Rick Simon, Internet Marketing Services

2008-03-26T01:34:00.000-07:00

A prime factor involved in tilting the fortunes of many big business enterprises in their favour, has been their marketing skills. Marketing has always been one of the most focused upon areas of a business enterprise. Enterprises have been giving away fortunes to marketing executives in the form of salaries and perks and these executives have been often laughing to the bank. Marketing involves inducing the customer to purchase the product, whether he needs it or not. Marketing thus involves the use of different techniques to induce the want in the customers' mind to purchase the product.

Companies providing marketing services have been doing great business in recent times. This is even more relevant in the case of internet marketing service providers. Companies providing internet marketing services have seen their bottom lines balloon up on a year to year basis. Internet marketing services have brought in a revolution in the international marketing arena. Online marketing, though still in it's early stages, will continue to grow for a very long time.

The success of internet marketing and internet marketing service providers can be attributed to many factors. The Internet, a vast treasure house of information in itself, sees a very large number of visitors on a daily basis. These visitors often run through web pages or 'surf the internet' looking for information on varied topics. These are the target audience of the internet marketing service providers.

The business model for internet marketing is very simple. When a person comes over the internet looking for information, internet service providers capture information about the person, his interests, choices etc. These can be easily inferred from the type of information the person is looking for. The next step is to classify his interests and further classify the different products to be marketed according to his choices. This step in internet marketing involves actually relating the different products to the choices of the probable customer. This is followed by getting the online contact information of the probable customer. The internet marketing service provider then prepares a set of online marketing aids which include online advertisements on websites frequented by the probable customers or the target audience, popup ads, advertising e-mails, online contests, combinations of these and also combinations of online and offline marketing tools, i.e., conventional marketing tools.

Internet marketing services have the highest growth rate as compared to any other industry and the growth rate is showing no signs of slowing down. Internet marketing services have clicked with both, the buyers of the service and the target audience of these internet advertisements. This is due to a combination of major factors such as ease of use, unlimited accessibility, availability of audio-visual tools, interactive format etc.

Internet marketing services have been steadily gaining ground in previously uncharted territories such as third world nations, rural areas, illiterate and semi literate population etc. This has been made possible primarily due to the availability of different audio visual tools and interactive formats available in this medium of marketing. Internet marketing which has already sent the bottom lines of companies in the developed nations soaring is steadily showing effect on companies in the other countries also and is accounting for a large share of their revenue. Stocks of internet marketing service providing companies have been on all time highs.

Customers of these companies are overjoyed with the amount of convenience that internet shopping has to offer. Internet marketing is a great concept which is showing no signs of burning out. It is the marketing idea of the decade and will hold fort for many decades to come!

Rick Simon, Avoid the Slippery Slope of Price Discounts in a Slow Economy

2008-03-19T01:24:00.000-07:00

Rick Simon, Avoid the Slippery Slope of Price Discounts in a Slow Economy: Holden Advisors Urges Companies to Employ Smart Marketing Tactics During Market Downtu Concord, Mass. (PRWEB) March 13, 2008 -- Dr. Reed Holden and Mark Burton, co-authors of Pricing with Confidence: 10 Ways to Stop Leaving Money on the Table and founders of Holden Advisors, warn companies to avoid price discounting as a strategy to win business during a market downturn. Alternatively, companies can employ several marketing tactics to outperform the competition.

"Price competition is a fool's game," states Holden, "because anyone can play it. As companies compete for scarce business, the pressure to pull the discount lever mounts. Soon it's a race to the bottom as prices continue to drop and profits evaporate."

Holden and Burton offer many, more profitable, alternatives to straight discounting in their new book, Pricing with Confidence: 10 Ways to Stop Leaving Money on the Table. Some of their tips include:

1. Revise financial goals so they are more in line with market changes

2. Use services as a way to differentiate your offering from your competitor - and make sure you charge for them.

3. Use flanking products to offer lower priced offerings while protecting high value products.

4. Continue to invest in innovative new offerings

"A company that should weather this downturn better than competitors is Apple," explains Holden. "They have a continuous string of new products - both at the high-end to protect the pricing umbrella and a number of mid-level extensions like Time Capsule that generate incremental revenues. Apple also is playing pretty hard at the low end with increasing capabilities in products like the Nano."

Burton adds, "There are a few consistencies between companies that will come out of the downturn in decent shape. Many successful companies, Intel is a good example, take a long-term view of pricing. They know once prices go down, they don't come up when times get better. Also, companies that compete hard with products designed for the low-end and then go up market will weather the downturn better than companies that only offer products at the high-end, but discount. Nokia is an example of a company that is playing this strategy well right now."

For more information on pricing in a market downturn, Holden Advisors offers the following:

1. Please request a copy of Holden's newsletter with current thinking on pricing in a slow economy at http://www.holdenadvisors.com

2. Contact Reed Holden through his blog: http://www.reedholden.wordpress.com.

3. Read Mark Burton's latest blog about Intel at: http://markrburton.wordpress.com.

About Pricing with Confidence

The book, Pricing with Confidence: Ten Ways to Stop Leaving Money on the Table is published by Wiley & Sons, describes easy-to-understand steps companies can take to design and implement pricing approaches that are profitable, even in challenging times. For more information on what pricing strategies your company can adopt when markets change, to learn more about the book, order a copy, or to view upcoming seminars see: www.pricingwithconfidencebook.com.

About Holden Advisors

Reed Holden and Mark Burton are co-founders of Holden Advisors www.holdenadvisors.com, a pricing consultancy and training firm that specializes in working across product, marketing, pricing, and sales functions to improve pricing performance.

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