Auction/eBay Marketplace

Well-known store or marketplace full of buyers and sellers. You task comes down to either promoting and auctioning your stuff directly or locating ideal power-sellers for arranging lucrative deals as their back-end sales. Either way you benefit from the developed market and exposure of targeted bidders or established customer databases and reputation of power-sellers.

Big vendors and power-sellers have established auction businesses with thousands if not tens of thousands auctions closed with the respective list of subscribers, customers and repeat customers. Ask them to promote your product/service on the back-end as valuable complementary addition to the products they sell or up-sell your solutions through their web-pages or other means.

Offer free copies of your products to reassure vendors in its benefits as well as prepare information necessary for vendor to promote your solution to minimize their efforts and maximize their returns.

eBay of course is not the only auction in town, so you can successfully experiment with this strategy in other places online.

Indexes, Directories & Catalogues

Any accessible professionally organized list of websites, products, ezines, affiliate programs etc. is a valuable resource for respective visitors or buyers. It is clear that submitting your listing there allows you to attract extra market exposure for the item or resource you·ve listed. Depending on the type of catalogue or index you may want to make your listing to be like an ad more or less. Your end-target in most cases is to make people click the link and take your desired action, so approach your submissions as such.

The tastier you listing and its position are and the higher rank of the index, directory or catalogue is, the more exposure and benefit you gain. Want directions? Check out the DMOZ and Google directories. They will swamp you with dozens of relevant niche directories and valuable resources.

This is efficient marketing since, in most of cases, you submit your listing once and benefit ·forever·.

Joint Promotions

Joint promotions help you tap into the other people·s market and goodwill, monetizing their credibility and years of business development. You can participate in either tete-a-tete JV deals or partnerships with multiple parties.

In some cases the combined benefits from multipart promotions are higher than derived from a single affiliate, but it may vary from deal to deal. As you know, there are several ·super-guys·, who can open such a huge customer market to your solution during exclusive tete-a-tete JV deal that no other joint efforts of 5, 10 or even 30 webmasters have chances to compete with.

Your task is all about finding leaders of your niche market and arranging such joint promo deals with them. It many cases, but not necessary, you can locate B2B directories, what means memberships of niche businesses, so you can close deals almost in volumes, without organizing one-on-one JVs over and over again.

Membership sites, associations

We started to look into benefits of membership-based sites, where you can get instant access to systematized list of members or address to them via mass email. Not only does it help you save massive amounts of time, but also money that you otherwise would have had to spend for ads or other means to reach this market.

Here you gain almost similar exposure to showcase your products and services as with the help of super affiliates, close JV deals with respective site owners, promote your relevant publications or offer other type of useful material depending on the aim of the particular membership site. The same goes to Internet associations, where you can find your customers or potential partners in one place. In any case your task is to introduce your business to the members, gaining extra exposure and profits if term ·extra· can be relative to the profits.

You can easily find all types of membership websites depending on your target market by means of Search Engines. It may be useful tip for you: don·t to try to find membership sites first, but search for niche-targeted informational portals, so that you can find there the whole lists of such niche membership resources.

Publicity

Publicity is a great way of covering large customer market for relatively small input. Unlike advertising, publicity exposure is free, long-lasting and catchy.

Publications entice readers of different media to explore your business in more detail.

Often, one free-submitted tasty-written press release can do for you much more than ten super-expensive magazines ads. Publications and press releases will be seen by thousands of publishers, editors and targeted Internet readers what means gold alone. If it is going to be further re-published and announced or you happen to be interviewed by interested media your solutions will surely get thousands of dollars in free publicity. Such action bringing in long-term benefits is the smart marketing indeed. Use it to make more sales.

There is a simple logic line · if you experience shortage of time and money, you need results and you need them fast. You can be sure such ·stores· are almost the perfect places of fast profits you can ever find. Why spend months of SEO, waiting in vain the day when your traffic finally starts buying, when you can access established online ·stores· full of ready-to-buy customers or ready-to-do-business marketers.

Direct your marketing efforts towards attracting massive exposure to your solutions via these ·stores· like all the major players do (if you were smart enough to notice this) and stop wasting your time reading hundreds of all these ·I-want-to-help-you-email-sales-pitches· you get daily. Spend your time on real results and information that show you how to get these results, rather than on reading email solo ads and buying never-to-be-used products.

