My question to you today is “Where are you in the marketing mix? Traditionally the marketing mix is the four “P’s”: Product/Service, price, promotion, and place. I want to go in a different direction with this; many small business owners get thrown for a loop when business slows down. We scramble to figure the next business move, especially if we don’t have a “B” or “C” plan. Sometimes the path becomes blurry and you wonder what should you do next, especially when things are slow or it doesn’t seem to be working.

Stay On Course Trust what you have learned in the light, not when you are in a tunnel of darkness. If your product or service, price, promotion and place have worked all along, stay on course. This is the time to buckle down and communicate, communicate, and communicate, sales is about building relationships. It’s time to reassure your clients and customers, you have the confidence to weather any storm and economic struggles. Educate clients about the products and services you provide, ask for referrals. Have you had plans to launch a new product or service? Most business owners receive most of the sales and referrals from satisfied clients and customers. Reach out, teach and inform.

Steps to mix it up For business owners without an “A” plan, take this opportunity to develop one. Decide what is most important to you; building a brand or direct marketing. When you build your brand you are focusing on selling your company name and the products/service you provide. Brand building helps to give company longevity, and name recognition. Direct marketing helps build concentrated sales on a product/service, like infomercials for instance.

The next step in developing a marketing plan is to create specific marketing objectives and write them down. What do you want your marketing efforts to do for you? If you’re selling herbs, for instance, perhaps you want to increase your monthly sales by 25 percent. My own marketing objective is to gain a new client each month. Whatever marketing objective you set, be sure it’s realistic. The marketing objective must motivate, and provide a way to track and evaluate your success.

Now under each marketing objective, write specific things you can do to achieve results. If you want to increase service sales by 25 per cent, you might create an email campaign Carefully take the time to think it through so you have a recipe for action.

Take fifteen minutes a day to review your marketing strategies, action plan, and track your marketing activities. Try it for 7 days and evaluate the results, and see if you don’t see a difference in your bottom line.

A network marketing system is crucial to your online success. But, is your network marketing system lying to you? Here are some things to consider when choosing and following a network marketing system.

Duplication Slap

Search engines do not like duplication. That’s why we work hard to put out original content. That’s why we rewrite our articles. If your network marketing system is not fully customizable, they are setting you up for failure before you ever begin. When choosing a marketing system be sure that you have the ability to place your own unique content on your pages.

Link Love

One method of keeping your pages search engine friendly is having most links point directly to your own website. However, most systems have your website links pointing directly back to their main website. They might have your name tacked on at the end, but it is always pointing back to their website. This gives them higher authority and guarantees that their page will be displayed before yours. So, when choosing a network marketing system be sure you can host your website on your own domain and all links point directly to you, not anyone else.

Who’s Primary Business?

The ultimate goal of any network marketing system is to lead your prospects back to your primary business. Does your system allow you to use your own business and not theirs? Who is ultimately going to benefit from the system you choose? It’s a question most definitely worth asking.

Complete Training

The first 2 years of my network marketing career was nothing but failure. It took 2 full years for me to figure out why. Here it is in a nutshell. My upline was giving me just enough information to give me a little success without being competitive to them. When choosing a network marketing system make sure that you are given complete training. This includes both free and paid methods. Everything from social media to content marketing all the way to email marketing and yes, even personal development.

Generating Leads

Many systems give you a way to generate leads. If not they are not even worth considering. However, who has control of these leads? Who is emailing these leads. If you do not have 100% control over the leads you generate something is wrong. Even if your system sends out just one email to your list that means they are storing your list somewhere. When choosing a network marketing system make sure you have complete control over the leads you are generating.

Cost

Many systems claim to be free only to, at the last minute, spring costs on you. Now, I am not saying anything is wrong for there to be a cost involved. Quite the opposite. In fact, if they are asking for money to use their system I know they are not using sneaky methods to benefit from me in other ways. The point is, make sure the network marketing system you are thinking about is completely transparent. Both in their intentions and their cost.

A good network marketing system will be of huge benefit to your online business. They will save you time, money and save your downline from attrition. However, be sure to do your research on any system before settling in. If they have a free or very low cost trial period do not feel bad about taking it. This will allow you to fully sum up what they are about and allow you to form an educated opinion.

