Monday, July 30, 2018

3 Simple and Low Cost Marketing Ideas to Create Visibility

Marketing your business is one of the biggest challenges for any solopreneur – it’s a task we all find quite daunting, and are simply overwhelmed by all the information that’s available. Below I have put together some information on 3 simple and low cost marketing ideas, which you can easily implement right away to create more visibility for your online business and web site. They all work well for me! To help you decide which is the best strategy (or strategies) for you, I have listed the pros and cons of each one.

Create a Blog Pros

:: You can really show off your expertise by posting on a regular basis.

:: Blog posts don’t need to be very long – approx. 200-350 words.

:: If you have some important information to share, you can instantly create a post – no waiting for your next newsletter to make your announcement!

:: If you use a blogging platform such as WordPress, this is hosted on your website. Each time you post to your blog you are creating fresh content for your website, which the search engines love! Cons

:: You need to post regularly - at least once a week – in order for this to be an effective marketing strategy.

:: You need to feel confident that you will be able to write fresh content regularly. :: It can be difficult to build a direct relationship with your reader. Publish an Ezine Pros

:: Unlike a blog, readers sign up to receive your newsletter so you already have a connection with them.

 :: You can build a relationship with your newsletter reader and encourage one-on-one communication.

:: You can go into more depth in your newsletter article than you can with your blog posts. :: Your clients/target audience can get to know you through your newsletter. Cons

:: You have to make a commitment to publish on a regular basis, otherwise your subscribers will see you as unreliable, and may even forget about you!

:: There is more work involved in putting together a newsletter than writing a simple blog post.

:: You will need to subscribe to one of the ezine distribution services – I strongly recommend you do this and not send your ezine via your email client! Article Marketing Pros

:: If you are already blogging or publishing a newsletter, you have your articles written.

 :: It is highly likely that once you submit your article to one of the article submission sites, it will be picked up and published on other article submission sites.

:: Regularly submitting your articles will elevate you to ‘expert’ status within your field/niche. Cons

:: You have to write the articles if you’re not publishing a newsletter or posting to a blog.

 :: It takes time to manually research suitable article submission sites and submit articles.

:: In order for this strategy to be effective, you have to submit your articles regularly – at least once a month.

Conclusion: You can just pick one strategy to focus on, or you can do all three! Whichever one you choose make sure it’s the right one for you. The key is to be consistent in your approach. If you decide to go with a blog make sure you have the time and motivation to add new posts regularly – at least once a week. Don’t start a newsletter if you know you won’t be able to keep to a regular publishing schedule! And for article marketing to be effective you need to submit articles on a regular basis.




ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Tracey Lawton is a certified Master Virtual Assistant with many years of experience, helping professional speakers, coaches, and authors operate an efficient, organized, and profitable business. Visit http://www.traceylawton.com/tips.htm to subscribe to her newsletter, Virtual Solutions, full of tips for operating a more productive business and receive Tracey’s The 7 Key Steps to an Organized and Efficient Office special report absolutely free.

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

10 Referral Marketing Ideas for Your Business

Marketers spend endless time inquiring, pondering and strategizing to help improve business for their consumers, thus increasing their own. Having a few referral marketing ideas to bounce around in meetings or just in your mind, may help to increase your businesses opportunities, marketing strengths, and ultimately, customer base.

Helpful Referral Marketing Ideas

1. Mull over some of these tips to see what you can do to grow your business through referral marketing.

2. Offer a free service to your customers from time to time that directly relates to your business. If you are running a car wash, throw in a free buffing towel or a car freshener for all of your visitors.

3. Figure out why your customers come to you as opposed to others. Expand on that, give them more than what they expect and you may find yourself with a willing referral marketing work force.

4. An easy way to stimulate some passive referrals is to create rebates that follow large purchases or costly services. Make sure your customers understand that the volume discounts you receive are being passed down to them.

