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 company's 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 doesn't 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 'limited edition' or 'limited period offer' will create a sense of urgency. The customer thinks that he should get this product somehow. It's 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 it's not mentioned, the first time the customer will be tricked into buying something, but he will loose trust and won't come back again.

Always hold seasonal sales and offers. Since all the competitors will be giving out different offers to attract customers, it's 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 competitors'. 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 won't 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 'Grab the golden opportunity now' or 'pick up the phone and dial the number right now', 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.    

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 isn't 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 company's 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.

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 company's 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 company's values. One should also remember that these companies spend fortunes on advertising which a new start up business can't. 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 reader's 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.

Doing Research on Marketing

Research on marketing is essential to understand the pattern of marketing. This is possible by searching existing knowledge related to business marketing. It is a form of business research, business-to-business marketing research and business marketing research. Marketing research is done in many forms and all these forms are known as problem-identification research.

Research in advertising is done to determine the copy testing of advertisements. It is also used to know the efficiency of ads placed in any medium, the customer attention it gets, the message it delivers and how it motivates the customers to buy the product. Commercial eye tracking is done to understand the visual behavior of the customer. Ads, websites, etc., are analyzed for this. Before an advertisement is released in the market, its performance can be forecasted with the help of copy testing which takes consumer's level of attention, motivation, brand liking, and entertainment into consideration.

When a customer buys something online he analyses it in order to make the decision, this one of the criteria on which consumer decision research is done. Interviews and surveys can be done to understand consumer's level of satisfaction, which is known as customer satisfaction studies. The demographic and psychology of the people of a particular geographical region can be studied with the help of segmentation research.

When analyzing is to be done about brand recognition, brand performance, brand preference and awareness, ad tracking is done. A favorite brand can be recognized with the help of brand equity research. Tests are conducted so as to determine what customer thinks about a brand or a product and it is specifically known as brand name testing. The demand of a product can be understood by demand estimation. After the demand of the product is taken care of, the quality should be checked from time to time. Appointing mystery shoppers who is usually an employee of the market research firm does this. He buys goods through a salesperson and notes down the whole experience. This procedure can be used to do research about rival companies' products.

Before practical application of a concept, concept testing should be done which tells whether the targeted audience will like the idea or not. Test marketing is done by introducing a product in small numbers in the market and observing the sales, after which the product is launched on a large-scale. After the initial phase, when the company thinks of increasing the price of the product, price elasticity testing should be carried out which shows customer reaction to price fluctuations. Distribution channel audits are conducted to understand the attitudes of retailers and distributors towards specific products and brands.

The more tech savvy form of marketing research is Internet strategic intelligence. The likes and dislikes of the customers can be directly known with the help of chats, blogs and forums. Online panels are a group of experts who accept the marketing research done online. 

All the researches that are carried out can be classified as primary research, which gathers original research, and secondary research, which is based on a primary research and information published by other resources. Secondary research costs less as research is done on already researched data, but the result isn't efficient.

The research designs used by marketing research are either based on questioning or are based on observations. Quantitative marketing research and qualitative marketing research are based on questioning. Quantitative marketing research is done to derive conclusions like questionnaires forms and survey. The number of respondents involved is high. Qualitative marketing research is done to understand something like in-depth interviews and projective techniques.

Marketing research based on observations is called experimental technique and ethnographic studies. Test markets and purchase laboratories are examples of experimental techniques. The quantity measured is determined by understanding the factors that are responsible for the success of a product and then one or some of the factors are changed and the result is observed.  In ethnographic studies observations are done longitudinally or done at several instances of time or cross-sectional, or done at only a particular time.

Research on marketing is similar to exit polling in politics. The market is studied from different angles, at different time, and under different circumstances.
 

Could A Career In Finance Be Just What You Are Looking For?

Careers in finance remain very lucrative and very exciting jobs in the corporate world but what exactly is needed to become a professional in this field? First, having a degree in financing or accounting remains a very valuable step in getting hired by most companies that deal with finance.

Accounting and finance careers can be jumpstarted by having a good knowledge of where exactly in financing you would like to find yourself in. You should thoroughly consider the many fields in finance wherein your particular expertise or interests may lie.

There is corporate finance, which involves working for companies and handling the financial side of their operations. A company's growth often depends on the long-term stable handling of their finances and acquisitions, steady business growth as well as in the more short-term aspects of handling the company's current available funds. As a career corporate finance professionals are responsible for making a company profitable and keeping it profitable.

You could also consider one of the many jobs in banking. Again, you have to find the right position to get into depending on what you're interested in. There are a variety of job functions ranging from a bank teller to bank manager, to working in either commercial banking or in investment banking.

If you are more of a people person, then you could find work that involves talking to people, finding out their needs and how to help them. If number crunching is more in line with your interests, then you could work in investment banking and assist firms in raising funds or creating projections regarding business mergers.

