If you go into a market and you want to find out where your competition is finding their customers, you just call up all your competitors and you tell them that you are a marketing students who wants to learn what they do.
And you ask for a 15 minute interview with the marketing executive, and you’ll be surprised how many people are willing to share time and knowledge and experience with you.

Another way to find out where successful companies in your industry are finding their customers is to contact trade associations and they can provide you with directories of media brokers and other industry specialists. And when you contact them and tell them about your plans for marketing your product, they will help you. And of course everything they tell you will be biased to everything they specialize in, but you still can get very valuable information that way.

Afterwards, send follow up “thank you” notices and maybe small presents. This way, they’ll probably talk to you again if you ask them in the future again.

5 Steps To Picking The Perfect Startup Product.

1. Find out what products are currently hot in the market.
2. Determine if your product idea fits that trend.
3. If it does, you’re ready to go. If it doesn’t follow steps 4 and five.
4. Come up with “me too versions” of several hot products.
5. Improve them in some way by adding features and benefits the originals lack.

How To Find Out What Products Are Hot
Identify the primary media for your market. And look at what’s being advertised the most. What are the bestsellers? How long have they been selling? That can give you a clue about the state of the trend. Because the trend is like a curve, and you want to be in on the trend as early as possible, you don’t want to get in when it’s already fading.
(Of course there’s no sure way to guess how long a trend will last, but you can find out by talking to people in the industry - speak with brokers, consultants, and even competitors.

Get your hands on the top 3-5 products in the market and study them. You don’t even need to buy them - you can just walk into a store and examine them in the store, or you can order, test them and return them for a refund.

And for every product make a list of all features and benefits. Compare the products to one another and figure out which characteristics are the most appealing and make a list of any shortcomings you notice.

And you can also share the product with others - friends and products, and get their ideas about how it can be improved. This is a great thing because you just tap into so much more brainpower, you’re multiplying the brainpower.

What you are looking for is an idea that will really excite you, an idea that you feel will really capture the market - that will create the tipping point buying frenzy. (Of course, just because you feel that way doesn’t mean it WILL be, but it’s a lot easier to get things going when you are excited).

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Recession And Your Business

During recessions, depressions and economic crises, some of the biggest fortunes have been built. (In fact, if you consider that fact that basically everyone is doing worse than they did a year ago now, and than you look at the world’s 7 richest people, you find that their net worth actually skyrocketed in 2008).

But it’s not only that the rich get richer. Actually, the people with the right business mindset get richer.

And one thing all of them share is that they understood: This situation is temporarily. The crisis is temporarily. Yes, there might be a couple of hard years, but after that, things are gonna get better, people are gonna spend more money again, people are gonna buy houses and invest again. A crisis is just a temporary condition.

Many of the big companies in the world like IBM got big during a recession, because they acted differently from most other companies. Most companies start cutting budgets when a recession looms. They stop marketing, they cut research & development budgets. They save money in every corner. The belt tightened faster.

But those companies that come out of a recession as a winner are those that do exactly the opposite: companies that put their money in RnD, marketing and hiring great people. Because if you think about it: it’s a lot cheaper to advertise during a recession. Publishers are desperate for advertisers and willing to discount.

All the products that are low quality get’s swiped away. Because when everybody has a lot of money to spend, you can get through with delivering mediocre quality. But if money is tight, they really want to experience that they got value for their money, and if they don’t, they’re not gonna come back to you and might even refund the products.

If you’re a small business owner, then there are three things you should do:

a reality check: face the situation as it is. Don’t go into a “think positive and everything is gonna be fine, I can manifest success” mode. If the numbers tell you it’s gonna get ugly, be prepared for it, not surprised when it strikes. Look at things that you don’t feel comfortably looking at. Face reality brutally. Don’t put a soft rosy cocoon around yourself.

Diversify
Create multiple streams of income and don’t just rely on one product, one advertisement, on one customer only. Because if that one leg breaks, there’s nothing left for you. So if you sell an ebook where you are selling to stamp collectors, then you want to get out a second ebook that you sell to coin collectors and another one to watch collectors and so on. Diversify.

