Long Term Investments for the Future

Long Term Investments for the Future


If you are ready to invest money for a future event, such as retirement or a childís college education, you have several options. You do not have to invest in risky stocks or ventures. You can easily invest your money in ways that are very safe, which will show a decent return over a long period of time.

First consider bonds. There are various types of bonds that you can purchase. Bondís are similar to Certificates of Deposit. Instead of being issued by banks, however, bonds are issued by the Government. Depending on the type of bonds that you buy, your initial investment may double over a specific period of time.

Mutual funds are also relatively safe. Mutual funds exist when a group of investors put their money together to buy stocks, bonds, or other investments. A fund manager typically decides how the money will be invested. All you need to do is find a reputable, qualified broker who handles mutual funds, and he or she will invest your money, along with other clientís money. Mutual funds are a bit riskier than bonds.

Stocks are another vehicle for long term investments. Shares of stocks are essentially shares of ownership in the company you are investing in. When the company does well financially, the value of your stock rises. However, if a company is doing poorly, your stock value drops. Stocks, of course, are even riskier than Mutual funds. Even though there is a greater amount of risk, you can still purchase stock in sound companies, such as G & E Electric, and sleep at night knowing that your money is relatively safe.

The important thing is to do your research before investing your money for long term gain. When purchasing stocks you should choose stocks that are well established. When you look for a mutual fund to invest in, choose a broker that is well established and has a proven track record. If you arenít quite ready to take the risks involved with mutual funds or stocks, at the very least invest in bonds that are guaranteed by the Government.


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How to Know When to Sell Your Stocks

How to Know When to Sell Your Stocks


While quite a bit of time and research goes into selecting stocks, it is often hard to know when to pull out ñ especially for first time investors. The good news is that if you have chosen your stocks carefully, you wonít need to pull out for a very long time, such as when you are ready to retire. But there are specific instances when you will need to sell your stocks before you have reached your financial goals.

You may think that the time to sell is when the stock value is about to drop ñ and you may even be advised by your broker to do this. But this isnít necessarily the right course of action.

Stocks go up and down all the time, depending on the economyÖand of course the economy depends on the stock market as well. This is why it is so hard to determine whether you should sell your stock or not. Stocks go down, but they also tend to go back up.

You have to do more research, and you have to keep up with the stability of the companies that you invest in. Changes in corporations have a profound impact on the value of the stock. For instance, a new CEO can affect the value of stock. A plummet in the industry can affect a stock. Many things ñ all combined ñ affect the value of stock. But there are really only three good reasons to sell a stock.

The first reason is having reached your financial goals. Once youíve reached retirement, you may wish to sell your stocks and put your money in safer financial vehicles, such as a savings account.

This is a common practice for those who have invested for the purpose of financing their retirement. The second reason to sell a stock is if there are major changes in the business you are investing in that cause, or will cause, the value of the stock to drop, with little or no possibility of the value rising again. Ideally, you would sell your stock in this situation before the value starts to drop.

If the value of the stock spikes, this is the third reason you may want to sell. If your stock is valued at $100 per share today, but drastically rises to $200 per share next week, it is a great time to sell ñ especially if the outlook is that the value will drop back down to $100 per share soon. You would sell when the stock was worth $200 per share.

As a beginner, you definitely want to consult with a broker or a financial advisor before buying or selling stocks. They will work with you to help you make the right decisions to reach your financial goals.

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Marketing Strategies

Marketing Strategies

Marketing strategy helps organizations to focus their attention to complete resource utilization to increase sales and win over their competitors. Every company applies some kind of marketing strategies to maintain existing customers, attract potential customers and also to maintain and enhance their reputation in the market.

When designing a marketing plan, first a marketing strategy is taken into consideration. The marketing plan consists of steps to be taken so as to attain success in the implementation of the marketing strategy chosen. Big projects involve selection of different strategies at different levels. Usually a strategy consists of well-sketched tactics. They are meant to meet the needs and finally reach marketing objectives. Each of the strategies has pre-calculated results because when a particular strategy is chosen at a particular level, its outcome becomes the goal of that particular level. If there is an absence of a well thought strategy in a marketing plan means it is supposedly lacking a good foundation. A reasonable marketing strategy should not only facilitate marketing goals, but also the action sequence of a campaign.

At regular time intervals the firm should analyze the marketing decision. This is done with the help of strategic models and the 3Cís model is considered for this purpose. To calculate the companyís strategic position, Ansoff matrix is used. The 3Cís model determines the factors, which leads to the success of a marketing campaign. There are three key parties involved in this model the corporation, the customer and the competitors. The involvement of all the three key parties leads to positive results and this involvement is known as the 3Cís or strategic triangle.

