seoontheweb.com Search Engine Optimisation Stratagies

Have you heard of a squeeze page before? If you are like many other internet users, you haven’t. If you are trying to make money, through selling an affiliate product or service, you are advised to examine squeeze pages. After giving it a close examination, you will see that there are a number of different ways that squeeze pages can help you.

When it comes to squeeze pages, you will find that they have a number of different definitions. In fact, it is sometimes difficult to pin down the exact meaning of a squeeze page. Although there are some variations, all squeeze pages, no matter how they are defined, have the same goal. That goal it to help you get the names and email address of internet users; internet users that you can then send emails or newsletters to. If properly executed, a squeeze page, which allows you to create an email list, will not only increase the amount of traffic that your website sees, but it may also increase the amount of affiliate sales you make.

As it was stated above, there are a number of different definitions for a squeeze page. There are many professional who believe that squeeze pages are simply a page where you have a small form that your visitors can fill out. Many times, the only information asked for is a first name and an email address. Once an internet user provides you with that information, you can then send regular emails or newsletters, whichever you prefer.

While many squeeze pages have nothing on them, there are many professionals who feel that you should provide a little bit of information. This is fine to do, but you want to be carefully with providing too much information or making your information appears as if it spam. For instance, if you are running a website that is centered on caring for your pets and the affiliate products that you are selling are pet related, you may want to write a little bit of information on pet care. However, when doing so, you do not want to promote your products now. Providing too much information may not only make it so your visitors don’t need to signup for your email alerts, but it may also discourage them from doing so.

There are also many professional who feel that you need to give visitors a reason to sign up for your newsletters or email alerts, like an incentive. The decision as to whether or not you want to offer an incentive is yours to make, but it is important to note that incentive have a positive track record. As an incentive, you may want to give you customers something free, such as en e-book. Keeping with example mentioned above, you may want to offer visitors are free e-book on pets, just for providing you with their name and email address. In most cases, this approach works wonders. It is a known fact that everyone loves free stuff, especially if it is something that they could use.

Now that you know exactly what squeeze pages are or what they can be considered, you may be wondering exactly why you should have one. As previously mentioned, internet users provide you with their names and email addresses on squeeze pages. Sending unsolicited emails can be considered spam and you may also be reprimanded by your web hosting company, your email provider, or even your affiliate programs. When an internet user actually provides you with their contact information, your email contact is no longer considered spam. In fact, you can send emails or newsletters to the individuals in question, as often as you would like. This is when you could then take the opportunity to promote the affiliate products that you are helping to sell.

Developing a squeeze page is relatively easy to do, especially if you have some web design experience. If you are unfamiliar with web design, you should still be able to create your own squeeze page, with assistance from a site building program or a professional web designer. If you would like to be able to promote your websites and your affiliate products as often as you would like, you are urged to create yourself a squeeze page today.

P.S. A squeeze page can take only a few minutes to set up, but you may be reaping the benefits for years to come.

Tim McLendon is owner of BandoMarketing.com and writes on tips to improve your Internet Home Based Business.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Would you like to make money by selling products online? If so, do you already have a collection of products to sell? If not, do you have the money needed to obtain them? If you are like many others, who want to make money online, there is a good chance that you do not have the funds needed. After all, if you did, you likely would not be looking for ways to make money online. While you might automatically assume that it is impossible for you to make money online, especially if you don’t have any products to sell, it isn’t. There is good news. That good news is that you can make money, a substantial amount of money, even if you don’t actually have a product to sell.

As it was stated above, there are a large number of individuals who want to make money online; however, many think that it is impossible to do because they don’t already have a collection of products or they don’t have the money needed to make the purchases. Unfortunately, when this occurs, a large number of individuals just give up. You are advised against doing this. As previously mentioned, it is possible to make money online, even if you don’t have any products to sell. You can do so with affiliate programs.

Affiliate programs are programs that create a partnership with business owners and webmasters. If you are already a webmaster this is great, but if not you can easily become one. As you likely already know, a webmaster is an individual who owns and operates their own online website. Once you have a website and you find another business, which is running an affiliate program, you can enter into a partnership with them. This partnership is unique because you can both benefit from it. Affiliate programs work to help business owners increase their sales, but they also help webmasters generate extra income.

Although affiliate programs sound nice, you may be looking for more information. After all, with internet scams at an all time high, you can never be too cautious. While some affiliate programs are operated in different ways, they tend to be operated in similar matters. This matter involves the business owner creating links or banners for webmasters, just like you, to display on their website. Special tracking software, which is often referred to as affiliate tracking software, is used. That software will enable a business owner to determine exactly when you helped them generate a sale and how much that sale was. This sale will, in turn, generate additional income for you by way of commissions. The amount of money that you make will all depend on the affiliate program that you choose to join, but your commission is often a percentage of your sale. In some instances, can also be a flat rate amount.

