The other way is when you already have a product or service available. You need to find out where it can be sold, to whom and for how much. You need to know how to place the product or service in the market.

Based on the information gathered, you then have to plan your production, set sales targets and do your budgeting and costing, along with planning your promotional strategies.

Selling is defined as “To exchange ownership for money or its equivalent.” Is sounds simple but it is not. Selling is executing a plan. If running a business is like a battle, sales is the front line. Everything else are Headquarters’ operations. Selling is exchanging your products for money. How this is done is the sales plan. Marketing will tell you where the market is, but locating the customers, persuading them to pay for the product, negotiating prices and deliveries is selling. Selling does not end with the receipt of the payment. An important part of selling is ensuring the customer returns.

While they are separate functions, Marketing and Sales have to be closely linked. Marketing may develop plans that are not in touch with ground realities, which Sales knows best. Sales may not be aware of new markets of positioning opportunities which Marketing, with its broader perspective, will be able to identify. Marketing and Sales have to work together on the selling plan and financials. Is it better to look at lower volumes and higher margins or the converse? Sales will develop special selling campaigns and price schemes. But Marketing needs to be involved so that they can offer their inputs on how these campaigns can be used not just to increase volumes but the broaden the market.

Marketing is a cerebral function – gathering information, processing it, understanding what can be sold where and in what volumes at what kind of price. Sales is a physical function – taking the product into the market, selling it and bringing in the money. Neither function has any purpose without the other. Planning without implementation is worthless, as is action with out knowing where, when, how and why to act. If Sales and Marketing are able to use common support resources like Ringgle (http://www.ringgle.com) the synergies are easier to achieve.

Even in the smallest of companies, where one person may look after both functions, there is a tendency to give more weight to one which is a big mistake. Success come when Sales and Marketing act as two sides of the same coin.

How this data is processed and how it is used often defines the success of a business. By itself the raw data is a series of numbers and facts and meaning nothing at all. It has to be processed. In the first stage of processing, this has to be collated and compiled for it to make any sense. For example, if data on visitors to your website is collated by locations
or income or age it means much more than just having 5,000 visitors.

It begins to make sense. But these are still fairly useless bits of information. Many businesses stop at this stage of processing. Some still achieve success, partly because of processing thus far and partly because of extraneous conditions like finding enough visitors from a locality they can target for their marketing efforts. But to be able to make full use of it to better your business processes, the information thus produced needs to be analyzed and compared. “With what?” you may ask.

Clearly, information such as, “There were 33 customer complaints” needs to be studied along with additional factors such as:
“In which product?”
“In what time period?”
“Were they all minor complaints?”
“How many were attended to?”
“In what time frame?”
“Was the customer satisfied?”
“Did he continue to buy our products/ use our services?”
Etc.

Then, one has to compare this with past period information, or with other products in
the company, or with industry average, or with the best in class etc. A business also needs to use external data – bench mark from the industry and other companies. You also need t know what do the numbers indicate in terms of customers who did not complain, but decided to go elsewhere etc.

Such analysis and comparison should lead to knowledge of what is actually happening or where you are in terms of realistic business results and potential. This, in turn, will open up several possible actions, from among which you can choose what is best for what you want to achieve.

Once this action is taken, it has to be monitored. The results need to be studied and the
fresh data obtained needs to go back into the loop. Such complete closed loop of data in every sphere of activity of the business will lead to increased efficiencies and success.
You many find it interesting to examine the various types of information in your own business and see how data, information and knowledge are being treated.

Is it being left at the raw data stage in most cases? Or is information available? If so, is it being used to the maximum and acted upon? Is this the end of the cycle or is more data collected and added into the loop for use if future business refinements? There are companies who can help you in this.

Data, if properly used, is knowledge. And knowledge is power.

The best form of internet marketing is to have search engines find your site. But a search for say, “lawnmowers” will open up at least a few thousand sites. People tend to stop searching after going through the first 2 or 3 pages of results. Let’s see what you can do to get your business high up in the results list.

• Using key words in a title tag is a key component of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Look at the title of this article. It is clear and concise for the reader, but if someone is searching for tips on how to market their online businesses, this will show up in the search. Having a different, but always relevant, title tag for each page of your website will increase the chances of search engines finding it since the more title tag options you have, the more chances of it matching the search criteria.
• Links placed in other websites is a valuable search tool. When contacting websites for promoting your business, tell them you preferred anchor text. Anchor text is the words that comprise the hyperlink that connects to your site. For example, if you re selling a new type of lawnmower, the anchor text should be something like “latest lawnmower technology”.” Other sites may not agree to the exact wording you want, but try to persuade them. If you are paying for a mention in the site, you have the power to negotiate.
• Relevance matters! Rather than trying to place links to your website wherever you can, it is better to focus on placing the links in sites that relate to yours. Your lawnmower link in a gardening site will be more likely to attract interest than a link in a site about farming.
• You need to be patient. The longer your site has been up, the more valid you and your products appear. Look at this way, if you had two choices in buying a car, based on name only, would you buy from Honda or from the Kalamazoo Car company? Search engines also give value to the age of sites when ranking them. Remember the hard work you put into your site may start producing real results after 6 months to a year.
• Use key words in the body of your text. The more often the key words appear in the text, the more you’re the chances of a search engine finding your site relevant. Just be careful not to force the use of keywords in such a way that the text looks awkward and unnatural. Keep in mind that many search engines penalize site stuffed with an excess of keywords which have designed only to improve search rankings.