5. Pick an obscure or unconventional holiday to celebrate annually. Give discounts, gifts or credits to your customers. If the first year doesn't generate enough interest, the second year probably will. Understand that each year the event is celebrated is also branding your business to that event. This is a more non-competitive marketing approach.

6. Brand a helpful item or frequently used tool and give them away to your customers. This type of passive referral works because friends or family see the item and your businesses logo. Remember, the more useful the item, the more often it will be seen. T-shirts, key chains or even items relative to your business are great passive referral marketing ideas.

7. Package an extra item with some of your products with the gentle suggestion that it can be shared with a friend or family member. On a more aggressive marketing campaign, give your consumers a free gift, with a free gift certificate with a friend or family member to come and get for themselves.

8. Cyber mail or snail mail a coupon to your customer to thank them for their business. Include another coupon, or coupon code that a friend or associate can use.

 9. Customer appreciation days are always appreciated. Offer sales, discounts and gifts to your current consumers and utilize some of the passive referral marketing ideas such as gifts or coupons for friends and family members who attend the appreciation day as well.

10. Does your business offer a required, timely service or maintenance agreement? Give your customers free planning books or calendars that remind them not to forget your services. Referrals will not generate themselves. Spend enough time developing a solid referral marketing plan that will likely begin a simple, brainstormed idea.




ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture and Referral Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture and Referral relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability. To discover more Referral program marketing strategies please click here Referral : program http://www.christianfea.com/joint-venture-wealth-report/?a=referralmarketing

Marketing Ideas

Marketing Ideas

That really add up You'll notice a great many various tools and gimmicks that corporations implement when advertising their solutions, services, or just their firm in general.

Many of these gear become expensive and they are rather challenging to work with to sustain business over time. So many companies are in search of easy advertising solutions, that don’t cost too much money, and that will stand the test of time. This is for many businesses the point at which they turn to discount product advertising to get the job done. Promotional products are the pieces that people use everyday but when designed with a enterprise name and logo design on them serve as a nagging reminder of that small business and the fact that you should contact them again in the future.

And any good advertising product usually also has a business phone number or web address printed on it to help you do just that. One item that is very handy and tends to hand around a good long while is a promotional calculator and this is one item that just really adds up to be a good advertising investment. Advertising calculators are handy, usually pocket sized and come in handy whether being toted around to calculate a tip in a restaurant or to help people budget their monthly expenses. They are the type of item that is designed to last.

Now you may just want to hand these objects out at a tradeshow or within your office setting or you may want to find an event where calculators seem to be the perfect giveaway. Places like a school career day or math club event can be a nice relative place to hand out promo calculators. Everyone needs the help of a calculator, whether sitting at their desk in a classroom or at home, or even when trying to figure out what they can afford when they are on line at the store.

Figuring is a major part of everyday life and most people would rather turn towards a helpful little device over figuring in their own head or with a pencil and paper. One thing is for certain, these marketing calculators will go a long way in helping to further your firm and get things rolling in the right direction for your corporation. It may seem like a small and inexpensive gift but it an item that will surely be used, seen, and last a good long while.




By: Jack Scott 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

promotional keyrings are perfect giveaways for any business. You can orde3r keyrings to say whatever that you want : http://www.printedkeyrings.org/

Internet Marketing Ideas for Success

Learn new techniques for promoting and selling your ideas, products, services, and promotions on the internet. Get internet marketing ideas, tips and advice.

Marketing on the internet today has changed dramatically over the past few years. Today’s techniques for promoting and selling your ideas, products, services, and promotions on the internet requires an expanding array of multimedia features and capabilities, much different and advance from days past. Below is a list of but a few of the techniques and approaches every marketer should consider including in their efforts to increase website traffic, sales and revenues.

Educational activities – One of the single most important ways to increase your personal knowledge and expertise with any given topic is to get involved somehow with teaching this topic to others. Even if it is a basic and simple process or procedure, the process of thinking through, writing it out, developing lesson plans, etc. will be invaluable to you. Once developed, separate the materials into small sections for delivery and distribution.

