Resource of Marketing & Advertising

In this post, I’m revealing six powerful secret psychological tricks that you can use to increase the effectiveness of your advertising and marketing. What if you don’t sell anything? Should you ignore this information?

You ARE selling something. Whether you are a Real Estate agent selling multi-million dollar homes, or a worker trying to sell your boss on the idea that you are a valuable employee, everybody is selling something. So it would be wise to learn these secret tricks and use them to achieve your own personal success.

The secret psychological tricks that I am going to reveal are not really secret. They have been used by shrewed salesman for millenium. Their existence was revealed back in 1984 by Dr. Robert Cialdini in his book “Influence : The Psychology of Persuasion”.

You will recognize these tricks being used everywhere in advertising today. Now you will be able to put them to use to enhance your own personal success.

Psychological Selling Trick Number 1: Reciprocity

Reciprocity works like this: you give someone something of value for free. That individual feels an obligation to return the favor. Reciprocity is a very powerful principle. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know that writing and publishing a successful newsletter is perhaps the most competitive of all the different areas of mail order and direct marketing.

Five years ago, there were 1500 different newsletters in this country. Today there are well over 10,000, with new ones being started every day. It’s also interesting to note that for every new one that’s started, some disappear just as quickly as they are started - lack of operating capital and marketing know-how being the principal causes of failure.

To be successful with a newsletter, you have to specialize. Your best bet will be with new information on a subject not already covered by an established newsletter.

Regardless of the frustrations involved in launching your own newsletter, never forget this truth: There are people from all walks of life, in all parts of this country, many of them with no writing ability whatsoever, who are making incredible profits with simple two-, four-, and six-page newsletters!

Your first step should be to subscribe to as many different newsletters and mail order publications as you can afford. Analyze and study how the others are doing it. Attend as many workshops and seminars on your subject as possible. Learn from the pros. Learn how the successful newsletter publishers are doing it, and why they are making money. Adapt their success methods to your own newsletter, but determine to recognize where they are weak, and to make yours better in every way. Read the rest of this entry »

Standard economics assumes that people base their decisions on real value only and take changes in price tags properly into account. For example, a rational consumer is assumed to base his shopping decisions on “real” prices (e.g., how many hours do I have to work for a loaf of bread?) and would not change his consumption patterns if all “nominal” prices were to move in proportion (e.g. are inflated by the same factor). Yet, normal people are often confused by purely nominal changes.

To illustrate, compare a situation in which money wages increase 2.3% and prices increase 3.1% over one year with a situation in which money wages fall by 0.8% at constant prices. The two situations are equivalent in “real terms”, i.e. if inflation is taken properly into account. People who perceive these situations differently are said to be prone to money illusion.

Economists have only begun to understand when money illusion affects market outcomes. It was commonly thought that the impact of irrational behaviour is limited in markets because “smart agents” can take advantage of irrational traders. However, recent evidence from the field and the experimental laboratory suggests that money illusion can affect markets. Read the rest of this entry »

Seeing is believing. Unless your website visitors can experience your newsletter and appreciate its value, they’re unlikely to join your opt-in, email list. By posting your newsletter on your website, you encourage more visitors to subscribe and you drive more profitable traffic to your website each month.

- Growing your opt-in email list is one of your most important goals. Your success depends on encouraging a high percentage of website visitors to provide their email addresses and permission to contact them for free via email. Most websites expect visitors to opt-in to email lists without first providing an opportunity for visitors to ‘test drive’ the newsletter. This is like wearing a blindfold when shopping for a car! Thumbnails, reduced size images of newsletters, are not the answer. Visitors are not able to read the value of its information before signing up. As a result, only a small portion of website visitors subscribe and - of those that do – many quickly unsubscribe.

- Your second biggest goal is to monetize your educational One-Page Newsletter by generating immediate sales. For the first time, you can display your newsletter in the context of other text and graphic elements on a web page. Next to your newsletter, for example, you can display links to promotional coupons or links to special offers described on other pages of your website. This is important because fewer and fewer firms are distributing formatted newsletters as email attachments. Instead, they are driving traffic to their website each month by sending short emails announcing the page on their website where they have posted the latest issue. You can now easily convert this traffic into sales!

- The third money-making reason for displaying your newsletter on your website is higher readership. More visitors to your website will likely read your newsletter because they don’t have to first download it. This leads to more sign-ups. The more attractive and informative your newsletter, the more likely visitors will sign-up to receive it. You can prove the consistent high value of your newsletter by adding descriptive links to earlier issues.

