Saturday 13 September 2008

10 Reasons To Form A Strategic Business Alliance

A strategic alliance is when two or more businessesjoin together for a set period of time. The businesses,usually, are not in direct competition, but have similarproducts or services that are directed toward thesame target audience. Below are ten reasons tocreate a strategic alliance.
1. You could offer your customers a larger variety ofproducts or services. This will allow you to spendless time and money developing new products to sell.
2. Your number of sales people will increase becauseyou're combining with other business. You won't havespend to time and money hiring new employees.
3. Your marketing and advertising budget will increase.When you form a strategic alliance with other businessesyou both will share the advertising and marketing costs.
4. You can now offer your existing customers moreback-end and upsell products. This will increase yoursales and profits.
5. Your business will gain a larger number of skilledpeople working on the same project. You will gainthe knowledge of the other businesses employees.
6. You will be able to beat your competition by sellingto a larger target audience. You will also increase thetotal number of existing customers you can sell yourproducts and services to.
7. You can exchange endorsements with your alliancepartners. You'll add more credibility to your businessand gain your potential customers trust to buy.
8. You can expand your business more rapidly. Youcan develop new products and services faster witha larger work force.
9. You'll be able to solve your customer's problemsfaster with a larger base of customer service people.You'll also learn new ways to improve your customerservice from your alliance partners.
10. You'll have a larger number of "strategic thinking"people. This will allow both businesses to come upwith profitable business ideas quicker than before.

10 Proven Ways To Accelerate Your Profits

1. Make copies of your web site in many differentlanguages. This'll allow foreign speaking people toread your web site and advertisements.
2. Give your customers a surprise bonus for buying.When you give customers more than they expect,there is a good chance they will buy from you again.
3. Send greeting cards offline or online to customerson holidays. You'll get the chance to increase yourorders by including your ad inside the card.
4. Market your products or services to your targetaudience. For example, don't try to sell a footballin a cooking magazine.
5. Give people the option of buying other productsor add on products when they decide to buy yourmain product or service at the point of sale.
6. Think of new ways to attract people to buy yourproducts or services. You could add on extra freebonuses, delivery options, payments options, etc.
7. Give other businesses the option of selling yourproduct. It could be a simple joint venture deal oran affiliate/associate program.
8. Follow-up regularly with all your prospects andcurrent customers. When people see your ad morethan once they are more likely to buy.
9. Learn sales ideas from reading and studying otherbusiness' advertising and marketing material. Itcould be ads, brochures, tv ads, sales letters, etc.
10. Educate yourself with new strategies to increaseyour sales. You could take classes, subscribe toe-zines and magazines, read books or ebooks, etc.

Thursday 4 September 2008

10 Ways To Create A Popular Online Community

An online community could be a chat room, e-maildiscussion list, discussion forum or other technologiesthat allow groups of people to communicate at yourweb site. When you have a popular online communityit will increase your traffic and sales. Below are tenways to attract people to participate in your onlinecommunity.
1. Tell your visitors that you post a new, free offerevery day, week or month in your online community.The free offers should be attractive to your targetaudience.
2. Regularly schedule experts or famous guests toparticipate in your online community. You coulddesign it to be a virtual class or a question/answersession.
3. Post testimonials on your web site from peoplethat have participated in your online community.The testimonials could be about what people havelearned or liked while participating in it.
4. Don't allow blatant ads in your online communities.If people decide to visit your online community andsee a ton of ads they most likely won't be back.
5. Post all the benefits of participating in your onlinecommunity on your web site. You could write it likeyou're writing an ad for a product you're selling.
6. Submit your chat room, e-mail discussion list ordiscussion board to online community directories.You can find them by typing " the community type"with the word "directory" in any search engine.
7. Create an e-zine just for people who participatein your online community. Allow them to subscribefor free. When they receive each issue, it will remindthem to come back and participate in your community.
8. You (the owner of the online community) shouldparticipate regularly. Post information that will benefitthe other people. This will show them you care aboutyour online community members.
9. Have plenty of people to monitor your onlinecommunity. They could remove postings that turnaway people like profanity, spam and other off-subject postings.
10. Your online community should contain userfriendly features, like a search option for archiveddiscussions, easy posting or chatting options, emailupdates or digests, etc.