What Are the Most Important Marketing Fundamentals?

The 3 marketing fundamentals

marketing fundamentalsThis blog post reviews a video by Alex Mandossian about marketing fundamentals. The man has some amazing insight into marketing. Make sure you click the link at the bottom to watch the video.

Alex says that the 3 fundamentals are:

  • Message — The message you want to get across.
  • Market — To whom do you want that message to get across.
  • Media — The more media you have to get the message across, the better.

The bicycle illustration

marketing fundamentalsTo illustrate his marketing concept, Alex uses a bicycle wheel.

The message is the hub of the wheel because it is the most important fundamental. If the message is unclear, the market audience will never find you. If your message lacks clarity, your marketing will not be able to get the message to your target market.

The media connects the message to the market. (Learn about social media.)

Click here to learn more.

The 3 Cs of your message

Con·cise, adj., expressing or covering much in few words.

The message must be

  • Concise,
  • Clear and
  • Consistent.

It must not lack clarity. If your message is concise, clear and consistent, you can instantly increase the pulling power of all marketing communications. You will make more money with the same amount of effort.

A good message:

  • Accelerates the marketing reach.
  • Reduces marketing costs.
  • Grows marketing engagement.

Digital messages

Digital messages come in many different forms:

  • Video. (See free course on making YouTube videos.)
  • Audio. E.g., people can listen while walking their dog.
  • Pictures. “A picture’s worth a thousand words.” E.g., the picture on the cover of the ebook pictured here helps to explain the subject.
  • Movement. Note the movement in the bicycle animated GIF above.
  • Engagement.You can ask questions and otherwise get the target market so interested that they will communicate with you.

Watch the video

To watch the complete video, click the play button on this MarketingOnline video.

How to Set Up a Twitter Account for a New Client

Setting up Twitter advertising for a customer

Twitter account

You are starting the social media marketing for a new customer. Your customer does not want to do any technical work. So, you will set up your customer’s new Twitter account on your own computer.

You will use your own credit card to pay for the advertising. You have arranged for the customer to reimburse you in such a way that the bookkeeping is very simple.

Your first step is to set up a new account withTwitter.

This is how to set up that Twitter account in 7 steps

  1. Twitter accountLog into your own Twitter account
  2. Click on your profile picture and then Log Out
  3. Ideally you will have your own email address that relates to your client but is forwarded to your personal address. (E.g., myname@customerURL.com)
  4. Twitter accountAfter you log out, you will see a form where you can set up a new Twitter account
  5. Enter your email address. (Preferably it is the email address from point #3 above)
  6. Create a password
  7. Respond to everything Twitter emails you.

Click here to learn more.

Twitter advertising

To help you set up your Twitter advertising, here are two official Twitter pages that can help you:

  1. Optimizing
  2. Conversion tracking

Ineligible to participate

Twitter account

As soon as I set up the account and created my first tweet, I clicked on my profile picture and then Twitter Ads. That took me to a new page saying that I was ineligible to do any advertising on Twitter.

I found the Twitter Eligibility page and found this: The most successful advertisers on Twitter tend to be those who are avid Twitter users. This means they have a history of sharing exceptional content and engaging with their followers. If you are interested in advertising but your account is fairly new, be sure to complete your account’s Twitter profile and spend a few weeks familiarizing yourself with Twitter’s best practices.

Twitter accountSo, I guess that means I’ll have to make lots of Tweets before I can set up my client’s advertising.

 

How to Be Successful with Twitter Advertising

Increasing sales of a product

This post is about how to increase sales of a product using Twitter advertising.

The Twitter Tweet we will talk about later links to an article on your website. So, write a compelling promotional page for your product. Read How to Increase Chances of Web Page Being Read.

Setting up Twitter Advertising in 4 steps

1. Join Twitter

Go to twitter.com, fill in the form & join Twitter. Create a difficult-to-guess password that has a combination of upper- & lower-cased letters, numbers & special characters.

Click the Get Started button and simply follow the instructions. Write out your username & password (possibly cryptically) in a place where you will find it when you need it.

2. Log into your new Twitter account

Go to your Twitter account. In the upper right-hand corner you will see a line inviting you to login. So, login with your new username & password.

While you are there, create a very effective tweet that promotes your product. Read these 8 tips. Also see the Headline Analyzer & the 180+ Power Words.

