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The key difference is the focus on making sure overall customer situations mesh with your overall company direction. Not to get distracted, or veer off course of your overall company direction, but at every step of development for your strategic plan, and execution of your plan, you are indeed on course for the overall vision and goals of the company.

Content vs. Execution

Many companies try to figure out how to sell more before they find out how to provide a solution to their consumers’ needs. The procedure for accomplishing this is exactly the same every single time, for every kind of business. It is the advertiser’s job to pay attention to human nature, to research human nature, and to have some insight into how people make their purchasing decisions. Strategically, marketing programs and advertising should get the attention of target market prospects and facilitate their decision-making. This lowers their risk for taking the next step in the buying process. By understanding what’s important to your target market, you can then put together a strategy that gets more qualified prospects to call, reduces your sales cycle, and increases your conversion ratios. After the strategy is in place, the tactical execution simply consists of testing and implementing your strategic plan.

Business-to-business Strategic Marketing

There is a business-to-business aspect to many companies, in which case these business-to-business transactions count as customer situation. For marketing to businesses that are your clients and customers, this means combining industry sector segmentation and product use with other factors related to purchasing decisions. For example, this would include purchase criteria and decision motivations that effect larger, enterprise sized purchases. In this case, part of your strategic marketing plan is to build strong, personal relationships with these larger businesses, and focus on providing customized service, products and even anticipate the needs of your business clients. Although a business is obviously a larger entity than a single customer, many of the same principles prevail; the most important being a keen sense of service, and making them feel they are important and that you pay special attention to them.

A strategic marketing plan encompasses developing a message, and developing the best way to communicate this message—and contemplates the best strategy to deal with communicating this message. Tactical marketing is important as it executes the strategic plan, but it is important to keep these two subjects divided as you develop a successful marketing plan for your company.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free JV Wealth e-zine.

Google has a slew of tools to help you analyze, optimize, and understand what’s going on inside their index.

If you want to find out what keywords Google actually has in it’s index for your site, you’ll need to register for their Google Webmaster Tools. It’s free and takes about 5 minutes to setup. You can start by going to http://www.google.com/webmasters/start/

The picture below is a snapshot of the actual keywords and keyword phrases that Google has inside their index. It’s very informative to know which words and phrases actually are inside their index compared to what we “think” Google is indexing.

Action Tip Takeaway (ATT): Register for a Google Webmaster account (or have your Webmaster do it) and get your site setup so you can find out what keywords Google has in it’s index for you. After you find your indexed keywords, you may want to alter some of your HTML content and tags to align with what’s in the index.

All businesses share the challenge of finding new business.  We recently conducted a survey of 700 small businesses.  43 percent of them needed to add over 10 new clients a year.  It should come as no surprise that $90 billion is being spent by businesses in the US to grow (American Marketing Association).  $20 billion is being spent in online marketing alone.  The common marketing portfolio for a company includes advertising (online and offline), public relations, event marketing (tradeshows), client marketing (referrals) and telemarketing (cold calling).  An effective marketing strategy will employ multiple initiatives under these areas targeting their customer/prospect segments.  Each of these items is important (in different varying levels) to achieve marketing results.  But, is there a way to achieve consistent marketing results without having the budget of a Cisco or a Microsoft?

Having been in technology marketing for nearly 20 years, I have seen various marketing methods emerge and some fall to the waste side (does anyone remember direct mail?).  The Internet has also provided alternative marketing methods by establishing new channels to targeted customers.  Our survey pointed out that most small business are not only concerned about getting good results from their marketing campaigns but are also concerned with high upfront costs of specific marketing campaigns.  With this in mind, here are ten low cost and low risk ways to drive new clients for your business.  By the way, it goes without saying that you have a clean web site that provides enough of a user experience regarding your service and easy links to the appropriate calls-to-action.

The top ten low cost and low risk ways to drive new clients for your business:

1. Client Referrals

Your path of least resistance to new customers is often from your existing client base.  Assuming you are delivering quality work, getting a client to refer another client often happens without even asking.  So why not ask?  Put together a campaign to drive new client referrals offering incentives to your existing clients.  Perhaps make a donation to their favorite charity, or discount on your service or even cash!  Be prudent in tracking client referrals as it is likely that your best referrals will originate from the same set of clients.  Always send thank you notes although I recommend David’s Cookies or Dale and Thomas Popcorn (a real office pleaser).

2. Blog yourself

While I know I am merely inviting you to join the myriad of people out there who are sharing their views, opinions and thoughts via the web it really is a good way to get the word out there.  Blogger and Wordpress are two free Blog site that make it really easy to set up and publish your blogs.  Blog regularly and more importantly make sure you publish your blog on your social network pages.  Blogs are often tapped right into the search engines so even by doing nothing you are getting the word out there.  (Check our Fastpitch Networking Blog promotion tools.)