When it comes to affiliate programs, one of the questions most commonly asked is “why?” As previously mentioned, affiliate programs allow you to make money selling a product that isn’t even yours. This means that you do not have to deal with any inventory. You also don’t have to ship any products to the buyers. In fact, you shouldn’t even have to communicate with your customers. Your affiliate partner, the one who is selling the product, will do all of the work for you. What could be easier than that? Also, if you join more than one affiliate program then you will have multiple streams of income!

If you are interested in making money online, without having to have your own products to sell, you are urged to further examine affiliate programs, namely the programs that are available for you to join. You can find these programs by examining large affiliate hosting programs, such as LinkShare. You can also find affiliate programs to join by examining the online websites of various online retail stores. Typically towards the bottom of the main homepage, a business will outline whether or not they have an affiliate program that you can apply to. If you are really looking to make money online, you are urged to find a product, a service, or a company that you can fully stand behind, one hundred percent.

P.S. Isn’t it amazing that you can make money selling products, without having to handle your own inventory? The quicker you sign for an affiliate program, the quicker you can start making money!

Tim McLendon is owner of BandoMarketing.com and writes on tips to improve your Internet Home Based Business.

Popularity: unranked [?]

StumbleUpon is a second generation website that allows its users to discover interesting web pages and sites without doing a search in a search engine. You install a tool bar in your browser and channel surf the web by clicking a button on the tool bar.

You sign up at StumbleUpon website and list your interests. When you click on the surf button in your browser tool bar, you are randomly directed to a webpage that matches your interests. If you like the contents or the website offerings, you can tag the page and give it a thumbs-up. If you don’t like it, simply ignore the site or give it a negative vote, a thumbs-down, if you feel the site has employed some trickery to draw your attention.

You can also go to a site that interests you by visiting the StumbleUpon home page and then clicking a tag from th tag cloud on the right sidebar. A tag cloud is a visual representation of tags that other users have assigned to various sites they have already stumbled. Once you click a tag from the tag cloud, you will see sites that have received the same tags by users.

You can also use the StumbleUpon tool bar for social bookmarking. When you find a new and interesting webpage, you can tag it and share it with others. Click the Send to button in the StumbleUpon tool bar to send the webpage you are on to a friend in your StumbleUpon network.

It is possible to get a massive amount of traffic from StumbleUpon. If you have an interesting or useful article, blog page, or an entire site, you can include it in StumbleUpon. If lots of StumbleUpon users thumbs up your page, you will get a large amount of traffic in a very short time period.

Besides a sizable number of thumbs-up by StumbleUpon users, there are other factors that help drive traffic to a site in StumbleUpon. The number of StumbleUpon friends, the type of friends and their profiles, the number of sites you have stumbled, and the number of reviews you have gotten in the past all determine traffic volume to your site. Another factor is the broad tagging of your article by other StumbleUpon users.

What are the other benefits of being stumbled besides a short-time traffic surge? Your website will get exposure and many visitors will comeback regularly. If your site is a blog, you will instantly increase your reader base. You will also get numerous backlinks from other StumbleUpon users who run websites.

To increase the repeat visits by StumbleUpon users, your site should have a professional design, in-depth contents, richly blended ads, and a memorable URL.

StumbleUpon users like video, humor, and web 2.0 sites. However, the monetization potential from StumbleUpon users using affiliate or contextual ads like Google Adsense is very low because these users are very fickle and want to click to the next site using the StumbleUpon button in their tool bar.

Like any social network, your goal should not be to use the system for driving traffic only to your site. Stumble other high quality and useful sites for others to benefit from information you posses. Develop a good online social network using StumbleUpon, share websites with others and have fun.

Dr Deepak Dutta, creator of oldest online free classified site, has launched DigMyPage.com to help website owners build links and increase traffic using MySpace type free pages and Digg style free submissions.

Popularity: unranked [?]

The ‘Marketing Strategy’ is the way we have come up with for achieving our marketing goals and it should include two mandatory elements:

- Which target consumers whom we can reach, hold a viable potential to buy whatever we intend to sell?

- What is the offer (the entire marketing mix) we will be presenting to these consumers in order to appeal to them and thus realize the said potential, given their alternatives?

You must not think of these as two separate questions but rather as two parts of the same idea. Let me clarify. What are “target consumers with a potential to buy”? These are consumers (a sizable enough group with buying power) likely to desire what you are offering. Why would they want it? That is the potential that you are supposed to identify. There may be several reasons. For example, maybe they are not consumers of your kind of product yet, however, they might be if something happens, or if they are exposed to a certain message. It could be that they have special needs or preferences, which up until today were not catered to by any of your competitors’ offers (and don’t forget that psychological, social, aesthetic needs are real needs). Maybe they are bored with what they routinely buy. When you identify such a situation, you know that the potential is there.

Identifying potential is only the initial stage of your mission, of course. Your strategy would also have to include something that you are going to offer these consumers that might improve their situation in a certain way, solve a problem, give them more than what they already get for the same price, or open new opportunities for them. In short, something that will motivate them to buy from you and thus materialize the potential.