There are a number of ways to distribute the materials out to potential clients. Direct mailings over a period of time, or many successful marketers set the individual segments up into an email marketing autoresponder program that sends the messages out to a predetermined list of clients and customers over a predetermined frequency. By far, this is my personal favorite method for delivery of the materials.

With distribution in this method, it gives you the perfect opportunity to include small “snippets” of promotion for yourself or various products or services which you sale or promote. You will be amazed at how effective this particular technique is. Not only will it give you expanded knowledge, in those cases where it was new information which required background research, it will reinforce you knowledge in those areas that you were already familiar with.

Link Exchange Directories – Though not everyone thinks of it, you should sponsor a directory website with open invitations for others to include links, banners and promotional advertisements back to their sites. Beyond including your banners, links, and advertisements sprinkled throughout the page, you gain the added benefit of having reciprocal links exchanged with others in the process. In effect, free advertising for both of you, a win-win scenario.

Share Tips, Insider Secrets – A popular feature of many marketers is to share various tips and insider secrets with your clients or email subscribers on a routine or frequent basis. Some even offer daily “tidbits” releasing them either through autoresponder programs or an offering located prominently on their website. This significantly helps clients and potential customers build a trusting and confident relationship with you. All of which are important ingredients for future sales and revenues.

Publishing eBooks – A very popular and lucrative venue for generating profits and revenue streams is putting topic materials together in larger format to publish and promote through ebook promotions. These can offer a full range of multimedia components and capabilities. These can be sold on an individual sale basis or part of a monthly ongoing “subscription” basis.

Developing, marketing, and selling of materials utilizing internet marketing ideas and techniques can be fun and profitable. Finding new, creative, and innovative methods for marketing on the internet requires some effort on our parts. The greater reality is that no single method or approach works all of the time (or even sometimes!). Being flexible, willing to explore possibilities and new techniques. Have fun trying different things to see what works best for you and your products, while growing your business and your profits at the same time.




ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Stephen Wright is President & CEO of InternetMarketingUSA.comWould YOU Like To Be Earning $1,600 - $3,200 Per Month in 180 DAYS OR LESS by Simply GIVING AWAY a $1,949 Product?" Learn how: http://imusa.successuniversity.com/slim

Internet Marketing and Advertising Ideas

Online advertising and marketing methods can be quite costly, but there are marketing and advertising ideas and techniques that don't cost a small fortune. There are great marketing strategies and ideas that can bring in a sizeable amount of website traffic and revenue.

Website owners wanting good ideas for marketing and advertising are always seeking new and ingenious advertising and marketing methods. Of course, all business website owners want their ideas and efforts to bring in more internet traffic and increased revenue. Unfortunately, online advertising and marketing methods can be quite costly, but there are marketing and advertising ideas and techniques that don't cost a small fortune. There are great marketing strategies and ideas that can bring in a sizeable amount of website traffic and revenue.

E-zines are a popular method of marketing and advertising websites because e-zine publishers have control over links and banner ads within their e-zines. Publishing an e-zine can be very beneficial for online business owners. Even if a website owner isn't a skilled writer, with a little help they can still publish an e-zine for online marketing and advertising purposes.

Unbeknownst to some, there are websites that offer free and low-cost content for those wanting to publish an e-zine. Besides the many free content websites, there are many e-zine publishers that trade content with writers who also want to take advantage of free marketing and advertising methods. Contributing writers submit original articles and include links to their business websites in exchange for the content they are submitting. This is a marketing method that benefits all concerned. The original e-zine publisher receives free content, and article contributors receive free marketing and advertising for their business websites. Writers without business websites often sell their work directly to websites that buy articles and sell articles to those seeking website and e-zine content.

