Three Rules To Business Success: Keep it cool, fun and exciting!

We can all agree that the success of a brand depends on many factors. Factors ranging from price and recognised quality, to exposure and feeling. Feeling, is something we all pick up on. The feeling to hold a product, the feeling to own a product, the feeling to show your friends a product, and certainly the feeling to simply be around a product. This feeling of excitement, fun and coolness is something Apple have brought in to they're brand and business resulting in extremely successful results.

Apple is a world famous company. It has a net worth of 406 billion US dollars and the biggest following of fans, press and excitement in the world. Apple sells a variety of electronic devices aimed at the consumer, from the iPod, iPhone and iPad hand held mobile device's to the iMac and MacBook computer systems. We can all learn a little bit from apple as it produces a wave of urgent excitement and coolness every time it releases a new service, product or software. This wave and immense expectation from fans has been built up over many years, and it can be explained in 3 simple points.

History

Apple has a history lasting several decades. A history which has been built up from exciting and quality news and products. Apple has had an extrodinary life, imagine it like a wall. A wall built up of bricks of every color! Apple's historys has been an exotic one, built up of many important and strategic decisions, announcements, products and people. This draws an urge of excitement as people come to see the newest brick of its wall of history be laid. This is why it is a big event for all fans of the company, and along with the huge amount of interest and fans, comes the press wanting to get in on the action and excitement, delivering to their viewers.. what they want to see and read.

Shop fronts of perfection. 

Apple has created a personality of perfection that is felt threw out its shopfronts online, offline and on packaging. It has a simplicity about it, but also a quality feel. The shops it has, often boast a supreme amount of quality compared to surrounding shops. This draws the customers in and makes buyers feel as if they are part of a new special club.

Its online shop front is cool. Its simplistic but cool and sleek at the same time, matching the shop front of its offline stores. The packaging of its products. Both the disposable packaging and hard cases are beautiful for all of Apple's products. They are clean, sleek and cool!

A general sense of love and excitement is felt and passed around by all.

Finally Apple seems to give out an essence of love and excitement to all of its fans. Its a company that is classed as 'cool' with the younger generation and is a company that gets spoken about as if its the popular kid at school! Its this coolness and well spoken about attitude and feeling it gives out that makes it have this amazing book of success and excitement. As this success and excitement carries on, the ball will keep rolling and Apple's great wall of history will keep getting built.

We can all learn from Apple and its efforts to be cool, made up on quality, love and excitement. Maybe to look in to other businesses like Apple, we can all then look into our own and see where we have been going wrong, and where we can make improvements.

What do you think? I'd love to hear your opinions and examples below in the comments!

Small Business Marketing Advice

Small business marketing is something that many small businesses forget about; but its a very important part of business! So i have wrote this post giving some marketing help for small businesses for you to read and use. Small business marketing magic needs both the right strategy and a lot of effort to achieve.

Affordable Small Business Marketing Ideas

Small business marketing is important and it can often cost a lot of money... but it DOESNT have to! The following affordable small business marketing ideas dont cost a lot of money; some are even free!

Twitter And Facebook

Twitter and Facebook are a great tools for marketing and there is free! Use Facebook and twitter for small business marketing and get great results.

Tip! - Market your twitter acount! Add it to your business cards and tell customers to follow you; give them an insentive like the possibility to win one of your products if they follow you.

Blog

Now a blog is not free --unless you use blogger or a free word press blog-- but it is a great way to market your business for a very cheap price; of around $40-$50 a year or so. It allows you to update your customers and the blogs visitors with whats happening in your business. For example, a new product launch.

YouTube

YouTube can be great if u stick with it! Make and upload quality videos frequently to get the best results. YouTube is a way of informing your visitors without text but threw your voice. Make sure you brand your videos with your company logo etc. Read this post for more infomation on marketing with YouTube - 6 Spanking Tips On Using YouTube For Business Marketing

Newspaper Ads

News paper adverts can be expensive but not always. It's a great small business marketing technique if you are; for example, a new £ shop or a fast food place in a specific town or city becouse you can place an advert in your local newspaper telling people about your business and what it has to offer. Small, local newspapers are often a lot cheaper to advertise in than big, national newspapers.