The ‘Marketing Scenario’ is a synopsis of the logic of your marketing strategy. In the same breath, it also enables you to make sure that that logic really works. The ‘Marketing Scenario’ translates the ‘Marketing Strategy’ to simple everyday language. How will it happen in reality? How will the materialization of marketing goals occur? I don’t know whether or not you have already sunk in this fact, but marketing goals are achieved through customer acts. So, let’s assume that we install a webcam with enhanced psychological insight capabilities inside the market and that it captures the materialization of our marketing plan, one purchase after another.

What is the ‘Marketing Scenario’?

The ‘Marketing Scenario’ is an amazingly simple tool to use: Only four questions. Are you jotting this down?

1. Who are the people who we believe have the potential of buying what we intend to sell? Yes, these are the same people we so often refer to as the ‘Target Consumers’. First, we must define our targets. What do these people have in common that makes them probable prospects (in the sense that they are likely to be particularly interested in our offer)? We could use demographic, socioeconomic, psychographic, as well as lifestyle descriptions. Note that at times, we target not a specific group but a wide almost indefinable group of people in a specific mood, a specific situation, or a specific need or state.

Make room for another possibility. You can target not a defined group of consumers but rather a state of need/desire or a consumption context shared by many diverse consumers at one time or another.

2. What precisely should they be doing (that they are not doing already and will probably not do if we will not intervene), that would direct them to eventually choose our brand specifically? It is, by the way, the first and only objective of branding. What do they have to do so that your marketing plan will materialize (even before the actual purchase)? Do they have to go somewhere? To call? To agree to meet your salesperson? To stop and pick out your product from the shelf? Which activity, which does not occur today, would lead them in the correct path on the way to buying?

3. What is the sound reason that should motivate them to change their behavioral inertia? How will they benefit from that change? Why would you, in their place, buy what you are offering? You can think of it as your differentiating factor (what makes you differentially better?), or as your competitive advantage (what makes you comparatively better?), according to your preference. What could make their situation better compared to their current standing and to the other options available to them in the market?

4. How exactly will they extract the benefit (that which answers question 3) according to your marketing plan? That is not a repeat question. Notice that the third question dealt with the ‘why’ of the target consumer’s planned motivation, and now, we are trying to understand the ‘how’ of your marketing plan. How are you planning to provide the benefit defined in the answer to question 3? If, for instance, you said before that you are making something more accessible, easy or comfortable for them, now explain how it will become more accessible, easy or comfortable, due to you product.

Let us look at an example: The introduction of Palm Pilot to the market. O.K.? Just the main points:

1. “Residents” of the business community, gadgets fans, who manage a dynamic, constantly changing schedule, and have not yet embraced the electronic organizers, or were disappointed by them because of their being laborious to update and generally unreliable.

2. … will step into the nearest office equipment store and ask about the Palm Pilot.

3. … because at last there is an organizer which is not only sophisticated, small and wonderfully shaped, but is also easily kept up to date and preserves the stored data when damaged or when upgrading to a new model

4. … because the Palm Pilot can ‘converse’ with the PC, making the updating process a simple task to perform, as well as enabling creation of backups which could be easily transferred on to the next generations of organizers.

That is what the ‘Marketing Scenario’ is all about. All you have to do is answer the questions. Be precise. Be thorough. Be honest. Do it in writing. Even if you’re absolutely sure that the answers are positively clear to you and there’s nothing to be gained. Only when your ‘Marketing Scenario’ is totally translated to a written text, should you go on and proceed with the brand development process. Otherwise, you will get trapped along the way, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Dr. Dan Herman, a globally renowned strategy consultant, an author and a lecturer, is the author of “Outsmart the MBA Clones: The Alternative Guide to Competitive Strategy, Marketing, and Branding” ( http://www.outsmart-mba-clones.com )

Popularity: unranked [?]

The main reason for the general fascination with brands is their ability to provide the consumers an extra value in addition to what the product\service\company themselves can provide. A value which becomes the major motivation for consumers to desire the product. Everybody agrees about that, but from here on it becomes foggy. First of all, what is this value exactly? Also, how precisely is this value being added and incorporated into the brand? In this short article I attempt to provide a clear answer to both of these key questions and to suggest a workable approach to creating value added brands.

By way of introduction, let me say that strong brands are perceived instruments, means to achieve goals or benefits, in the consumer’s mind. They arouse emotions because they are perceived as a source of something beneficial. The positive emotions are direct outcomes of these anticipations. Their various symbolizations (name, logo, font, emblem, etc’) have little impact of their own. Their importance is mainly as identifiers of sources of already attributed and anticipated benefits.

The act of branding has ten different meanings which are ten different ways to create instrumentality or usefulness beyond the tangible benefits which the product/ service/ company themselves can provide.