Blogging is the latest internet craze among online business owners looking for fresh marketing and advertising ideas. It certainly doesn't take a professional writer to create a blog. An internet business owner can create a blog and submit content to that blog on a daily basis. If information is full of valuable keywords and phrases, many search engines will pick up that information. People searching for particular keywords and phrases will likely stumble upon the information.

Include links to a business website along with related information people are seeking, and the business could receive a great increase in internet traffic and revenue. Advertising using daily blogs are simple low-cost marketing methods, and these marketing methods have proven effective for a great number of online business owners.

Internet business owners seeking marketing ideas and advertising methods are often willing to exchange links with other online business owners.This can be accomplished through link exchange programs or by directly contacting internet business owners. Those looking for free online marketing and advertising methods and ideas can create partnerships with many online business owners and greatly increase their traffic and revenue.




By: Todd Lavergne 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit: http://www.EarnBonus.com

Supercharge Your Sales With The Five Greatest Ideas in Marketing

"Supercharge Your Sales With The Five Greatest Ideas in Marketing" talks to the evolution of marketing thinking and how it impacts the web entrepreneur. The vast majority of those starting on the web have no marketing background. These five 'big ideas' provide rich perspectives for thinking about how to design a web site, develop a sales letter, run an email campaign - in fact the whole gamut of web marketing.

Web home-based business is about marketing. Pure and simple! Yet few home entrepreneurs are versed in marketing. We all get caught up in the latest techniques and give little thought to the simple but immensely powerful ideas that sit behind those techniques. There are many ideas floating around, but only five that are truly profound.


The Unique Selling Proposition

Under the USP theory you identify some feature of the product and you use that as a lever to distinguish it from its competition. So products are stronger, faster, sharper, and they wash cleaner, and so on. USP thinking is product-oriented thinking, totally focused on the ‘functionality' of the product. Product-oriented thinking is very common on the web, understandably as people become very wrapped up in what they produce. It is also a death-trap for the unwary as it ignore or simply assumes – the customer.


Customer Orientation

Customer orientation shifts the focus from the product to the customer. It recognizes that the customer puts very little value on a product's functionality. Cars are SUPPOSED to work and not rust. No-one is willing to pay a cent more for one that doesn't rust, though they may be charged more!Think in terms of a continuum of what the customer values i.e. what the customer is ‘willing to pay for!' At one end are the generic functions that the product is supposed to have, next to that are various augmentations – say, support services, warranties, guarantees, and so on. People are willing to pay a little more for these augmentations but they largely resent them. At the other end are the psychological factors – fear, safety, status, children's advancement and so on. People are willing to pay almost anything for these AND, even better, positionings based on customer psychology are extremely difficult to copy and it is difficult to dislodge the leaders. Despite an overwhelming quality advantage, it took decades for the Japanese to create a truly high status car – the Lexus – and dislodge Cadillac and Mercedes.


Solution Marketing

The solution approach is an evolution of customer orientation. The primary insight is: People buy things to solve problems.


Those problems may be simple, requiring an equally simple solution. Or they may be ‘systemic' requiring many products working together to resolve them. So the ‘ring around the collar' image that used to sell detergent in the 1950s has morphed into a system problem of detergents, dryer cloths, and different types of machine and so on. Solutions is a return to product orientation as the human psychological elements tend to get lost.


Experience Marketing

Experience marketing puts the psychology back into solutions thinking. In experience marketing your market approach moves into the skin of the consumer and asks the question: What is the value I gain from the experience of buying and owning this offering? It moves marketing into the world of theater and the choreographing of the sales and delivery process to add value to the consumer. The classic examples are Disney (rides become family), Starbucks (a cup of coffee becomes a refuge from a hectic world), Bass Outdoor World stores (rods and lures become oneness with the fishing and hunting world), Harley-Davidson (motorcycle transport becomes being a rebel and dangerous), Guinness (a beer becomes community), and Club Med (a holiday camp becomes a journey of self-discovery).

The essence of experience is to create a story around the offering, to build adventure, passion and help people to a reason for being. Sound very grand? But it's hugely profitable!


