Are you ready to take your sales to the next level but don’t know what to do or where to begin? You’re not alone. It’s amazing to me how many small business owners do not understand or appreciate how important their marketing is to the life, health, and growth of their business. That’s because, in most cases, they are making one of three critical marketing mistakes that can lead to lack of growth and even business failure.

In fact, according to the US Small Business Administration, more than 50% of new businesses will fail within the first five years!

Here are three critical mistakes you must avoid to be sure your business isn’t one of them.

1. Not Creating a Written Marketing Plan and Budget

Most experts agree that the fastest way to growth and profitability with your small business is to have a written marketing plan that includes a monthly or quarterly budget.

Unfortunately many small business owners dismiss this advice choosing instead to fly by the seat of their pants where their marketing is concerned. The result, more often than not, is poor results and even outright failure. That’s because it’s always a good idea to know where you’re going and how you’re going to get there before setting off down the road.

First, take an inventory of the marketing strategies that have worked best for you or others in your business or industry in the past. Some of my clients tell me they generate the best results using direct mail. Others are partial to online direct response ads. Still others use conventional advertising such as newspaper, radio, or television. The kind of marketing you decide on is outside the scope of this article. The critical thing to remember is to make a decision on how you will market and fund your efforts, put it all down in writing, and then stick to your plan.

2. Not Developing a Competitive Advantage in the Marketplace

Most business owners cannot identify their competitive advantage let alone communicate it effectively to their customers and prospects. Think about it. What sets you apart from everyone else who does what you do? What unique advantage or benefit does patronizing your business gain for people that they cannot get somewhere else? If you don’t have a good answer to this question you will never be able to maximize your results and dominate your market-no matter how good or clever your advertising is.

3. Not Communicating The Benefits

Marketing and sales is all about communication. As soon as you have learned to communicate the unique reason or reasons why people should do business with you instead of your competitors you will be in a position to persuade them to buy from you.

Of course, one of the most important parts of effective communication lies in understanding each other clearly and accurately. That’s why your marketing needs to speak the language of the person you are speaking with. If you knew that your prospects spoke only English, you wouldn’t speak to them in Russian or Chinese would you?

One of the biggest reasons businesses fail to communicate and persuade effectively is that they often are speaking to the prospect in a different language than the one the prospect speaks. I’m not talking about actual languages. I’m talking about directing your communication towards the one and only language your prospect is always tuned in to listening to. That is the language of benefits.

Too many businesses use their marketing as a hammer to try to beat the customer over the head with logic, facts, and figures. They think that if they can just tell the prospect enough about their company or their product or service, it will result in a buying decision. Unfortunately buyers are not interested in hearing about you, your business, or how great your product or service is. They are interested in one thing only. “What’s in it for me?” Answer this question and you will find yourself speaking their language. Learn to speak it fluently and an incredible boost in sales and revenue will never be far behind.

So how do you learn to speak in terms of benefits to your prospects and customers? It’s simple. After you tell them about you, your company, or your product or service, tell them what it means to them. For example, if one of the features of your club membership is a swipe card with 24 hour access, say, “You will receive a membership card good for access 24 hours a day which means you will have the added convenience of being able to work out any time you’d like−even in the middle of the night!”

Once you have your road map in place in the form of a written, well funded marketing plan, have created or identified your competitive edge and are clearly communicating the benefits to the customer in everything you do, you’ll not only have avoided three critical marketing mistakes most businesses make, you’ll be on your way to dominating your market.

Advancements in business technology have greatly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of email marketing solutions. We have become so used to email marketing that we sometimes forget the great benefits it has for businesses. Here is a quick reminder.

Can you remember how difficult lead generation was before email? The endless cold calling and environmentally unfriendly letter send outs that also sent the marketing budget sky-rocketing. Email marketing solutions have radically reduced marketing budgets, tightened the control of marketing departments and massively improved the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems have played an important role in providing marketing teams with strong data through marketing automation processes that free up the marketers to direct their attention on managing the email marketing campaigns.

The speed of marketing email send outs, almost instantaneous, also enables large quantities of customer feedback to be rapidly received. Existing customers may well respond to enquire about a new product or service advertised in the email or on the company website the email directs them to. Whereas new leads reaped from retargeting processes may register a general interest, either directly or by clicking on media and banners on the website.

Costing far less than the hard copy adverts of old, marketing emails can incorporate a wide range of media, including video and audio files, which grab and hold the attention of readers, enticing them to stay awhile and hear the message your company has to deliver.

Making the email content as dynamic as possible may also move recipients to forward the marketing email on to colleagues, partners and clients, effectively extending the scope of the email campaign. This introduces new professionals and companies to your business, thereby generating fresh new leads.

One excellent form of media to include in a regular marketing email is a company newsletter, perhaps featuring a message from your CEO. Business relationship building is crucial and can be strengthened by making marketing emails seem more personalised.

CRM systems can help with tailoring marketing emails to the likes and preferences of the recipients based either on their customer history or on the banner clicks and media viewed on your company website. This improvement in data management and categorisation has had an extremely positive impact on the effectiveness of email marketing.

Combine these benefits with how environmentally friendly marketing emails are compared to the letter mailings of yesteryear, it’s clear how indispensable email marketing solutions are in the ecologically conscious business world of today. It’s hard to remember a time they weren’t available.

Network Marketing Success appears to be elusive for about ninety-five percent of network marketers! For many of us the term ‘network marketing’ immediately brings to mind the name of some of the most popular MLM companies in the industry. These companies follow a marketing policy of direct sales, where the distributor is in direct contact with the consumer, eliminating the need for a middleman. Network marketing is also known as multi-level marketing or direct sales.