Creating a conceived linkage to a tangible benefit

The most basic level of branding is creating a conceived linkage between the brand name and other identifiers and a tangible benefit. Huge brands like Pantene shampoo which promise to amend the six symptoms of unhealthy hair look, work in this level.

Forming a mental context

A “mental context” is a concept or an organizing principle which allows the consumer to conceive originally unrelated facts (such as: the various marketing activities of a company) as connected by a guiding intent or by some other common factor. For example: should you stumbled into a hotel like the “Hudson” or the “Royalton” in the heart of Manhattan, you are promised pleasure on different levels, but if you know you’re in a “Boutique Hotel” your stay becomes a very different experience altogether.

Directing an experience

This is essentially a hypnotic effect, in some cases related to Placebo. The branding here is the creation of an expectation which alters the sensed experience and enables the consumer a richer experience than what the product alone can provide him with. For instance, the expectation that an energy drink like “Red Bull” will energize, makes the consumers feel a wave of energy beyond the physical effect of the drink.

Creating a means of self presentation

Here the branding creates a symbol with a meaning that is well known to everybody in a relevant group, which enables the consumer to characterize himself. The brand “ABSOLUT vodka” became a way for yuppies to signal their yuppieness to other yuppies and so became a huge success.

Creating a means to deliver a message

The branding role in this approach is to create a symbol of another kind, its meaning known for everybody as well. The diamonds giant “De Beers” made the diamond a means of expressing commitment, making the physical fact that a diamond is indestructible a metaphor for the lastingness of a relationship.

Building a social-cultural authority

The next branding approach is the creation of an authority which the consumers can use as a guide, to help them understand what’s happening around them and to inform them which behavioral ways are normative, what will make them happier etc’. The brand “Apple” depicted the personal computer, not only as a working tool but also as a device for self expression and creativity.

Creating “a long hand”

In this approach, the branding is creating means for the consumer and empowering her to act for noble objectives and high purposes, which are important to her, but which she can’t achieve by herself. The “Body Shop” network made buying a way for contributing to the preservation of the environment and helping people in need all around the globe.

Creating an Alter Ego

Here, the brand is a way for the consumer to behave (at least on a fantasy level) in a manner he would like to but doesn’t dare, or isn’t willing to pay the price for. The provocation of the fashion brand “Diesel” is made as if “in the name of” the brand customers. They can feel like they are provocative themselves every time the brand advertises one of its outrageous campaigns.

Building an “Emotional Gym”

Opting for our civilized and protected life style, we compromise (not once, happily) a lot of our possibilities as humans. We go to the gym to prevent the degeneration of our body which, in our life style, doesn’t get to face the challenges it was designed for. Similarly, we watch movies and TV series’ in order to “exercise” emotional skills which aren’t legitimate in our life style. Brands like “Sicily” from “Dolce & Gabbana”, allows us too to experience such emotional possibilities.

Facilitating fantasies

With only a fine difference from the previous approach, this branding approach helps the consumer to fantasize an alternative reality. The brand “Timberland” was designed as a way for consumers to fantasize about courageous adventures against the forces of nature.

The understanding of the different kinds of added value, the ways by which these values are instrumental to the consumer and the methods by which brands can be destined to be means for the consumer for achieving his goals, makes the difference between masterful creations of brands and amateur imitation which produces mere look-alikes.

Dr. Dan Herman, a globally renowned strategy consultant, an author and a lecturer, is the author of “Outsmart the MBA Clones: The Alternative Guide to Competitive Strategy, Marketing, and Branding” ( http://www.outsmart-mba-clones.com/ )

Popularity: unranked [?]

By definition, a luxury brand is an outstanding brand, justifiably priced highly and destined, at least primarily, to a select group of the social-economic elite. Luxury is not about unattainability though. After all, you cannot profit from consumers that cannot buy your brand. However, luxury is about the consumer outstretching herself a bit to buy something extraordinary but rather expensive for her financial ability. When you are used to driving a BMW 760 (price tag: over 85,000 Euros), it is no longer a luxury for you, although you might be pleasantly aware that it is for many. Alternatively, paying 115,000 Euros for a Maserati Quattroporte Executive GT Automatic, will probably be more of luxury to you.

Before entering a deeper discussion of luxury I think it will be good to acknowledge two basic facts:

1. Luxury is relative. One man’s luxury is often another’s (usually richer) everyday lifestyle.

2. The standard of luxury is mutable. Today’s luxury is often tomorrow’s commonly expected standard. Luxury brands are under a constant pressure from non-luxury brands trying to offer a similar value for less, thus eroding the status of luxury.

Much has been said lately about the changing nature of luxury these days. While some of the proclaimed changes are no more than the result of historical myopia, certain developments are worth noting.

1. There are now more layers of luxury than ever before to match new levels of affluence. More billionaires, more multi-millionaires, more millionaires, more super affluents (annual income over $150K), affluents (annual income over $100K), and near affluents (annual income over $75K). A Toyota Camry (around $25K) is considered a luxury car at some level of affluence, at a higher level it’s BMW 7 Series (around $115K), at yet a higher one it’s Maybach 62 (around $375K).