Although Acrobat Reader PDF format is ideal for distributing newsletters with typography and formatting intact, it is not useful for previewing newsletters.

Macromedia’s Contribute 2 is a software program that incorporates Flash Paper technology. With Contribute 2, you can easily add a readable, zoomable and printable version of your formatted newsletter to a page of your website.

This means that visitors to your website, without doing anything else, can immediately read and print your newsletter. The newsletter on your website will be an exact replica of the original.

Flash Paper versions of your newsletters complement Acrobat versions of the copies you print on your office printer. For the first time, you can combine the credibility and constant visibility of educational newsletters with sales created by free, targeted promotional messages.

Every affiliate marketer is always looking for the successful market that gives the biggest paycheck. Sometimes they think it is a magic formula that is readily available for them. Actually, it is more complicated than that. It is just good marketing practices that have been proven over years of hard work and dedication.
There are tactics that have worked before with online marketing and is continuing to work in the online affiliate marketing world of today. With these top three marketing tips, you will be able to able to increase your sales and survive in the affiliate marketing online.

What are these three tactics?

1. Using unique web pages to promote each separate product you are marketing. Do not lump all of it together just to save some money on web hosting. It is best to have a site focusing on each and every product and nothing more.

Always include product reviews on the website so visitors will have an initial understanding on what the product can do to those who buys them. Also include testimonials from users who have already tried the product. Be sure that these customers are more than willing to allow you to use their names and photos on the site of the specific product you are marketing.

You can also write articles highlighting the uses of the product and include them on the website as an additional page. Make the pages attractive compelling and include calls to act on the information. Each headline should attract the readers to try and read more, even contact you. Highlight your special points. This will help your readers to learn what the page is about and will want to find out more. Read the rest of this entry »

Counter one of the classic negotiating gambits by addressing it directly.

You’ve assembled a brilliant sales proposal for a new client and when you arrive to the meeting to hammer out the final details, you suddenly find yourself sitting across the table negotiating with two people. One is a person with whom you’ve had contact during the sales process; the other is new a purchasing agent.

The former is characteristically warm, gracious, and quite friendly to your proposal. The latter is hard nosed, aloof, and completely opposed to nearly every one of your positions. They are playing the classic negotiating tactic of ‘good guy, bad guy.’

In the audiobook, “Sound Advice on Negotiating Skills,” author Roger Dawson says that when buyers use good guy, bad guy, they are counting on the salesperson being drawn to the good guy. Psychologically, the salesperson wants to please him or her by making concessions.

The solution, says Dawson a renowned speaker and author of the book, “Secrets of Power Negotiating” is to “counter their tactic by letting them know that you realize what they’re doing. It’s such as well known negotiating tactic that when you say to them, ‘Oh come on, you’re not going to play good guy, bad guy with me, are you?’ they become embarrassed they were caught and will back off.”

Raise your hand if you think brand management is just for BIG companies (like Target, McDonalds or Ford.) Wow! That’s a lot of hands! Well, guess what? You’re all wrong.

Brand issues are important to ALL companies for the simple reason that people buy from other people. People have personalities. Branding establishes and communicates a company’s personality (sometimes referred to as company image.)

Think about YOUR company. What personality or image do you want to present to customers and prospects? Should it be warm, friendly, and down-to-earth? Polished, knowledgeable, and sophisticated?

Does your company’s current logo and literature design reflect the image you want to present? Is your company’s personality presented consistently in all forms of communication?

Are you overwhelmed now? Let me simplify. There are four key steps in brand management:

1) Positioning - identify your company’s unique benefits and image.

2) Planning - develop a road map for your brand identity programs.

3) Protection - guard the integrity of your brand.

4) Promotion - build awareness of and preference for your brand.

Brand management is an ongoing process, not a destination. Bad news: the work is never done. Good news: if you do the positioning and planning up front, protection and promotion programs flow naturally.

The election year is in full swing, complete with allegations of class warfare and claims about which candidates cater to the rich and which candidates will best serve the interests of the poor and the middle class. But a new study, co authored by North Carolina State University researcher Dr. Chris Ellis, explores the idea that Congress and the White House act on behalf of the wealthy and shows that it would be impossible to cater solely to any socioeconomic group, because people’s preferences tend to be overwhelmingly similar when it comes to how the federal government should spend its money.

The study shows that “Even if government wanted to respond only to the interests of the rich, it couldn’t,” Ellis says, “because the rich and the poor tend to share similar political viewpoints at least on economic issues.”

