MLM (Multi-Level Marketing)-A Real Business Or MLM Scan

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MLM (Multi Level Marketing)-A Real Business Or MLM Scam?

Most people when they hear the term MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) they usually insert the word -scheme- or -scam- at the end – this gives the whole business model a bad name. Well maybe I can change your negative perception and tell you how a legal immigrant from Mexico, worked the fields in California starting at the age 15. He stumbled on MLM, and is now a millionaire. Now that absolutely amazing- Not only are -home businesses- or -MLM’s- very successful they are incredibly fulfilling. This business model is the marketing strategy with some of the longest standing and largest organizations in this country. Mary Kay, Avon, Ambit Energy, Herbalife, and Amway are just a few leading the way on Direct Sales Top 100. MLM is a marketing approach in which the Independent Consultants are compensated not only for sales they personally generate, but also for the sales of others they recruit, creating a downline of distributors. Most commonly, the consultants are expected to sell products/services directly to consumers by means of relationship referrals and word of mouth marketing. Kind of sounds like a typical business whereas the owner hires the head of marketing and he then hires a sales manager and then she hires a sales associate, etc-. Sounds legit right – so why the bad press? Many MLM companies have been a frequent target of criticism and lawsuits. The fixation on the pyramid style of marketing model makes people jump right to the highly illegal -Pyramid Scheme- of the past. The initial startup costs can be considered high by some. But compared to starting up a -brick & mortar- business or franchise it is pennies. People also say there is too much an emphasis on recruitment of lower-tiered consultants over actual sales; but this done so there is not excessive pressure on a single recruit to have to produce or know 1000’s of people. You may know numerous people that sell products from Mary Kay, Avon, Tupperware and so on. They peddle their products and services because they believe in them and the companies that stand behind them. These companies empower their consultants who sell their products to actually establish their own businesses. This is very attractive to many entrepreneurial-minded people who want to be their own boss but also want some pre-established structure and support. Most MLM organizations provide a very strong infrastructure and great training as well as impeccable rewards. And best of all you get to work your job around the rest of your life instead of the other way around. The next time you meet someone who runs or are approached with an opportunity for a -home business- or -MLM- give them a chance and listen; it may be a break you have been waiting for. Until you have seen it, you should never say no to it. When opportunity knocks will you answer the door?? www.ambitious.toolsrock.com

Top 5 Effective Web Marketing Expert Techniques You Didn’t Know

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Not everyone is adaptable to the ever-changing world of SEO. No one can claim knowing some secret tricks to increase website traffic. The working style of SEO is still a mystery to many website owners. However, you can get effective results if you follow the intended way of optimizing you site to make it SEO friendly.

Rush to the Masters

It is highly recommended that you should consult with a Web Design Company in Maryland as soon as you face lack of traffic to your website. They will offer you highly effective SEO service packages at an affordable rate. There is no better way than consulting the masters in SEO for superior web marketing. You can do your homework on SEO Services in MD and save your expertise for later times. Getting a permanent hold of the web marketing techniques is not possible overnight. You need to regularly add new web contents, articles and perform necessary updates to keep pace with this dynamic system of optimization.

Site Visibility Issue Demystified

Are you facing site visibility issues? Let the Web Development Company Rockville MD handle the problem with care. You will experience steady improvements within weeks of optimization process. If you go through the online resources, you will find that there are many interrelating factors such as the site design, arrangement of texts, relevant content, right keyword density, backlinks, and effective Social media marketing, involved in placing your website to the top page of Google. Guidelines to Follow

Following the prescribed guidelines for effective page optimization will benefit you in more ways than you can ever imagine. SEO Services in Washington DC offers you simplified guidelines to follow that does not require any special knowledge. A website can be optimized for different traffic purposes. You can optimize your business website according to local, nationwide or global traffic. Each of the purpose has its own set of different SEO techniques properly implemented by Professional Web Marketing Services MD. This will help you get further knowledge and confidence in their professional services that can earn you more money in future.

Content Optimization Any Internet marketing consultancy firm MD carefully focuses on your website content. You need relevant website content that is contextual to the applied keywords. There should be a systematic balance of using the number of keywords in a website content to ensure proper optimization of website. Too much keyword usage can make your site blacklisted and you will have no other option than staring the optimization work from the scratch. Positive Search engine optimization in MD will help you stay on the top in all the popular search engines. You will significantly gain increased traffic to your site with the effective help from the industry leading Web marketing Expert.

Value Added Services

You should select the Best business application Services Rockville MD for your website by going through a strict search and analysis. You must look for at least 90 days warranty in each of the exclusive web marketing services. If you do not get positive page ranking results within the period, then the Professional web design Services in MD will work at free of cost until they can get you some effective page visibility results.