2. Some of the luxury buyers are now somewhat less interested in purchasing uniform symbols of status / identity and they opt for developing an individual style and expressing themselves in original ways. The tension between the traditional (more safely genuine luxury) and the innovative has always burgeoned forth luxury. Currently, luxury leans more towards the innovative than the traditional.

3. There are more “out of class” purchases now, both upwards and downwards. The wealthy feel no obligation to always buy expansive (actually, affluents typically look for the best deal on whatever they want to buy, no matter how extravagant). The no so wealthy have also developed an appetite for luxury when and where they can afford it.

4. There’s a trend towards spending more on luxury experiences rather than goods, at least amongst wealthy Americans. This trend is stronger among seasoned affluents who already know that the attraction of objects wears out while cherished experiences just get better with time as they are remembered, told and re-told.

5. There are more luxury hits now and fewer classics. Luxury used to be defined in the tradition-driven past by classics. The novelty-driven present, that is evident in the non-luxury sectors as well, turns the success of luxury brands of the day into sweet but short-lived.

The unchanging nature of luxury

Despite all these significant developments, the nature of luxury has remained unchanged in essence.

People buy luxury brands in order to:

1. Feel special and apart from the crowd.

2. Feel superior and privileged.

3. Feel of value and importance.

4. Exercise ability and freedom (”I can afford it”, “I can do that”).

5. Reward themselves for efforts and achievements.

6. Console one and recuperate from a setback or misfortune.

7. Signal status and command acknowledgement and respect.

8. Demonstrate refinement, connoisseurship and /or perfectionism.

9. Delight the senses, experience pleasant sensations and feelings or create an infrastructure for future favorable experiences.

10. Participate in a certain group and lifestyle.

11. Signal affiliation and belonging.

12. Remind oneself of one’s “real” (or aspired) identity.

13. Enflame hope and mobilize motivation and energy.

14. Indulge and pamper oneself, take care of oneself.

15. Feel loved, taken care of and even spoiled.

16. Show feelings of gratitude, admiration or great affection.

Luxury brands are specifically designated to serve as means for consumers to fulfill one ore more of these tasks. Here are the ten eternal principles for developing and managing a luxury brand:

1. A luxury brand is first and foremost a product and/or service of superior quality (a quality gap from competitors is recommended but not mandatory).

2. The products and services are not designed and planned according to consumer tastes and expectations, even though they appeal and cater to sometimes-hidden deep-routed desires. A luxury brand sets its own standards and does not adhere to fashions. There is an air of leadership to it; it is exceptional, unique, original, artistic-creative, surprising, and novel (but never peculiar in a ridiculous or potentially repelling manner).

3. A luxury brand’s most important value lies beyond the core product function or practicality.

4. Luxury brands have something extravagant / excessive / redundant and overly generous about them. Something that is clearly not necessary: the use of unjustifiably expensive materials, performance that is far beyond all needs and requirements, an exaggerated level of service.

5. A luxury brand always expresses zealousness for quality, highly held values or even an ideology, a distinctive culture, together with sense of hedonism, passion for life, and a free spirit.

6. A luxury brand will always be linked with the circle of those who “run the world” at that certain period of time and with the success symbols of the time.

7. Behind a luxury brand there are often legends of eccentric genius creators, mysterious production processes, secret formulas, exceptional preparations etc’.

8. A luxury brand is never managed in a democratic way, but rather with authority or even with dictatorship, by a genius creator or by an inspired leader who demonstrates, inside and out, a strong passion for the product and pedantry for every small detail.

9. A luxury brand must be rare or difficult to reach in some way. The awareness to the brand and the desire for it sometimes wide-ranged (while the numbers of buyers has to be limited) and other times restricted to a few that are in-the-know. Even the buyers themselves, must not be inclined / capable to purchase the luxury brand too often.

10. Luxury brand consumers expect to be distinguished from all others, and to be protected from them (the No-Mix principle). At the same time, they expect a special intimacy between them and the company and its managers, as well as flexibility regarding rules that are afflicted on others.

Dr. Dan Herman, a globally renowned strategy consultant, an author and a lecturer, is the author of “Outsmart the MBA Clones: The Alternative Guide to Competitive Strategy, Marketing, and Branding” ( http://www.outsmart-mba-clones.com/ )

Popularity: unranked [?]

The Old

The old customary procedure of strategy development has a pure and sound logic. It has been designed in order to answer the question: What is it that we should do in order to achieve our goals?

The process essentially involves three stages:

1. Where are we now?

2. Where do we want to be?

3. How are we to get there?

This process is based on Gap Analysis. Supposedly, the competitor who will manage to execute it better and wiser (and will also carry out the strategy with consistence and persistence), will be the one who achieves the competitive advantage over the rest of the market.