Fortunately, Internet is full of free reprint publications that allow you, if desire, to create 15-page newsletter in a matter of 30 min or an hour. The most of this time will go for reading articles to publish and writing short “editorial”.

This easy to implement and powerful method was widely used 5-7 years ago. The publisher quickly gained the “expert” status, attracted advertisers, promoted offers and earned, earned and earned. Such ezine system worked like clock-work. The competition was weak, people just login on the net in desire to discover some new opportunities and gladly “bought”, “participated” and “joined”.

At present there are thousands of publishers who publish their newsletter to tens of thousands other publishers. Is there a way out? Of course. There is always a way out. Some joke, with its own share of truth, states that: “The way out of any trouble is usually located where the entrance is”.

To stand above your competition you need to differ in the best way. Help comes from the golden rule of innovation that proves itself here as well. Requirements became tougher for quality, practical, value-added newsletters filled with personality. This task can easily be achieved when you combine innovation plus knowledge.

The last trend I observe going in the direction of professional, yet simple, one to three pages newsletter that brings practical and original tips with a simple HTML layout.

Professional is not just a meaningless adjective, but essence of newsletter that stresses the importance of expert knowledge of the person who writes materials to it. You or your columnist should be a true expert in the sphere s/he represents.

Second conclusion is that knowledge cannot be “copied”, original content is the vital feature of powerful electronic newsletter nowadays. For this very criteria (original content or not) I can project the level of expertise, establishment and, eventually, the income publisher has, because, in most cases, successful Internet entrepreneurs publish original and unique newsletters only.

Another way to be on top of the market is based on revealing unexplored market niche with big potential and low competition. The benefits of such approach are obvious, but still underestimated by many publishers, who keep on struggling bravely for their share of the “internet marketing” pie, without paying any attention to their natural abilities, hobbies and knowledge background that is neither connected to economics in general nor to management, marketing or e-commerce in particular.

As for the format of ezine distribution, HTML and PDF are to kill text newsletters due to unmatched potential and unbeatable advantages, except for size. While size of the issue may play important role now, I predict a major shift in the nearest future as it cannot compete with interactivity (sometimes in real-time) and reading pleasure that HTML and PDF newsletters can bring. This process reminds development of web-sites that was used to represent simple “notepad” text in the origin of the Internet and after a short period, evolved into design-rich interactive media, the same way text newsletters will go down in history very soon.

First steps are being made in this direction forming new powerful media sector that possesses much more strengths rather than weaknesses. Let us make this incipient trend work for our good.

There is standard ratio adopted in the online business community as a tool for quality evaluation of customer response, it is called “conversion ratio”. It describes what percentage of web-site’s visitors commit the needed action whether it is a sale, subscription, signup for an affiliate program or other.

Tracking this ratio can be a valuable asset in estimating marketing activity, promotional measures, development of product etc. All these factors influence this ratio as well and may easily “say” what is good for customer and what is bad. Every business online strives to achieve higher “conversion rate” for one simple reason – that would mean increase in sales, subscriptions, affiliate signups or other.

One of the easiest and usually fallacious way of raising your business “conversion rate” is narrowing your marketing focus or selecting more targeted niche-market inside the one you are working at. This way doesn’t demand spending money or time for inventing more powerful marketing schemes or improving your product. Instead, direct your marketing campaign to more targeted and more interested in your offer groups of people. The fact about their higher interest in your offer will by itself increase response rate at your site without any additional measures.

It is so easy to sell a glass of cold water to strangers in desert rather than to people at North Pole.

Second stage of your customer-targeting attitude may lie in creation of more addressed promotional materials. Materials that are capable to “speak” with your potential customer as closest friends, who know all the fears and hopes your customer feels. This way your visitor, listener or reader will feel more involved, interested and more likely to “follow your way”.

Your targeted customer market may be further diversified by age, interests or financial capacity, so you can prepare even more targeted materials addressed to this particular group of people for the short time of your direct advertisement campaign.

In order to prepare such addressed marketing campaign you need to evaluate fears and hopes together with what your potential customers already know, what they are looking for and what they expect from the product you are offering.

As a result of such research you should have more targeted sales/promotion materials and niche-oriented sales copies. It may even be a good move to create several versions of sales copy for different groups of people, changing them depending on what niche you are currently advertising in.

