The Silent Avatar Speaks

Just What is a Marketing Plan?
A marketing plan includes a list of actions needed to accomplish marketing targets. It can be for a product, a service or a brand. There are marketing plans for short term goals – 1 year, and long term goals – five years.

A marketing plan might be part of an overall business plan, and a good marketing strategy is the basis of a well-written marketing plan.

Why does a Business Venture necessitate a Marketing Plan?
A marketing plan is an invaluable tool for guiding a small home based business owner to organise their marketing efforts. It ensures a systematic technique to creating products and services to meet and gratify customers’ needs.

How to write a Marketing Plan
Drawing up a marketing plan is not difficult. Focus on the goals and the efforts needed to achieve them.   Your goals need to be stated clearly in the marketing plan.

Remember that a good marketing plan sets clear, realistic, achievable and measurable objectives. It should consist of deadlines, a budget and allotment of responsibilities.

Marketing Plan Outline
A basic marketing plan outline may comprise of these topics:

Current Market Analysis
Depict the current market environment which your business is in. This analysis can later be used as a benchmark to fine-tune the marketing plan in the future.

Define your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis and also the PEST (Political, Economic, Social, Technological) analysis tools, write a short description of the current product or service available, the marketing benefits and barriers the business could come across. Contemplate the threats posed by competitors and also consider other factors that could affect the business in the year to come. This may aid in the formulation of strategies in the future.

Target Market
Every product or service needs a market. This explains why customer analysis in marketing plans is essential to its success. The product could be directed at the online market as well as the conventional offline market.

It could be targeted at the general public or it could be aimed at a niche market. For an online market the analysis should include reasons why people shop online.Once a target market is selected, write a target market profile based on demographics and include selection yardsticks.

Marketing Objectives
Express your business’s marketing goals for the coming year. The targets should be specific, realistic and measurable to asses the marketing progress. Avoid vague statements like, “Increase indoor sales” Incorporate specifics instead – “Increase indoor sales by 25%.”

Strategies to Achieving Objectives
If the marketing goal is to boost indoor sales by 25% then a strategy has to be developed to meet this end. For example, there could be special a promotion for walk-in clients. This promotion can be marketed via an emailed weekly newsletter to clients. The strategies should be detailed and cover the 4P’s of marketing -

• Price
• Product
• Place
• Promotion.

Marketing Budget
Putting into affect marketing strategies to fulfill marketing objectives costs money and it’s just plain stupidity to think that you can have an online presence and just by the mere fact that you are online and have been indexed by the search engines you will have a successful business.

There’s a saying… spend some money to make some money. Create a breakdown of marketing connected expenses associated with the strategies. Have a look at the numbers and decide if it is too much. Do not be afraid to lower or revise the budget until a feasible figure is achieved – and then make sure you stick to it. Don’t be tempted to buy yourself the latest “toy”.  You are growing your business so you can have as many toys as you want.. but only when your marketing has paid off.

Bear in mind that a marketing plan should remain a constant process throughout the life of a company.

Revise your marketing plan at least every 6 months, and for goodness sake… track where your results are coming from! Analyse, analyse, analyse!

I’m the Silent Avatar… and I have spoken

Tags: Business and Management, Business Tips, Internet, Internet Marketing, Marketing and Advertising by the silent avatar
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Before you can go about starting a business, no matter what it is, it goes without saying you would have to know a little something about the business you were going into wouldn’t you?

Don’t be under the illusion that just because you are good at something, you feel you can translate that to a viable business.  Of course prior knowledge on the subject is a must, or at the very least a sound understanding of what it takes to operate the sort of business you want to start.

You can begin your endeavor of starting a business by studying other similar business models that are successful.

I’m continually amazed at the number of people who want to start a business online, yet they have done very little, (or even no research) to back up the viability of their business.

Starting any business means knowing what your potential customers want, and the best ways to find out if what you propose to offer is what is needed. Successful businesses always fulfil a need (and people are willing to pay).

A quick way to gauge your perception about your proposed business is to ask your friends, family and their contacts to complete a survey.

You can set up a simple survey at Tiger Survey.com (and its free).

Simply write a series of questions you would like to know the answer to, and then circulate the survey link to your contacts for them to complete the survey. Don’t short cut this process! You are fact finding before you invest your hard earned savings into your business idea!

Put some time and effort into the questions and don’t make the survey too long, or you will find that your survey will be abandoned.

If you want to ensure a good strike rate for your survey, offer something in exchange for completing the survey. It can be as simple as a lottery or art union ticket to those who complete the survey. Whatever it costs, it’s well worth the investment to find out if you are on the right track.

Also consider what resources you need to operate your business effectively. If you need a printer to print invoices, or brochures, or to print business reports (and you don’t have one),  consider if you have the money to purchase one because it may be a ‘must have’ to operate your business successfully.

Other resources can be things like:

• people – how many?
• premises – where? lease? buy?
• stock area – or maybe drop ship?
• capital – reserves for the unexpected?
• equipment – must haves to operate your business successfully?
• advertising – got a budget?
• child minding -  you can’t focus on the kids and a business at the same time.

There are hundreds of other details that you must see to when starting a business. If you don’t have the time or the ideas that you need to start from the ground up, you can always see about a franchise. You may need to invest a bit more when starting a business this way, but that name you get comes with advertising and reputation that you would not have when starting a business on your own.