Downtime
Use your downtime, make the best use of it. This is when you don’t have work, when you don’t have things to do because you don’t have clients, no business to take care of. Use this time to educate yourself. Use this time to prepare yourself when things get going again. Remember: the crisis will pass, it’s just a temporarily state. (That doesn’t mean that everything will be fine and rosy, but if you prepare yourself for the moment people start spending money again, you can get back into business very fast). Example: research a new niche. Learn about marketing. Learn about how to find the best freelancers to do technical work for you. Use downtime to aquire skills of value to you and your business. Because this time is cheaper than if you are busy and successful already, because when you are busy, taking time to study will be “more expensive” because you lose revenue if you don’t take care of business. But if you don’t have something to do anyway, then your time is “cheap”, and you should use cheap time to improve yourself.

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Fantasy sports is where you people can form their own sport teams and trade players, find sponsors, etc. just like a real sports team owner. Companies are making a lot of money with that kind of stuff…

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Discounts can be a powerful way to attract new customers and make more sales. Bust most people really don’t understand how to use discounts the right way - and they get it completely wrong and that can literally destroy their business, and destroy the profit margins.
It’s not that hard to really understand how to use discounts, but you have to understand the concept once.
What you don’t want to do is to blindly discount your products. Instead you want to have a high perceived value, because discounts are actually challenging… because what they do is - yes, you can get more customers in the door, but when you discount your prices, in the prospects eyes, they are not just associating the discount with the money you charge, but also with the value you deliver. That means often the perceived quality of your services or product get’s hurt. You don’t want to be the discount brand in the people’s mind. Discount is okay if it’s a generic product - Walmart has made lots of money with it. But if you’re not Walmart - and I guess you’re not a multibilliondollar business, then discounts are not the way to go as a general selling strategy.

Instead the way you really want to use discounts is that you use them infrequently, and when you use them you give your prospects and customers a reason why you discount. And, you only discount a lead product. But you don’t discount everything unless in very specific cases which I will not cover here.

You want to have one low-priced, discounted product that gets the customer in the door and that completely overdelivers. Something that people buy for 20 dollars, but when they open the box they find that the perceived value is something that is worth a lot more - 100, 200, 500 bucks. But they just paid 20 dollars. And then you offer them higherpriced products and then they are much more likely to be inclined to say: wow, if he sold me that for $20, and I got a $200 value, then how much value must I get out of the $200 product? And you have really earned their trust and then they are much more likely to buy from you. And if your $200 product can deliver more than a value of $200, then it’s a very easy way to get a repeat customer. And even if the product is worth really just $200, you still have good chances, because that first impression was buying a $20 product and getting $200 worth of value, 10 times the value, and that will stick in the peoples mind.

You have to look at discounts as a way to attract many new clients. But once they are in the door, you don’t want to be the discount guy. You really want discounts to be something that is perceived as: “Oh my god, I can get a discount on this guy?” It’s like imagine Gucci or some luxury brand, a ferrari or porsche, doing a discount where you can get a car from them for the price of a volkswagen or something. There’s a high perceived value and then you offer a discount that gets people into a buying frenzy, people thinking: “Oh my god, this is such a great opportunity, I gotta get my hands on this now!”
And you also want to make it time limited, quantity limited, something like that.

Or you tell them they can get the discount ONLY IF THEY QUALIFY - and then you tell them what the qualification is.

You also want to be sure that you don’t bring in the wrong type of customer, because there are some people who are nothing else but “bargain bitches” (that’s what I call them). They will only be loyal to you as long as you offer them discounts. But as soon as you offer them normal prices, they will not buy from you. So you don’t want to attract these. You don’t want chronic bargain hunters.

So, ultimately I do encourage you to use discounts, but use them for your lead products. Use them to get new customers into the door, use them to turn existing prospects into buyers. But keep in mind that you want to limit this to your lead product so that you are a company that is perceived as a high-value company.