Autoresponders play a special part. At the dawn of their usage they greatly assist in solving the most time-consuming business task that is customer support. Nowadays there are other ways of how autoresponder can help with your everyday routine tasks. Below are the most common tasks where autoresponder fully reveal its potential:

1. Customer support;
2. Singup/unsubscription procedures;
3. Timely delivered emails;
4. Electronic materials on request;
5. Response tracking.

The usage of autoresponder as a customer support is based on the topic your customer interests in. Whether it is problems with program installation, billing or general question, it will reply with pre-written answers the same moment email was received from customer.

In very basic way autoresponder can simply notify customer/visitor that his/her inquiry was received and will be answered within 24 hours.

Subscription/unsubscription is also usually required instant notification. The majority of existed mailing scripts have an automatic notification feature, still in its basis it is the same old autoresponder.

Ezine or newsletter subscription is not the only process where autoresponder can give you a hand. They help in many cases with all sorts of email notifications of successful sale, accepted inquiry, thanking for completing the survey and many other cases.

Next way of autoresponder usage proved to earn huge income to many online entrepreneurs. Timely delivered follow up emails that are based on autoresponder are widely recognized as a must-have marketing strategy. The theory behind claims that biggest customer response is gained at 8th contact only. That is why business owners setup a follow up autoresponder sequence that, when signup for, starts emailing pre-written messages on specified time basis – daily, every other day, weekly, biweekly etc, generating the biggest possible response rate on complete autopilot, without any need of owner interference.

Email courses are small variation of previous strategy. They were designed to educate interested people, work the same way as product follow-ups do, still serving as a perfect marketing tool for generating subscribers, customers without any hassle.

Publications on request play another important role. It may be articles, reports, brochures, schemes, ebooks, audio, video files, any electronic media may be emailed in the body of the email message or as an attachment to every person immediately on their request and to an email box they considered to be the fastest to download from, presumably, ISP’s.

As strange as it may seem, autoresponder may be used for tracking response rate as well. For instance, by putting slightly different autoresponder email addresses on different web-pages you can easily count how many requests came from each page, testing which web-page generates the biggest interest.

Autoresponder can help in tracking ezine advertisement response. To do so you will also have to setup a different autoresponders for each ezine you plan to run your advert in. At the end you will see how many people each ezine has sent you and generated the biggest income.

Dominating majority of web-hosting plans, offered today on the Internet market, come with simple, usually unlimited, email autoresponders. That means they can help in 4 main cases that we have discussed above, except for timely delivered emails. That is because they imply one-time reply email, so you can setup (1) customer support emails, (2) subscription notifications to both your subscriber and yourself, (4) publications on request, (5) response tracking, but (3) timely delivered emails like email follow-ups or courses.

In order to offer automatic, say, weekly, email courses you will have to look for:

1. custom autoresponder internet application (script);
2. 3rd party autoresponder providers.

The rule of thumb is to know your needs and resources. First choice is preferable if you know what FTP and CGI mean or have someone with basic knowledge of how scripts are setup, want to install it once and forever, have time and money to make one-time investment. You can even try to find free script that in some cases may be even quicker to setup than sign up for some 3rd party service.

Autoresponder service, provided by independent Internet company, is easier for new comers as all technical stuff will be hidden, leaving simple web-interface to manage your autoresponders. For such convenience Internet companies will charge you on monthly or yearly basis, although there are free so-called adware autoresponders available.

In general you can find discounted all-in-one services, hosting offers or mailing lists coming with follow-up autoreponders and allowing you to save money.

Competition makes the business world go round. Any product or service you desire to market should be market-checked and compared to those, which are most similar to yours.
The main three parameters that should be defined and analyzed include market niche, demand and competition. The direction of your analysis and result should be:

• The developing of the virtual picture of your “usual” customer;
• The estimated number of monthly sales;
• The exact prices of your closest competitors’ products.

Pricing Policy based on Marketing Considerations.

The days, when product price was calculated by summarizing the total cost of business running per product item with specified profit markup are gone and almost forgotten. This tactics is totally defective in our highly competitive world. Those, who continue to define everyday prices by that method, are stagnating with several exceptions that only prove the rule.

The most progressive pricing policy is dictated by Market. The job of online business is to listen and implement the most beneficial pricing techniques. Listen to online market or be squashed. Given your Market analysis is ready, it is assumed that you have already heard the market out.