In the ‘old days’ Network Marketers would spend hours with friends and or family in an effort to get them to sign up to buy their products or join them in their network marketing program. This is called targeting the warm market or the list of family and friends. So, what happened when this ‘list’ is exhausted? Or your friends start running and hiding when they see you coming? It leads to failure and frustration which is why ninety five-percent of Network marketers fail. Clearly, you can see why this old school method does NOT work today! What are some of the requirements to have Network Marketing Success you may ask?

What Does It Take? First of all, as my good friend and Mentor Michael Dlouhy said, “you have to love people, because network marketing is a relationship business!” “People join people, they do not join companies!” Eighty-five percent of the population cannot stand pushy obnoxious sales people! Secondly, you MUST have a strong WHY or as Napoleon Hill would say, “A burning desire” to succeed in this business. Your WHY will keep you grounded, focused, it will motivate and inspire you! So, write it down and read it daily, in fact read it several times per day or as often as you like. Thirdly, learn the skills! Come on, we go to schools or colleges to learn how to become teachers, nurses, attorneys, bus drivers, you name it, there is probably a school for it. However, when it comes to Network Marketing a large number of people just sign up with an MLM company, then start pushing products and expect to become rich! This is amazing! You MUST learn the skills; because you need them. This is not an option, without the right skills you are dead in the waters. Or at best you will be struggling and losing money instead of making money.

Lastly, brand yourself. Do not go around promoting a particular company or products. This is not a good idea. As we all should know by now the Federal Government do close down a few MLM companies from time to time. What does one do when one has branded oneself to a company that is no longer in business? The short answer: start over, that’s right. What’s the alternative? Brand yourself by putting your name and your face out there! Use the KLT factor. Create Know, Like and Trust. Step out of the shadows and make yourself visible to your target audience, this is how they will get to “know” you. Once they get to know you, they will begin to like you. After they get to know and like you, they are highly likely to trust you! Once you get the KLT working for you, you may promote any products your heart desires!

8 TIPS FOR NETWORK MARKETING SUCCESS:

1. Educate yourself, and then educate your growing team. Read books every day, even if it’s a page or two! As Charles Jones said, “readers are leaders”! Read books by authors such as Jim Rohn and Ziz Ziggler among others.

2. Have duplicatable systems in place; you must be able to train and mentor your partners! In other words, you must be able to help your partners become successful in building their income from home. One of the most important aspects of this area is lead generation.

3. Have a Mentor or find a successful leader who has the success levels that you want and then copy or mimic that person. You can also read the autobiographies of success people.

4. Surround yourself with like-minded people. Network and mastermind with like-minded people, this is powerful. This synergy is amazing!

5. Use the internet for marketing your network marketing opportunity. Choose one form of internet marketing strategy then implement and use it until you have mastered it. After you have mastered the first strategy, pick another one and repeat the process.

6. Become the kind of leader that develop other leaders. Find out what people need by listening to them, and then help them to get what they need! This may appear to be simple and mundane, however it is very powerful! As Zig Zigler once said, “help enough people get what they need and you will eventually get what you need.” Become a solution provider and success will follow you around!

7. Plan your work and work your plan or simply manage your business priorities on a daily basis. Make it fun and have fun doing it. A great book to read on this subject is, The Game of Work by Charles A. Coonradt. Learn how to enjoy work as much as play. After all, you are working with people without a boss!

8. Update or upgrade your circle of influence on a regular basis. We are all a product of our environment. Want proof? Our income is the average of the five closest connections in our circle of influence. If you want to significantly increase your income you are going to have to significantly raise the bar when it comes to whom you associate with. For example, if you want to be a multi millionaire, then you are going to have to associate with other multi millionaires.

Online markets have become the golden mines for internet lovers. Everybody starts to love internet-related business as it requires minimal capital investment. More and more people try to dig into their own gold mines. Will they eventually find the gold at the end without any helping tools?

There are many ways of making money online. There are eCommerce stores, specialist stores, service-oriented stores and many other products and services stores available in online markets. These establishments require heavy capital investment as they must have the goods and services ready before they can start selling online. What will be the best online business to run when you have no resources at your disposal then?

Affiliate marketing will be the right choice for online marketer. What affiliate marketers earn is actually the commission you earn from directing online shoppers to the website you are supporting. Believe it or not, earning commission online has become a multimillion business. Almost every internet lover tries to get a cut of this cake.

Some of the issues you must take care are as bellow:

1). Identify the right companies that offer affiliation.
2). Possess the knowledge to run affiliate campaign.
3). Keep abreast of time of automation tools to beat out your competitors.

There are certainly many online companies offering affiliation services. They are practically too many to choose from. The biggest and the most reliable affiliate company to date is ClickBank. The biggest advantage of being with ClickBank is the commission rate is the highest. It offers commission payout from 25% to 75% of the price.

Once you have selected your affiliate partners, you need to possess the right knowledge to direct your online marketing campaign to the website you are supporting. This will involve social media networking, pay per click campaign, link building and many other things to promote your parent website. You will only earn a commission if there is a sale made by the online visitor you direct to.

As you will not be the only affiliate marketer for this website company, you must stay above of others to earn the most. You need an automation tool that helps you keep an eye on your markets and on your competitors. In short, you need a tool that automates the whole process of affiliation.

Affiliate marketing is an eye-catching business to run. If you are an internet lover you should look into it. And if you need help to automate your affiliate marketing business, you should look for an online doctor that can take care of your online marketing business.

Jay Admire introduces you to the world of affiliate marketing. Jay explains in details on the need of having a ClickBank doctor / CB doctor to automate the ClickBank affiliate marketing campaign. Only with CB doctor you can stay ahead of your affiliate marketing competition. Go and look for your CB doctor today at [http://www.cbdoctor.co/]