TIP of the post! - Use these small business marketing techniques to achieve small business marketing magic!

Further Reading:- 3 Ultimate Online Business Branding Strategies

What Are Your Views? I'd Love To Hear From You!

Leave Your Thoughts In The Comments Below!

6 Spanking Tips On Using YouTube For Business Marketing

Want to use YouTube for business marketing? Want to open up your business and its products/services to the world? Use YouTube video marketing! This a great way of getting the word out about your business. Here i offer 6 spanking tips on using youtube for business marketing plus one extra tip for the shy entrepreneurs out there who are affraid of the camera!

YouTube Video Branding

Do You Brand Your Business?

Do you already brand you business in a certain way or is there a selected image and feel you like to spread about your business? If so you should know how important branding your business is! Its also just as important to brand your videos, give them something that makes them stand out and makes them yours!

There are two ways of achieving a YouTube Video Branding. You can make your video branded by using the same person speaking, the same background and the same tone of voice/language aswell as that you can also brand your YouTube videos with editing. For example, you can add a logo, business name and web address infront of the actual video to brand your business; but make sure you keep this layout similar on each video!

Upload Frequently

It is very important to upload videos to YouTube frequently and keep your viewers up to date with whats going on. It may take a while for your YouTube video marketing to start to kick in and for your videos to start getting traffic and views but you must keep uploading. The more you upload the more content there is with your businesses branding on it to be watched by others.

But DONT let the frequency of your video production effect the Quality of it!

Produce Quality Videos For YouTube

Quality is King in business... every entrepreneur and business man (and lady of course) should know that! Its the same with YouTube video marketing... let your quality slip and its going to leave a bad impression of your business on the viewer. If you have to, take extra time time to make sure your videos are up to scratch before you upload them; else it could have a negative impact on your business! Now that wouldnt be good!

Offer And Serve More Than Just Promotions

People are looking for advice and useful information -- Not Promotions

I know its tempting but dont try and sell to people straight away. You first have to get them to watch your video (which needs plenty of 'thumbs ups' from other viewers) and you then want to give them something they were looking for, you can give them advice, tips and/or information on any topic related to your business. This can win over they're trust and pre-sell your product/service. You can then in the last 30seconds of your video, promote your business, its website and its products/services.

Make A Convosation And Be Social

When making your videos use your brain and come up with ways of creating a conversation... you can ask a simple question at the end of your video, like; Did that answear you question? You can also ask the viewers opinions on something or even make a video wishing people a happy christmas once a year.

Also when people make a conversation, make sure you reply and join in aswell. By doing this you can get a buzz and sense of excitment going around your videos (this will get people to come back) but even more importantly once they've spoken to you and you have spoken to them directly and personally, they're much more likely to buy your product/service from you.

Use Several Forms Of Online Marketing

This is a great way to get a sense of excitment going around your business. If you bring togeather more than one online marketing strategy you can get increased results. For example, within your online marketing campaign you could have a blog, a YouTube account and Twitter. Bring the 3 togeather, get a views on your videos and then send those viewers to both your blog for news, updates and promotions on your business aswell as twitter where they can follow you, ask you questions and be updated about your business, its products and even your new video upload.

"It all about being social these days and using YouTube video marketing, twitter and blogging togeather can give great results."

Affraid Of The Camera? - Here's An Idea!

Affraid of the camera? Well dont think you cant still use YouTube for business marketing becouse here's a way i found of getting away from the camera; while still producing a proffesional 'video'.

1. Simpily make a background image displaying your businesses name, logo and contact info (e.g. Phone number, twitter name, blog/website adress) and a Thumbs up reminder to try and get people to 'thumbs up' your video
2. Make a video but when editing add this image over the top, it will be more of a podcast than a video but you will be able to put it on youtube!