The sample tweet below is for a product called the TSC Side Sleeper. These are some reasons why it is a good tweet:

  • Opening phrase got a 76% Headline Analyzer score
  • It offers to help a common problem (getting a better sleep)
  • The line of text is short
  • It has a picture that grabs their attention
  • The TSC has a green check mark but will be unknown to most people. It will pique their curiosity
  • It links to a very informative page
  • People are asked to retweet it. They are more apt to retweet if they are asked to

Click here to learn more.

3. Start first Twitter ads campaign

Click on your profile picture near the upper right-hand corner. Click on Twitter Ads.

Click on blue Create Campaign button the top. This blog post is about selling a product. So, you will click on the Website Clicks or Conversions link.

Give advertising campaign a descriptive name.

4. Set budget, Tweet & target market

Fill in everything as you see fit. If you are on a tight budget, set your start & end dates. Then click Next.

Click the check box in front of the tweet you wish to use in your ad. Decide where you want to place your ad. The search query Tweet is triggered by the user’s desire for information. So, you definitely want to include Search Results.  Twitter has a huge list of categories. In this example, I searched for “sleep”. Twitter showed me the closest related category in their list (sleep disorders).

To find your target market more precisely, click Return to Original Campaign Form. For geographical locations, I chose Import Multiple Locations. After I had written the countries on 2 separate lines, I clicked the Add Locations button.

For age I chose 50 and over. The rest of the audience features should be self explanatory. When finished, check your ad with the Audience Summary. It you are satisfied, click Save in upper right-hand corner.

 

Related pages

How to Build a Winning Twitter Ad Campaign

Twitter ad setup

Free Wi-Fi Hotspots and How to Avoid the Evil Twin

What is an evil twin?

evil twinAn evil twin is a hotspot set up by a cybercriminal or hacker. It mimics a legitimate hot spot in just about every way.

The evil twin’s purpose is to eavesdrop on unsuspecting users and/or to insert themselves in the various data conversations happening between hotspot users and servers.

Once connected to you, the hacker or criminal may be able to:

  • Steal passwords, account names, etc.
  • View files that are being uploaded or downloaded.

The hacker could be sitting behind you in an airline terminal. The evil twin wifi signal could be emanating from their laptop with a signal that looks like the legitimate wifi signal. The name would just have been changed slightly.  More.

How to defend yourself against an evil twin

Avoiding evil twins may be as simple as using an inexpensive VPN (virtual private network). With a VPN, you would

  1. Log into the hotspot
  2. Use the VPN in your mobile device to use an encryption tunnel to find a temporary VPN server.
  3. Surf the web using the IP address of the temporary VPN server.

 

How PrivateVPN works

As soon as you log into a free wifi or any other unsafe site, open PrivateVPN. It will find an encryption tunnel to the country of your choice. In that country you will get a new temporary IP address.

You will have 55+ countries from which to choose. If the connection is too slow, try another country.

The hacker will be unable to find you. Your online data will be completely safe. You have a completely secure web event.

If you are using PrivateVPN for the first time, check out your temporary IP address. You can go online & search for what is my IP evil twinaddress? IP Lookup will give your IP address. Click on Get IP Details.

evil twinYou will see data telling that you are in Belgium (or whichever country you chose). You start accessing the Internet. You download & upload data to your heart’s content. The evil twin cannot find any of your data.

Buy now

Note that it is a great deal of work to produce these blog posts. Also note that I will get a commission if you buy PrivateVPN from this blog post. Please support me & buy PrivateVPN now.

YouTube

Related pages

Mobile devices & cybersecurity
Online fraud
VPN (virtual private network) overview, online privacy, etc.

 





 

Digital Flyers, a Better Choice than Paper

Rona’s digital flyer success story

digital flyersHome renovation chain Rona replaced its printed flyers with expanded digital flyers. As a result, their sales doubled at its stores across Canada. This was in spite of the fact that they had scrapped the printed flyer during a nationwide test one week in February.

It was a 15-page digital flyer, far larger than its typical printed versions. The flyer allowed readers to click to find more details, create lists and watch how-to videos.

The flyer was distributed online to customers in the company’s databases.

With digital flyers, users can search for specific items, to see who has the best prices.

So, let’s say you’ve run out of stain while your are renewing your deck. Instead of rummaging through a bunch of paper flyers, you can just go in and search for online for stain prices. You’ll find every store that has stain on sale in your market.

Digital flyers offer more variety

digital flyersSome stores display their weekly flyer prominently on their own company website. However, some stores keep them on websites that display flyers from many different stores.

In the flyer displayed here, prices & descriptions show up when users hover over a picture.