The role of the corporation is to increase the strength of the company in the success critical areas, when compared to that of the competitor. The customer and his interest form the basis of any strategy. The competitor also plays a vital part. The competitor-based strategies are based on the functioning of business competitors like design and engineering, sales and servicing, and purchasing.

When making a marketing plan depending on some particular strategies known as mix strategies are used. 4Pís model is used to calculate whether the plan is sticking to the strategies or not. The four Ps stand for product, price, place and promotion. Products are goods produced by the company on a huge scale for the purpose of selling them and earning profit. Price is the money paid for a product by the customer. The price is based on many factors like competition, market share, customer perception and product identity. Place where the product is sold can be either physical store or store on the Internet. It is also known as distribution channel. To make the customer knowledgeable about a product, the marketer does promotion. It involves advertising, public relation and point of sale.

There are different types of marketing strategies based on some criteria.  Challenger, Leader and Follower are types of market dominance strategies. Market dominance strategies are used to dominate the market. Cost leadership, Market segmentation and Product differentiation are types of porter generic strategies. Porter generic strategies are built on strategic strength or competing abilities and strategic scope or market penetration. Close followers, late follower and Pioneers are types of innovation strategies. Innovation strategies are meant to trigger the rate of product development and model innovation. It helps the firm to incorporate latest technologies. Intensification, Diversification, Vertical integration and Horizontal integration are types of growth strategies. Growth strategies facilitate the growth of the organization. Marketing warfare strategies are conjunction of marketing strategies and military strategies.

A marketing strategy or a mix of them is chosen only after thorough market research. A marketer should always be ready to face any kind of situations like if the strategy is changed in the middle, he should be able to perform another market research so as to choose the proper strategy, within a short period of time. This can be done easily if you have experience.

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Tricks to sell your product

Tricks to sell your product

The whole idea of the marketing and sales is to play with the psychology of the consumers. In any campaign, efforts should be made it make it so influential that the decision making of the customer is totally in the favor of the company.

There are some tricks to manipulate the mind of the consumers, which can be utilized by not only ordinary sales person, but can be used by larger firms. Although they are used unknowingly, there is no set list.

Mutual exchanging is the first and powerful trick. The company can start with giving something for free to the customer. He will take it for the first time, but from next time he will feel obliged and will try to return the favor. Offering the product for free initially can do this. And if the customer is satisfied with the product, he will buy it for himself from next time. Some salespersons get confused with this principle.  For example, it is ineffective and wrong according to this principle, to quote ëSpend over $25 and get a free t-shirtí. The offer is not free; the customer has to spend something to get the free product. The product being given should be totally free without any condition to be fulfilled. For example, the line ëGet the latest lipstick shade absolutely freeí will do the trick. If the shade is really good, they will buy it the next time and might even think of buying other shades of lipstick.

The next trick is to present something as of high value, but the company should incur only small or no amount in producing it, like information. It can tempt the customer by saying that the information provided to them is a big time secret and is not known to anyone at all. But some mess it up, by saying that they are providing very valuable information, but it turns out to be another advertisement.

Another example is giving out free sample to the targeted customers. Again the mistake made here is that companies distribute samples of poor quality or rejected products. This certainly lowers the customers liking towards the product and he will assume thatís the way the product is actually and wonít go ahead to buy it.

Use words, which initiate immediate action, like ëLimited time offerí, ëOffer ending sooní, and ëOffer till stocks lastsí are really motivating. The customer gets the impression that the offer will end really soon as the products are limited edition and he should go out and buy it at the very first chance. This works well specially with customers who have an interest in collecting antiques, collectibles and anything which are not easily available.

Tricking the customer in making a commitment is another next good method to increase sales. The trick is to make the customer to take small steps toward the goal, without realizing about it. Like when the customer requests for some information, provide them with the relevant information for free and make them fill a form and take contact information from them. This is like committing to get offers and information about products in future. Do not advertise in this step. In the next step advertisements about products and services can be sent to the customer to the address provided by them. Conducting surveys is another example.

Lottery is another good method. When a person buys a lottery ticket, he fills his address on the ticket. This information can be used to contact the customer in future. In the above practices itís very vital to not to advertise in the first step. Only after getting the customer contact information, should promotional mails be mailed to him. Long advertisements that are featured in the newspaper are a small twist to this trick. If the customer invests time to read the whole advertisement, he has committed and will surely respond to the ad.  

