Marketing Strategies Blog

Apr 7, Sales and Marketing Training: Learn by Watching a Marketing Video, Sales Video

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 23:28:51 GMT

The best resources for sales and marketing training: watch a marketing video, free online marketing training, or a sales video. These videos make it easy to understand and easy to implement.

Dec 11, Holiday Marketing Tip - Send Holiday Greeting Cards

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 14:45:55 GMT

It's not too late to send out holiday greeting cards or calendars to your customers and prospects. It's a great way to keep your brand in their mind. And right now, PsPrint is offering up to 60% off on holiday printing: greeting cards, stickers, calendars, postcards and more. Make it special by including a free sample, personal message, or coupon with the holiday greeting card. Or make a donation to charity or a special cause related to your business niche, and let your clients know about it in the holiday card. Here are some other good holiday marketing tips:

Do an email mailing to catch last-minute shoppers. Make the message crisp and clear to appeal to procrastinators wanting to get holiday shopping done with little time to spare.
Participate in or sponsor a charity event, with a press release about the event.
Offer an electronic gift certificate for those final-hour shoppers. Even if you don't have electronic gift cards implemented on your site, you can still let buyers send an e-notification from your site so the gift recipient knows that the gift is coming soon.
What does the holidays mean for B2B sales? typically, that's the time that year-end budgets need to be spent or lost. What can you do to make it easy for customers to spend remaining 2009 budgets to ease their business in the New Year?
Promote a special offer, whereby a percentage of your holiday sales go to a favorite charity.

Nov 7, Writing a Marketing Plan for Your Business

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 02:35:25 GMT

What are the main items your marketing plan should include? First, make sure it aligns with business goals and strategy. Then use these easy steps to write your marketing plan.

Nov 7, Marketing Plan Format Guidelines

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 02:26:58 GMT

Follow these marketing plan format guidelines to put together a marketing plan outline that will deliver successful marketing strategies to drive your business to the next level.

Feb 17, Marketing Strategy Planning: Developing a Marketing Strategy

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 04:23:47 GMT

Follow these easy steps to optimize your marketing strategy planning. This will help you write a marketing strategy that will drive sales and grow your business without costing a fortune.

Feb 17, Market Orientation

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 04:02:30 GMT

What is market orientation in marketing strategy? What are the benefits and drawbacks of having a strong customer orientation? Read this summary to find out.

Feb 6, SBI Reviews: Our Experience with SBI Site Build It

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:52:13 GMT

Read our SBI reviews. SBI (Site Build It) allowed me to easily create and market this website, and grow traffic using all their included tools. Learn more about SBI here.

Feb 5, About Easy Marketing Strategies

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:40:35 GMT

I started Easy Marketing Strategies.com as a resource for information and guidance to help small and medium businesses build winning marketing strategies. See more of our story here.

Feb 2, Have You Re-Vamped your Marketing for Post-Recession yet?

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:16:17 GMT

The pundits tell us the recession is coming to an end... this means different marketing strategies are in order for 2010 than you may have used for 2009. Have you re-vamped your marketing plan for post-recession? If not, you need to start doing so. As this article in Advertising Age today describes, Walmart, Allstate, Hyundai and other marketing giants are doing just that already... So, what are you waiting for. Click below to start writing a marketing plan that will help grow your business in the post-recession economy.

Jan 29, Marketing Tips: 100 Powerful Marketing Tips to Boost Your Sales and Visibility

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:57:50 GMT

Looking for marketing tips to increase sales and boost the visibility of your small or medium business? Here’s a list of 100 easy marketing ideas to promote your firm, product or service.

Jan 29, Email Marketing Tips

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:11:07 GMT

Email marketing tips to offer value and build trust with a qualified, interested list of prospects. Learn how to send emails that are seen as valuable information, not spam, while driving revenue.

Jan 22, Using a SWOT Template for Marketing Strategy

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 03:44:26 GMT

Here are some recommended SWOT template examples. Understand your business’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats by doing a SWOT analysis.

Jan 21, Marketing Question of the Week: How is Marketing Different from Advertising?

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:02:06 GMT

Check out our Marketing Q&A page to see the answer to our latest marketing question: "What is the difference between Advertising and Marketing?" Or visit the page to ask any other marketing question, add your marketing tips, and view other questions.

Jan 15, Marketing Research Plan: Tips for Online Marketing Research and Strategy

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:38:17 GMT

A strong marketing research plan is the first step in building a winning marketing strategy that will drive sales and grow your business. Follow our tips for effective marketing research online.

Jan 13, How to Write a Marketing Strategy

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:12:45 GMT

Write a marketing strategy to drive business results with these nine easy steps. Use our guides, templates and sample marketing plan in developing a marketing strategy to align with business goals.