Dream Marketing

The Dream is the super-charging the experience approach. (For an impassioned look at this subject go to Tom Peters Re-imagine, Dorling Kindersley 2003)"A dream is a complete moment in the life of a client. Important experiences that tempt the client to commit substantial resources. The essence of the desires of the consumer. The opportunity to help clients become what they want to be." Gian Longinotti-Buitoni (ex-Ferrari)Wow! Longinotti-Buitoni (quoted by Tom Peters in 'Imagine') defines Dream Marketing as:

"Touching the client's dreams The art of telling stories and entertaining Promoting the dream not the product Building a brand around the main dream Building ‘buzz', ‘hype', a ‘cult' Dreams create an explosion of passion, a release of pent up frustration. This is beyond a good experience it is almost orgasmic!"

From product orientation to selling the opportunity to realize a dream; that's a long journey! But it's a useful way of thinking about marketing your product. Ask yourself:

Am I really just selling a USP into a mass market; generic marketing? Can I find the customer fragment and understand what they want? Does my product solve a problem? If so, who has the problem? Can I imagine one that does? What experience am I offering the customer? Does the theater surrounding the purchase decision add value? Is there any way I can tap into their dreams and deliver on it?

As you move down the list your margins and profits rise!




ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Michael Kay is Research Director of HBB Research a business school based research program looking at web home-based business. He is the lead author of HBB Research's recent Report: The Gold Rush. To For more on The Gold Rush and to get your free subscription to HBB Insights, the ideas newsletter of HBB Research, go tohttp://www.hbbresearch.com/

Internet Marketing Idea Considerations

Innovative internet marketing ideas are ideas that are fairly new. Old methods of generating traffic for a website have little or no success today. More accurately, internet marketing ideas are constantly evolving. One of the few downsides to using innovative internet marketing ideas is that since most have yet to be proven, most commonly because of the newness of them, you may not know if they are really worth your time or your money.

Before searching and implementing new innovative internet marketing ideas, it is a good idea to examine you targeted market very carefully. This will go a long way towards ensuring a good fit.

Website owners wanting good ideas fro marketing and advertising are always seeking new and ingenious advertising and marketing methods. Unfortunately, online advertising and marketing methods can be quite costly, but there are marketing and advertising ideas and techniques that do not cost a small fortune.

Ezines, as one example, are a popular method of marketing and advertising websites because Ezines publishers have control over links and banner ads within their Ezines. Even if a website owner is not a skilled writer, with a little help they can publish an ezine for online marketing and advertising purposes. If you are looking to get into internet marketing, you are probably asking, where can I get ideas for a website, target market, products, etc.? In addition to traditional websites, your internet search may also come up with online business magazines or online business journals.

Online, you can find a large number of websites that offer free internet marketing ideas, many of them brand new and not used before. Besides the many free content websites, there are many ezine publishers that trade content with writers who also want to take advantage of free marketing and advertising methods. Include links to a business website along with related information people are seeking, and the business could receive a great increate in internet traffic and revenue.

A content-rich site is one that has lots of informative articles on it. These are usually centered around a common theme. Contributing writers submit original articles and include links to their business websites in exchange for the content they are submitting. Writers without business websites often sell their work directly to website that buy articles and sell articles to those seeking website and ezine content. Offering internet marketing articles and tips on strategic internet marketing topics is a great way to keep value content on your website. This is a bonus for the search engines and greatly aides in increasing the relative standing of your website on search engines such as Google.