To trade and invest profitably, there are many important things you need to know about the stock market. This article looks into some of the most important rules you need to know to make profit in the stock market.

1. Never trust the advice of your broker unless they have successfully traded their own money for some years.

2. Avoid the mistake of buying at extreme high price. You should only buy stock when the price is relatively low with potential to make profit in the nearest possible time.

3. In the stock market, note the direction of movement of price. Price movement is either up or down. And knowing this will enable you enter the market at the appropriate time to enable you make money in shares through margin trading.

4. Change is constant and this statement is also true for the stock market, and this leads to “the trend always changes rule”. Price may be down in one moment and up the other moment. So, when price goes down against you, do not despair for the price may go up in your favor the next moment. All you need to do is carefully take position to take advantage of share price movement to ensure a profitability of your investment in shares and stock.

5. The extent of change in price in one direction determines the extent of change in rebound or fall. The more extreme the move up or down, the more extreme the reverse once the trend changes.

6. The stock market moves in advance and responds to information such as news or impressive fundamental. You need to be proactive in making investment. Waiting to invest only when the signals are totally clear to you may cost you some relative loss in profit. You need to take position before the long directional trend move takes place. The market reaction to good or bad news in a bull market will be positive more often than not. The market reaction to good or bad news in a bear market will be negative most of the time.

7. Know that the stock market is not human and hence not rational. The market is not capable of generating stimulus for itself, rather, it react to activities and manipulation by the players who desire to make money in shares.

8. Learn to take profits quickly and absolve losses quickly if it arises. Trading discipline is a necessary condition to make money in the market. If you are not disciplined your chances of making money in stock will be greatly reduced.

9. Technical and fundamental analysis helps to predict the potential and profitability of some stock. However, successful market timing is necessary for you to know your entry point and exit point for you to make big money from the stock market.

Social Marketing is a confusing labyrinth of terms, conditions and rules that you need an expert in social marketing to navigate for you. Facebook, MySpace, Squidoo, Twitter, YouTube, and Hubpages all have a variety of rules to follow regarding business use of their sites. You can become a fan of just about any major company on any of the main social networking sites. That does not mean that you can just duplicate your website on any of these sites and multiply your business accordingly.

There are many restrictions about commercial advertising and direct solicitation of members. There are rules against spam as well that you need to be aware of to keep your site from being shut down for non compliance. You need to be an expert if you want to get into all of these sites. Local Marketing Authority is a social marketing agency that is well versed in social network marketing as well as blogging for business, maximizing your email lists, search engine optimization and all of your other web marketing needs. Due to economies of scale by using Local Marketing Authority for all of your web marketing needs you will realize a great deal of savings rather than using several providers.

If you have a great deal of video content that you use to bring traffic to your site via RSS feeds, blog links or newsletter links you can use YouTube as the repository for them as an additional place to have your customers go for information. I would recommend having your social marketing agency transfer copies of your video to YouTube as members of the various social networking sites feel more comfortable viewing what could be considered “commercial” video at YouTube versus going directly to the company’s website for the same video.

Having someone on Twitter who has a large following in the market you are seeking to reach Tweet about your product or service can drive a great deal of traffic in the direction you want to go. Many people become fans of a particular company or product so that they can get the most up to date information on new products, promotions, and contests. Other benefits to having a great deal of social network marketing efforts are that to actually set up the various sites and access comes at no charge to you. To effectively set up on all of the various sites you would need a great deal of time which most business owners do not have. To maximize your exposure and to take advantage of the benefits of social network marketing you would need to employ the services of a web marketing company like Local Marketing Authority that not only can help you with reaching the hundreds of millions of customers on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and the rest of the social networking sites but with the rest of your web marketing needs.

Not only are social networking sites excellent areas for new customers and revenue you need to consider business networking sites like LinkedIn as well. You can put your company profile up and join the various groups that apply to your business area. You can also blog in any of the groups you are set up in. Local Marketing Authority offers “blog for business” services along with search engine optimization, RSS Feed applications and a variety of options in social network marketing. They also offer a great deal of information about the various services they offer. They have explanations of how MySpace and Facebook work, what RSS feeds are and why you should be using them to complement your email marketing, how search engine spiders work and they also offer a free E-book if you sign up for their newsletter called “13 Deadly Marketing Mistakes”.