So theres my 6 tips on using YouTube for business marketing!

Further Reading: 3 Ultimate Business Branding Strategies

I'd Love To Hear You Views, Tips and Advice on YoutTube for Business Marketing

Leave Them In The Comments Below!

3 Ultimate Online Business Branding Strategies

Business branding can be hard thing to accomplish. It can be a very complicated thing to achieve that needs many hours of thinking and doing. Once you've decided how your branded business should look to the target customer, you then have to decide how your going to achieve this look. To do this you need to take a specific route and choose from a range of branding strategies to get the best results for your business.

Online Business Branding

My Personal favourite way of branding and marketing my business is to use online branding strategies. Branding and marketing your business online can be very cheap and can have great, lasting results. My three favourite ways of branding threw the internet is threw online internet marketing, online video marketing and online social marketing.

Online Internet Marketing

Online internet marketing is a way of marketing that almost every business uses these days. Internet marketing is a way of marketing your business via a website or blog. You could start a free blog using blogger or word press and announce any changes or interesting information (like a summer sale) to your customers. You could also make a website advertising -- and informing people about -- your business and its products/services.

Online internet marketing offers a lot and it doesn’t cost very much if you do it yourself; but if you don’t have time to create and optimize a website you can always pay a website developer to do one for you.

Once you have a website or blog built make sure it is branded as well; website branding/blog branding is very important. The branding of your website/blog can reflect your business, thus give the same impression of your business to the reader. Make sure the branding of your website/blog works with your ideal business branding.

Online Video Marketing

Online video marketing is an interesting and fairly new way of business promotion and branding. Video branding is simply done by making a video and posting it to video sharing sites like YouTube. You should brand your video -- just like your website and business -- by talking about a unique product, keeping the videos similar by using the same backgrounds and person speaking as well as a logo -- and/or website link -- on your video.

A video marketing campaign can be used not only for business branding but also business marketing and product/service promotion. Using video is very simple, cheap and can go viral within days; if it’s a good video you’ve made.

Some good advice for online video marketing is not to smother your video and viewers with promotions but give the viewer something of use and interest, this will help win over they’re trust. If your product is related to skin care and acne treatments you could do a video called “10 ways to reduce acne” and spend 5 minutes talking about how to reduce it and then in the last 30 seconds say something like “for increased results - use these 10 tips and my acne cream,; which is available at … “. If you pair both Internet and video marketing together this can be very good strategy as you can then direct the view over to your site where they can buy your product. 

Online Social Marketing

Online social marketing is a bit like blogging. It is another way of getting the word out about what’s happening in your business. You can use sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn to market your business and/or website. It is harder to brand your self and your business on a social site; but it is possible by taking care with the tone you use, the pictures you display and what you offer; don’t spam but offer information of value like tips, advice and special offers on your products/services.

Bringing the 3 strategies together…

All of these online branding strategies are effective and cheap, they can all bring increased custom and interest to your business and its products/services. I recommended using several or all of these strategies to get the best results for your business branding and promotion.

Have any thoughts or questions? 

Leave them below in the comments!

Types Of Market Research - Desk and Field Research

Market Research And Analysis

There are two main types of market research. These are desk market research and field market research. Market Research is very important for a business and its power should not be under-estimated. Without doing a sufficient amount of both types of market research a business can easily spend alot of money without getting any benefits back! Market analysis is very important for a marketing campaign and can help you market your business to the right people -- who are intrested in your product or service -- and not the wrong people.

Market research should be an on-going task and you want to get feed back from your customers all of the time! Things to ask your customers are; where they heard about you and your product/service; what they thought about your product/service; and what could be done to improve it.

Types Of Market Research

As I said in the paragraph of this blog post, there are two types of market research; Desk market research and field market research. I shall explain the two types below.