Visit sites like http://www.ringgle.com to look for resources that you can use to improve your marketing efforts.

Actually marketing involves many more activities that work together to facilitate a satisfactory exchange of relationships via creation, distribution, promotion and pricing of goods, services and ideas.

To succeed, a business requires satisfied and happy customers who return to the business to provide additional sales. In exchange for something of value, like payment, the customer receives a product or service that satisfies their needs.

Such a product or service should have an acceptable level of quality, reliability, customer service and support, is available at places convenient to the customer at the “right” price and is promoted effectively by means of clear message that is readily understood by the customers.

Understanding customers and anticipating their requirements is essential to effective marketing. Also important is the understanding of market trends.

With an understanding of the customer and the general market trends, a company should then devise a marketing strategy. Identifying the right market segments, selecting a suitable positioning platform and beating rivals are some of the core elements of a marketing strategy.

In Europe and the USA, between 25% and 35% of all civilian workers perform marketing activities such as strategic planning, personal selling, advertising, packaging, transport, storage, marketing research, product development, creative design, wholesaling, retailing, marketing planning and consultancy.

The priority of marketing is to identify customer needs, determine priority target markets and achieve sales through implementing marketing principles and practices. Relationship marketing focuses on long term, mutually beneficial arrangements in which both the buyer and the seller focus on enhancing the value of the exchange between them.

Relationship marketing continually deepens the buyer’s trust in the company and in turn helps the company better understand customer needs. Better markets respond to customers’ needs and strive to increase value to buyers over time.

So how does a company go about marketing? It all starts with gaining marketing intelligence through analysis. The analysis should focus on the customers, the competition, the general market trends or factors and finally the company’s own capabilities.

By analyzing customer needs and trying to understand buying behavior, companies can try and formulate effective marketing strategies. This leads to improvements in the product or service, quality management, strategic promotion and overall improvement in service.

By studying and understanding the competition, companies can try and change their marketing strategies and be better able to compete. This leads to changes in features, benefits and price of the products or services. This also leads to improved promotion and better brand positioning.

By keeping an eye on general market trends and in particular related market factors, companies can come up with pre-emptive marketing strategies, attacking potential threats and take advantage of future opportunities.

Finally, by fully understanding it’s own strengths and weaknesses, a company can improve it’s processes and ultimately improve the quality of it’s products or services. This also prevents the company from getting into ventures or areas that they might not be able to handle or which have a potential to fail. At the same time, it could also show the company opportunities that they might have been missing.

For online businesses, many of the same principles are relevant. Online companies should also focus on marketing analysis, strategies and programs. In the coming weeks and months, I will be writing more articles about each of the above mentioned ideas and principles and how they can be applied to small businesses.

If a company wants to satisfy it’s clients, then it should pay attention to quality management. Quality management comes in many flavors - by inspecting, by controlling, by including key people and by setting standards in the company that can not be ignored.

By inspecting and screening out defects in its products or services before customers noticed them, a company can be one step ahead of the game. Services and products will be streamlined and be of high “quality”.

By controlling or by detecting quality problems and solving them in a systematic way, companies can ensure their products or service are perceived to be of high quality over the long term. A systematic approach ensures a consistency in terms of quality. And consistency is what build brands. What is a brand?

By including every employee in the company in the quality management process, companies can make sure they understand the expectation and perceptions of its customers. This means seeing things from a customer’s point of view. Customers can not be seen as external to a company. They are a part of it and therefore quality becomes paramount to such a company.

Take the case of the Four Seasons Hotel, a chain of over 63 hotels in 29 countries. Four Seasons Hotel is known for its high quality of service and has even won several awards. From the beginning Four Seasons wanted to make quality of service a competitive advantage and a guiding principle. This meant treating its customers with courtesy and intelligent and treating its employees with humanity and respect.

A company does not have to be huge or a multimillion dollar enterprise to appreciate and implement quality management practices. Take the case of a tiny restaurant and cafe, in the middle of New York’s West village, with a dozen tables or so. Tea and Sympathy became a fashionable landmark and known for its quality of service. The guiding rules of service or printed on the menu for all to see. It is also a reminder for its employees on how to maintain consistent quality in the way it treats its customers.

Customer satisfaction should be measured on a regular basis and the root causes of any short comings should be immediately dealt with. Looking at the core processes usually addresses the reasons for any failure in quality. How are things done? Could they done better to improve quality and increase customer satisfaction? These are the types of questions that must be asked regularly.

For further information on quality management here are a list of useful websites:

The British Quality Foundation is a not-for-profit organization promoting business excellence.

The Juran Institute’s mission statement is to provide clients with the concepts, methods and guidance for attaining leadership in quality.

The American Society for Quality website for good professional insights.

Amercian Quality Assurance Institute, a well established institution for all types of business quality assurance.