The pricing strategy usually could be two types: short-term “cream skimming” or long-term market penetration:

1. “Cream skimming” implies high price on newly invented and promoted product. The market is fresh, the product is innovative and “hot”. The online business cycle for that strategy is usually from 3 months to 1 year.
2. Market penetration is more appealing to the majority of start-up ebusinesses. The graduate growth, business credibility building, long term prospective are the main components of this pricing strategy. As a standard it implies the same or lower price level that exists on the market.

As it comes out from the online product nature, the overheads are what should be looked after closely. The total running expenditures should be summed up and known prior to the stage of pricing planning.

Once you have been equipped with market research and calculated expenses it is time to define the customer or retail price. You may also define the discounted reseller price, client discounts and so on.

The general rule here is to have the result price to be at least twice as higher than your brake even price. If your total fixed costs are 100 and your estimated monthly sales are 20 then to make your business break even you need your price to be at least 5 dollars per item. In that case your price should be not less than $10 in order to have some “price space”.

In order to maximize your profit potential your price should reflect the value, not the costs. Want to raise the price? Increase the perceived value first. If it is still not enough to cover the costs – you are not competitive in that market.

Know the “fears&joys” of your targeted niche. In two words there is a substantial difference of price acceptance in offering video course on financial trading to institutional investors and video course on conducting an interview to the unemployed.

Decreasing price levels proved to generate more high-priced sales in comparison with increasing price levels. That is the reason why many marketers using the following tactics of persuasion: “I was asked to sell it for $995, I decided to sell for $489, but especially for You I will cut the price to $79 only for the next three hours”. Imagine if s/he decided to tell the truth like: “It cost me $9 per item to create, I will be happy to sell it for $39, but I’m so greedy, that I decided to sell it for $79″. In that case s/he would probably close much less sales.

Another technique is price discount, widely used by almost everyone involved in off or online sales. With the help of discounts the seller could achieve two main tasks: create the feeling of emergency and increase the perceived value of the product and what is more important – without lifting a finger.

Just try not to overdo it as your substantial price drop could play a trick by being interpreted as bad quality of the product.

Price diversification, as the next technique, is absolute must if you want to cover more people with different financial capabilities. It is a mutually beneficial pricing policy for its ability to satisfy much wider demand then “bold” asking for $99.

This tactics may be implemented by offering the “core” of the product for the lowest price possible. Second price level is the standard version of the product for nominal price and one or even two “extended” high-priced versions for those who don’t mind spending additional several hundred bucks for more colorful package.

Other way to go is to offer popular resell rights on digital products that, in its nature, play the same role of price divider and help to cover wider market, without much hassle, although, sometimes it is not the best tactics to use, because master resell rights add benefits and perceived value to a small number of resell rights seekers and have zero effect on “luxury” seekers, who look for “gold trim” at every product they buy, so create a “Deluxe” version for them as well.

Other well-known fact is that psychologists suggest using .95, .97 or .99 price endings as more favorable prices for our subconscious perception rather then round numbers.

You can come up with other specific pricing techniques to suit your business needs, just try to think them over.

Now let me put a little cloud of disappointment in the blue sky of your promotional pleasure. We will have to spend some time on creating our “salesteam” first to make it work for us afterwards, so you will be able to do whatever you want knowing that your business/product is consistently being promoted for you.

I don’t speak about hiring marketing or advertising department to promote your online business, it would be expensive enough. Better leave that practice to those Dot.coms that report each year about internet collapse.

What we will do is cheap, yet ten times more effective. It is a market dream come true, although for it is time consuming efforts at the beginning, 80% of small home based operators didn’t, don’t and won’t do it. That is another reason, why the effect of that “salesteam” will be tremendous in comparison with other “easy to achieve” marketing methods, like 5 bucks classified ezine ad.

The more self-discipline in “salesteam creating” process you put, the faster your desired result will be achieved. That rule is so obvious, yet not carried out by a lot of people, including me. One fellow marketer will have perfect “salesman” in a week, while for another one it will become a never-ending tale.

Now I’m literally feeling the second bursting question you want to ask me. What is the “salesteam”? Do you really want to know the most guarded secret of all marketing gurus? The hidden truth of their million dollar profits? Ok, that is Viral Marketing! I know you’ve heard that 100 and 1 time, but don’t blame me, the most guarded marketing secret of all times and nations is that there is No Marketing Secret.