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How to make a marketing campaign appealing?

How to make a marketing campaign appealing?

Marketing campaigns cannot survive if they boring. Everyday there are more than three thousand marketing messages reaching out to the customers and it is really a huge competition if one expects to be recognized among the crowd. This message should talk to the customer and influence his mind. Strong, creative, confident and exciting are the key factors that a message should have, as that will embed it into the customerís thinking and he remembers it for a longer time. The customer should feel empowered and should think of taking some action right away. For instance Nikeís catch line is Just do it, itís a line that has such a great impact on the minds of the people that they use that line even when talking about everything else, along with Nike products. It is obvious that by adding certain features, the marketing appeal can be multiplied.

Scientists agree to the fact that using visuals to make a person learn something is the best option than any other means and as one of the famous saying goes ìa picture speaks a thousand wordsî. So the best bet is to add visuals to promote marketing. Visuals can be anything like pictures, animations, or graphics. See yourself what wonders it does by placing a picture of a representative and products on the companyís website. This not only brings the customers close but also strengthens the relationship.

Different colors depict different types of emotions. Messages can be delivered to people suing colors and meaning can be added to it. Red and blue are colors liked by aggressive shoppers where as yellow color can catch good attention of the on lookers. Green reflects health, money and nourishment, so it can be used in food advertisement. Black means strength and power that is why it has been used by Jaguar, on their website background and advertisement. Wealth and royalty means purple. Colors used on business cards can also be used to attract the customers. But the colors should be carefully played with, too much can be distracting. A professional help can be sought when selecting colors for business cards, website font, website background, logo, etc., to send the right message. On websites, fonts can be added which change colors and graphics that move.

There are lots of options available when thinking of what technology to use. The good news is that most of the options are cheap and easy to use. Audios and videos can be added to your website to attract attention. Like when one visits the Pepsi homepage, they are greeted with energetic music, which attracts teenagers instantly. To make a more realistic approach, welcome message, introduction video, interviews, or how the goods are produced, can be added to the website. Hearing a voice can be very touching and a rapport can be immediately developed with the visitor. Like Adidasí website opens with a video which truly fits their punch line, Impossible is nothing.          

Business cards should be outstanding and at its creative best. Professionally designed graphics can be added to a brochure type of card. Information about the company, contact information, quotations, and picture can be added on four sides of it. The fonts should be the same.

Just listing the benefits isnít enough. Customers want more, they want their needs to be met. Like if some is thinking of buying an exercise equipment, donít just say that the machine has display, automatic incline, cooling device, CD player, programs, but also add that there is a program with audio instructions which encourages the person to do exercise, which is meant for people who need real motivation to get out of their couch and to start sweating out. So convey exactly why the customer should use the product, be more precise.

Uniqueness is the biggest key factor. Not only should the products and services be unique, the marketing campaign should be unique too. Not only will the effort be appreciated but also the impression will be everlasting. Once faith of customers is gained, they will be like free walking advertisement and will spread the word to their friends and acquaintances like anything.

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Differences between Marketing and Advertising

 Differences between Marketing and Advertising

Marketing and Advertising, although they sound similar but in reality they are not. Advertising is only a part of the bigger game called Marketing. Marketing encompasses complete conceptualization of a brand right from research to designing to advertising to sale. Advertising, on the other hand is a component of the marketing process which is nothing but conveying the message through variety of mediums to promote the product.

Advertising is one of the most important component of a marketing strategy and also the most expensive. Advertising constitutes sending the message across the public about your company, product or services. It also constitutes behind the scenes work like the process involving formation of various strategies and coming up with a right one to target the viewers. The strategy consists of planning things like placing ads, deciding what media to use, what time, frequency etc. The advertisements are generally placed via mediums like television, snail mail, newspapers, internet, emails, radio, magazines, mobile messaging, flyers, billboards etc. The most popular one is of course television although advertising on internet is becoming increasingly popular too.

Easiest way to differentiate advertising from marketing is to consider marketing as a cake and if you cut the cake, advertising as one of the pieces of that cake. The other pieces of cake are market research of the product, product designing, media planning, PR, product pricing, customer satisfaction, customer support, sales and many more. All these components or pieces of cake should work independently but collectively in achieving the bigger goal i.e. sell product and build companyís reputation in the market. Marketing is a marathon process involving many tasks that involve hours sometimes days of research. The research part of marketing takes the longest duration as it involves thoroughly understanding the behavior of people towards a product. Designing the product and developing advertising strategy is also a time consuming process. Only components that take less time are executing advertisements and sales. Marketing can also be perceived as a medium between consumers and the company.