Desk Market Research

Desk Research is where you collect and analyze information that alredy exsists but has not alredy been collected togeather. This information can be found in a variety of informative sources such as the yellow pages. The main purposes of doing desk research is to find out:

• Competitors - Who they are, where they are, and how many of them there are.
• Businesses - How many there are, wether there competition, and where they are.
• Economic trends - Are people buying the products/services you provide?
• Householders - How many of a particular type of householder are there in the area of your business?
• Market trends - Is the market/industry growing or shrinking?

Field Market Research

Field research is done by direct conversation with a -- or group of -- potential customers. This form of research is all about getting out and speaking to you target buyer; you may be able to make a questionaire for the target buyer to fill in and answear the questions you need to know. The main purposes of doing field research is to find out information such as:

• How often do customers purchase the product/service you offer.
• How likey they are to purchase the product/service from you.
• Market price they expect?
• How they decide on a supplier.
• A big enough market; with enough customer, to build a successful business?

So now you know the two types of market research and what there purposes are. If you want to know any more on market research, desk market research or field market research -- or you have any comments on this blog post -- feel free to comment below and I shall get back to you as soon as possible!

New Business Financing - What Is Marketing?

Financing a new business can be tough but its something that almost all entrepreneurs have to do. The worry of having to find the money each month to keep the business ticking over is stressful enough on its own without the worry of also having to finance a marketing campaign; to help get the business to grow and become successful.

Now what is marketing you may ask? Marketing is a way of getting the message out about your company and its products/services to your potential customers. It can be done threw many methods from face-to-face referrals to TV adverts to flyers to a popular modern method of internet marketing and websites. All of these method have there pros and cons but for a new business that is struggling for finances I recommend online marketing. Its cheap, simple and effective! After all a website can be made for less than £100 a year and everybody is online these days.

So there’s your answer to ‘what is marketing?’ and a very simple, cheap and effective way to market your business while on low funds.

5 Tips To Business Loans And Marketing Your Business!

When starting a new business, entrepreneurs often take on loans to get the ball rolling on their new venture but the question every new, budding entrepreneur has to ask themselves is how much should i borrow? Becouse at the end of the day the more you borrow now, the more you have to pay back later.

Money is needed for everything in business, materials, manufacture, employees and marketing; to name a few. Now the biggest one of those is marketing. Marketing your business is very important and is not like buying materials. It takes alot of thought and more importantly can also take alot of money.

The following are my 5 tips to business loans and marketing you business:

1. Take Your Time! - Dont make quick, un-thought threw decisions about loans and marketing; if you do theres a good chance youl regret it later!

2. Dont Borrow To Much! - This is an obvious point to make but the mistake is made all to much. Dont take on to big of a business loan, its better to have a small business -- with all debts paid off -- after 3 years than no business -- becouse you couldnt pay back the debts you owed -- after 3 years.

3. Read The Small Print - As always with things like this, make sure you know what you and your business are agreeing too!

4. Value For Money When Maketing - When marketing make sure you get good value for money, i sugest using online marketing for great, cheap and effective results.

5. Experiment and Shop Around - Experiment with different ways of marketing your business -- after all not every business is the same -- and then shop around for companies offering the skills and services you need to market in this way.

Financing A Business? Use Online Marketing!

We all know that financing a business can be a struggle and we all know that for a business to be succesful it needs to be marketed well! Now your thinking "isnt marketing expensive?" Well yes and no, a full marketing campaign using T.V. adverts, radio adverts and news papers can cost millions but what about online marketing?

Online Marketing, A Revolution in
Cheap Marketing

When most of us think about marketing the obvious comes to mind like television, bill boards and news paper ads. We rarely think about the others like online marketing and video marketing. An online marketing campaign can be very easy and considerably cheaper to devise than the ordinary marketing campaign. As well as its low cost its also very efficient as its always there; a T.V. advert only last for maybe 10 or 20 seconds but a website can last -- and be ranked well in the search engines -- for years if done properly.

So next time your worried about how your going to finance a business and its marketing campaign... turn to online marketing, a cheaper and more efficient way to market your business with lasting results!