Today's Feature Article

5 Key Marketing Questions
by Bob Leduc

When you know the answers to these 5 key marketing questions, you can create effective web pages, sales letters and other sales generating communications. The answers to these 5 questions reveal how you can get your prospect's attention and motivate them to take the action you want.

1. Who Do I Want To Reach?

Describe detailed characteristics of your ideal prospect. Be very specific.

Once you clearly define the characteristics your ideal prospect you can develop a powerful sales message appealing directly to their unique interests and needs. Prospects are more likely to respond when they feel you are talking directly to them about their individual needs.

2. What Action Do I Want To Generate?

Decide in advance what action you are trying to stimulate. Do you want to get inquiries for your product or service? Do you want to produce sales directly from your promotion? Or do you want to build a list of qualified prospects willing to receive frequent offers from you?

You can develop an effective promotion in a short time when you have a clear understanding of the action you are trying to generate.

3. What Is My Competitive Advantage?

Identify why prospects should do business with you instead of with a competitor selling a similar product or service. For example, do you provide faster results, easier procedures, personal attention or a better guarantee? If you cannot think of a reason - create one. Add something to your business you are not already doing.

Your competitive advantage can be responsible for fifty percent or more of your sales. Make sure you have one - and don't lose it. Keep checking on your competition and make any changes necessary to keep your competitive advantage.

4. How Will I Prove My Claims?

Don't expect prospects to believe what you say. Make sure you provide proof of any claim you make.

For example, collect and use testimonials from satisfied customers. Provide research data supporting your claims. Get endorsements from experts your prospects are likely to recognize.

5. How Will I Create Urgency?

Most prospects do not respond the first time they see your promotion. Instead, they delay making any response - then often forget about you.

You can convert many of these procrastinators into buyers by giving them a compelling reason to respond immediately. For example, give them a special price if they order now - or include a valuable bonus if they order by a specific deadline.

TIP: Develop a series of 4 or 5 different special offers. Use them one at a time with an expiration deadline. When one offer expires, replace it with the next offer and a new deadline. Continuously recycle through the same series of offers. This enables you to create urgency using special offers without taking time to create new ones.

You need to answer to these 5 key marketing questions before you can create a motivating web page, sales letter or other sales generating communication. The answers to these 5 questions will reveal how you can get your prospect's attention and stimulate them to take the action you want.

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Bob Leduc spent 20 years helping businesses just like yours find new customers and increase sales. He just released a New Edition of his manual, How To Build Your Small Business Fast With Simple Postcards and several other publications to help small businesses grow and prosper. For more information: Phone: 702-658-1707 After 10 AM Pacific Time/Las Vegas, NV or Email: BobLeduc@aol.com Subject: "Postcards"

Today's Motivational Reading

Reflections--A List of Year-End Questions
by David Batchelor

In order to embrace the new, we must release the old. An important part of preparing for the New Year is to review the past year--to release it--and to learn from it.

To go where we wish to go and be whom we wish to be, we need to know where we are and who we are. An honest self-analysis is always helpful to gain clarity. As we end the year, the decade, the century and the millennium, it seems particularly fitting to devote some time to reflecting on the year past and where we find ourselves as the new year dawns.

The following questions should stimulate your thinking for this process. I hope that you take time out of your busy schedule this holiday season to ponder where you are and where you've been. Enter into discussions with people you care about. Write out your thoughts and feelings. Do some journalling. Consider writing a letter--an end-of the-year-epistle to yourself. It could be profound to write it and valuable to read it in the years ahead.

Reflect upon what you did, how you felt, what you liked, what you didn't and what you learned. Try to look at yourself and your experience with as much objectivity as you can-much like a biographer would.

Here are some suggestions to get you started in mulling over the past year-perhaps the last decade. Feel free to add your own.

Another Suggestion: Consider listing all the things in your life of which you'd like to let go--anything you no longer want. Give thanks for what they've brought you in terms of learning and usefulness and then burn the list. It's a symbolic gesture to help you release the old and be open to the new.

The next step is to list what you DO want-experiences, knowledge, material things, relationships, healings, whatever.

In doing this, you'll be using the principle of vacuum-releasing what you don't want and embracing what you do.

I'm confident that anything you can do to make this year-end more dramatic in terms of your own personal and spiritual growth will be valuable.

Make it a great New Year by ending this one well.

In closing, I would like to recommend a great book on "Vision". It's titled "Mach II With Your Hair On Fire". By Richard Brooke.

In case you don't know who Richard Brooke is, here is a summary:

He made his first million before the age of 30, advancing to the top sales-leader position in a $60 million Network Marketing organization made up of more than 200,000 sales people. At age 31, he became the Executive Vice President.

At age 33, he accepted the opportunity to "turn around" a Network Marketing company (Oxyfresh Worldwide, Inc.). This company, when he joined it, was in a death spiral and technically bankrupt. It was almost $1 million in debt with no cash, no assets, and no credit. With the help of a tremendous staff and his partner Randy Anderson, they turned the business into a role model for our industry it has posted record growth every year for the past ten.

You can read the book "Mach II With Your Hair On Fire" free online at: http://www.greatestnetworker.com/is/davidbatchelor/learn4

Happy reading!

David :-)

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David Batchelor has written numerous articles focusing on Tips, Strategies, Tools and how-to's for creating the Ultimate Home Based Business. To Subscribe to his e-zine please go to: http://www.netmarkpro.com/djb

Subscribers' Corner

An eBook Publisher's Dilemma: Should I Use PDF or Exe Format?

by Michael Southon

If you write and publish eBooks, sooner or later you will probably be faced with a dilemma - should you create your eBooks as .exe files or .pdf files?

PDF, which stands for Portable Document Format, is the file extension for files created with Adobe Acrobat.

Exe, which stands for 'executable', is the extension for files created by eBook compilers.

PDF is widely considered to be the 'industry standard' for eBook publishing, and for good reason. Here are some of the advantages of PDF files over exe files:

(1) With most eBook compilers you have to set up each page of your eBook as a separate web page. With Adobe Acrobat you can use a single MS Word file as the source document.

(2) PDF files automatically number each page - exe files don't.

(3) PDF files are very easy to edit - you can insert pages, replace pages and delete pages (and the page numbering is automatically adjusted).

(4) Printing from a PDF file is much easier than printing from an .exe file.

(5) The 'bookmark' column on the left side of a PDF file makes navigation very easy - much easier than in an exe file.

(6) PDF files compress better than exe files, so you end up with a smaller, more manageable file.

(7) It's virtually impossible to transmit a virus through a PDF file - exe files are susceptible to virus transmission and can become corrupted during download.

(8) Finally, by using PDF you automatically expand your potential market because PDF files can be read on both a PC and a Mac (exe files can only be read on a PC). Over 8 percent of the online population in the U.S. are currently Mac users (www.nielsen-netratings.com) - not a huge increase in your market, but nevertheless significant.

But exe files do have some advantages over PDF files. Until recently, one of the most important of these was price - most eBook compilers are a fraction of the cost of Adobe Acrobat.

However, a number of PDF creators have recently appeared on the market with price tags similar to those of eBook compilers. Here are some of them:

Another advantage of exe files over PDF is the rebranding feature. The following eBook compilers all have a built-in rebranding function:

If you use free eBooks as a viral marketing tool, rebranding is the key to success, because people are much more likely to promote your free eBook if they can customize it with their own affiliate links.

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Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3 years. Join his 3 Day 'Ezine Writers Email Course' and discover the #1 Secret of Ezine Advertising: http://www.ezine-writer.com/email-course.html

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