5 Message Killers You Must Avoid In Marketing

When learning from others, one of the best things to learn from them is their mistakes.The following is a list of the five most common mistakes made by marketers everywhere.

The #1 Killer - Stressing Image Over Substance

Image advertising is all about you and your business.

How great you are, your qualifications, years in business, full-service product line, etc.But your prospects do not care about you, they care about themselves.Anyone reading or listening to your ad has one question in mind:What is in it for me?Simply put, an image ad has no way to track results.Its goal is to keep the company name in front of the public and often tries very hard to be clever.Watch any beer and soft drink commercials and you will know what I mean.By contrast, a direct response ad is trackable using codedresponses like: ask for John Miller.You know exactly which ads prospects are responding to.This helps you measure the effectiveness of each ad.

Killer #2 Not Taking Time To Educate

Your main objective should be to educate your prospect using several steps.

Your first ad should get their attention and spark their interest enough to contact you.Your next may be purely educational.If your prospect still does not bite, your next step should be to provide more information using follow-up marketing techniques.

High-ticket items require an extensive one-on-one educational and sales process.Your prospect needs to be educated about the benefits of your products or services, their options, why yours is better than your competition, why you are charging the price you charge, and a host of other things.Lower-priced items can be sold in a one- step model and in many cases they have to be because an extended multiple step marketing campaign is too expensive to run.The trick is to give your prospect a reason to continue investigating your offer in the first advertisement.

Killer #3 - Not Explaining the Price

If you price is very low why?

If your price is very high why?These questions need to be answered in the minds of your prospects in order for them to be comfortable with how much they will pay.If you are going to advertise a low price, give your prospect a reason why.Price is one of the primary factors that motivate a prospect to call or visit your store.Throwing your price out there with no explanation (justification), especially if it is a high price, is suicide.Your prospect must be given a reason WHY your price is what it is at the same time as they learn that price.

Killer #4 - Bowing to Public Opinion

I am going to be very brief and to the point about this mistake.

You should not care what your friends and family think about your ads.What is important is what your customers think about your ads and the only way to find that out is by letting them vote with their wallet.Full stop!

Killer #5 - Forgetting to Track and Test

There is no worse, no costlier mistake than not tracking and evaluating the results of your ads.

Not tracking your ads is like stumbling around in the dark.If you do not test your ads, you will never know how much money you may be leaving on the table!Your business simply can not afford this kind of guesswork.

About the Author

Strategies like that can explode your small business quickly, that's why I'd suggest you go right now to http://www.

freemarketingbook.org and request a copy of Jonathan Jay's new book "Marketing Secrets of a Multi-Millionaire Entrepreneur"

Copyright SuccessTrack 2009

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• What Are Private Label Right Articles And What Can You Do With Them?
• Cash Gifting - The Number One Home Based Opportunity
• Online Marketing - The Way of the Future

Increase Your Affiliate Sales By Using An Ad Tracking Software

All around the world, including in the United States, there are a large number of business owners who rely on affiliate programs.If properly implemented, affiliate programs can help to increase the number of sales an online business sees.

If you are a business owner who already has your own affiliate program, it is likely that you also have affiliate tracking software.If you are a business owner who is interested in starting your own affiliate program, but has yet to, you will soon learn the importance of affiliate tracking software.

Affiliate tracking software is vital to the success of an affiliate program.With affiliate programs, business owners, such as yourself, rely on website owners to help increase their sales.This partnership often involves the displaying of your ads and links on your affiliates website.Affiliate tracking software tags those ads using a unique affiliate id.Every time one of your affiliates helps you generate a sale, the software you are using will record that sale.Often times, the date, time, and amount of the sale is also recorded.This information will allow you to know how much you should compensate your affiliates for their work.

If you have not already purchased affiliate tracking software, you will need to do so.However, it is important to be aware of what you are purchasing.There are many business owners who find out that they purchased the wrong type of affiliate tracking software, too late.Most affiliate tracking software programs accomplish the same goals, but they do so in different ways.This is by incorporating different services and features into their software.To make the most out of your next affiliate software purchase, you are advised to familiarize yourself with these services and features.

Perhaps, one of the first things you should look for is customer support.Most software programs come with customer support, but not all do.If you are using a software program for the first time or even if you develop a problem later on, you will want to be able to talk to someone who can assist you.Therefore, it is important that you find and purchase affiliate software that includes customer support.Once this is done, you are advised to use that support for any questions that you have, even the smallest ones.You will find that this support is more important than you ever imagined.

When examining the services and features of particular software, you will likely come across programs that offer varied commission levels.When starting your own affiliate program, you will assign a commission percentage to your affiliates.This percentage is often a flat rate for all, but it does not necessarily have to be.Affiliate tracking software with varied commission levels can allow you to compensate your affiliates in different ways.This is ideal, especially if you want to reward the affiliates that are brining in the most sales.

While it is important to make the most out of your affiliate tracking as soon as you get it, there is also a way to make the most out it before you even do.This is by fully reading and understanding all software descriptions, included services and features, and the costs of using that software.This is the best way to prevent yourself from being stuck with a software program that you cannot use, especially if it does not have features that you want or need.It is also important to determine the cost of affiliate tracking software and payment options.You will want to be on the lookout for monthly fees, yearly fees, and onetime fees.You should also determine ahead of time whether or not a cancellation notice is required.In the event that you decide to end your affiliate program or change tracking software, these fees may be more than you can afford or are willing to pay.

The above mentioned points are just a few of the ways that you can get the most from your affiliate program and its tracking software.To sum it all up, the more you know about what your affiliate tracking software can do, the more you will be able to do with it.

About the Author

Thomas is an Affiliate Marketer.

You can see his latest Ad and Conversion Tracking Script here: Ad Tracking Software and the popular Clickbank(tm) Script here: Clickbank Script

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• A Squidoo Lens: The Benefits of A Squidoo Marketing Presence
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