Perhaps working in real estate could be right for you. Real estate is particularly valuable because banks and other financial institutions use land as collateral. Real estate-related jobs typically entail being a good judge of the value of land and properties. This could also mean a lot of travel for you and seeing new places as well as talking to the people in those places.

Would you like to work in the area of insurance? Job functions in insurance involve helping companies and individuals maintain security and prevent losses to their properties. Security is such a valuable commodity especially for large companies. Even other areas in finance require insurance of their own. Banking, for instance has its own risks and thus banks usually require the security provided by insurance firms. This security itself can be prized as a solid commodity.

Banks, even though they might not be suffering a risk of collapse could indeed collapse if its clients construe the bank as lacking security. For individuals, the field of insurance gives a measure of security through a variety of policies like life insurance plans, fire insurance plans, as well as sets the car career finance insurance rate for the family and house insurance rates. In insurance and in the other fields of finance, you might be able to find the perfect career path for you.

With the great diversity in careers in finance available and actual new job functions being established all the time as dictated by the constantly varying needs of the clients, then surely there is a spot in this field just right for you, your talents, skills, and interests.

A College Degree Is the Starting Point of Your Finance Career

If you want a career in financing, you have to get a college degree. To be more specific, you have to graduate with a bachelor's degree in math, business, statistics or economics since you will be dealing with numbers and using these skills to make decisions and recommendations.

One study shows that there are currently 230,000 financial analysts and financial advisors in the US. You might think that there is no more vacancy in the market but there are because new businesses are established while old ones are still growing.

With a college degree, one thing you can try is financial consulting. Here, you are tasked on providing advice to business valuation, economic forecasts and analysis, treasury management, strategies for creating shareholder value and securities pricing.

Later on, you may be promoted to finance manager and instead of providing advice to clients, you will have the opportunity to invest their money in order to make a profit. Those who do well here earn somewhere around $73,000 to $145,000 annually and with the amount of money that is given, you better deliver.

Another field is corporate financing in which your job is to manage the client's assets and if the opportunity presents itself, make acquisitions.

Those who want to serve their country may issue securities, enforce the law, manage assets and offer financial advice to people.

Similar to the finance manager are the money managers because they hold stocks and bonds for clients and at the same time buy stuff off Wall Street. For this job, you need to be proficient in various technologies as well as the latest qualitative methodologies. You will also need to be CFA certified.

Working for an insurance company is also a viable option. Here, you help prepare clients deal with catastrophes before they happen. It is a trillion dollar industry that is still growing so you can still get in the game.

Among the various opportunities, many find their way to commercial banking. You could be a bank manager, teller, the one in charge of approving loans or looking for new accounts. This accounts for the majority of those employed in the financial services industry.

In any of the positions mentioned, you must be good with numbers and have excellent interpersonal skills. Why? Because you are dealing with people and if the client doesn't like your personality, chances are they will bring their business elsewhere.

After working for a few years, you can work for another company or be daring and start up your own company.

Aside from banking, the real estate industry is also looking out for finance graduates. This is because their training is useful when it comes to property management, real estate appraisal, brokerage and leasing, construction and real estate development. On one end, they sell property while on the other find ways to make it possible for the customer to invest depending on their budget.

A college degree is the starting point of your finance career because no company out there will hire someone who just graduated from secondary school or does not have the proper training when you are dealing with other people's money.

So, if you are still considering what to take up in college or lost in your current course, shift over because this is very rewarding.

E-Commerce And Affiliate Marketing

The creation of the internet and the mass production
of computers in the late 80′s changed everyone’s
lives forever. Now, everyone has the potential to
be their own boss whether you are a stay home mom
or a manual laborer.

All you need to do is search on Google for business
opportunities and it will bring up more than you
could ever imagine. Even though you may think it’s
easy to make a living on the internet, it actually
requires a firm business plan and a lot of hard
work.

You can run an online business with your current
job, and your potential market is a lot bigger than
the average stores.

The first thing you’ll need to decide is the type
of business that’s right for you, then research
the market. The possible business choices open to
you are:
1. Affiliate programs
2. Adsense programs
3. Selling products

Affiliate programs will pay you a commission for
selling company products. You’ll have no contact
with the customer, as all you do is provide sales
leads to the company of whom you have to be an
affiliate for.

Adsense programs are where you take an existing
website you own of a particular subject then add
contexual adverts from Google’s adsense program.
When someone clicks on an advert you’ll receive a
few cents.

The final method is selling products. You’ll build
a website with a shopping cart then give as many
details as possible about the products. When
customers buy products, you’ll receive pay based
on what you sell and how many.

When it all comes down to it, you’ll need to set
up a business and web site to get the most from
E-Commerce or affiliate marketing. It’ll take a
lot of hard work and dedication – although it’ll
prove to be well worth it.