Before going any further let me point to two main features that determine PR Promotion strategy, very close, but a little bit broader than the “classic” viral marketing meaning. They are characterized by:

• one-time action to create and set up;
• non-stop ongoing promotion results.

If, for instance, you paid money for ezine solo ad and get 3 sales, in order to produce 30 sales you will have to order that solo ad for 10 times (in practice much more, because of marketing “depletion” effect). This is everything, but astute promotion, which is based on one-time deed with never ending results.

In the above case, you should order solo ad to promote your free valuable, say, traffic report or sales letter with a compulsory URL to your web-site, positioning you as a traffic or sales letter expert. Your info product will thus rapidly spread over the net, generating you much more than 3 sales. It is hard to imagine what will happen if you offer 30-50% commission for publishers to give your product away for free.

You have also probably heard hundred times about recurring passive income. The example above describes Recurring Passive Promotion that means that your company, product/service is going to be automatically promoted by a “salesteam”, consisting of:

1. Info products: eBooks, Reports, Brochures, Email courses, Audio, Video files, Web-site template and so forth.
2. Auto or semiauto software applications and programs.
3. Partners, clients or subscribers.

In fact, RP Promotion is a foundation of RP Income that is the main desired target to any online marketer to achieve financial freedom. Below we will look a little bit closely on each promotional instrument. Note that they are perfect instruments or tools if you wish, but it is the craftsman who creates art, not the tools themselves.

Info products

Do you follow number #1 rule of all marketing gurus that is “Money is in the list”? If you do, you can use your list, i.e. ezine, newsletter to easily compile an info product from the materials, mainly articles or tips that previously were written for your issues. That means that not only do you constantly profit from the list, but expanding your profits by promoting your list. In practice it will look like subscribe sign up box on one of the welcome pages of your free ebook, report etc.

As I have already shown in the example above, it may be any kind of beneficial for target market template with permission to use it for free, remaining your small URL at the end intact. It may be audio file coming with the electronic brochure. There are really unlimited variants of creating powerful and valuable, yet totally free RP “promoters” or “salesmen”.

Stage two is to make your “salesteam” of info products work. That task may only be accomplished under the total absence of such artificial barrier as seller’s money thirst. Don’t be tempted by quick earning potential. Your main task is to launch a word of mouth tornado that will bring much more long-term profits. So start giving away your report, ebook, everything you can to interested web-site visitors or subscribers. Avoid including numerous banners or affiliate links also, nothing can irritate more than such stuff, especially the feeling of understanding that the only reason I got that, say, report was to make me buy something. It is hard to give away for free what you’ve spent several weeks to create, but it will repay ten times. Remember RP Promotion is a fundamental long-term development strategy, there is no place for “quick bucks”.

Your main focus should be not the Money, but sharing Valuable Information and providing Specific Solution, related to the sphere of your expertise. The more value you give away, the more people will read it, the more subscribers, clients and partners you will have.

Auto or semiauto software applications and programs

Software! Efficient small info business is impossible to run without software programs. They are our “angels” that help in our difficult everyday routine business life, but not only that. They are also capable of automatically promoting our business with no or very little effort for our part, so it is a crime not to include them into our “promotion team” review.
Once set up they could:

• Submit/resubmit your web-site, pages to Search engines and directories;
• Submit/resubmit your adverts to FFA and classified ads pages and boards;
• Check SE rankings and adjust your pages accordingly;
• Submit/resubmit your info products, including ezines and articles, to respective directories, announcement lists, groups, forums, boards etc;
• Automatically send promotional emails to Safe Lists or subscribers;
• Follow up with your prospects and customers, etc.

Take note that we are speaking about Recurring Passive Promotion methods only. Software programs can do 1 million things more, but we point to what tasks they can passively accomplish to start rolling your viral marketing ball. Software is also the only part of the “salesteam” you should and have to spend your money on. Other promotion “staff” will be totally free in terms of money.

Now let me explain why RP Promotion is slightly broader in its meaning than viral promotion. As you know, products announcement or Safelist emailing cannot be called to be viral methods as their produced effect are short term and lack exponential results growth. The classic examples of viral marketing strategy were ebooks giveaways or free web-based email services.

RP Promotion goes further. Software announcements and submissions, taking into account, their completely non-stop automatic working “nature”, still generate recurring and passive results. Once set up, we start getting short-term, but permanent and never-ending effect, until our software programs are working at the background, although, let me repeat, that promotion is not considered as viral marketing.