Jan 12, Definition: Marketing Strategy

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:57:14 GMT

Here is a simple definition of marketing strategy. What is marketing strategy? How is it different from marketing plan, marketing mix, and business strategy? And how do you develop it?

Jan 10, Writing a Marketing Plan: Ten Top Tips

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 01:32:38 GMT

If you are writing a marketing plan, these tips will help you create a marketing plan faster, focus your plan, and write a marketing strategy that’s optimally aligned with your business goals.

Jan 4, Doing a SWOT Analysis to Focus Your Marketing Strategy

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 02:10:53 GMT

A SWOT analysis helps to focus your marketing strategy planning by evaluating your company’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This process makes it easy.

Jan 4, Sample Marketing Plan - An Example Plan for Free Download

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:19:02 GMT

Here is a sample marketing plan that you can download for free. It will give you some example ideas to use as you write your marketing plan.

Jan 3, The Marketing Strategy Process: Developing a Marketing Strategy

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:28:00 GMT

Understanding the marketing strategy process will help in developing a marketing strategy that supports business objectives and drives sales. Follow this process to define winning marketing programs.

Jan 3, Defining Your Marketing Promotion Plan: Tips for Successful Product Promotions

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:51:31 GMT

What is a marketing promotion plan, and how can you develop a marketing promotion strategy that will increase sales even in slow economic times? This article will show you how.

Jan 3, Developing Your Marketing Mix: The Four Ps of Marketing

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:43:17 GMT

How to easily develop and optimize your marketing mix using the 4 Ps of marketing: Product, Price, Place, Promotion. These four components are the essential elements of your marketing plan.

Jan 3, Marketing and Advertising Taglines: How to Write Taglines that Sell

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:05:59 GMT

Need to create compelling marketing and advertising taglines for your company, product or service? This article provides our top tips for developing the best taglines: those that sell for you.

Dec 9, How to Craft Your Marketing Messages to Multiple Audiences

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:33:42 GMT

When crafting marketing messages, it's important to remember that there are a number of different audiences that need to be addressed. Too many people think only about their end customer when putting together their key messages. Although the end customer is, of course, your primary target, the fact is that they are influenced by a number of other stakeholders. Your messages need to be influencing each of those stakeholders also, so that they will reinforce and not undermine your key messages to the end customer. As you are developing your marketing messages, make sure you are addressing each of these audiences specifically:

Your end customers,
Sales and marketing partners,
the media (press, etc),
Distribution channels and other channel partners,
Online or offline influencers, such as analysts, influential websites, and prominent bloggers in your field,
your ecosystem partners, such as complementary service providers and other vendors,
other key stakeholders that your end customer looks to for guidance on their purchase decision (this is especially important for B2B products and services).

Dec 6, Developing a Marketing Communication Plan

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:27:18 GMT

Your marketing communication plan is how you communicate your marketing messages to your target customers. It is a part of your overall marketing plan. Use these tips for a strong marcom strategy.

Dec 5, Postcard Marketing Tips: How to Design Effective Direct Mail Pieces

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 04:50:38 GMT

Get key postcard marketing tips to help you design effective direct mail pieces, plan your direct mail marketing budget, and develop effective marketing strategies and offers that drive sales.

Dec 4, Inbound Marketing: Getting Customers to Find You

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:24:24 GMT

What is inbound marketing? It's the process of helping customers find your company or product when they are looking for a solution like yours. That's as compared to the expensive alternative: outbound marketing. That's the traditional approach of sending out brochures, email lists, cold-calling, and advertising. With the expanding importance of the internet and social media as a tool for customers to find information to solve their problem, it's critical that your product or service comes up close to the top of the list on search engines, gets mentioned in blogs, etc. Here's an excellent, newly published book on how to drive inbound marketing: "Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs" by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, founders of inbound marketing firm HubSpot. Traditional "outbound" marketing methods like cold-calling, email blasts, advertising, and direct mail are increasingly less effective. People are getting better at blocking these interruptions out using Caller ID, spam protection, TiVo, etc. People are now increasingly turning to Google, social media, and blogs to find products and services. "Inbound Marketing" helps you take advantage of this change by showing you how to get found by customers online. "Inbound Marketing" is a how-to guide to getting found via Google, the blogosphere, and social media sites.

Improve your rankings in Google to get more traffic
Build and promote a blog for your business
Grow and nurture a community in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
Measure what matters and do more of what works online

The rules of marketing have changed, and your business can benefit from this change. "Inbound Marketing" shows you how to get found by more prospects already looking for what you have to sell.

Nov 18, Do You Really Know Your Target Customers?

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:48:08 GMT

Having a clear understanding of your target customers is one of the most important ingredients to putting together a compelling marketing strategy. If you don't really have a detailed picture of your target customer, how can you properly position and message your product or service? How do you describe your target customers in detail? Do you have a really clear profile of those prospects who see the most value from your product or service? What is the profile of your best customer? The three most important things to know about your customers are:

detailed target customer profile,
customer painpoint that your product or service addresses, and
average customer lifetime value.