Although you can get the upper hand, by using innovative internet marketing ideas, you may find that not all ideas turn out the way you wanted them to. As a business owner, you can greatly benefit from finding and implementing innovative internet marketing ideas. When it comes to finding these, there are many business owners, especially new owners, who are unsure how they can go about finding those ideas. More often than not, these can be valuable and lucrative in the advice, content and products you have to offer.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Stephen Wright is President & CEO of InternetMarketingUSA.com Owning your own home based business website has never been easier! Have a website, need more traffic and revenues? Visit IM-USA today for information and techniques proven to make you successful. Get Started Today! http://www.InternetMarketingUSA.com/pips.html

Marketing Concepts and Techniques Challenged

In order to appraise the new ideas in marketing and particularly in the areas of consumer behaviour and marketing communications, one should initially outline some challenges faced by a number of fundamental marketing concepts as well as by the marketing as a discipline. Micro-marketing, maxi-marketing, database marketing, new marketing, wrap-around marketing, value-added marketing, relationship marketing and neo-marketing are but a few variations of today's marketing. The very fact that there are so many offshoots is explanative of the eventual disintegration of the science marketing as we know it from the Kotler's books.

The major marketing concept of customer orientation still seems to be a valid reference point. In the contemporary over-informed, over-stressed and hedonistic consumer society the customer is the one who decides to purchase a product, to be loyal to a brand or to switch to a competitor. We may agree, therefore, that "the need for such a [customer] focus has not changed" (Holland and Baker, 2001:44). The exchange value concept, however, might have been rendered obsolete by the "postmodern manoeuvre in marketing and consumer research" (Brown, in Baker, 2003:25). Let us assume that value may be created "during consumption, in sign-value" and not in "exchange-value, as modern economists claimed" (Baudrillard, in Firat and Venkatesh, 1993:235). In such a way the emphasis is on the customer's personal experience and on the view, that "the value of consumption comes from the consumer experience" (Addis and Podesta, 2005:404).

According to the traditional theory, consumers are identified, targeted and acquired through a set of strategic tools such as segmentation, targeting and positioning. Different techniques and approaches based on statistical, "psychological, sociological, and economic principles and models" (Addis and Podesta, 2005:389) have been employed in service of these concepts. While these techniques are still in use, a number of processes and mainly the fragmentation of markets will gradually render the traditional bases of segmentation (demographics and psychographics) questionable and "even the more recent typologies" like VALS will be "less and less useful" (Firat and Shultz II, 1997:196).

Additional challenges faced by marketing research specialists poses the fact that "within the field of qualitative research it is widely recognised that there is no single uniform manner for representing consumer experiences" in postmodern, consumer society (Goulding, 2003:152). The typical roles of researcher and respondent have also changed and the research process is characterised by increased collaboration. Furthermore, the Internet demands that researchers adjust to the new forms of communication by adopting new methods such as "lurking", "online community", "netnography" and others (Cova and Pace, 2006:1092).

As a result, in today's fragmented markets reality where "segments are breaking up into individual customers" (Firat and Shultz II, 1997:196), "the modern tools of sociological analysis" become outdated (Cova 1996:19). While quantitative research is still widely in use, an array of qualitative techniques are been preferred to "fill the gap" in the knowledge about the postmodern consumer. Among the most frequently mentioned are ethnography, fiction, discourse analysis, personal introspection, and in-depth interviewing (Addis and Podesta, 2005:406).

Since purchases, branding and communications are all moving online, scholars have begun defining the Internet Marketing Segmentation (IMS). One such definition follows: "IMS is the use of current information technology to classify potential or actual online customers into groups in which the consumers have similar requirements and characteristics" (Lin et al., 2004:602).

Definitions of that sort, alluring as they may look, are simply old concepts in new clothes and some make-up. More important is that new approaches like online ethnography, or netnography are being increasingly used as appropriate research methods (Cova and Pace, 2006; Maclaran and Catterall, 2002). Companies would need to resort to guerrilla tactics and employ people proficient in areas such as online community engineering. Phenomena like brand hijack (Cova and Pace, 2006:1094) and decisions on how much power should be given to consumers will eventually speed up the trends that shape contemporary research.

