The whole idea of raising sales comes down to just a couple of things that one is supposed to know when carrying out online and offline marketing campaigns. Those two pointers are:

1. defining your target audience, and
2. studying your product.

Of course, you are going to have to do homework, such as studying your competitors and markets, but the two key points mentioned above are really the key to making your marketing efforts worth your time and money.

What is marketing? The process of raising demand over supply.

Every business owner has realized at some point in the life of their business that they cannot underestimate the power of marketing. With all of the details and aspects of marketing the subject may seem to be overwhelming; if you start feeling overwhelmed, just go back to marketing basics.

The Basics of Marketing

The basics of marketing begin with market research. You must research your market to see what your potential customers need and how you can give that to them. When you know what your potential customers want you can then tailor your marketing strategies based on that precise information.

To successfully market, you need to come up with a clear and concise plan and follow it unconditionally. You may choose to use a chart or a bar graph that will show you the timeline of your marketing efforts. Project managers usually use a timeline bar graph and marketing planners should do so as well.

Make sure all of the promotional items are professional in appearance. You don’t want the promo material to look cheaply made or to be sloppy.  Remember:  this is a representation of you and your business.

Marketing is something that every business needs to do in order to be successful. Strategic marketing is something that is done for the business to achieve long-term success through correct ongoing actions.  Clearly outlined objectives are set in strategic marketing in order for a business to obtain a better market position and therefore achieve a good market share. If the results are achieved then the business will have a good share of the market and therefore will be able to increase the cost of prices because demand will be high.

Remember, before beginning any marketing campaign, whether immediate or long-term,  you need to do market research to have a complete understanding of what your customers need and the best way to reach them.

Most important is to deliver on the promises given, especially if the prices are increased. Strategic business marketing, when done correctly, can allow a business to become the top retailer or service provider but only if they provide excellent products and customer services and stay true to their marketing.

A sample marketing plan can help a business owner by giving an example of what an effective marketing plan looks like. There are several components of a successful marketing plan and they are as follows:

Objectives

• Present market conditions
• Analysis of strengths and weaknesses
• Analysis of threats and opportunities
• How you will achieve your goals

There are many advantages to having a well defined marketing plan in place. One of the best advantages?  You will save money by not spending unnecessarily. If you see that part of your plan is ineffective, you can change your plan before spending  more money unnecessarily. Because you have a marketing plan in place, you will be able to instantly see if your objectives are being met. Should they not be met, you can rapidly change your plan to insure success. By following a great sample marketing plan, you can develop a plan that can be customized to your own needs, or use as-is.

The fact is you can create a virtual environment for the small business with little or no added cost to the client.  There are many systems available to do this and even the 800-pound gorilla in the room (Microsoft) has made it cost effective for the small business.

There are a few choices available for SMBs going virtual:

Note:  Although VMWare most likely has the best product on the market, in order to get all of the features, it is so expensive that it becomes cost prohibitive for most small businesses.

The two other systems I can recommend.  The decision of which one will rely on the following criteria:

1. Are you comfortable with open source?  If so, Virtualbox is your answer.
2. Do you want to keep it Microsoft only?  Then Hyper-V is your answer.

Both systems are cost effective and will give you many of the features you need.

Most of the entry techs now working in the industry work strictly in Microsoft products (this is fine, we find Microsoft in almost every business we service).  For these techs, Hyper-V is not only easy to set up, it is not an added expense to Windows Server Licensing.  If the client purchases Windows Server 2008, licensing can be used for both the Hypervisor and for the actual Virtual Machine that is running on it (all the Windows goodies like Active Directory).

For the techs with Linux expertise, Virtualbox is an excellent product.  As the hypervisor, the Linux machine will be transparent to the Guest OS (Windows Server).

One of the most important features of Virtual environments is Disaster Recovery.  If you have properly set up the virtual environment, you should be backing up the images used for the guest OS (these backup images can be stored on an external drive).  If you are doing that correctly, you can restore those images to another machine quickly and easily.

The major differences between the two (and why we prefer Virtualbox) –

Hyper-V:   You must bring up another Windows Server, setup Hyper-V and bring the backup image in.

Virtualbox:  You can install it on a spare desktop and bring the image in.

The major difference is time.

• With Hyper-V, you will need to get the server hardware or OS running before you can have their core infrastructure back up.  Most small business will not have a spare Windows server available.
• With Virtualbox, adding the software to a workstation will give you the availability of having the servers back up and running (until you get the server hardware running) in a matter of minutes.

It is refreshing to work with PDG’s clients, since these people are ALL devoted to Steve Simon and to Rich Lederer.  Whatever magic they do, they do it well because their clients have been with them for a looooong time and are very, very happy.  This makes the work we do so much easier.