Partners, clients or subscribers

Being the prime source of some product or service allows you to establish mutually for you and your partners beneficial business relations. That is the best of the best tactics you should pursue in the long haul.

Here is a tip-of-the-iceberg example. It is clear that two (approximately equal) promoters are better than one. That is why huge potential of a sole promoter, who gives away several ebooks, email courses with a number of working submission software, becomes a drop in the bucket in comparison with what kind of perspective that promoter could get if there are hundreds, if not thousands, of sub-promoters working for him by giving away his free ebooks, courses etc. Even 30% or 50% commission paying will mean for the program owner one thing only – his/her profits have grown on the remaining 50%-70% of the retail price.

I’ve presented an example of RP Promotion, when you should order a solo ad to promote your free ebook, which, in its turn, will spread the word about your main product. Actually that was a bad tactic as well.

Astute RP Promotional strategy should comprise, ordering a solo or top sponsor ad that will promote your 1st valuable “salesman” like ebook or video file that in turn will popularize your beneficial partner/affiliate program, through which you will gain tremendous market exposure!

No, I was wrong. No need to spend money for manually ordering one-time ads. Write a salesman assistant! I mean article that will offer general public to download your free audio file! When your article is submitted to a lot of directories it will be published many times in different ezines, generating you temporal, but recurring, with each new publication, response. The more “assistants” you will have the easier it will be for your salesman – audio file – to work. “He” will be in demand, reassuring listeners in the undisputable benefits of your partner program. What is next stage? Those who don’t want to become partners, but like your product, would buy it – that is one-time benefit if you stop corresponding with your clients. Those who become your partners will generate true streams of recurring passive income. That’s what I call Recurring Passive Promotion strategy.

Pavel Lenshin is an Internet entrepreneur, web-developer and marketer. Learn how you can maximize your online profits and get a free access to special profit opportunities and thousands of dollars of ebooks, reports, software, email courses, audio interviews, exclusive programs, resources and enjoy advanced Internet services. Register now free at http://anesbo.com

This viewpoint exists in peoples’ minds whether they are your competitors, clients, partners, friends or your own employees. That is why your brand is psychological by its nature, what creates new challenges as well as additional potential.

Strong brand in the mind of a person generates honoring feeling to your company/product or you as a company’s “face”.

Poor brand may represent negative impression about your product or be the result of an absence of that impression, and I should say that it is much more advantageous to offer a new brand to the market, then try to do something with bad image. Since we are dealing with psychology, it is clear that good image and reputation is very hard to build, but it is even harder to restore.

If you want to reach the heart of you customers’ “likes” you need to:

• Offer maximum quality no matter what you offer or do.
• Deliver pleasure.
• Be innovative.
• Address to people’s emotions.
• Evoke desire and interest.
• Provoke active response.
• Build trust by repeated contacts as a foundation of long-term relations.

Factors that would stimulate and reinforce your branding:

1. Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is number one passive “brander” for your business, where you go UP (Unique Proposition) the straight road of successful branding or making your way through a very deep forest of competing with other already established brands.

Suppose you have created new proposition, new kind of service and if you have named it, for instance, “WebSky”, then all people would call it “WebSky”, not “A service that offers you 1. … 2. … 3…. and provides 1… 2…. 3….” It would have a neutral brand from the very beginning, no need to create, imagine or popularize it among hundreds of others.

Windows is a TM and great Brand for Operation System of well-know software giant. Don’t you think about what makes us pronounce “Windows” instead of “Operational system” or “OS”? The answer is simple – Windows occupies more then 60% of OS market. Microsoft’s OS in the informational society plays the same role that would have played some imaginable Oil Monopoly in the former industrial society. Hopefully there is no oil monopoly but there is a monopoly of the software “fuel” which is used by majority of computer systems.

The idea behind Microsoft is also true with McDonalds, Coca Cola or Mercedes-Benz and it is on the surface – they are monopolies or, at least, oligopolies in their respective markets with their respective strong USPs and therefore strong brands.

So let us summarize this important fact – the more unique your market offer is, the more unique, easy to remember and easy to associate with your brand will be.

2. The second thing is the size of your business in terms of financial capacity and market share. Very few people pointing to that fact, but its effect on your brand shouldn’t be underestimated. No matter what product you offer to the online market, it will surely lose the brand war, if your marketing budget is $00.00 and your whole business is located on some unknown unstable hosting as a result of funds deficit.