The marketing communication concepts of mass marketing and mass advertising have also been a subject to considerable revision. The so-called mass customisation has been boosted by the use of email marketing, database marketing, RSS and others. The processes of fragmentation and post-consolidation have given birth to new concepts like tribal marketing (Cova, 1996:21). Mass advertising and the one-to-many, one-way linear communications have given way to one-to-one, many-to-many, two-way, non-linear communication flow (Holt, 2002; Maclaran and Catterall, 2002).

The Internet has brought also the idea of suck as opposed to the traditional push and pull (Travis, 2001:16). The levels of interactivity have changed "the nature of advertising from persuasion to relationships" (Philport and Arbittier, 1997:75) and the efficacy of advertising itself has been questioned. The title of the article "Stop Advertising - Start Staging Marketing Experiences" by Pine II and Gilmore (Strategic Horizons LLP, accessed 10th January 2009) is self-explanatory.

Schmitt (1999:53) argues that three trends in the broad commercial environment have caused a paradigm shift from traditional "features-and-benefits" marketing toward "experiential marketing":

- The omnipresence of information technology;
- The supremacy of the brand;
- The ubiquity of communications and entertainment.

While agreeing with Schmitt's ideas I would also add to the frame the influence of postmodern consumer behaviour. Therefore, reference points for future research are:
- Postmodern condition;
- Experiential marketing;
- Internet as a new branding tool;
- Customer-based brand equity.

Addis, M. and Podesta, S. (2005). Long Life to Marketing Research: A Postmodern View, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 39. No. 3/4, pp. 386-412.

Brown, S. (2003). Postmodern Marketing: Everything Must Go!, in Baker, M. (ed.), Marketing Book, Oxford: Buterworth-Heinemann, 2005, pp. 16-31.

Cova, B. (1996). The Postmodern Explained to Managers: Implications for Marketing, Business Horizons, Vol. 39. No. 6, pp. 15-23.

Cova, B. and Pace, S. (2006). Brand Community of Convenience Products: New Forms of Customer Empowerment - The Case "my Nutella The Community", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 40, No. 9/10, pp. 1087-1105.

Firat, F. and Shultz II, C.J. (1997). From Segmentation to Fragmentation: Markets And Marketing Strategy In The Postmodern Era, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 31. No. 3/4, pp. 183-207.

Firat, A.F. and Venkatesh, A. (1993). Postmodernity: The Age of Marketing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 227-249.

Holland, J. and Baker, S.M. (2001). Customer Participation In Creating Site Brand Loyalty, Journal Of Interactive Marketing, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 34-45.

 Holt, D.B. (2002). Why Do Brands Cause Trouble? A Dialectical Theory of Consumer Culture and Branding, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 29. No. 1, pp. 70-90.

Goulding, C. (2003). Issues in Representing the Postmodern Consumer, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 152-159.

Lin, T.M.Y., Luarn, P. and Lo, P.K.Y. (2004). Internet Market Segmentation - An Exploratory Study of Critical Success Factors, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 22, No. 6, pp. 601-622.

Maclaran, P. and Catterall, M. (2002). Researching The Social Web: Marketing Information From Virtual Communities, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 20, No. 6, pp. 319-326.

Philport, J.C. and Arbitter, J. (1997). Advertising: Brand Communication Styles in Established Media and the Internet, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 37 No.2, pp. 68-77.

Strategic Horizons LLP, 'Stop Advertising - Start Staging Marketing Experiences' by Pine II, B.J. and Gilmore, J. H. Online. Available at: http://directory.leadmaverick.com/Strategic-Horizons-LLP/Akron/OH/10/943/index.aspx (accessed 10th January 2009).

Travis, D. (2001). Branding in the Digital Age, Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 14-18.

Schmitt, B. (1999). Experiential Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 15, No. 1-3Find Article, pp. 53-67.



About The Author 

Boyan Yordanof is in the tourism business since 1996. His main interests are in Internet Marketing and more specifically Branding in the Hospitality Industry. Boyan is an Internet Marketing Executive at RIU Seabank Hotel Malta Personal URL: http://www.yordanof.com