Nov 13, Holiday Marketing Tip: Send a Greeting Card or Calendar

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:41:20 GMT

Whether your sales peak in the holiday season or not, you can still take advantage of this holiday marketing tip: send a custom greeting card or calendar to keep your brand top in your customers' minds. Check out this article for some holiday marketing strategies using cards and calendars that will drive business your way.

Nov 11, Use Web Analytics to Optimize Your Marketing

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:53:50 GMT

What are web analytics? These are the reports, charts and summary data on your website that can help you understand your visitors and develop strategies to increase traffic and better meet their needs. The fact is that there's a mountain of useful data that you can access and analyze using web analytics to improve your marketing strategies. The issue is dealing with that mountain in an effective and time-efficient way. Check out this free webinar on using web analytics to improve your marketing strategies. In today's tough economic climate it is not the lack of data on the web that is a problem, it is our ability to make sense of it all that is the challenge. In this deeply practical webinar Avinash shares his favorite tips for taking reams of data from your website and finding the nuggets of actionable insights in it. Bounce rates, segmentation, pan-session behavior analysis, key non-ecommerce success metrics and more strategies will be covered. You'll walk away knowing how to improve marketing efficiency, drive insights into consumer behavior, and generate greater returns on your online investments. Avinash Kaushik is the Analytics Evangelist for Google, and has published a couple of books on web analytics. It looks to be a worthwhile webinar, so check it out.

Nov 6, Check out this free SWOT analysis template

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:00:29 GMT

An important component of a strong marketing strategy is knowing how to perform a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths / Weaknesses / Opportunities / Threats. A SWOT analysis can be particularly useful in marketing to help prioritize marketing opportunities and decide on marketing vehicles. It can also be valuable for developing sales presentations and proposals, as well as in traditional business planning. SWOT analysis is the best way to really focus your marketing strategies in ways that will drive optimal business growth and profits. Go-to-Market Strategies has an excellent free template you can download and use to get started on your SWOT analysis. Check it out at the link below (just go to the Sales/Marketing templates list and look for the free download).

Aug 21, Naming Your Business or Your Product: Ten Top Tips

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:48:17 GMT

Naming your business is a vitally important part of your marketing communication plan, but many business owners find naming a business one of the biggest challenges. Get top naming tips here.

Aug 15, Marketing Mix Strategy: How to Develop an Optimal Product Marketing Strategy

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 02:29:25 GMT

So what is the ideal marketing mix strategy? How can you develop an optimal marketing mix? Follow these questions to develop your unique marketing mix strategies for product, price, place, promotion

Aug 14, Why You Should Care About Marketing Strategy

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:55:22 GMT

What is marketing strategy and why should I care about it? That's a common question from many small business owners: you wear too many hats, have too many immediate demands on your time, and long-term planning often ends up being a "nice to have". But marketing strategy is critical... and here's why: A solid marketing strategy allows you to prioritize all those "to-do's" according to how much positive impact they have on the business. Marketing strategy allows you to make sure you're getting the maximum impact from your limited time and budget. Excellent marketing strategy is not about spending weeks and weeks in all-day closed planning sessions... It's about making sure you have a workable process in place to prioritize your business activities based on what your customers and the market values most highly. Take a look at this article for the straightforward five-step marketing strategy process that any company, large or small, should follow:

Aug 4, What Should be Your Blogging Strategy?

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:42:39 GMT

Despite the advent of social media like Twitter and Facebook, having a corporate blog should be an important component of your overall marketing strategy. In his recent article "Take off Your Twitter Goggles: Why Marketers Still Need a Blogging Strategy" on MarketingProfs, Clay McDaniel provides an excellent overview of the key components of a successful blogging strategy... and why it is so important to have a blog in the first place:

First, keep your blog updated frequently with relevant content.
Second, make sure you are monitoring and commenting on other blogs in your niche.
Remember that a strong blog not only provides new and useful information to your customers... but it also thereby proves your credibility and increases the visibility of your product or service.
Include photos, videos and links in your blog... not just text.

Your blogging strategy should be part of your overall web site marketing strategy. Click the link below for more online marketing strategies:

Jul 7, Web Site Marketing Strategy: Top Website Marketing Strategies to Build Traffic

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:26:02 GMT

What is the best web site marketing strategy to get interested visitors to your site? This article lists top website marketing strategies that really work to pull in traffic & sales, minus the hype.

