Free Business Growth Hormones - by Justin Ramalho

Operating a graphic design and marketing company, I’m often faced with clients who are looking for advice to earn more money.  I always ask them: “who is your biggest competition and how do you compete with them?”  I get many responses such as “we offer a better deal” or that “we do a better job.” 

Then I ask them: “Do you get paid as much as your biggest competitor on a single transaction?”  They usually tell me that they don’t as they want to earn every sale as possible. 

So this is where my company comes into action (www.ad2image.com).  We develop marketing material to give their company the image of prestige. 

Many companies are afraid to raise their prices as they fear they will lose their customers.  In some cases, they will lose a small number of your customers, but when you can visually and strategically sell your customers on the fact that you offer the “BEST PRODUCTS AND SERVICES” and put a higher price tag on it, many will pay for the ”best”.

If you want to get paid like the best, you must appear as the best.  What’s the difference between a Toyota and a Lexus?  Besides a few added features and different body style, the Lexus usually sells for $20,000+ more.  There will always people who will want to pay for the “best”. 

Don’t be afraid to raise your prices.  If you are, then maybe your company can offer both middle-ground pricing for regular services and higher pricing for a few added features.  For Internet retailers, this might be a tough task, but let me tell you about my recent purchase at Amazon.com

I was looking to buy a book on Amazon and was ready to buy the least expensive copy from a third party.  I was ready to checkout, but then an Amazon advertisement mentioned that if I spent $25 on Amazon’s books, that I’d qualify for free shipping!  Wow, free shipping!   Amazon’s books were a little more expensive, but when they offered free shipping for spending a few dollars more, I couldn’t pass up the deal.  So I ended up buying 3 books to qualify for the free shipping :).  Amazon earned the sale and made me pay $15 more than I originally was going to.   Smart marketing!

People are always looking for a deal.  But there are ways to market your items and services where you can get paid the most.  Appear as the best and offer clever promotions, and you should get paid more for your products and/or services.

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The most successful companies always have one thing in common: they stay fresh and current in all of their marketing projects.  Now, almost anyone can compete in today’s marketplace without a huge advertising budget.  This may sound crazy, but really, the Internet has changed many of the fundamentals that companies need to be successful.

Before the internet, companies often advertised using the following mediums:

• Television
• Radio
• Direct Mail / Coupons
• Signs
• Word of Mouth

These methods were effective ways of branding a business to draw attention from their consumers.  Television commercials were great…until there were 200+ channels to choose from.  Radio advertising was effective, until there were dozens of more stations and on-demand music downloads.  Direct Mail worked great, until consumers starting browsing the web to find deals and compare the competition.

Although many companies still use these forms of advertising, there are other methods to compete in today’s marketplace:

• Blogs
• Search Engines
• Podcasting
• E-Video
• Email Newsletters
• …and more

Most of us rely heavily on the Internet to research companies and find current specials.  The two most difficult entities to success on the Internet is to bring traffic to your website and to continue to re-visit your website on a frequent basis. 

Business Owners often assume that once they build a website, that they will automatically appear at the top of the millions of websites on the search engine results.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.  Websites are no doubt an essential tool, but websites have to be advertised effectively including search engine optimization, PPC (pay-per-click), almost endless web content, e-videos, target based landing pages, blogs, etc…  I will discuss the keys to “getting Internet traffic” in another article.

After you succeed in getting a potential customer to your website, you have about 10 seconds to “wow” them before they click elsewhere.  This means that you need to have your website relate and appeal to all of your target audiences (age, gender, ethnicity, etc…).  People often browse the internet to get answers.  So when your customer enters your website, you better have the answer they are looking for.  This includes promotions and coupons.  Most of us don’t have the time to read all of the content on a website.  We like to read the bullet points and move onto the next web search.   

E-Videos are another great advertising tool.  Web videos that can be placed on different pages on your website often get more attention than a website full of content.  As humans, we like to watch motion (in fact, if it wasn’t for motions, humans wouldn’t exist as we rely on recognizing different patterns to survive).  The inception of the television has spoiled us.  Now we can watch almost anything we want, anytime we want to. 

The key to all methods of advertising is to have the media be viral: or where it gets so much attention that it spreads like wildfires.  A good example of viral media was the Superbowl halftime show with Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake.  Although this wasn’t so-called “planned”, the fact that Justin Timberlake accidentally ripped off Janet Jackson’s clothing exposing “flesh”, this had everyone talking.  We all heard about it thus making the news “viral”. 

Another example of viral media was the famous dancing baby in the mid 1990’s.  A lot of us were sent an email link to visit this baby dancing.  The video wasn’t created by a large corporation, but rather from a much smaller source.  The dancing baby drew the attention of all of us as we hadn’t seen this form of media yet.  It was fresh, funny, and VIRAL. 

We all have heard the slogan that “sex sells”.  Why does it though?  It is because this topic is viral.  The opposite sex is often one of the most viral discussions.  We are attracted to beauty and when we are referred to see this “unbelievable” looking person, we look for it.  Viral media is the key to business growth. 

In summary, traditional methods of advertising are still in use, but the Internet has required us to think and advertise differently.  If you can effectively market yourself online and create “viral” media, then your one-step ahead of the majority of companies out there.

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