XonMarketing.com | Blog of Experienced Marketer

Entrepreneurship is quite an adventure with lots of opportunities for growth and transformation (particularly in conscious business). It requires a certain level of innovation, risk-taking, truth-telling, willingness to be different and self-directed, and the ability to think BIG.

Many of the entrepreneurs that I meet are really great at what they do and how they offer it, but have yet to learn the “how” of being an entrepreneur and allowing it to be their lifestyle. So often, they’re ready to throw in the towel, when all it takes is some mind-set shifts and tweaks in their relationship with their business to shift it from just paying the bills to thriving on all levels.

Here are the top 8 pitfalls that I consistently see for would-be successful entrepreneurs:

1. They are NOT clear on their vision. Losing sight of this creates a disconnect from why they began their business in the first place and makes the mundane tasks, along with the ups and downs, to seem even more meaningless when there is no clear vision about how their business is going to serve them and others.

Tip: Create your 5 year vision of where you and your business are going to be, the difference you are making, how you feel to be in this place, what you are experiencing and how you are showing up in your business (be as specific as you can, and most importantly, have fun with it)!

2. They are NOT clear on their message. When there is lack of clarity in this area, prospective clients, collaborative partners, media and the like go where the message is clear. If you are not making is easy for people to discern right away how to do business with you, no matter how nice or gifted you are, they will go with the flow and ease of someone who does (ouch)! Imagine how much energy goes into trying to convince people to do business with you when you are not clear from the get-go. Since everything is energy, energy will follow the clearest path!

Tip: Use your vision to help you get clear on the difference that you wish to make so that you can get clear on your message. This is a priority, especially if you are not serving as many folks as you would like! The energy spent ‘chasing’ can now be spent attracting, and thus frees up your energy to create more wonderful products and services for your community!

3. They are NOT being their message. Prospects and clients won’t necessarily know why, but if you are not walking your talk, they can sense that a mile away. It boils down to practice what you preach (as often as you can). We’ve all encountered misaligned or inauthentic folks along our way, and it is harder to be around them compared to those in their power and speaking their truth.

Tip: Create rituals for self-care, energy management and mind-set management and offer what is your brilliance to make it easy for people to find you and desire to do business with you. This will turn you into an attraction magnet for ALL things ideal!

4. They are NOT at peace with money. Let’s face it, business is ALL about the money, whether you are allowing yourself to embrace that it or not. You have to have discussions with clients, vendors, team members, and many more about money – daily! When you are not at peace with receiving money, charging money, paying for things, or investing in the growth of your business, it WILL cost you – big time!

Tip: Make healing your money story a priority and invest in how to make that happen. You’re here to make a difference through your business – you can’t do that if it’s sinking!

5. They don’t play nice in the sandbox. Business is all about relationship. If you are not connecting, collaborating and creating community (which is the way of new paradigm business), you are going to be stuck in the pain that comes from competition and/or being the lone wolf.

Tip: Turn making connections into being JOYful. Go out and meet new people. Seek out communities that are aligned with you and your business and witness what comes from growing your business in a supportive environment.

6. They do NOT have a clear business model that actually matches their vision, message, and community. So often I see folks offering coaching packages when they’d rather do brief consulting gigs or vice versa. Or, their business model only offers 1 service when they’d rather offer a variety. These are just a few simple examples, but the truth is that as long as your business model doesn’t match your inner and outer goals for business it will keep you stagnant or even destroy your business (yikes)!

Tip: Get clear on what you are offering it, how you are offering it, who you are serving, how it benefits them (and how it benefits YOU)! If your business is not making enough to support itself and you, then you are not making a profit (which is what businesses need to do). Instead you have a very expensive hobby on your hands, and I know that is not your goal!

7. They do NOT take action and implement their million-dollar ideas. Ideas are only as useful and profitable as the implementation of them. So many conscious entrepreneurs get stuck in procrastination, perfection paralysis and analysis paralysis (and the reasons for that are a whole other article). When they do not create an action plan (and manage their energy as shared before), they lose money and watch their business stagnate or decline.

