In a bad economy, every company tries to cut back on their spending. It’s a natural preventative measure that helps keep a firm safe when times are tight. In many cases, a company will consider cutting their marketing budget early on, and will often look at postponing an online marketing campaign or canceling it altogether. If they work with an interactive marketing agency, they’ll often consider stopping that work.

There are many reasons for this. There might be a need to cut back on staff responsibilities to reduce stress on a small workforce, leaving no one to manage the campaign. There might be a shift in the industry, making the planned campaign less viable. Although these other situations do arise, the most common cause by far is a lack of funds. When money gets tight, campaigns often are suspended temporarily and permanently. This is a strategy that many companies employ, but it doesn’t always work.

Question 1: How Many Direct Competitors Do I Have?

Whenever a firm stops a marketing campaign, its competitors will step in and fill the gap. Working with an interactive marketing agency isn’t like creating TV ads, where any number of other companies would happily vie for a company’s spot, and most of them wouldn’t be considered direct competition. The Internet offers such specificity that the moment a company stops pushing its product online, its competitor will see an opportunity to increase their dominance in a targeted way.

When a company stops a program, it can lose its spot on the search engines within a matter of days, and possibly start losing customers after only a week. For this reason, a firm should only consider stopping its online efforts if it’s very confident that it has no direct competitors. If it can’t be sure, the results of pausing work with an interactive marketing agency could be disastrous.

Question 2: Are You Using Social Media?

If so, be aware that stopping the program will likely erase all gains you’ve made through Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and other social media techniques. These types of media rely on regular updates to communicate with fans; abandon this, and fans will quickly abandon you. You’ll be seen as corporate and mercenary, rather than a true blogger and Facebook friend, which can absolutely hurt a company’s image amongst the people that follow them. This is true of individuals, and it’s true of companies as well.

Question 3: What Opportunities Will You Miss?

This is perhaps the most important question that a company should consider. Whenever a firm pauses or cancels a campaign that they were running with the help of an interactive marketing agency, they definitely are paying a price. In economic terms, it’s opportunity cost: the cost of what you could have done, but chose not to do. It’s not a direct cost like the campaign itself, and it can often be hard to estimate unless the campaign is actually employed. Particularly with online media, however, the missed opportunities from a single canceled campaign can be staggering.

First, you’ll miss any potential clients that would have been gained through advertising. Thousands of people might see an ad online, but if that ad never runs, a company never sees a return from it. In addition, a firm can miss a chance to learn more about its industry and further hone any future campaigns. If a firm is out of touch with its industry’s client base for a few months, it could miss a major shift in marketing techniques. More importantly, when it tries to jump back into the market, it could be facing a steep learning curve.

Putting It All Together

Considering these questions will help a company decide whether canceling or postponing its work with an interactive marketing agency is a risk it can’t take, or a gamble it’s willing to take. Whatever the decision, be sure to keep a finger on the pulse of the market as much as possible so you know when the time is right to jump back in, or change current strategy as the economy picks up.

With so many alternatives available, it is often asked which method of marketing is most effective. Because of escalating costs, many businesses and organizations have opted for predominantly electronic marketing (internet), but those using exclusively electronic market often complain that they are not getting the response they anticipated. While some corporations are successful using predominantly internet marketing, the most successful “Web” campaigns are those that use other media to direct the target audience online. Some of those media include television, radio, print media (newspapers and magazines), advertising (including banners) on other Web sites, and direct mail marketing.

Although internet marketing is quite effective in attracting certain target markets, the exclusive use of internet marketing often excludes a number of potential “targets.” Certain products directed toward certain generations of individuals can be marketed primarily by electronic marketing (however, there is still the need to direct the target market to the site that one wants to market), but other products, and many services need more attention to “conventional” marketing.

Many organizations have dramatically reduced printing and mailing as their primary method of “outreach,” predominantly because of the escalating costs of printing and postage. Some then substitute an almost exclusive electronic “outreach” method, and many are then disappointed to find, for example, that attendance at events and conferences, as well as membership dues and donations collections end up suffering, as a result. While the elaborate multi-colored, expensive paper, expensive to mail magazines and brochures produced years ago usually are difficult to justify, less expensive printing and mailing should often be considered.

However, any mailing should effectively “sell the sizzle”, so that even a casual glance by a viewer would “catch the eye” and interest the recipient. Statistics indicate that conventional mailing in envelopes can be quite ineffective, because it is time consuming to produce and distribute, can be costly, and does not get enough “views.” The reality with “envelope” mailing is that a large number of recipients never even open the envelope, considering it to be “junk,” and never bothering to view the contents and message. On the other hand, postcards can be quite effective, because the message cannot be easily avoided by the viewer, and they are relatively inexpensive to produce and distribute.

An organization has two choices in terms of the type of postcard to send, regular-size or over-sized. While some argue that over-sized get more “views,” studies have indicated that both sizes, if produced correctly, receive approximately the same response. The huge advantage of regular sized postcards is that they are significantly less expensive to mail.

The most effective postcards are those that are printed on both sides, with a “sell the sizzle,” catchy phrase on the address side, and the words “See Other Side” printed cleverly. On the other side, a very brief, to the point message, emphasizing the main message, and providing a phone number, an e-mail contact address, and a website to go to for details. Depending on the type of mailing, typical response rates on organizational postcard mailings range from about one to eight percent. In addition, an effective;postcard campaign can be produced for approximately $350 per thousand pieces (even less if not-for-profit bulk rates are taken advantage of), including printing and postage.