Everyone speaks about great brands like Coca Cola, but no one actually says, that it makes absolutely no relation to an entrepreneur, who wants to start his own small practice online.

Know your competition and develop the marketing strategy that would reflect your business capacity, needs and suit a marketing budget. The smaller your business is, the more aggressive your branding should be. Branding has a feature of building itself when your business is rapidly expanding.

3. Corporate culture is another vital brand creator. The epicenter of your brand is the company itself; therefore the more positive and brighter the company feels inside, the more positive, attractive and shiny it will look outside.

If your online venture’s stuff numbers you and your cat :0) you can easily build a delightful business culture but, to my regret, it won’t have a big influence on outside world. What will have an effect is the popularizing of your business values through partner networks and/or clients.

Friendly atmosphere that welcomes employees’ or partners’ creative initiative with the focus on development of personality, is exactly what makes a difference and lights a “fire” in the eyes of every person your company deals with.

4. Know your market. This small sentence comprises an understanding of the needs of your market niche, satisfaction of your market needs via directed promotional campaigns, adopting the development plan in compliance with analysis of the strength and weaknesses of your business as well as closest competitors.

Don’t devaluate your brand through wrong market approach. People pay much more attention to their own needs as well as to companies that satisfy their needs. The market offers should be specific and directed to particular niche with its unique problems, joys, hopes and needs. Don’t try to shoot several ducks with one shot.

Your branding campaign should reflect the market you are working with in a clear and highly beneficial way to your potential customers.

Major Ways of online branding:

1. All possible kinds of online promotion: banner impressions, classified ads, solo ads, articles submission, web-site traffic building, opt-in email campaigns, promotional joint ventures, ezine publishing, viral marketing. All these ways of branding positioning are to be niche-oriented.
2. Expand your e-business network by running partner/affiliate programs.
3. Co-branding by means of strategic partnerships, joint ventures with the established brands in non-competing markets, for additional market and branding exposure.
4. Unique personal and/or corporate culture.
5. Informational and design representation of your business Web-site.
6. The product/service itself. It is mainly through them your clients acquiring positive or negative experience of dealing with your company.
7. Domain name, design, logo, motto, TMs, SMs are the main subsidiary representatives of your brand. That is why they should be clear and supplement each other in conveying your “message”.
8. Testing and measuring the response rate of your branding efforts.

Why branding is so important? Because it, firstly, creates a platform via loyal market surroundings for easy and quick business growth; secondly, increases perceived value of your whole company. Do you want your own company to develop smoothly along with exponential growth of its market value? I do.

According to economic theories we live in the world of monopoly competition. That term shouldn’t confuse you, as the meaning behind implies competition between many small or middle-size “monopolies”, that are not monopolies in their direct meaning, as they don’t control some particular sector of economy, rather then they are the prime sources of their unique propositions of services or products. That fact makes them to be a so-called monopolies of their own services or products, despite the fact that a lot of other companies offering very close, in terms of features and benefits, services or products to the market.

That is why it is obvious that the more unique benefits and features your proposition can offer to the market, the more “open-minded” market will be towards that proposition of yours.

Since we are usually involved in activity, which is not related to raw resources and materials, where uniqueness is very difficult to reach, due to the nature of the product like wheat, we are capable to offer a product and/or service that brings new “way of thinking”. While it sounds too expressive, the core idea behind is to be new, at least, in something.

Now let us speak more minutely about online e-business strategies you may and should apply online.

1. PRODUCT.

The product/service your will offer is 100% responsible for your long-term success. While it’s possible to get some profit from useless goods, owing to the professionalism of the marketing experts, it won’t last long. The “word of mouth” marketing is the most reliable long-term marketing tool ever existed. That is why it’s better to make a product you will be proud of, and even having mediocre marketing abilities, due to lack of funds, experts etc. your product would still have a profitable future, of course if, as we stated, it perfectly solves some problems, brings joy and so forth.

How to do it

Research, analyze and develop it. That is your e-business foundation. The best idea that I can give you about what product/service to create is that it should be the one you will be the most happy to use or utilize by yourself, in other words, the product that e-market lacks and you feel a great need in. Make it more beneficial by having substantially lower price or substantially more benefits, features, new way of solving old problems, new service in order to make it faster, cheaper, easier, deliver more pleasure to deal with. Do you see the point?

