Axis and Allies: Part 2

Just to reiterate, this isn't just about a method (ie tactic) that can be used to strike the target market at its core. It's a process that must be followed to achieve maximum marketing effectiveness.

All of your research will lead you to: the INSIGHT. This insight is the key to your campaign; it's the nugget of truth that glows white hot at the center of the marketing plan. An insight is a universal truth that all your customers share as an intrinsic value that they see in your product or service.

It's your Axis and Allies battle cry that trumpets your cause and helps you win the day. Find that insight, and you've found the key to the marketing kingdom.

The insight is what helps to guide and develop the direction of the next step: the strategy.

Blogging for Dollars, Part 2

Direct marketing is another popular method for bloggers to make money off of their blogs. This requires more work than just setting up an account with Google and smiling, or frowning, at whatever ads show up.

In this case, you need to either accept - assuming someone's offered - or look for a company to partner with. Then that company or individual pays you to place their ads directly on your blog. For the advertiser, they get to specifically target an audience - YOUR audience. For you, this option is great because you have a sure source of income from your blog that you've hand-picked. You no longer need to hope for the best with AdSense, although it IS pretty good about matching ads to fit your content.

Axis and Allies: Part 1

I've grown up during this revolution of marketing and was a witness to the insanity long before I learned to embrace it as a marketer. When asking for marketing advice, people often receive answers full of great, tactiacal methods to get messages out to target audiences. Those have their place, but then you need to bring them all together and decide how to use them for YOUR OWN purposes. One method will almost always be the wrong answer.

Before you can market to ANYONE you need to have a strategic view of the situation. I knew someone who called it the "40,000-foot view." It's almost like playing a game of Chess, except that it's more complicated than that; maybe "Axis and Allies." You set up your pieces strategically, putting everything where you think it should be in order to get the biggest ROI.

The first part is, of course, researching to find the target you want. It can be a micro-target (niche) if you want to focus on a smaller group, or you can broaden your efforts to aim at a slightly larger group. It's up to you, but make sure the research gives you the information you need to make a correct targeting decision.

Along with that, make sure you also find out where your decided-upon target gets information. That way, you can then decide the next step: strategy.