Contact:

Website: http://www.strategicwebmarketingmd.com/ 14417 Rich Branch Drive, North Potomac MD 20878,USA Telephone: 240-750-8799 Email:

Nike’s Marketing Strategy

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Nikes marketing strategy rested entirely upon a brand image which is favourable and has evolved into a great multinational enterprise over time. The favourable brand image has been kept afloat due to the strong association with the Nikes logo which is quite distinctive and the slogan Just Do It which has been used in advertisement for quite some time. The company has been known to invest heavily in advertisements and brand promotion (Fill C, 2005 p.54).

Market Segmentation
Most of the consumers of Nikes products are mainly sportsmen. This is so because of the utility that comes with the products. An athlete is more likely to go a sports shoe designed and marketed by Nike more than a person who detests sporting and exercises. Nike targets these consumers by agreements between Nike and athletic teams, colleges athletic teams1 etc for product sponsorship and eventual promotion to the members of these teams. In this way, Nike is able to reach a wide number of consumers and consumers who are more likely to buy. Even though others are likely to buy the products, Nike pays specific emphatic targeting to the athlete more than any group of individuals even though it also targets the youth who have embraced the hip hop culture (Mercer David, 1996, pp 171).

Targeting strategies
Nike lays a number of strategies to target their immediate consumers; athletes and other sportsmen. The targeting strategies include among others the sponsorship of products by professional athletic teams, celebrity athletes and college athletic teams. This strategy is specifically successful because of its ability to reach a large number of athletes. If the athletic team manager prescribes a specific type of track shoes made by Nike, the trainees have no option other than to buy them. The teams can as well buy the track shoes in bulky and supply them to the team members.
The second strategy that Nike applies is the designing of product destination. It does this by associating success with the product. For example, when a celebrity athlete sponsors a specific brand of athletic shoes, the brand will be associated with success. This psychological effect is reinforced with advertisements that affirm this position.
Finally, Nike targets the consumers who are likely to develop product intimacy; those who care more about the utility and quality of the product than the price. In this way, the pricing is not affected too much in a bid to accommodate a large number of consumers. However, price has also been factored in Nikes marketing strategies as shall be seen later in this paper (Frank, 2004, p.173)

Pricing Strategies
As stated in the foregoing section, Nike targets the consumers who embrace product intimacy and thus care less about the product. This has enables Nike to set relatively higher prices than its competitors. This is a strategy that calls for higher pricing points so as to push the perceived product value. It has been established that consumers who consider a product to be of high quality are likely to pay the high price more often and consistently. Once consumers develop product intimacy, they come to associate their person with the product and will pay whatever price quoted on the product provided it has the Nike logo on it.
Another very important thing to note is the fact that Nike uses the vertical integration pricing strategy in which they take ownership of the participants at channel levels that differ and they also engage in multifarious channel level operations both in a bid to control costs and thus influence pricing function (Goldman S, 2000, pp154)

Distribution Strategies
Distribution strategies embraced by an organization can either give them an edge in market or make them lag behind the winners in the market. The more efficient the product distribution is the more sales and thus more profits. The delivery of the right product and at the right time to the consumer not only effects utility but also leads to high degree of consumer satisfaction and loyalty. Nike distributes its products on level basis. The high priced premium products are given to certain distributors while leaving the low priced to be sold at highly discounted prices at mega retail stores such as Wal-Mart. Whereas Reebok embraced a limited distribution strategy Nike ventured more into a global3 market capitalization (Jeannet J, 2000, pp 44).

Promotional and Communication Strategies
Apart from Nike selling quality products which have lead to a high degree of customer loyalty, the promotional strategies that the company employs are simply superb. Nike has contracted a number of professional and celebrity athletes which have managed to draw a considerable attention to their products. Some of the sportsmen signed by Nike include soccer stars such as Ronaldinho, Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos, Basketballers such as Jermaine O’Neal and Lebron James2, triathlete Lance Armstrong and golf superstar Tiger Woods. This has created a relatively high degree of Nike products awareness. Besides the signing of celebrity sportsmen to promote their products, Nike has also employed a great deal of advertisements through the mass media. Nike employs a selective- demand advertisement focused on the high priced shoes used for traditional sports (Goldman S, 2000, pp154).

Conclusion
Nike has remained and continues to remain at the top of production and distribution of sports gear and equipment. However, it should be noted that competitive pressure cannot allow Nike to sleep at the top. The recent Reebok- Adidas merger poses a great challenge to devise new marketing strategies to continue leading or recede to oblivion. The following recommendations are suggested in a situation where marketing management is competent. These include:
Increased market share through a new product development, competent pricing strategies, advertisement and other sound promotional activities.
Restructure market dominance by driving away competitors mainly through fierce promotional strategy coupled by pricing function that will make the market quite unattractive for the competitors.
Increased social responsibility to strengthen the image of the company
Diversification of market through factoring the Asians and Black Americans in their product promotion besides doing a research to establish the tastes of these groups.
Venture into new distribution channels especially in international markets
Different pricing strategy so as to open up a new market segments.

All the above show a competent marketing management can hoist organizations top become market leaders and making the market leaders maintain their competitive edge in the market through adherence to marketing ethics, marketing plans and well thought out and formulated marketing strategies.