In the study, researchers used data from the long running General Social Survey to measure public opinion on government spending from 1973 to 2006 – and found that political sentiment was very similar between the various socioeconomic groups. Basically, trends among rich, poor and middle-class voters toward becoming more liberal or more conservative tended to take place at the same time. Ellis explains that the trends happened at the same time because both rich and poor responded to changes in the nation’s economic health, or the actions of the federal government, in broadly similar ways. Ellis, an assistant professor of political science at NC State, co authored the study with Dr. Joseph Ura, an assistant professor of political science at Texas A&M University.

The study concludes that the federal government acts on the preferences of all income groups either because it can’t tell the difference between the preferences of the rich versus the poor, or because officeholders wish to represent the desires of the public as a whole. The study, “Income, Preferences, and the Dynamics of Policy Responsiveness,” was published in the Oct. 3 issue of the journal Political Science and Politics.

“This does not mean that the government is actually acting in the best interests of the poor,” Ellis says, “only that what the poor want is similar to what the rich want in terms of how the government appropriates its funds.” For example, the public’s views of what the federal government should do with respect to education, health care and the environment are similar regardless of socioeconomic level. Ellis notes, however, that social issues, such as abortion, were not considered in the study.

Source: North Carolina State University

A freelance writer’s best resource of finding jobs online are Job boards or sites. While some boards are geared specifically to the freelancer, many others also list other type of jobs.

Some job boards allow freelancers to register their profiles and credentials for prospective employers to peruse, others allow resumes and classified ads to be posted. Other sites such as www.elance.com enable employers to post jobs and freelancers to bid fees for the jobs. The site earns a place for any jobs awarded. There are other sites similar to www.elance.com such as www.contractedwork.com.

There are many writing job boards online and it is not that difficult to discover them. Some Jobs boards provide links to other job sites and the list could be a bit long.

Searching through the major search engines can also provide an exhaustive list of writing jobs. Use key words such as:

• Freelance writing Jobs boards
• Writers Wanted
• Writing Jobs
• Copywriting Jobs
• Technical writing Jobs
• Submission guidelines.

To make your task of searching for writing jobs online, we have provided you with the following list of sites. We hope you will find what you want.

• http://www.emoonlighter.com
• http://www.elance.com
• http://www.burryman.com/freelance .html
• http://www.recruitmedia.co.uk/jobs.asp
• http://scriptlance.com
• http://www.ants.com
• http://www.e-work.com
• http://www.freeagent.com
• http://www.freelancejobs.com
• http://www.freelancers.com
• http://www.careerpath.com
• http://www.monster.com
• http://www.sunoasisjobs.com
• http://www.ajb.dni.us
• http://www.employmentall.com
• http://www.epclassifieds.com
• http://www.freelanceexperts.com
• http://www.copyeditorjobs.com
• http://www.mediabistro.com
• http://www.journalismjobs.com
• http://www.newsjobs.com
• http://www.freelancebbs.com
• http://www.freelancers.com
• http://www.freelanceworkexchange.com
• http://www.writergazette.com/jobboard.shtml
• http://www.freelancejobsearch.com
• http://www.freelancebank.com
• http://www.mediajobsearchcanada.com
• http://www.smarterwork.com
• http://www.codelance.com
• http://www.looksurf.com
• http://www.csne.org/jobs/postings.html

If you have checked the above sites a number of times in two or three months and you have not got any job. I suggest you assess your skills and consider taking some relevant writing courses. You may also supplement these with a college degree in a relevant field to enhance your marketability. While doing so do some writing exercises and write articles on a wide variety of topics and post them on to articles submission sites online. Good Luck!

It is just amazing. Power right at your fingertips. It feels good to have access to such a powerful thing.

In one click you can make thousands feel the power you possess in hand. What am I talking about ? You guess it. The power of Internet Marketing.

Since the first day I started, I was astounded at the potential power at my fingertips. The Internet has provided us with a means of communication unparelleled. What you do with that power is essential to your success.

Many will use such power to obtain wealth and fame by unscrupulous means. They are the ones who will fade away faster than spit on a Arizona road.

The thrivers are those who have a vision other than just making money. They make people lives better. You have to give to receive. It is one of Nature’s laws. I learned that the hard way.

Our dreams and aspirations can all be achieve. But before that comes we all need to work on our attitudes and mindset.

Ask any of the ‘gurus’ and they will tell you it is essential for success. And remember the Golden Rule : Give to Receive. You will not regret it.

You have amazing power at your disposal. What you use it to do depends on you. Question yourself seriously. Only you would know.