s search volume, and the average search volume.The two columns we are interested in are the advertiser competition and the Average search volume. What we want to do is merge the data from these two columns to give us a number that we can work with. So what we need to do is take a generalized average of these two to get a number which we will compare to a predetermined benchmark. Sounds a little odd, let me explain a bit more completely, and hopefully you will understand. All of these numbers are in decimals on a scale ranging from .00 to 1. The higher the number, the more competition there is(as expressed by the advertiser competition numbers) and the higher the search volume(as expressed by the average search volume). Ideally, we want low competition with a decent search volume to target lower cost high converting keywords. So, to find these keywords we use a general benchmark number that will determine their competition and volume level. If the keywords exceed the benchmark, we leave them be, if they hit right around the benchmark, or fall below it, we want to capture them and include them in our PPC campaign.
To get our figures, which we are going to compare to a predetermined benchmark, we are going to take an average of the advertiser competition column and the average search volume column. We want to do this for all the keywords that have been exported to the excel file. And the way we do this is by typing in a simple command in excel and copying the command down throughout the related boxes. So to start, we find box E2 which should be blank, this is the first box to the right of the first value in the avg. search volume box. So, within this blank box you want to type=average(D2,B2). This will automatically give you an average of those two numbers in this E column row when you close that last ).Now, to get all the averages for every keyword you simply want to click on that box(E2) and pull down on the box while you hold in right click. The boxes should fill in with color when you drag down to the last box(nothing will be in them yet). Then, when you have filled in the boxes with color up to the last box you want to lift your finger off the right click. When you do this all the averages will appear in the boxes. You basically just copied the function down through the boxes. So now we have all these averages. What do we do with them, what do they tell us?
Well, a good benchmark average is around .50. This will give us a reasonable competition level with good search volume. So we compare these averages to anything that falls around .50 and below. Anything that goes above .60 we want to avoid to start out with, because it will probably be too expensive to bid on. So now compare all the averages in column E to the predetermined benchmark of .50. Whatever falls below .50 or, .55(to possibly get some more data) we want to keep. Take all the keywords that meet this criteria and copy them into a notepad .txt file. (There are faster ways to do this but they take some learning of excel functions that you may not know yet.)
So now we want to take these keywords that fell below or right around the benchmark and plug these back into the Google keyword tool and hit enter. Now go back through the entire process that we just did to get the keywords we just plugged into the Google keyword tool. You are going to want to take the average again of the two columns mentioned above, then get all the averages of all the keywords by draggin the first box down, and then compare again to a benchmark of .50 or .55. But now, because we found some more targeted keywords to work with(as a result of the first exporting of data to excel, and taking the averages to compare against the benchmark) we should have more keywords that hit right around the benchmark and below it. This is because we are working with more targeted and hopefully lower competition keywords. We are finding yet more targeted keywords related to the first set we found. This should produce a larger list of keywords that meet our benchmark. So now we can take the words that meet the benchmark here, and we can use these in our targeted PPC campaign. You will want to sort through this list of course, and make sure the keywords are well suited for the particular items that you are selling. This method will get you headed in the right direction for your PPC campaign.
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Affordable Advertising Agencies
Low cost internet advertising agencies are the ideal way and most recommended means to make your product or service known and for your web site to earn money. There is such a very huge range of affordable internet advertising agencies that are now found in the Net.
There are various Internet advertising agencies according to the kind of product or service they provide. Here is a list of a few of these kinds of online marketing agencies.
1. Web design agencies
These are focused on building web pages for a website. Many web developers are now offering affordable services if you just know how and where to find them.
2. Logo services
Production of web site logos is the main concern of these agencies. Hundreds of pre-designed logos could be purchased or even customized to complement your website better.
3. Copywriting Agencies
In adjunct to search engine optimization, these agencies provide quality content that targets the attention of the market you intend to tap. Looking for the best deals with copywriting services will be a cinch if you know where to look. If you prefer freelancers, they are often found with their own websites.
4. Search engine optimization companies
These companies analyze and modify websites in order to achieve the highest possible search engine ranking. They improve your website’s design and content to better attract more traffic. Link building could also be employed by these e-marketing agencies to benefit your business. They are actually a combination of all the services mentioned above. Sometimes they also go by the name of Internet marketing consultancies or something of that sort.
5. Domain registration companies
Your business’s name in the web is the business of these companies. Looking for the best amongst a wide array of these agencies is like looking for a needle in a haystack. But if you are determined enough to do your homework with these marketing services, results would be more than rewarding. Just make sure that you don’t register with those whose only intention is to rip off those who can’t afford the most reputable domain registration agencies.
These are just a few of the Internet advertising agencies that a web marketing newbie could turn to. Examining your needs first will better your chances in getting in touch with the cream of the crop of these Internet marketing agencies minus the hefty price tag.
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