Tip: Create daily, weekly, monthly action plans for your most pressing business needs and plug them into your calendar. Extra tip: marketing should always be built in as equally important!

8. They do NOT have sacred support. Any successful business person will share with you that they did not do it alone, and in particular, had support such as accountability partners and business mentors. I’m a firm believer in coaching and have many myself. We all need a safe place to celebrate our successes, share our disappointments, create new ideas/see things in a new light AND learn the HOW (of being a successful entrepreneur, thriving in their purpose, and leaving a powerful legacy).

Tip: Don’t delay. Find a partner, a coach or someone that you can mentor with. This really will be the difference between where you are now and where you want to be.

Until next time, wishing you much success on your journey and looking forward to supporting you to thrive in all areas of your life!

Online marketing is no doubt the most effective way to reach people. Its capability to earn millions is unquestioned.

Perhaps, this is one of the most momentous discoveries of mankind. The internet has brought about a lot of changes in the world. It allowed us reach the unreachable; it permitted us to communicate with the people around the globe without spending much money.

These are also the reason why people nowadays are investing in online marketing for their businesses…because beyond a doubt, online marketing will work for them.

We do have a lot of options to choose from when it comes to advertising. In fact, we have the television, radios, print media and all. However, online marketing still belongs at the top of the list for many reasons.

First, people prefer online marketing because it reaches the whole world. Your supposedly very small business may become very large almost overnight because of the magic of using online marketing because everyone in this world can literally see what you offer.

Second, you reach the world and get millions without having to pay millions in return. The cost of online marketing compared to other forms of media is very efficient and cost effective. Let’s say you use print media. If you are going to make a flyer and advertise it over the world, how much would it cost you? If you were to pay for TV advertisement, you would definitely have to pay for every single second that your business is aired.

Third, online marketing creates a two-way communication process. We do not simply promote what we have. Hence, we get to know what our visitors or what our customers think through the ”Comments” box on our web pages. By doing so, we get to know what they want and we are able to improve our products and services.

Next, it is also very important that we build relationship with our customers. Yes, we may have benefited from them but we should always find ways to keep them coming back to our place of business or at least our website. With online marketing, we are able to do this because we can become interactive with them, thus, making our customers feel that they are valued.

Fifth, in business, we always have to budget our resources. Unlike in other forms of media, we save a lot of money with online marketing because we will no longer need to keep sending letters, flyers or postcards every time we want to contact our customers or offer a promotion. In fact, the current trend is to only mail your customer information if they need additional resources or information about your business. For advertisements in newspapers and magazines, you have to pay for every inch of space, and even every color used in the design your ad. With online marketing, it is always cost-effective.

The sixth reason why people have shifted to online marketing is its flexibility. For example, let’s say there has been a change in the benefits or features of your product or service, or even a change in your prices. Well, you’ll have to hire someone to redesign your ad, reprint it and send it out again…and that cost more money. But with online marketing, you can easily update your site and make the changes without removing money from your wallet. Does it sound great? Yes, it does.

Well, are you getting the picture on why there is a craze with online marketing? Here’s more.

Another reason a business should prefer online marketing is because you have a lot of media choices when promoting your business. You can opt to show videos, photo presentations, audio, blogs or even social media. There is nothing really hard about this type of strategy. It will definitely save you more time and of course, resources.

Moreover, you can monitor what is going on with your business. Through the use of tracking, you have the chance to see the traffic generated by your site. With this feature of online marketing, you get to know what else you can do to tweak and improve your site because you see what keywords prospects are choosing to find you and incorporate more of those into your website.