Distributed Marketing E-mail Bliss = Exacttarget & Sproutloud

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The E-Mail Marketing Vendor Landscape

Recently, ExactTarget announced they raised $30 million in new funding bringing the companys total funding up to $208 million since inception. This comes on the heels of other announcements, such as iContacts $40 million dollar raise last year. Clearly, the e-mail marketing industry continues to grow.

E-Mail marketing companies all differ in their core focus it is important to size up your own requirements before jumping in.

Recently, we put together the following slide for our national brand clients. We believe it is helpful to understand a business sales channel first before approaching the e-mail marketing vendor landscape.

At SproutLoud, we think about sales channels in three categories: Direct, Dependent and Independent.

In Direct sales channels, as the category name suggests, the organization sending the e-mail owns the business or consumer relationship and therefore communicates directly. Enterprise e-mail marketing platforms like ExactTarget work really well.

In either Dependent or Independent sales channels, the organization is selling their brands product or service through a third party. Franchise marketing, independent agent marketing, VARs, affiliates, home-based employees, etc. The communication to the end buyer of the brand is happening through an in-direct channel (or by a local entity). In a dependent sales channel, i.e. a franchiser / franchisee, the organization has legal authority on directing how the third party advertises. With an independent sales channel, i.e. a manufacturer selling through retailers, that same legal authority doesnt exist. Indeed, the third party may have many options on what brands product / services to market and how to market them.

Once these sales channels are identified, the needs for an e-mail marketing tool begin to surface. As this graphic illustrates, supporting indirect dependent and independent sales channels is complex. Whereas an e-mail marketing manager working for a centralized organization has direct access to the customer to sculpt proper e-marketing tactics, a distributed marketing organization has to rely on other channels to communicate their brand message. The customer relationship is owned by a third party. In these cases, a typical Enterprise e-mail marketing platform, and corresponding services behind the platform, doesnt suffice.

The more independent the sales channel, the greater the risk to the brand because the marketing message is less controlled. In addition, the brand struggles with receiving proper business intelligence when the communications are being sent through a third-party. If the brand isnt providing the proper tools, chances are that the third party is having their own dialogue with the customer in a way that isnt necessarily brand compliant. For example, the third party is creating e-mail templates using brand assets from scratch with tools like Constant Contact.

With respect to e-mail marketing tools, the brand has to find a way to support a greater number of versions (all the requests coming from the field to customize and deploy e-mail marketing assets), even while the number of contacts per e-mail blast may be minimal (smaller business entities typically have smaller list sizes versus millions of e-mail subscribers in enterprise lists). This makes for a logistical nightmare.

In distributed marketing environments, versus centralized enterprise marketing environments, different business needs mean very different approaches to choosing the right software from the e-mail marketing landscape.

Advertising And Marketing Communications Management Program Offers Biggest Breadth Of Digital Inform

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There are many fields in which the duties of professionals vary. One such field is the management of marketing communications and advertising. Most often, however, tasks revolve around the control of a few key advertising and public relations roles. As such, these professionals must develop or refine a communications strategy, which includes the branding of a company or client; identify opportunities for customer research and to implement these data gathering and targeting initiatives; work with product design and production teams to coordinate the refine of old products or the creation of new products. Unlike other marketing and communications professionals, these managers are in direct contact with clients, helping them to develop and then meet their goals.

At Centennial College, students can attend a marketing and communications program aptly called Advertising and Marketing Communications Management, which has been recognized by the Interactive Advertising Bureau as offering the largest breadth of digital /mobile curriculum.

The aim of this three-year offering is to introduce students to the entire advertising process, which includes research, developing strategies, campaign planning, copywriting, production, media planning and buying.

For a realistic experience, students in this marketing and advertising communication program in Toronto encounter elements of the real world in their courses. For example, they must meet firm deadlines, complete activities in which multitasking is involved, work under pressure and deliver professional presentations. Once students have an idea of what to expect in the field, they have the opportunity to apply their skills to the real world, as this is the only Greater Toronto Area college program with a four-month internship. Aside from working with a host of professionals and gaining an idea of how their roles function in the real world, students should also take this opportunity to expand their professional networks.

It is important to note that fifth semester offers students specialized streams that provide an advanced concentration in copywriting, media planning and buying or account service.

As a respected advertising program Toronto offers, this undertaking supplies students with the option to enter the field, for which they are fully prepared after three years or increase their knowledge through further education.

With the abilities to work in all areas of advertising and marketing communications, including account management, media buying and planning, marketing, digital/mobile, copywriting, production, direct marketing, promotions and event marketing, students have been hired by many reputable companies. Among these organizations are: Anderson DDB, Boom Marketing, Grey Canada, MacLaren McCan, Media Edge, Mindshare, Starcom, Young & Rubicams and more.

Eligible graduates may benefit from Centennial College’s educational partnerships that allow graduates to apply academic credit towards further study. This program has partnered with Alberta’s Athabasca University, Algoma University in Ontario, Davenport University in Michigan and Australia’s Griffith University.