Related pages

Rona tests online flyers…
How to create your own online flyer

 

Pinterest Pin, How to Make One, p.2

Return to first Pinterest Pin page

4. Combine pictures into the Pinterest pin collage

Pinterest pinI opened GIMP and created this Pinterest pin.

  • Click File > New to make a 600 x 1200 pixel box
  • Use screen capture software such as Skitch to capture copy of YouTube lesson form
  • Save form with a descriptive name
  • Experiment with different graphic sizes
  • Copy & paste the title graphic into place
  • Click foreground colour box and change colour to red
  • Click text tool
  • Pinterest pinClick font icon to change font to Georgia or Georgia bold
  • Click File > New to create a box with white background
  • Type “Learn how…” text into message that tells people what they can be learning. Note the white space to help people understand the message almost instantaneously
  • Use Rectangle Select tool to draw box around text. Make box no bigger than it has to be to include all letters
  • Use Image > Crop to Selection to isolate a smaller white box with the text
  • Give it a descriptive name
  • Copy & paste it  into the box
  • Copy & paste the other 3 graphics. Note that you may have to keep experimenting with different sizes
  • Change foreground colour to orange
  • Select regular Georgia font
  • Print “Go to” into appropriate space
  • Change font to Georgia bold
  • Type lines below “Go to”
  • Change orange foreground colour to darker orange
  • Type “email” & drag it on top of the lighter orange “email”. (Having the text in two different shades helps people recognize and remember it.)
  • Use Rectangle Select tool to draw box around useful part of collage. Idea behind that is to delete excess white space at bottom
  • Use Image > Crop to Selection to isolate useful part of collage
  • Give it a descriptive name
  • Change colour to a darker red
  • Click two-headed arrow beside colour boxes. (This will make the background colour dark red.)
  • Click on collage and then click File > New.
  • Increase the length and height by exactly 10 pixels each
  • Click OK
  • Click on collage and press Cmd C to copy into clipboard
  • Click on new red box and press Cmd V to paste collage on top of it
  • Right-click in Histogram-Layers panel and select Anchor Layer
  • You now have a collage with a 5 pixel border around it.
  • Use Image > Scale Image to change the width to 600 pixels
  • Make sure it has a descriptive name with the word Pinterest in it
  • Export it as a PNG file
  • Use the WordPress Add Media button to copy the new Pinterest pin into your appropriate web page.

Pinterest pin


Earn a percentage of the selling price for every book sold.

Click here to learn more.

 

 


Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of a free YouTube tutorial. It’s called 7 Day YouTube and will teach you how to make entertaining videos & animated GIFs.

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Screen Capture to Make Videos & Screenshots

Free Jing screen capture program

Download a free Jing program.  You will be able to screen capture any area in your computer screen.  Not only that, but you will be able to record up to 5 minutes of video action on your screen.

Suppose you are trying to explain a computer problem to your tech guy who lives in a different country.  You can use Jing to capture that part of the screen with the problem and record your voice as you are describing the problem.  Then you email him your little video file.

Start using Jing in 6 steps

1. Download Jing

Go to the Jing website.strong>2. Click free download button
After you click the blue download button, select Windows or Mac.

3. Double click on Jing

screen capture jing-in-applications-folderOnce you have downloaded Jing, double click Jing in the applications folder.

4. Hover over the sun

screen capture jing-sun-captureThere will be a sun icon in the extreme upper right-hand corner of your screen.  Hover over it.  Click on the circle with the plus sign.

5. Rectangle on your screen

screen capture jing-capture-an-image-of-social-media-logoWith your mouse, draw a rectangle on your screen over the area you wish to capture.  If you wish to capture that as an image, click on the yellow Capture an Image icon.  (Note that the function of each icon shows up when you hover over it.)  Save your computer as a PNG file with a descriptive name.

 

6. Create a video

Rather than save an image as a PNG file, you can screen capture action and save the action as a video file.  As it is recording, you can add your own voice with explanations.
You can then email the file to someone.  For them to see the video, all they have to do is save it to their hard drive and then copy and paste it into their browser address bar.  (This will work for Chrome, Firefox and other swf-file-in-browser-windowbrowsers.)

 

Jing video

Watch the video below to get a further understanding of how Jing works.

Man captured by a screen


man-captured-by-computer

 


Peter Enns has been developing websites since 1996. He is a social media blogger and author of the free YouTube video-creation tutorial called 7 Day YouTube.

tweets