3. Inverse Public Relations

Have you ever read an article online and seen a trail of comments and responses to the article?  Well why not do that yourself (assuming you have something interesting to add).  If you are a subject matter expert (and even if you are not) why not add your two cents to topical articles.  Include a link to your Blog or your web site in the response.  Of course it is self promotion but it is promotion nonetheless.

4. Socialize yourself online

Word of mouth is always a great way to drive new business.  Working ones rolodex was often the terminology for the art of taking out ones rolodex and “dialing for dollars” - reaching out to your contacts to see who might be able to refer some business.  Social networking and moreover professional networking has added a whole new dimension to managing ones rolodex.  Networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook as well as niche professional networks such as BizNik and Fastpitch make it easy to establish an online profile and provide good tools for reaching out to your network.  Join a group on Facebook or set up a live event on Biznik.

5. Face-to-face networking

Although there is a fee for the more popular networking groups they are a great way to meet other professionals all of whom are interested not in sharing photos or videos but in growing their businesses.  There are online versions of these groups such as Network for Professionals and a number of Meetup groups.  Start a Meet up or join one inviting everyone to happy hour (on you of course).  You’ll be certain to draw a nice crowd of likeminded professionals.

6. Web site optimization

Having a web site without it being optimized for search engines is like having an unlisted telephone number - both are bad for business.  You need to make sure that people could find you.  Go to Guru.com or eLance and find an expert in SEO (search engine optimization) and pay some money to make sure that your web site is posted across the internet.

7. Pay-for-Performance

If you don’t have the stomach to deploy a PPC campaign and wade through all the unqualified leads and responses why not look into a pay-for-performance model.  These are also called CPA or cost per acquisition.  Usually the vendor will determine the price per successful lead acquisition.  This could be paying only for leads that complete a registration process for instance.  Salesconx.com (self promotion) also employs a pay-for-performance model which allows the buyer (the marketer or business) to establish the price for being introduced to a potential customer.  Salesconx has one advantage over current CPA provides insofar as having no minimum commitments.  This lets you get up and running very easily, quickly and inexpensively to closely monitor your return on investment.

8. Share the Wealth (Partnering)

Aligning yourself with another company is a great way to “double up” on your sales efforts.  If you providing expertise in X and a likely other vendor of your customer provides Y why not partner up with that company.  Create an incentive for the other company such as a percentage of revenue generated.  You could share clients and create targeted marketed programs reaching out to both your client bases.  Maybe deliver a unified presentation or online seminar to draw the synergies of both your companies.  This is generally an easy initiative to ‘kick off’ but often a bit harder to deliver in full.  To make a partnership successful requires investment (mostly of time) so be patient.  Keep in mind that your object is to add N new clients from this partner.  So as long as you are meeting your objective it is certainly worth the time and money.

9. Expert yourself

Assuming you are knowledgeable in a certain field why not make your expertise available to others ‘free of charge’?  For example, if you are a Tax specialist why not offer your community church or local library a free communal lecture on “Tips and Traps for Tax Preparations”.  Many organization and institutions are regularly looking for topical content and experts so why not offer these folks your services.  My mother was an interior designer in her own practice and started out by writing articles for the local paper on low cost decorating tips.  If you are in the health sector try the local gym - they regularly have evening informational classes.  Local chambers of commerce also have periodic meetings are often seek panel representatives.  Any opportunity for you to speak in front of an audience where you look like an expert in your field is a solid opportunity.

10. Independent sales reps

If you believe that your product or service is easy to understand and relatively straightforward to sell, why not recruit selling professionals that are paid only on commissions.  It wasn’t too long ago that most sales representatives were independent and there are presently 2.4 million independent sales representatives in the US alone.  Granted most of these folks aren’t selling synergistic products/services but, it does demonstrate just how many folks out there make their money solely through sales.  Try placing an advertisement in Craig’s list for independent sales reps in your industry or marketplace and see what happens.  It does require a good of time to train and manage independent folks but getting a few more clients into the pipeline thru a commission only source is certainly worth the effort.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free JV Wealth e-zine.

If your looking to increase targeted traffic to your website or blog, here’s a straight forward strategy that I used to bring 172 people (210 pageviews) to my blog in a few short days using a viral content method.

Basic Testing Method

Through testing different Twitter post headlines, I found one that one style (quantification of facts) of headline outperformed my control headline by 210%. The Tweet post that I used was “6 effective ways to use twitter as a lead generation tool“. Now obviously you can tell by the title that there’s a clear benefit that was stated with a quantifiable fact. Instead of just saying “effective ways to use Twitter”, I started it with “6″. By using qualification in your Tweet posts, you add more believability, credibility and newsworthiness.

Follow me, I’ll follow you - Reciprocation

If your using the “follow me, I’ll follow you” method of reciprocation to add followers to your Twitter account, you should be choosing who you follow strategically. Choosing people who are your ideal target marker, or have a high probability of benefiting from your product or service is a good way of thinking about who you should choose to follow. If your in the PR, SEO or Copywriting business and you’re not targeting business owners who have a high probability of using your services, your Tweets will fall on deaf ears.