I claim that this time honored process is no longer adequate. It is not sufficient for the competitive environment of this day and age. It does not help managers steer their organizations in the direction of success and profitability. I call it: “Wishful Strategizing”. Its outcome is more often than not, failure. This results in executives who lose faith in strategy making altogether.

What is wrong with the classic process? Before anything else, its basic assumptions are erroneous:

Assumption # 1: We know our goals.

Our evaluation of potential is based upon the current situation, and on consumers’ answers to market research questions. However, the real potential, that which we cannot see while adhering to this approach, is based on “what could be”. Our initiatives and actions continuously change customer desires. Products that no consumer ever wished to exist become vital necessities. Hence raise the famous historic mistakes in market potential assessment of commercial flights, cars, computers, and so many other products and services.

Assumption # 2: The world is stable.

We assume that if we just define where we want to get to, we would surely be able to either find or make our route to get there. The leading image, in the background of it all, is that of driving through a more or less previously explored landscape that anyway remains unaltered while we progress across it. Well, the choice of image could not be more misleading. In the past, companies succeeded by discovering or unveiling unsatisfied customer needs. Today, generally speaking, there is no such thing as ungratified needs. Moreover, customers have become infested with options. Their expectations are constantly rising. Their wants are volatile. If in the past, “market share” was a stable index of achievements (as we used to say: “we have achieved a market share of x”), than today, in many fields, the market share data changes by the month, by the week, and even by the day. We can speak only of our average market share. Most managers will admit that there are no more sustainable competitive advantages, and that the mission has become the achievement of a repeatable competitive advantage. While the old approach is a control-oriented approach (we aspire for market dominance), the new orientation of marketing behavior is that of a dance-along with the market trends and with the customers.

Assumption # 3: Only we are doing this (or: we do it better).

The illusion that we are capable of defining specific goals and of moving towards them virtually unimpeded, assumes that our competitors are going to continue doing exactly what they have been doing so far. Well, surprise! They will do no such thing. First of all, the competitors of today may not be the competitors of tomorrow. Manufacturing in china, electronic trade, and the limitless openness of customers to novelties have lowered entrance barriers in many market categories. Furthermore, managers now spend less time in their posts. This means that new managers constantly pop up in competing companies and bring with them with new ideas, or at least a fresh ambition. In the past, when the game consisted of a rat-race toward unfulfilled customer needs one could know exactly what one’s competition was attempting to achieve. Since then, more and more companies have realized the need for inventiveness and innovation, in order to do something that could succeed, and that their competitors have not yet tried.

The New

So then, what is the alternative to the old brick road to strategy? I propose that we move from wish-oriented management to opportunity-oriented management. I would like to hereby offer a new process leading to successful strategizing, which we have been using in our consulting work for the last few years. It includes four stages:

1. What’s now?

2. What’s possible?

3. What’s feasible?

4. What’s next?

The new heart of the process is the question “what is possible?”. Admittedly, the old process does encompass a SWOT Analysis, in which there is an Opportunity component (the O bit). It is however a minor and usually pretty much neglected step in the strategy development process. It has no method; it has no tools. You just list whatever opportunities come to mind.

As opposed to that, the process I am offering is based totally on systematic examination and thorough scanning of available opportunities. We have developed a comprehensive methodology for doing that. We named it ‘The Opportunity Scan’ or in short ‘The O-Scan’. This set of procedures and tools is designed to map the full scale of opportunities that are available to the company at a certain point of time. Judging from my experience, defining goals is much more meaningful, far-reaching and effective, after a proper opportunity scan.

We have created the O-Scan after having analyzed in depths more than 150 companies who have managed to come up with a “next thing”, and succeeded. This “new thing” usually was

- A new winning business concept

- A new winning competitive strategy

- A new segment that offers growth potential

- An innovative ‘Hit’ product (or service)

- An irresistible brand strategy.

Our analysis asked the question: “where and how was the new opportunity found and identified?”. Based on the conclusions of this extensive study as well as of our own accumulating experience, we determined that a systematic opportunity search should encompass six modules for which we assembled or designed the most appropriate instruments:

1. Consumer Fore-Search

2. Competition analysis

3. Internal Audit

4. Brand Audit

5. Worldwide Lookup

6. Inventive Thinking

The What’s Next? Process for strategy development, could be summed by the three “Open Your I’s” commandments: Identify, Invent, Implement.

The static nature of the old process manifests itself once more in the norm of performing the process of strategy development infrequently, because “one does not change one’s strategy every day”. In contrast, the approach I am professing reads: strategy in motion, strategy in constant development that stems from the tension between the need of continuity, and the accommodation to the changing environment and opportunities. Therefore, the strategy development process is a continuous one, which constitutes an essential element of the routine management work.