Online marketing is also an extremely effective type of advertising because you can design your website the way you want it. You have the power to add features in it, to create a web design that would attract visitors and make them stop on your web page and take a look at what you have. The best thing about it is that, you can do the changes anytime you want without worrying about your expenses. By controlling the design, more and more people will be attracted to your site and you will be able to create an amazing impression on them.

Lastly, people go crazy about online marketing is because it is beneficial not just for businesses but for the consumers as well. Why? Simply because it makes everything much more convenient. The consumers need not go out of their house anymore and search around the city to look for what they want. With just a click, they can have it. And another thing is that the communication between the buyer and consumer is immediate. Response is very fast and that is why transactions are almost immediate.

So there we have it. These ten reasons explain why online marketing has become the number one source of advertising today. You need not have a second thought anymore. All you have to do is close your eyes and dream of how money can be made when you invest your money in online marketing.

Several methods of promoting businesses have been created and developed in recent years. Traditionally, article marketing is published in paper-print form but as the marketing world is evolving, as well as technology, article marketing is now available online through the internet. Article marketing is considered as one of the most effective and fastest ways to promote products, companies or businesses in the world through write-ups. You can’t just set aside the benefits your company can achieve by using article marketing. Here are the top ten reasons to use article marketing as part of your business plan.

REASON #1: INCREASED ONLINE PRESENCE WITH ARTICLE MARKETING

Most businesses nowadays desire to make their presence known to the online world in order to have increased exposure with their target audience and one of the best ways to achieve this is by using article marketing. Making your products or services more visible in the market is one good reason to use article marketing as a marketing tool. All you have to do is write quality articles related to your business that include useful links leading back to your website and submit them to the article directories available on the web. By this, you influence people in your particular niche to become your customers and persuade them to buy your products on a regular basis.

REASON #2: ARTICLE MARKETING IS INEXPENSIVE AND COST-EFFICIENT

You don’t even need to spend a single cent to have online exposure for your business. Several free article directories can publish your articles on the web or you may also consider your own site or blog to promote your company. With article marketing you are earning but not spending…that’s a pretty good return on in investment, don’t you think?

REASON #3: ARTICLE MARKETING OFFERS A GREATER BRAND AWARENESS FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Article marketing is not intended just for exposure but to improve your company’s visibility on the web and increase the awareness of your products or services to target consumers. Websites with new and updated content are more preferred by search engines. So, your article must be of high quality and with a bulk of information that will catch the attention of many prospects. Well written articles will be re-distributed to other web pages and will further promote your own web site. Also, if you publish a good quality article with high ranking article directories you can attract millions of visitors each and every month. Article marketing creates great exposure for your company’s brand by including your business’ signature, information and most importantly links leading to your website.

REASON #4: GENERATION OF BACK LINKS TO YOUR WEBSITE WITH ARTICLE MARKETING

Page rank in Google and other search engines are often based on the number of inbound links and also the page rank of the provider of the links. The higher the page rank, the higher the importance of the content of such a particular website. Article marketing is a highly effective technique to increase the number of back links to your company’s web site. Whenever your article is published and re-distributed it will benefit your business by receiving a link back to your website, increase traffic and attract more visitors. Article marketing will be more beneficial if you publish a high quality article in a high ranking page of article directories.

REASON #5: ARTICLE MARKETING IMPROVES YOUR COMPANY’S REPUTATION AND PROMOTES YOUR EXPERT STATUS.

If you write more than a couple of high quality articles concerning your business it will enable you to establish a degree of authority and improves your reputation from other authors and companies on the web. Publishing many articles with good quality will prove your expertise in the field and thereby improves your article’s visibility and business’ exposure.

REASON #6: ARTICLE MARKETING WILL PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS, PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Millions of people are surfing the internet so it is a great opportunity to promote your products or services compared to what traditional advertising can give you. Expanding your reach to people all over the world to promote your business is possible with article marketing. Provide your readers with useful information that they can use and share among other people and your business will spread to thousands of readers around the world.