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Steven Wagenheim just posted in the famous “Warrior Forum” a simple way to make some quick cash.

It involves google trends, blogspot, digg, quick action, keyword research and being willing to lose 6 times out of 10 (or more), but with the occasional hit more than making up for it.

Read the method here…

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Here’s some things I learned about using Twitter:

Don’t follow anyone just reciprocal because they follow you. There’s different reasons for that. First - do you really have time to follow thousands of people? No way.

And then, what does it look like if you’re following thousands of people? Everybody who looks at your Twitter account can see how many people you are following.  So what does it look like if you have 200 followers and are following 2000 people? It’s kind of like the guy who’s calling five people every day to hang out together, but nobody really wants to, but some people just accept it because they can’t say no. Think that’s funny? Well, it IS funny, but it’s human nature too. Don’tunderstimate this simple stuff.

It’s kind of like in high-school, but adult life is really like another version of high-school life, plus we’re acting like we’re not high-school kids anymore…

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See, many people who are worth $50 per per hour are actually spending lots of time every week on stuff that they could pay somebody $3 per hour for.

I recently talked with a friend who wanted me to help him upload pictures to a Joomla site, and my response was: Dude, I love to help you, and the best way I can think of to help you is by telling you: pay somebody to do it for you!

He was the third day into uploading pictures on that freaking Joomla site, this was the state he was in when he came to me, his eyes were red, his fingers almost swollen from all the mouseclicking (ok, I’m going a little over the top, but you get my point)… And he told me: “No, I can use the money for better stuff.” Now, this friend is not stupid, but something about that was not so smart… because I know when he worked on his other business (selling financial services) he could make a couple of Benjamins a day just like that. And here he was, telling me: “No, I can use the money for better stuff. I’d much rather spend a week doing stuff that I could outsource for $3/hour than making a couple of Benjamins in a day.” Funny thing is, even after I pointed it out, he did not agree with me. Anyway, I told him I’m gonna outsource it for him, paying out of my own pocket - and that’s when he all of the sudden decided that outsourcing wasn’t so bad and he actually did it himself.

Funny, right?

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When somebody tells you they don’t have enough money to buy your product or that it’s too expensive, then it really just means: “I don’t want it that much. The money is worth more than the product to me.”

But it also means that your prospect is SOMEWHAT interested. Otherwise she wouldn’t even be thinking about price at all.

But you haven’t demonstrated enough value yet. You have to show them that ONLY your product can give them the exact outcome they crave. And you have to tell it to them in a way they believe (using specificity, testimonials, screenshots and other social proof elements).

Mark Widawer wrote a great post on why people don’t buy, according to Frank Kern…

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Your own personal productivity is the most important thing in your business.

Even when you have top-employees - you need to be on top of your game.

That’s why every entrepreneur should know how he functions most efficiently.

Sure - to some extent it’s different for everyone. But something is just human nature.

For example: distractions clutter our mind and take out lots of productive force from our minds.

That’s why you need uninterrupted chunks of time. Eben Pagan, who’s running the $20 million internet business that he started from scratch from his bedroom, made a great free video on productivity.

One thing you should do for sure is:

• don’t check your emails more than 3 times a day
• don’t check your emails first thing in the morning.
• first thing in the morning: get a good start that puts YOU in a good state. (good food, good exercise)
• reserve a two hour time slot for the most important tasks in your business. Be sure to not be interrupted under any circumstances during this time. (Turn off the phone and blackberry)
• after 50 minutes of work, do a 10 minute break.

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Ok…

My eyes are GLUED to “Integration Marketing”, but this one’s so good that I wanted to share it:

Why do most businesses fail? Because they feel compelled to keep on trying different approaches instead of simply scaling what already works.

(Source: “Integration Marketing”, by Mark Joyner, ebook Version, p.29)

If you don’t see how powerful this simple thing is, you’re probably not running a business.

(Anyway, it only really makes sense when you read it in context. So head over and get your free copy.)

PS: I’m not even using my affiliate link. No time to fumble around with that now, just wanna get back to reading, this is how good this stuff is.

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