But many companies often make mistake of confusing advertising with marketing. They try to ape big companies like Coke and Pepsi in advertising but they simply ignore the work that goes behind that. The classical example of this is, take the case of logo for instance. Many business owners are so hysterical about the logo of their company in their advertisements that they think that it will simply bring in the sales. But what makes a logo works is none other than the reputation of the company and the logo must have a feeling to it and should truly reflect companyís values. One should also remember that these companies spend fortunes on advertising which a new start up business canít. Rather than spending unnecessary money on branding your product one should invest money and time in communicating to the consumers that they can address their expectations. After building reputation and growing to a big size company one can think of these lavish ideas. Educating the consumers also helps as it will give them an understanding that you know what you do and are best at doing that.

Smart marketers are aggressive in approach rather than passive. They provoke readerís minds by prompting them to do something rather than just making them knowledgeable of the product. Smart marketers also bring home the names, addresses and contact numbers of people who are really interested in hiring your company by employing aggressive marketing. Thus having a good marketing campaign speaks a lot about the company and their products and advertising gives that finishing touch to the hard work done by the marketing people in selling a product.

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Creating a Corporate Image

Creating a Corporate Image

For any corporation it is very important to create a distinct image in the market. This is known as Corporate Image which distinguishes the corporation from its competitors and provides a picture of it to the general public. It depicts the principles, beliefs, productivity of the company. This image is responsible for increasing the sales of the product and to achieve brand equity. Corporate image creation is a strenuous and time consuming process and is carried out by experts qualifying in perception management. Basically, the creation involves marketing experts who used various kinds of promotion methods and public relations. Since this image is targeted to attract the customers it should be highly appealing. Besides the marketing experts critics play an important role too.

The name of the corporation and its catch line should reflect its belief like Wal-Mart, which says that it sells for less. A logo should also be designed accordingly. Like the corporation FedEx has an arrow incorporated in its logo which depicts its fast and efficient service. Once the image is created by the corporation the next step is advertising and product distribution in the market. Like if the corporation creates luxury products, they should rope in big names in the advertising experts and the models to be featured in these ads should be super stars. Likewise, they should not distribute their products to every other store; instead they should target more hi-fi malls. Time to time, advertising and branding budget should be reviewed to cut down on cost and to be in-sync with the technology. This also helps in revamping the corporate image according to the fast changing demands of the consumer.

Testimonies of news papers, magazines, and labor union can deteriorate a well-created corporate image. Simplest of controversies can be exaggerated by the media and spoil the name of the company. Controversies are born by the interference of organizations related to environment, religion, crime, politics, education and charity. Government, too, is another powerful and influential organization by itself.

Once the corporate image is created, it should be retained. It should not be like here today and gone tomorrow. This image should be reflected in all the brands and product line of the corporation. Even if one of the products isnít up to the mark, it will lead to confusion among the consumers and will hit the sales of the company. Like recently there was controversy about a particular contact lens solution of a company. It was supposed to be infecting the users with a rare disease. This not only affected the sales revenue of that particular product but also made the customers think and raise question about the authenticity of other products of that particular company.

Another companyís products had hidden non-vegetarian ingredient in a vegetarian product. This led to the decrease of trust among the customers. In such a case the company should either advertise itself as a company selling non-vegetarian food or it should invest in promoting the company as vegetarian by introducing more vegetarian products. So the image of each individual product of the company makes up for the complete image of the corporation. And last but not the least, the image should be very realistic, truly representing its values and should leave a personal touch with the consumers.

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Attributes of a Successful Selling Strategy

Attributes of a Successful Selling Strategy

The first attribute of a successful selling strategy is a website that provides information about the products and the service they are providing. The advantage of that is we can sell those products and services online. Selling is a talent to be cultivated. It requires a lot of understanding to find what the customer is looking for and then fulfilling his needs.

It is very important to get the complete attention of reader. The content of the message should be make reader think. This can be achieved by using power words, along with color and visuals. Once the attention is grabbed, it should be retained till the end of the message. The customer should be prompted to take some action and their involvement should be sought. They can be made to sign up for newsletters or can be made to take the survey by visiting the companyís website.

The consumer should be convinced to buy the product. All the features of the company should be specified, with the more relevant ones on the top. They should be explained logically through these points how the products will fulfill their needs or solve their problems.  It does only by convincing the customer about this will motivate them to buy the product. They should be made to understand what wonders the product can do to him. Strong emotional words should be included in the sentence. The customer should either fear the loss of the product if he doesnít buy it in time or he should be given the greed of the advantages the product can provide. These reasons will create an emotional impulse and will make them think that they have no other option to buy it. They will have a logical reason to make the purchase. The emotions of the buyer should be manipulated with words.