Dr. Dan Herman, a globally renowned strategy consultant, an author and a lecturer, is the author of “Outsmart the MBA Clones: The Alternative Guide to Competitive Strategy, Marketing, and Branding” ( http://www.outsmart-mba-clones.com )

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If you’re trying to segment your market in the traditional way, what you may be looking for would be groups of consumers sorted out in such a way that a certain likeness exists within each group, and a difference exists between them. The variable determining the meaningful likeness or difference between those groups would be the segmentation variable. A trivial segmentation variable, just for the sake of demonstration, would be hair color. However, after having segmented the customers into groups, it is reasonable to assume that you would expect to do something with it. Let’s say that you have decided to target a certain segment. You would probably want to do some marketing activities that will appeal to this segment, or else, to communicate some kind of enticing message to it. Sometimes, the segmentation variable could suffice for the purpose, (”listen to me, all you red-heads out there”). In most cases (for instance, the segment of those who consume beer only out side their home), you would have to characterize your segment before you could address them. In other words, you would have to define what describes the customers in that segment, beyond your segmentation variable, and also, what makes them different from consumers in other market segments. The characterization of your segment is a task that is not the same as defining your segment. It is a distinct next step. But now, if you can be truly sincere with yourself, I’m convinced that you have already found out that it does not work.

In the distant past, and in traditional societies (sectarian) the people’s behavioral patterns were pretty much modeled by their affiliation to a certain gender, a nationality/tribe/race, a certain religion, a social/economic status, a profession, and an age group, much more than today, anyway. There were clear clusters of elements pertaining to appearance, general behavior and particularly consumption. Then, back in those days, if you knew one element of a particular cluster, you could quite easily guess the others. But all this has changed. As people are becoming gradually more individualistic, and as possibilities have multiplied, people have become less and less definable as types.

First of all, let’s face it, our consumer refuses almost completely to abide by segments that create homogeneous groups (heterogeneous from others) according to demographic, socio-economic variables, or even according to lifestyle. Our customer will not behave and consume under our stereotypical forecasts. He is a “collector”, and therefore I call him the “eclectic consumer”. He likes the old (Frank Sinatra), as well as the new (fast internet), the expensive (BMW) as well as the economical (hardware do-it-yourself stores), the international (Giorgio Armani) as well as the locally rooted (folk dancing), the epicure (a double Makiato) as well as the crude (football).

The eclectic consumer has become frenzied by the abundance of opportunities, and is now addicted to the concept. He does not want to miss anything and so, his life is multiplex, yet laden.

So, how do you market to the eclectic customer who is afraid of missing out? One central insight for the re-designing of market segmentation is as follows: the eclectic consumer, who will not miss anything, “connects” to different, even contradictory, motivations he has at different times. Because these motivations are not necessarily compatible with one another, the eclectic consumer is constantly in motion from one stereotype to another, from one lifestyle to another.

In order to adapt to this consumer reality, our segmentation (and subsequently, our products and services, our advertising and so on) should be formulated not according to groups of people, but according to motivations and uses. Note that when I refer to “uses” I mean, among other things, psychological uses, such as mood control, self-esteem enhancement, and fantasy support, and I also mean social uses, such as signaling others things like group affiliation, specific atmospheres, or impression control. The new method is called “Contextual Segmentation”: segmentation according to contexts of purchasing or using/consuming.

Note that this constitutes a formation of a real revolution in segmentation thinking. Some of you would probably comment that this is not so much about segmentation as it is about consumer behavior analysis. Well, let me answer you. Let us recall the original purpose of market segmentation. It is the furcation of the market into smaller units enabling us to focus our marketing/branding/advertising activities, and to achieve differentiation, so that we could win advantages we could not get when working with the entire market. The search for small consumer groups has evidently stopped delivering results. However, the pursuit after groups of “purchases/consumptions” rather than of people, could offer new horizons.

Let us sharpen things a little. According to the old segmentation, each group is characterized by a need/preference/motivation. The new approach preserves this concept. Yet, in the new reality, and according to the new approach, the motivation is no longer common within a defined consumer group. A “segment” is now a group of “purchases/consumptions” qualified by a certain context of purchasing or consuming a product plus a specific motivation.

When we segment according to this approach, we analyze consumer behavior; we identify the various contexts of product consumption, and the different motivations that characterize consumers who experience those contexts. The new relevant segments could consist of certain moods (such as the “I’m going to teach that husband of mine a lesson he’s never going to forget” segment), certain social situations (such as the “Wow, I haven’t seen YOU in a long time” segment), all according to what is relevant to that specific product category. Note that when we meet a given purchasing context (a dinner at a restaurant) there are varied consumer motivations that exist (”tonight we’re going out solo, no kids”, versus “we’re celebrating grandpa’s birthday”), and they would be considered different market segments. A specific consumer is likely to participate in one segment, few segments, or no segment. Nevertheless, much like the old segmentation, every segment accounts for a share of our sales, and we can do our profitability calculations accordingly.

According to Contextual Segmentation, then, our marketing activities, at all levels, should be aimed towards a context of purchasing/consumption plus a certain motivation, and not towards groups of consumers.