REASON #7: ARTICLE MARKETING INCREASES YOUR SEARCH ENGINE RANKING
Article marketing is a known technique for making your page rank higher with search engines. Your website will also benefit with additional traffic from the directories where your article was published if their web pages are also high in ranking.

REASON #8: ARTICLE MARKETING ATTRACTS MORE CUSTOMERS

Making your articles place on high ranking pages from search optimization will attract more actual and potential customers, especially if you provide the information they are looking for. The possibility of referring your articles to others is clear if you meet the criteria and publish high quality articles.

REASON #9: INCREASE YOUR SALES WITH ARTICLE MARKETING

Letting the world know about your and your products or services though article marketing will increase the awareness of your target customer and they may consider your company the one who can satisfy their needs, hence they will become your regular customer and your business will generate higher sales.

REASON #10: USE ARTICLE MARKETING TO PROVE YOUR BUSINESS CAPABILITIES
By utilizing article marketing, your business will be well known for its expertise not only in your particular niche but also in any associated fields, which will help to develop trust from potential customers. You can prove your business’ capabilities by lending your audiences useful information by which your company can provide.

With the increased tension of competition in the marketplace, article marketing can make your products or services stand out among the others. You will not appreciate the benefits article marketing can give you unless you try it and see the unexpected success it has on your business throughout the world. You must be practical in this time of global recession and make the right move! Start achieving your success through article marketing now!

If you are in the field of online business you must have heard of online marketing. Internet marketing, online marketing, e-marketing and web marketing are just the same terms to describe the use of the internet in marketing and promoting your products, services or business. In recent years, online marketing has provided global consumers a higher distribution of information. With today’s increased competition, you must possess the skills and capabilities to attain success. Every success story entails hardships, ups and down, but it’s up to you to learn how to avoid the pitfalls with online marketing. That’s why we are going to discuss the top ten reasons online marketing fails.

Reason #1: The lack of effort and time needed to learn new information about online marketing.

To reach the success you are aspiring to obtain, you must spend adequate efforts and time learning what can lead you to it. Get as much as new online marketing information you can and take time to study them before you use of them for your company’s growth. The more knowledge and experience you can possess, the quicker you will reach your goals. Often the best online marketing techniques will come to you suddenly, but evolves out of all the information you might know. Do not let your business be deserted by others, make it stand out by utilizing new online marketing strategies. Wide varieties of new information are available throughout the web; just encode an online marketing in Google and you will find what you are looking for. Never stop craving for more and new information, techniques, or techniques about online marketing for you will never grow personally or financially if you are not learning something new.

Reason #2: Similarity with other online business websites.

To increase customer’s interest, your website must be different from other online business web pages. Visitors get easily bored if they browse and always see the same products, content, and pictures. In order for your online marketing to be successful, you should make your website distinguished from your other competitors. Always make use of unique online marketing ideas when creating your web pages, for it will matter a tremendous amount when trying to attract more potential customers.

Reason #3: Your website is confusing and inconvenient for visitors.

One of the reasons for using online marketing is to promote your products or services to your target audience on the internet. Having too many products, pictures, links, etc. in your web pages can cause confusion and a confused mind will take no action; thereby leaving you without the number of customers that you could and should attract with your online marketing efforts. Try to be simple and focus on a particular product or service with your website. Making sure your other products are in the background of the main product or service you would like to promote. A long navigation system will make people get tired of finding what they want and can cause them to prefer other convenient sites.

Reason #4: Your website is just a sales presentation.

Increasing your sales may result from online marketing, but you must not totally focus on sales alone. Online marketing will benefit you if you provide useful information about your business within your website and attract more potential and actual customers to purchase your products.or services. Most of the time sales do not arise from the first visit, so make use of your online marketing techniques such as providing free information, tips or newsletters to give visitors a reason to come back to visit your website.

Reason #5: Failure to set specific demographic targets.