Something like ëlimited editioní or ëlimited period offerí will create a sense of urgency. The customer thinks that he should get this product somehow. Itís nice to have sales often, especially to clear out old inventory in the name of some offer. The products which have an obvious damage should be sold out at a special price. But the damage should be mentioned to the customer. If itís not mentioned, the first time the customer will be tricked into buying something, but he will loose trust and wonít come back again.

Always hold seasonal sales and offers. Since all the competitors will be giving out different offers to attract customers, itís a good point to have one, too. But it should be remembered to not to imitate anyone. Only a unique offer will make the customers not go to the competitorsí. Once in a while offer free shipping offer also works. A condition like if a customer spends particular amount of money, all items will be shipped for free. This is another attractive deal which will surely tempt the customer. Thanks to search engines and online stores anything can be purchased from the comfort of the home. Give away free sample to the customers or keep a pre-sale price for introductory products. The customers wonít think twice to spend a little money to try something new.

The ending of the sales message is where most people mess it up. The whole efforts will be wasted if the customer gets a second thought. He should be convinced, by nice words, to buy the product till the very end. The content should be arranged with care. The key is to tell the customer what to do exactly after he finishes reading the matter, like ëGrab the golden opportunity nowí or ëpick up the phone and dial the number right nowí, etc. Do not include links or short advertisement of other products or services. This will shift the focus of the reader and he might have a second thought. A list of the existing customers should be maintained and from time to time special offers should be mailed to them. So basically the whole idea is to influence the mind of the customer until he buys a product.  

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Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a derivative of Internet marketing where the advertisement publisher gets paid for every customer or sales provided by him. Affiliate marketing is the basic for all other Internet marketing strategies.

In this type of marketing, affiliate management companies, in-house affiliate managers and third party vendors are effectively utilized to use E-mail Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, RRS Capturing and Display Advertising for the success of the product. The web traffic can be traced with the help of a third party or own affiliate programs. A lot of work is involved in this process. At first marketing by this method involved lots of spamming, false advertising, trademark infringement, etc. But, after the invention of complex algorithms and advance security this has been regularized to make it safer for doing business and shopping online. This even led to the better scrutinizing of the terms and conditions by the merchants. Affiliate marketing became more profiting with the opening of more opportunities but at the same time it also increased the competition in marketing.

Due to this pressure in house affiliate programs for merchants became a thing of the past and were replaced by out-sourced programs. The companies that offered this service have expert affiliate and network program managers who have various affiliate program management techniques.  These affiliate networks have publishers associated with them who help them with the advertising part.

Affiliate marketing was started by cdnow.com who had music oriented websites. They placed list of music albums on their site and they paid others if they put those links in their websites when a visitor bought their album through their site. The first company to link with cdnow.com was Geffen Records. Two months later, Amazon was offered by a woman that she would sell Amazonís books on her website and she should be paid a certain percentage in return if she sold Amazonís books through her site. They liked the idea and started the Amazon associates program. It was more of a commission program where they received a commission if a visitor clicked their links and banners on otherís site and bought anything through it.

Since its invention, the affiliate network has been adopted by various businesses like travel, education, telecom, mobile, gaming, personal finance, retail, and subscription sites, the most common being adult and gambling sectors. In UK alone, affiliate marketing produced £ 2.16 billion.

The compensation methods used are Cost per sale (CPS), Cost per action (CPA), Cost per mile (CPM) and Cost per click (CPC). The first two are the more famous methods today. This is because in CPM and CPC, the visitor which turns up on a particular website might not be the targeted audience and a click would be enough to generate commission. CPS and CPA have a compulsion that the visitor not only clicks on the link but also buys something or signs up for some service after it which proves that he is among the targeted audience. Only in the above case the affiliate gets paid. So the affiliate should try to send as much targeted traffic as possible to the advertiser in order to increase his/her returns and for this reason affiliate marketing is also known as performance marketing because it totally depends on the performance of the affiliate. The affiliate team can be differentiated from a sales team from the nature of their jobs. The job of the affiliate team is to drag targeted traffic to a point and from that
point itís the job of the sales team to influence the visitor to buy the product or the service.

This is a very effective kind of method because the money is being paid only when results have been achieved. The publisher incurs all the cost except that of initial setup and development of the program, which is incurred by the merchant. Many businesses give credit to this method of marketing for their success.

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