Imagine the honor we felt when we received this today:

Cedric, Dan, and Susan,

We are particularly happy to have found technical service that has such high standards of knowledge and communication. Rich and I feel that we are giving a gift to our customers by recommending you.

Regards,

Seth describes arrogant as being a hair’s breadth away from having “the confidence and attitude that goes with bringing a new idea into the world”.

Someone who has enthusiasm for a passion and shares that enthusiasm can only be called arrogant by the misinformed.

This definition is what I think of when I meet someone who is truly arrogant:

ar·ro·gant adj.

1. Having or displaying a sense of overbearing self-worth or self-importance.

2. Marked by or arising from a feeling or assumption of one’s superiority toward others:

We’ve all met the arrogant guy – the one who will have a conversation with you explaining how he is all and you are nothing.  The slightly derogatory tone of voice.  The aloof demeanor.

The person this definition describes is someone who is actually only talking to himself.  You are right in front of him, his body, mouth, eyes are all pointed in your direction.  Words come out of the mouth, but they are not intended for you…they are directed only toward his own inner dialogue.  No one else really exists.

Unfortunately for all of us, this has been erased by the Department of Transportation earlier this morning but the sentiment still lives on…

NY Daily News

And just for the record…We here at Entechserv do not sanction any abuse of tourists but we sure think this is hilarious!

He wanted a fast solution for email; we migrated all of his old emails onto our Collaboration Suite and set him up with an email with his own URL.  His Blackberry has become his mobile office:

• Our spam filter is so advanced, he can easily access his real emails so that he can answer them instantly.
• Appointments and deadline alerts are with him wherever he goes,
• He sets appointments and new tasks from clients’ offices as they are created, rather than using an appointment book or waiting until he gets to his office.
• He sends and receives email confirmations for all appointments from his phone or from his desk.  No more wasted time on appointments that clients forget about.
• He stores important, confidential documents on the web client to be accessed and downloaded from his client’s office, enhancing security.

This is just what he has raved about — since the collaboration suite is part of our lives we don’t know what other parts of it he is using.

The result of his new-found efficiency? He started hiring employees and we just installed a new server and workstations in his office.

People considering starting their own businesses often have no idea of how to begin and what business to get started in.  I have tried to help by tritely asking, “What are you the most passionate about?”  Wrong!  From now on I will ask, “How do you most effectively help?”

I attended a seminar featuring Marc Cenedella,  the founder of TheLadders.com.  The most subtle, yet most obvious thing about this man?  He was exalted!

The word needs defining:

exalted adj 1: of high moral or intellectual value; elevated in nature or style;– WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005)

and exalt:

1: laud: praise, glorify, or honor; 2: exhilarate: fill with sublime emotion; 3: inspire: heighten or intensify;4: raise in rank, character, or status; –  wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Before the seminar, I fully expected to hear about how Marc made all of his money, how he advertised in this way or that, how he did some kind of viral thing – but he either ignored that area, joked about it or skimmed over it.

The message conveyed by Marc was that he loves to effectively help people, and increased his ability to do that by increasing the number of people who came to him for help.  He now gets to indulge his joy any time he wants – the result?  He’s generally exalted.  The side effect is that he’s rich.

Have you ever met someone who worked just for the money?  Totally miserable – probably an alcoholic – at best, impossible to enjoy being around.  Many entrepreneurs started out with strong ideals about delivering a product or service that would benefit others, then lost sight of that goal in the face of unpaid bills or “unsolvable” problems.  The goal changed to finding clients who would pay them money.  Desperation set in and then they failed.  That failure was blamed on the economy, the product or any other reason other than that the original ideal was lost.

We met the owners of Universal Processing (now our clients).  These guys are the cleanest, brightest young men I’ve met in a long time.  They are ethical, excited about their product and they create their business because it is an honest alternative to anything else that is out there.  They help people.  They work to find more people to help and to create more effective ways to help businesses.  If you get a chance to talk to any of the owners of this group, you’ll find they are exalted.

By the way, if you don’t know us personally and meet any of us from Entechserv, you will find that we are (almost always) exalted.  Our clients know this and they know why!

I met Ellen DePasquale, The Software Revitalist, at a NY Entrepreneur’s Business Network seminar.  Her presentation showed how to use Social Media to prospect – it was brilliant and she gave tons of information, but that was just the tip of the information mountain from this amazing lady.

I started checking out her blog and found she also instructs on how to save employers time and money.

Ellen DePasquale has written a white paper on the overwhelm employees experience when they don’t know the software they are using.  She writes a blog about ways to automate your systems (huge time-saver) using the common programs we all share (like Office).  Her book,  It’s About Time – Time Management Tips From The Software Revitalist, goes into detail on how to make our tools work for us (rather than the reverse).

She is definitely the other side of our coin.