photo credit: h.koppdelaneyRemember Roy Hobbs

Any baseball fan that likes movies should know the name Roy Hobbs, the fictional character played by Robert Redford in “The Natural.” Hobbs at nineteen years old is one of those athletes whose easy grace and athleticism, makes him a natural, but his career takes a fifteen-year detour due to a youthful indiscretion and some bad luck. Eventually, at the end of his failed career, Hobbs finds success and redemption. This story transcends sport and becomes an allegory for life, and yes, even business.

Failure Versus Success

Our earliest memories of failure are formed in school. Nobody wants to fail and repeat a grade – the social stigma is far too high a price to pay. As adults we are more used to the prospect of not always meeting our expectations. Even successful baseball players who hit 300, fail seven out of ten times. And in business the sales-to-traffic, or sales-to-call ratio is generally fairly low.

We all know what success is: it’s meeting goals and expectations based on how we define them. But do we learn from success? In most cases no. In fact success establishes the status quo, ingrains conventional wisdom, stifles innovation and creativity, and promotes the repetition of the same methods, technologies, and ideas that have always been used, even when those methods no longer work.

Standing Still Is Not An Option

Don’t get me wrong, success is vital to staying in business and prospering, but it does have a dark side. In a business climate that moves ever faster each day, standing still is not an option.

And what about failure? Obviously going bankrupt is bad, that kind of failure we can all live without. But not all failure has such dire consequences. Most failures are simply a matter of not achieving the results we expected from our investment of time, money, and effort.

As negative as failure is, it does have a positive side, as long as that failure does not become irreparable. What failure does do is teach us how to improve, it forces us to change, and most importantly, it demands that we experiment with new ideas, methods, and techniques.

A Case for Marketing Experimentation

Marketing is one of those nebulous words that has fallen through the cracks of common usage, it has somehow lost its meaning. It is used to describe everything from sales to advertising without any distinct place in the business vernacular, or in the average entrepreneurs’ collective conceptual understanding.

I think it is important to give marketing a precise definition, if for no other reason than to provide us with an achievable purpose for spending money on promoting what we do.

According to Harvard Business School’s emeritus professor of marketing Theodore C Levitt as presented in BusinessDictionary.com, marketing is summarized as “…the entire business process as consisting of a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse, and satisfy customer needs.”

It’s no wonder the word is used to describe almost anything remotely related to doing business. As far as a textbook definition goes it’s fine, but from a practical, day-to-day business process point-of-view, it lacks concrete implementable direction.

Experimentation Versus Research

And what makes this kind of definition even more obscure is that it leaves out the most important element, communication, and instead inadvertently stresses the most misused, research.

Without effective communication we have no way of getting noticed, or of being heard, which to my mind is the central issue in business success. And research, the current golden calf of the digital age, is to quote David Ogilvy, “…used like a lamp post for support rather than illumination.”

Marketing – The Process of Communicating Your Brand Story

So let’s redefine marketing so it can direct us to some more meaningful approach to improving our businesses. Let’s view marketing as the process of defining, creating, and communicating your brand story.

Part of the problem is we live in a seemingly rational world, but we are selling our products, services, and ideas to a decidedly emotional audience. This discrepancy between how we think things should be decided, and how we as human beings actually make decisions, is difficult for most people to wrap their heads around.

The Key to Human Nature

Is there a bridge between the rational world and the emotional-being; one that can direct us to a method of communication that convinces and persuades an audience to accept, remember, and respond to our marketing communication? The answer is yes.

The key to human nature is cognition, as defined as, ‘the act of understanding through thought, experience, and sensation.’ We do, and decide things based on our understanding of the world we live in, and how we perceive our place within it.

From that perspective, our decisions are perfectly rational; but our perception and understanding of that world is decidedly emotional. Our world-view is based on how we interpret our experiences, filtered through our sensory perception. And therein lies the bridge between the two seemingly opposite perspectives. Marketing is the process of shaping that interpretation to meet our business goals.

Shaping Perception

How then do we shape perception? The answer lies in our ability to deliver a powerful, meaningful experience to an audience; one that leaves a lasting impression, moulds opinion, imprints recognition, and establishes confidence and trust within the context of a defined business purpose.

This is the goal of marketing, a useful, meaningful objective that informs how we communicate to our interested publics. All the tools to do this are readily available to those who use the Web as their primary means of marketing communication.

The business website is the most adaptable and economical communication vehicle ever invented. It allows us to employ words, pictures, sound, video, and human interaction to connect, engage, excite, inform, and entertain in an attempt to persuade.

Are you going to get it right every time – no, but by continually fine-tuning your message, and how you deliver it, you will ultimately achieve your marketing goals. This is a workable, practical marketing process that any company can adopt.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.sonicpersonality.com. , and http://www.136words.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

Our company, Firedrum.com has the ability to increase your web site through our internet marketing process. Our dedicated and hardworking crew has the know-how and the skills necessary to build a superior web site for you. There are many tools and techniques to provide you and all of our clients with the essential services their web sites need to thrive. There are numerous important values we incorporate into the services we present to our clients in order to bring success to all of our clients through our internet marketing. These services and values are our top priority because they will help to bring accomplishment to your company. We provide outstanding company design and dynamic solutions to our customers’ websites. We provide SEO formatting in our article marketing. We provide you the tools necessary to keep your web site up to date. And we provide our customers with a growing audience and the ability to keep track results.