With online marketing, setting a specific demographic target is very important because you will be more focused on what type of customers you want and what you must do to attract them. Failure to settle the target will increase the risk of failure when promoting your products, services or business; moreover you will not gain the full benefits of online marketing when it comes to increasing your sales and growing your business.

Reason #6: Unsecured ordering pages.

Security for any type of investment matters for almost everybody. Unsecured ordering pages will greatly cause your business to lose sales which contradicts the goals of effective online marketing. Numerous free secure ordering forms are made available on the internet, so this should never be an issue.

Reason #7: A lack of back links to your website as a useful strategy in effective online marketing.

Providing links leading back to your website from a high ranking web page will also give your site a high rank. Linking is the key to success in having your website found on the major search engines and will bring traffic to your website; therefore, increasing you number of potential and actual customers.

Reason #8: Lack of perseverance.

Most businesses fail online due to lack of persistence and giving up too soon. Online marketing will take a lot of time to fully succeed. It could even entail years to become a major player and to develop strong customer relationships, build partnerships and see financial rewards.

Reason #9: Insufficient follow-up.

Within any business following up with a prospect or customer is very important because it will provide you with more of the same types of results that your business desperately needs to grow. Online marketing often fails because many companies fall short in following up with its online visitors; thereby, stunting the growth of brand awareness.

Reason #10: No promoting your website.

Increasing the consumer awareness of your online business can leverage your success. Several online marketing elements and strategies can be used to promote your website, increase traffic and attract more customers. If you lack the funds to pay for promotions, you can use many free ways of advertising your business awareness online such as participating in forums, chats and submitting free links to search engines.

You will need all the help you can to survive in this competitive marketplace, so make use of the online resources you have to gain greater success with online marketing and learn from these failures. Prepare yourself properly and get ready to do what you must due because the success of your business online is in direct proportion to your knowledge gained from other’s mistakes.

Interested in getting into the vending business? It is most definitely a profitable business if you are able to find the right locations and set up the proper machines to make the most sales and profits from those locations.

In most cases the most profitable vending machine business is one that has a variety of pop and snack vending machines. For pop machines you can offer a wide variety of beverages to sell from soft drinks, fresh juices and bottled water. For snack machines top sellers are chips, chocolate bars, gum and candies.

Finding the locations to place your vending machines is the most important part of the business. High traffic areas will obviously enable you to generate the most sales but these are going to be harder to find as there is more vending companies competing for these locations.

The trick is to start small and buy vending machines for good prices. Starting to big may throw you into a financial tailspin due to the capital that it takes to start a vending business. If you are getting into buying multiple machines for any location you could be looking at spending tens of thousands of dollars.

So it pays to do a little research before jumping into the vending machine business. Take a look at used machine prices verses new vending machines. You can find great deals on quality used machines. Look for brand names like Dixie Narco, Royal Vendors and Vendo for pop machine manufacturers. Look for National Vendors or Automatic Products for snack vending machine manufacturers. These companies have been in the business for many years as a lot of vending companies use these machines for their vending businesses.

There are several other reputable companies that sell vending machines just be sure to find a company that offers a good warranty on the machines. Also be sure to buy machines that you can get parts for easily.

Looking on the internet is the easiest and fastest way to find companies to buy machines from. You can also find local companies in your area by doing a search on Google.

As for the business end of things it’s always best to start small and build the business one step at a time. This will enable you to learn how the vending machine business works and give you time to recoup your investment on your machines.

This is also a business that can be done on a part time basis. You don’t have to quit your day job or anything like that to get started. Can you dedicate a few hours per week to find locations or fill machines?

If you can then you will be steps ahead of the pack.

There is money to be made in vending. Buying vending machines and placing them at locations that will enable you to pay off the machines in a reasonable time frame will help provide additional income to buy more vending machines and expand your business.

Be aware though doing your research is critical. You don’t want to get sucked into buying a boatload of machines and having them just sit in your garage.

Just take your time before diving in head first!

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