Remember… THINK FIRST! Don’t become another number in the statistics of failed businesses.

I’m the Silent Avatar.. and I have spoken

Tags: Business and Management, Business Tips by the silent avatar
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Do you fully understand the business ideas and concept behind residual income?

It is really quite a smart and yet simple business model: “Do something once then get paid many times over again, for that clever initial action!” It could be the action of referring someone into an online business, like a nutritional MLM, for example.

Just as a singer/songwriter like Michael Jackson or Sir Paul McCartney, writes a song once then gets paid a neverending stream of royalty income – or like the writer of the Harry Potter series – writes an irresistible novel then gets paid over and over again as thousands or millions of copies fly off the downtown book shop shelves!

That is all variations of residual income. Or passive, automatic, monthly or annually recurring income. It’s a rather exciting prospect isn’t it? Many authors, playwrights and songwriters enjoy this recurring residual, royalty income! You can too, as a home based business entrepreneur, working with a telephone and the Internet from your home office. This is what I’ve done since 1997.

Certainly, there are many types of home based work online and internet businesses that use the residual income model. For example, nutritional MLM or multi level marketing businesses that typically sell supplemental nutritional products, women’s cosmetics and household goods, like home cleaners, etc., all use the Residual Income Model. It first appeared in about 1950 and has made millions of dollars for business owners and top sales performers. It is also known as referral marketing.

They are a type of referral marketing where you refer someone once to a global home based business compensation matrix or structure then you get paid monthly recurring income at a certain percentage while they remain a paying customer of the company. The simple, compressed matrix works best – not a complicated binary structure.

It looks good in theory but does require a lot of supportive work behind the scenes to make sure your referred downline of customers does not collapse or disappear! They will need your constant attention and coaching support, believe me.. most people seem to work best with frequent leader’s help and reinforcement. You can even devise a system of rewards and incentives, like the large multi-level marketing companies always do. They offer holidays away to Hawaii, for instance, and frequent conferences with hotel accomodation.

Other very smart Internet marketers with online Small Business Ideas create their own passive income systems. I recently joined one such online business called “Passive Profit ROBOT“, created by Jeff Alderson of Florida, USA. I’m extremely impressed with this system – it has genius-like simplicity because all I have to do is pass on a free marketing report, by referring people to my unique referrer web URL. That’s all I need to do! It is a very simple system where you refer people using the Internet, then you get paid regularly as they purchase marketing software and business information products through the Paypal and Clickbank merchant systems.

Joining these merchant payment systems as an affiliate is a breeze too!

It even pays to find a product on Clickbank which aligns with your own website and promote the product from your site.

To sign up for Clickbank simply click here

Tags: Business and Management, Business Tips by the silent avatar
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Ever since I got into business for myself I have come to know this one thing. The key to success is to find someone who is spectacular at business and then become their best friend.

That doesn’t mean that you want to become exactly like them, but it does mean that you want to see a similar form of success to what they have.

So why stick to them like glue? Because there is one thing that they have which you are likely still seeking – and that is… Vision.

Establishing a vision for your life and especially for your business is easier said than done! That is why getting to know people who have already achieved a measure of success will give you a much better chance at finding your own calling in the world today. Ultimately, they will make you successful.

Excellent candidates for this are Small Business Mentors. There are four different things to look for in a Small Business Mentor.

1) They need to show that they can achieve results.
Since a Small Business Mentor has the JOB of being your mentor they need to show that they can achieve some form of success on their own. I was made painfully aware of this fact when I put myself under the mentorship of a bad business husband/wife team who ultimately ended our relationship yelling at me on the phone because I had called them out for damaging my reputation to a third party for no reason at all.
Hey, that kind of stuff happens. But I have since recovered and have been made the wiser for it. So you’ll need to be weary of a Small Business Mentor because they can really cause things to go downhill for your business.

So bottom line: do your homework before you approach any kind of Small Business Mentor and make sure that they have had similar results in their own business that you would like them to help you achieve in your own business.

2) They should be helping their clients establish a vision
As I said above, one of the major keys to success is vision. If your Small Business Mentor doesn’t have some kind of emphasis on helping you to set up a vision then you are going to have to think twice before becoming their protege.

3) They should freely give of their information to grow your business.
Part of working with a mentor is the ability for them to give freely to you information which will help you grow your business and make it successful. Unfortunately, there is a saying “you can’t know what you don’t know“, and this means you are only going to get the information you need if you ask the right questions – unless of course they freely give over their information.

4) Find a mentor who has been there and done that.
Good mentors have been through the mill, made mistakes, (and plenty of them) and are now willing to not only advise you what to do, but also what NOT to do.

They can offer you a shortcut to success, based on what they know works.

If you are looking to find a mentor, you don’t have to go and pay someone. Forums abound with people who are willing to impart their knowledge for the good of all. Of course, don;t take up their valuable time with questions which have already been answered. Search the forums for answers to your question first.

If you would like a mentor which is a bit more personalised, I recommend The Internet Entrepreneur Club run by Derek Gehl. This is a membership site where you can post any questions,  include links to your site for feedback, and generally make good use of someone who knows what they are talking about.

I’ve included a banner link below for you to check out.

Until next time,

I’m the Silent Avatar… and I have spoken

Tags: Business and Management, Marketing and Advertising, Online Business, Promotion and Marketing by the silent avatar
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