Jun 25, Social media marketing

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:57:04 GMT

When using social media, too many marketers incorrectly assume they should chase size or scale: How many followers? How many leads? How many visitors? etc... Instead, focus on trying to do a great job building relationships with and providing information for the targeted subgroup they should really be focused on, even if that's only 100 people. If you're still on the fence about social media, and how important it is to your software marketing efforts (and most of us are), then remember this point. It's true that too many marketers count their success on Twitter, for example, in terms of how many followers they have. But does that really matter if most of your followers are fellow marketers and internet marketing wannabees? No, it doesn't... unless that's the target audience for your product or service, of course. I don't know the silver bullet for marketing using social media... like most, I am still testing the waters myself. But I do know that it seems to be a great way to learn more about your niche, and really really focus your target subsegment to identify those folks who could get the most value from what you have to offer. When you've identified them and built a following (and it may be a small group.... that's OK) then that's the time to figure out how (and whether) to inject a marketing message into your communications with that group. Most of us could probably do with spending more time listening and learning... perhaps that's the best that social media has to offer us right now. Check out the rest for more thoughts on internet marketing strategy.

Jun 17, Easy Marketing Tips 'n' Tools: Subscribe to our Free Marketing Newsletter

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:54:25 GMT

"Easy Marketing Tips 'n' Tools" is our free biweekly newsletter, offering tips, tools and templates to help build easy marketing strategies. Subscribe now!

Jun 13, Marketing Strategy or Marketing Activity?

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 07:14:34 GMT

Many people are confused about the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing activity. A marketing activity is something you do (or someone in your organization does): write a case study, attend a tradeshow, publish a press release, etc. If you know exactly what to go do after you write it down, then it's a marketing activity. A marketing strategy, on the other hand, may not be something you can execute on immediately without some additional planning. For example, "raise awareness of our new service" might be a marketing strategy. Another example could be "develop a joint marketing program with a global reseller". Marketing strategies are what help you make sure your marketing activities (or tactics) are aligned with your business goals. GOALS ---> STRATEGIES ---> TACTICS It always amazes me how many people get confused about the difference between marketing strategies and marketing tactics or activities. Going straight from business goals to executing marketing activities is like throwing things at a wall to see which one sticks. That's an expensive way to market! Remember the middle step of writing down your strategies, and you will make sure your marketing activities are more focused, cost less, and drive more sales. For more information on marketing strategy planning, check out this helpful article:

Jun 9, Writing a Case Study: How to Write a Compelling Marketing Case Study

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:48:37 GMT

Writing a case study is one of the best marketing communication strategies to clearly describe the benefits of your product to your target customer. Get tips for doing a marketing case study.

Jun 3, Blog Marketing Tips: How to Effectively Use Blogs as a Marketing Tool

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:14:45 GMT

These are the best blog marketing tips. Ever wonder how to best use blogging as a marketing tool? Use these blog marketing strategies to drive traffic and links to your blog.

May 26, Five Top Marketing Plan Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Tue, 26 May 2009 09:17:39 GMT

Avoid these common marketing plan mistakes to get the most value possible from your marketing budget. This is our top 5 list of the most common marketing blunders and how to avoid them.

May 19, Internet Marketing Strategy: Seven Easy Tips

Tue, 19 May 2009 08:26:07 GMT

Find out how to plan an internet marketing strategy for your business. There’s so much hype about internet marketing. We make it easy to build a web site marketing strategy that will grow your sales

May 7, Creative Marketing Tips, Creative Marketing Strategy

Thu, 07 May 2009 09:31:39 GMT

Looking for some creative marketing tips to help you stand out from the crowd? Sometimes the best way to have your marketing get noticed is to do something different from your competitors.

Apr 30, Event Marketing Strategies Using Webinars and Other Virtual Events

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:00:50 GMT

Event marketing strategies for maximizing the marketing benefits from participating in web seminars (webinars) and virtual conferences.

Apr 23, Writing a Press Release: Writing Press Releases as a Promotional Marketing Tool

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:21:41 GMT

Provides guidelines for writing a press release that is compelling and effective as a promotional marketing tool. Writing press releases can be a key marketing strategy if you use it effectively.

Apr 17, Marketing in a Recession: Top Tips

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:59:27 GMT

Top tips for marketing in a recession. What are the best marketing strategies for surviving the recession? How can you grow market share with recession marketing? These tips will help you thrive.

Apr 12, Developing a Competitive Marketing Strategy

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:49:54 GMT

Optimize your competitive marketing strategy by defining the target customer profile, identifying their pain point and completing a competitive analysis of alternate solutions.

Apr 11, Contact Easy Marketing Strategies.com

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 07:25:05 GMT

Contact Easy Marketing Strategies.com. We provide information and guidance to help small and medium businesses develop or improve their marketing strategies.

Apr 11, How to Market Your Business for Free

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 05:53:39 GMT

Here are some marketing tips to market your business for free. It just takes a little ingenuity and some time investment to solve the challenge of marketing in a recession. These marketing strategies are easy to follow, and cost nothing or next to nothing to implement. Check out the rest in my recently published article on eHow...