Organizations that really want to optimize their results should use creative postcard marketing, in conjunction with internet promotions. Postcards are both cost effective and productive, and will improve results of any organization’s marketing!

Within this little article, we are going to be taking a better look at high ticket direct sales type of businesses. It is important to remember that this is a fairly new concept in the world of home based business opportunities, and we are going to be looking at some of the reasons why. This type of GPT business model, really is the future of network marketing.

Some people might have heard the term GPT a lot, but they do not know what the term is actually referring to. It is important to remember that the term stands for the phrase get paid today. This is because, unlike with MLM, you actually get high upfront commissions for selling products just as you would in a traditional offline business. This is why the serious type of entrepreneur prefers this type of business. There is also a residual income with the right type of high ticket direct sales business.

Some people are slow to jump on some of these strategies, because they require a larger investment than MLM. Sometimes this investment is pretty close to the price of a brand new car. It is important to consider that these opportunities are real businesses, and it has already been proven that some MLM programs base themselves around only gathering distributors and are not intended to be an alternative to what most people are seeking to secure as a business of their own.

So many people are getting fed up with the MLM business opportunities, that the type of program we are currently discussing is destined to become the primary form of network marketing from the home. There are many people who do not like the fact that they invested money in an MLM business without realising what was actually required to make it work. They are also realising that the freedom to build their own business is very restricted by the MLM company rules.

While the real truth about multi level marketing is starting to show it’s head in terms of the high failure rate. finding an alternative can be just as difficult. Most people in these economic times require a second or third income and that requires a much faster return to profit after the initial investment to help ease their pressures. The traditional MLM business model is a long term two to five year plan with most network marketers dropping out within the first year.

There are many entrepreneurs that consider themselves to be quite professional as well as serious. These type of home business owners are likely to see pretty good earnings as early as a year after their initial investment in GPT. This seldom happens in the world of MLM, because MLM is not intended to generate a return on investment in the first few years.

By now, you should be able to better understand the high ticket direct sales type of business. Keep in mind that this is the perfect alternative to MLM. The business model itself has been used offline for many years, instead of selling or trying to sell hundreds of products to thousands of customers month after month, you are able to focus heavily on your marketing and will have much more time to work on your business rather than in your business.

You think you have done all your homework and now are considering excelling in affiliate marketing. You heard from all the self-proclaimed great ones about how you too will achieve great success with their product. Problem is you know little about getting traffic, doing keyword research and no real online marketing strategy.

There is so much information bantered about the Internet on how to succeed in affiliate marketing over the longterm. It is a very financially rewarding business to be in. Problem is you do not even know where to start. If you are very driven to succeed in this business and willing to do the things to be successful, you will. Many get discouraged because they take the shotgun approach (the phrase I used in describing my first efforts along with many others) and was rewarded with the dreaded and very common ailment called “information overload”. There are many other phrases to describe this disease and usually describe with adjectives, expletives not used directed to a GP audience My efforts here are to emphasize a more targeted and deliberate direct approach using the rifle instead of the shotgun. Keep in mind there is not a quick overnight successful way.

How much time do you have to put into your own business? How passionate are you to earn your own money and be your own boss? A business takes time to develop so you need to be dedicated to achieving success in your endeavors. Set a goal and work towards that. Depending upon how much time you can put into it will depend on how long it will take to start seeing some results. The main thing is you need a strategy and you need to keep on track with that goal.

One thing to keep in mind in to not try learning from many different sources in the beginning. You must have that laser directive be taken through a process. Do not just go ClickBank and grab links and spew them everywhere. There is that shotgun again.

Blogging is really good way to go with WordPress being the most utilized.Of course this means a domain name and hosting. Getting traffic and keyword is two of the biggest hurdles to overcome. Knowing and understanding the use of keywords is probably the most important one factor in achieving this. Never slough through this ( another severe symptom of the shotgun approach on your way to information overload} as effective keyword research is not only one of the most important assets to possess, but sadly one of the most overlooked by the inexperienced. I think people get confused because the most common keywords is also the hardest to get ranking with. There is where a compromise must be reached between these two contradicting forces. If a keyword is very highly searched you have a very competitive term and unlikely to be ranked for in position of visibility. A term with low searches is no good. Nobody is looking for it. There are some very good free and paid tools to assist you with this, but it does take that laser focus I spoke of earlier. There are even some programs that teach you blogging and keyword research.

Another effective method of getting traffic is article marketing. It such an important source for external backlinks. Social bookmarking is another important source.but these all the ways to get traffic just can not be covered here. One thing that may surprise you is that you may want to know your keyword is before you know what your niche is or the subject matter of your article will be about. It does sound crazy.

Setting up your business online in affiliate marketing is an exciting prospect by learning how to do article and email marketing, building a website, keyword research, search engine optimization, buying a domain and much more. What I have mentioned above give you a very basic insight into what’s involved in the setup of your own business.

There is so much more to know about affiliate marketing. I just hope I have directed the right way and stimulated your mind to convince you to think on correct path and given you some idea what to expect.