2. THIRD PARTY PRODUCT. License techniques.

Nowadays, we all hear about resell, reprint or master resell rights.

In short, by acquiring resell rights you are able to resell the product you bought for the specified price. So you pay license fee and then buy a desired number of products at a massive discount (more then wholesale).

Reprint & redistribution rights are the same as above with the only difference – your business entity may solely reprint and redistribute the product in specified quantities, without any necessity to buy them from the licenser. The one who bought the license (licensee) is also have a right to customize or brand that product before retails, if other is not stipulated in license agreement. Sometimes you receive a right to become a licenser and offer resell rights to you clients, whereas you keep all the generated profits.

Master resell rights entitles you to enjoy all the benefits mentioned above plus the right to resell reprint and redistribute rights and sometimes the master resell rights themselves. That is truly fantastic opportunity as you actually acquire a complete business of the licenser. The only priority the licenser has is that he may change and develop his product further, where your power is limited by customization only, i. e. you are not allowed to change the “nature” of the product or service, if other is not stipulated in license agreement.

When we speak about Internet and info (intangible) products one thing should be stressed here. Taking into account unlimited supply and the way info products are being copied, with a press of a button, it is difficult, if not impossible, to control their further distribution. Therefore resell rights that coming with info products are accepted to possess free redistribution rights as an additional feature of reprint & redistribution rights. The thing that still makes a difference between these rights is customization or branding.

To sum up, let us say that, concerning info products, any rights you acquire allow you to distribute, but customization of the product is allowed only under reprint & redistribution or master resell license agreement, if other is not mentioned. That is why, they are sometimes called customization rights instead of reprint & redistribution.

You can also order at wholesale prices before retailing, but if your intentions to establish long-term partnership are serious, acquiring license is more advisable as you will be able to save substantial amount of resources (usually financial), brand the product (if poses reprint or master resell rights) and generate new income streams by offering license certificates to your clients.

How to do it

The product/service you choose to license should meet the following criteria:

• Satisfy high market demand;
• Be innovative (strong USP);
• Have an acceptable benefits/price ratio;
• Reflect your business “likes”;
• Reflect your long-term business strategy and marketing potential.

You should take your hand on the pulse of economy development in order to proper track the trends. It doesn’t matter what economy sector or market demand these trends belong to, what does matter is how you track and analyze these trends in a sphere or scope of activity you work in.

If you are like me, an info business operator, the main priority to you in searching for license deals is to anticipate the possible high future demands. That is also true when you are developing your own product/service. If you find a product that perfectly suits your current business and meets criteria mentioned above, then chose what license to acquire and go for it, or contact the owner and offer him to acquire a license or have a discussion about considering new terms of license agreement, no problem should arise in that case.

3. PACKAGE.

Other front you can strike from is to bundle products/services into another unique offer. Don’t think that it’s too easy. This way demands much more financial investments and even more time on market research. Your “package” of products or services is nothing more then a number of third party’s products/services, which were licensed by you, accompanied or not with your own offer(s) into some new product that is implied to offer complete solution.

How to do it

Here is a brief example that shows, which direction you should move.

Let assume that you are running a web-site selling dietary supplement capsules and quite often you get emails from thankful customers asking you to solve their other health problems or provide them with a recipe of healthy diets to lose weight etc.

What you can do is partner with fellow marketer, who is successfully offering brochures and other materials on the best diets to lose weight as well as with another e-business owner who promotes ebooks on how to solve minor health problems indoors. You can even acquire a license to resell some light sport trainers, just reassure via independent research that these offers are reliable and beneficial for your customers and not frustrate and ruin your positive image.

So by setting up these deals, you are not only answering the question – what health food should be, but also starting to provide a complete package of products and services on how to keep everyone’s body in good shape. That’s it.

CONCLUSION

The way you choose is yours and yours only. Make yourself feel comfortable with it, let your business and your future plans be comfortable with it. And never forget about the market – as a place where you develop your business. You should follow the market, anticipate it and satisfy it in the best possible way.

This is the only attitude that may almost guarantee your success, unless you are still looking for new “revolutionary” matrix schemes, super “breakthrough” offers of the next 22 century, or these fake last-chance programs like “jump-in-today-get-rich-automatically-tomorrow” or “all-job-is-done-for-you-just-pay-now” :0) You may continue that list.