Dr. Dan Herman, a globally renowned strategy consultant, an author and a lecturer, is the author of “Outsmart the MBA Clones: The Alternative Guide to Competitive Strategy, Marketing, and Branding” ( http://www.outsmart-mba-clones.com/ )

Popularity: unranked [?]

How can you make money online from GoDaddy.com? You can make money from the GoDaddy company with a few methods including:

- Domain parking and domain sales transactions

- GoDaddy reseller and super reseller accounts and affiliate marketing

- Creating your own websites through Godaddy.com to sell your own product or service or do affiliate marketing

- Selling information about GoDaddy including coupons or vouchers and then selling other related services to the same people.

Because GoDaddy is such a big company, they’re practically a household name. There are many ways to capitalize on this company to earn money yourself. You can make direct money by using them in several ways. Let us explore some of GoDaddy’s online money making programs with a closer look:

Domains

You can do domain selling through GoDaddy.com as well as domain parking. Domain selling enables you to sell your domains and or websites. Some profitable niches might fetch a great profit. This is commonly known as website flipping or domain auctions and GoDaddy has a marketplace for this.

Domains parking lets you earn commission from websites that are parked. This can be achieved two ways.

First, the domain name is something people will stumble upon often because it’s a common word or closely related to another website. The parked website has advertisements placed on it and you earn a commission based on that.

Second, you do the parking because you are working on your website. While you wait to create the site you do domain parking so you can earn in the meantime.

Reseller Accounts and Affiliate Programs

Another way of making money online is to sell hosting packages you can do this with GoDaddy. The company has something called a reseller program and a Super Reseller Hosting program so you can make money not only from selling hosting and services as well as from selling to others who will resell hosting as well. GoDaddy offers over fifty different products you can resell to others. You can sell products directly from your own website or through banners and links.

Creating your own website is fairly simple with GoDaddy. They have products and services for use from very novice users to programs suited for more technical people so you can sell to a broad audience.

Your Own Profitable Website

You can use a website you purchase from GoDaddy to set up your own money making blog, your own online store or affiliate sites and sales pages for products. The possibilities are nearly endless and you can purchase many different products and services from this company to help you grow and support your own home based business.

GoDaddy is one of the lowest cost hosting solutions out there. They are a popular and well known choice and because of that can be a great company for you to capitalize on.

When looking for money making ideas your best bet is to look for companies like this that one who can offer you multiple ways of making money through them. The shorter the time it takes you to learn programs and how to capitalize on a particular niche, the more money you can make and because GoDaddy is a company that works in multiple areas and is so widely publicized you can quickly learn enough to hit the ground running in your money making efforts.

To learn more about domain parking, GoDaddy and more online money making programs visit TheWebReviewer.com.

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Do you want need to learn how to put movies on your iPhone? Many iPhone owners want to take advantage of their brand new iPhones but the problem is that they don’t know how to do so and what website they should use to download movies on their iPhones. In this article you learn exactly how to do that.

As a movie buff, you have always been proud of the fact that you can name all of Stanley Kubrick’s movies in order of release and have memorized every line from every John Waters movie. Besides that you know every independent flick that has come out in the last decade. The easiest way to add to your knowledge is with an iPhone. It’s not just for talking; you can watch movies on the iPhone as well.

There are different ways to get movies onto your iPhone. But if you want to get your massive collection from your shelf into your iPhone to freshen up on Quentin Tarantino’s foot fetish, just follow these simple steps.

First you have to get software that will rip your DVDs into a different format. You will need to convert your DVD into an mp4 file because that is the format the iPhone reads for your movies. This software is easy to find. However, there are many different options out there. You can go to http://www.download.com and check what is available. Here you will find freeware, shareware and software you can buy. The site also has user reviews for most of the products and Net reviews for the more popular brands. The good thing about a lot of the programs is you can test it before buying it. The program allows you to run a trial period. This way you can find the one that is best for you. Once you have found software that is efficient and easy to use, start converting your movies.

Once you have converted the movies, put them into iTunes. This is how you transfer movies to your iPhone.

If it sounds like a lot of work, don’t worry. There are other ways to get movies. You can download them straight from the Internet, but this is risky if you aren’t careful. P2p and torrent sites are plagued with viruses and spyware. These sites are also illegal and could get you into trouble before you even had a chance to watch any movies.

There are pay sites that offer downloads, which are good. You pay a one-time access fee that ranges up to $50. You get to choose from thousands of files and never have to pay again. It’s quite simple and easy to use. This also reduces the amount of time it takes to get a movie onto your iPhone because you skip the step of ripping the movie into a readable format. These sites have done the hard work for you.

Enjoy your new protable DVD player, I mean, iPhone. You’ll never miss another Johnny Depp/Tim Burton collaboration again while watching movies on your iPhone.

Download all the movies you want, Visit this site for the full review. http://tinyurl.com/38ajb8

Popularity: unranked [?]