Tailor your Tweets to go Viral - Write with your end user in mind

If your using Twitter for business purposes, it’s essential to tailor your Tweets with your end user (you followers) in mind. My blog is about Joint Venture Marketing and Business Optimization Strategies, so I keep my Tweets tailored to these topics 95% of the time. Simply by tailoring my content to my target audience and providing highly relevant content with the right message, at the right time, and to the right audience I was able to get my Tweet picked up by 38 other Bloggers and media websites.

So my point is, regardless of your niche, you can get very targeted traffic to your site with the right message, at the right time, to the right audience.

Action Tip Takeaway (ATT): Go to your followers on Twitter and click on at least 10 profiles to see if you can find a pattern, consistency or particular demographic that will direct you in a particular direction as far as the type of content you may want to consider writing about. Once you find a pattern that your folowers fall into, use some type of quantifiable fact to further increase the benefit to your offering.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free JV Wealth e-zine.

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Obviously, sales and marketing are still very serious needs that must be met in order for you to even have a business, but other people can provide those needs if you’re willing to let them do so. Makers of widgets can hire companies to process their orders, ship the widgets, and even handle customer service in its totality. Children’s book authors often work with agents and publishers to create successful marketing campaigns for the distribution and sales of the new book . These types of partnerships are joint ventures in which both companies win.

Focus on your expertise

The first step in forming this type of joint venture is determining what you do best. If it is a product you provide or an excellent service, you need to pin down how your time is best spent.

Then figure out what part of your company you would like someone else to handle. It could be as small as having an outside vendor handle your payroll, or as large as forming a joint venture for future advertising campaigns. Creating a joint venture for a large or even small part of what you are doing now will allow you more time and energy to focus on what you already do.

Seeking out joint venture partnerships

On the other end of the spectrum, if you are an excellent sales and marketing professional, you might want to seek out a company that has synergies with your business. If you love their widgets, then propose a joint venture marketing campaign that will propel both of you into the forefront of the target audience. Or, if you find a great children’s book author and you sell children’s toys, then you can propose a joint venture email campaign.

The most important aspect in forming a joint venture is your personal belief in what you do. If we are honest, we all know there is something in which we excel. Indeed, we may have become good at many things, but chances are we all have a special skill or talent.

If you can discover your specialized talent, then you will see where others are not as adept in that area. Actually, you are likely to find people that despise doing what you love to do, and vice-versa. This is a great thing! The beauty of a joint venture is that your strengths are the other partner’s weaknesses, and vice-versa. This helps you create a marketing campaign or business strategy that is more powerful than your individual efforts. Finding the synergies and capitalizing upon those differences in a joint venture can take your business to the next level.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free JV Wealth e-zine.

Collaboration Marketing may not be a must for your business, but it’s certainly something worth exploring. You may not need to collaborate with other companies to grow your business, and you may be satisfied with the size and scope of your business. But even if you are not looking to grow, change, or expand, a collaboration strategy may help you maintain the smooth running of your current operations, which could mean less day to day work for you.

There are two distinct types of Collaboration Marketing that are important to understand. One deals with the actual advertising and marketing of your products, the other relates to the market in which you sell and distribute your products. Before making a decision about whether a collaboration strategy is right for your business, it is important to understand and explore both aspects of this type of marketing.

Advertising Collaborations focus on shared industry resources and word of mouth partnerships. If you have a small business specializing in making wedding cakes, you will benefit by making contact with other wedding industry professionals such as photographers, caterers and consultants. If a photographer has a client who has not yet decided on a bakery for their special cake, the advertising collaboration creates a point of contact and referral to recommend your wedding cake business to the client.

By the same token, if you have clients who have not yet selected a photographer for their wedding, you can recommend your collaboration partner, who is a wedding photographer. The success of your Advertising Collaboration will depend on your ability to form and develop successful business relationships.

Market Share Collaboration deals directly with the market in which your products are bought and sold and may be a large undertaking, but it’s an important process to understand in any marketplace. This type of collaboration has to do with banding together with other small businesses in your area, and forming a small cooperative to maximize cost savings for products you all use or need to do business.

For example, the Central Minnesota Buckwheat Growers formed a 16 member cooperative in order to market their buckwheat directly to larger buyers, and they received a substantially higher price for their product than they could have received individually.

You are probably not growing or selling buckwheat over the Internet, but this model holds true and translates across the board for any business. If you are a small business, you may benefit from partnerships with other small businesses in your same industry just like the Buckwheat Growers did when they formed a collective.

Collaboration Marketing is a model I believe you will find merits exploration. If done properly, it will provide a helpful way of expanding and solidifying your business for years to come.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free JV Wealth e-zine.

@VividEpiphany Good luck with your JV! Email me if you would like a critique of your plan. No charge. in reply to VividEpiphany #

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