The Internet Marketing Process

There are many services and values we instill into our customers’ web sites. The advantages we add to our clients’ on-line businesses are numerous. We can communicate with your clients, we can establish brand awareness, we can increase customer frequency and loyalty, we can promote new products and services, we can generate web traffic and on-line sales, we can increase sales leads, and we can increase marketing ROI. Through e-mail communication, we can present your customers and clients with your vital information through links and interactive messaging. Through our marketing techniques, we launch awareness of your business, we promote the details of your business, and we entice more customers to purchase your products .Through your updated web site, your customers will receive the excellent features from your web site.

Trust our internet marketing capability to boost your business on-line. The internet marketing process we present to all of our clients draws their audience into their product, service, or business, and we make that audience grow into a larger and a more profitable audience. The customer design we offer is based upon your product or service. Our design is created around you and your business. The SEO format and article marketing situates keywords into articles discussing your business and your products or services. We allow you to track the results of your new marketing friendly web site and keep your web site up to date. And we offer dynamic solutions to marketing your web site.

No matter the product or service your business performs, we can increase the quality of your web site. The internet marketing we provide to our clients has the top quality advertising benefits added to your on-line site and to your e-mails. We can and will offer the most excellent care to your business. We can and will take all of your advertising needs into consideration. We will provide you with an outstanding customer design, SEO format for your article marketing, dynamic solutions, a growing audience, the upkeep of your web site, and the tracking of your results. Stick with the best internet marketers. Stick with Firedrum.com

Bob grew up in Wichita, KS. He graduated from Colorado State University with a Bachelors Degree in Marketing. Bob spent several years in the printing industry before moving to Arizona and working with IKON Office Solutions and Ticketmaster/CitySearch. He then became a co-owner of FireDrum Internet Marketing in 2002. Bob is responsible for generating all of the company

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The reason we all write blogs and content for our websites is because we have something that we feel is important to say, and we want to get that message out to the public and to our potential consumers. Unfortunately, as my boss has pointed out in one of his posts that only 16% of people actually read blog posts and the rest of us simply scan them for pertinent information. I have to be honest, as a reader and a writer I found this to be a shocking number and had a bit of a hard time accepting it. But, as Jeff explained to me, most of us are thrown so much information in one day that we simply don’t have enough time to read it all.

I think that’s only part of the reason though. Truthfully? There are a lot of badly written, boring posts and articles floating around on the web and most of us can’t be bothered to read them to get the information we need out of it. But, the good news is that I do believe if something is truly well written or entertaining that people will read it. Therefore, in order to get our message across, we have to make our writing more appealing to our readership. Fortunately, these few simple copywriting tips can be used to help you tighten your writing and reach further than that 16 percent.

1.) Plan Ahead

Listen, if you don’t know where you’re going with your writing, than your readers don’t stand a chance. Before you sit down and put fingers to keyboard, think about what you want to say and what the logical flow of your thoughts should be. Your writing should be orderly and have direction. If you’re looking for a great starting place, try this simple adage: Tell people what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you’ve told them. It’ll help lend focus to your thoughts.

2.) Know your Audience

It seems like common sense, but you’d be surprised. For example, if you know that your travel site appeals to young urban professionals, writing a blog post about retirement travel is probably not going to go over well. Think about your idea and spin it: Maybe your blog post could be about where to send your retired parents on vacation. Find a way to make your new product or service appeal to your existing audience.

3.) The K.I.S.S. Principle

In other words – Keep it Simple Stupid (Hey, don’t blame me, I didn’t invent the acronym). Did you know that most newspapers write their stories for a grade seven education level? Writing for the web shouldn’t be any different. And, while it’s great that you have a PhD in entomology, but if your readers don’t know you’re talking about bugs, you aren’t going to get your points across.

4.) N.M.A.P. (No more acronyms please)

Given the previous entry, this one is a little ironic. But here’s the thing. Just because you know what you’re talking about when you mention a BOGOFF (Buy One Get One For Free) or E&OE (Errors & Omissions Excepted); doesn’t mean that the people reading your blog do. Explain what your acronyms mean before you lose all your readers with your technical talk.

5.) Mix it up!

Sometimes copy can feel really stale and boring, but you can’t quite figure out why. It’s often due to the overuse of certain words in your copy, so take a look over what you’ve written. If you see that every sentence starts with the word ‘the’ then you need to make a change. This also applies to words in a paragraph, if you’ve described something as ‘good’ four times in the past three sentences it’s time to pick a new adjective.

6.) Use Awesome Words Sparingly

Being overly descriptive with your writing is not necessarily a good thing. If you were writing a novel, sure, there might be room for more flowery turns of phrase. Web copy though, should be more simple and direct. Don’t over illustrate what you’re trying to say, just say it, otherwise you’ll lose your readers.

7.) Text Not

It doesn’t matter how busy you are; text speak does not belong in proper copy. Take the time to write out each of the words you want to say, otherwise you’ll turn off your readers. Because, not only is text speak annoying, it can also be hard to understand, so resist the urge, kwim? (Oops!)

8.) Slash

Once you’ve finished writing your blog or article, save and close the file and walk away from it. After you’ve taken a little bit of time (20 – 30 minutes) come back to it and start editing. Your fresh eyes will help you be able to see the mistakes and the unnecessary parts more easily. And remember, if you think you’ve gotten a bit too wordy or it runs a little too long, than it probably has.

We write content for our websites or blogs because we want people to read it, but appealing to readers in the information age is easier said than done. Writing should be tight, direct and interesting to your readers. Following the above copywriting guidelines should get you on your way to improving your copy.

SEO Toronto Canada internet marketing company offers search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and social media marketing.

You are making the most important step you will ever take in your business career Without understanding how to build a good concept, good product, good service, and good content, everything else is a waste of timeIf you have already been surfing the web for an internet business that makes the most of your skills and experience, then you have already realized that operating a cyberspace business uses different techniques, methods, and tools than a brick and mortar storefront does…

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