When you are in college it can be hard to balance everything-studying, working, friends, etc. If you are one of those students that have to have a job during college, you know how hard it is to balance everything without messing something up… that’s why, in my opinion; a home based business is great for college students. A home based business is not one of the regular types of jobs. A home based business will not make your life harder, actually…it s going to make it easier and I will tell you immediately why.You can fit with your job around your school schedule- This is one of the best reasons why working from home in college is great. You can fit 100% into your own schedule! You can build your business around your classes, social events, or if you cannot work a certain day of the week, you don`t have to and there is no boss that will tell you that you have to be there no matter what.You can work from home. Imagine a job where you working outfit are…your pyjamas! That’s the beauty of a home based business. The fact that you can stay home! You don’t have to spend money on gas, or energy on going and returning from job you don’t like. A home based business can be done from any place…your dorm, your apartment, etc.You can make a ton of money – you can earn lots of cash. Many people that work through college don t have jobs that pay a lot. What so great about home based business is that you can make tons of money while still being in school. How much money? Enough to pay for your books, classes, food, clothing, living expenses and still having money to save for the future. A home based business is great for that period when you try to figure it out what career you wish to have and is a better alternative than waiting tables.

Most people think about home based business opportunities because they like the idea of freedom and being able to work whenever they want or wherever they want to. Some people feel that they are controlled by their bosses but they think that a home based business would take too much time and would never work for them.But, the fact that you reading this article about home based business opportunities shows your initiative and you could be your first step to success.One of the biggest reasons why people fail at with their own internet business is because of a flawed mindset towards internet marketing. You do need time to work on your home business but that does not mean that you should adopt a part time or half-hearted mentality towards it. It is a business and if you treat it like a hobby it will become a very expensive one!To succeed with a home based business you have to be willing to learn a new set of skills and be committed to success.So, where can you start on the internet with a home based business?BloggingBlogging is one of the easiest home based business opportunities that you can attempt. You can write a blog and publish online very quickly and easily. Focus on your passion and if you have great content, people will come to your blog and you can earn money on it through advertising or affiliate programs. You only pay for the domain name (ie, the internet name of your blog) and the monthly hosting so that it can stay online. You can even register some blogs for free. Be warned however that it may take a long time to build up traffic and you need to ensure that you write your blog on a very regular basis.Affiliate MarketingAffiliate marketing is one of the most profitable home based business opportunities on the internet. You can promote other people’s product and get commissions for your efforts without having to worry about creating a product or dealing with fulfilment or customer queries. You can earn up to 100% commissions (if you do it right) by just driving traffic to a merchant’s site and getting people to buy something from it. There are unlimited home based business opportunities in this sector because there are always new products coming out and affiliates are needed everywhere!Freelance ServicesOffering your services as a freelance supplier is the fastest way to make money online based on your core competencies and expertise. Writers, graphic designers and other talents are in demand especially on the internet.Internet MarketingThis is the most popular niche online and is mostly related to teaching others how to make money online or business opportunity niches. There is a huge market on the internet looking to find how to make money online. There are over approximately 50 million searches on the internet each month related to making money online and home based business. If you have a product that can help somebody to make money, save money, save time, save effort or generally run their business for them, then you have a huge market of potential customers.Legitimate home based business opportunities require you to make some investments. Elements such as outsourcing, buying domain names, paid traffic etc do cost money. Do not believe the myth that it doesn’t cost money to build an online home business. It can be inexpensive but it is not free. You must learn to invest your time and money wisely to achieve maximum results.

Part Nine: Communication and Relationships

Promotion and advertising is the cornerstone of the marketing plan and marketing department, requiring a strategic plan to work out the best way to leverage marketing efforts to successfully promote a product.

The Promotion Mix

The promotion mix consists of advertising, personally selling, sales promotion, public relations and direct marketing, utilising the main elements of the original marketing mix. It depends on the product, industry and market as to which of the promotions mix to use, however usually a combination of two or more is the most effective way of communicating and sparking the interest of the target market.

Common trends have blurred the lines between which promotion method works well, and consumers today require very tailored messaging for them to actually pay attention to the marketing activity itself. “Same old” advertising is starting to get lost in the clutter, to be replaced by innovative and viral campaigns that engage consumers.

The IMC Approach

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is the approach where all marketing efforts utilised by the organisation from the promotion mix communicate a clear, consistent and compelling message about the product or organisation themselves. Shifts in communication and message should be done slowly overtime, rather than confusing the customers by promoting inconsistent messages. IMC is a way that an organisation manages its entire portfolio of communication.

The Whole Communication Offering

An organisation is constantly communicating messages to the target market. These include:

(1) Planned and deliberate messaging: via the promotion mix

(2) Product messaging: via the marketing mix (such as price, distribution, etc)

(3) Service messaging: via interaction with the customers themselves

(4) Unplanned and uncontrollable messaging: via gossip, external publicity, reviews, rumours and other external environment buzz.

An IMC plan will ensure that an organisation presents a united, solid communication front to customers: this means the management of all contact points of an organisation and product (what is said in the promotional mix, confirmed by the unplanned messages, and performed via the product and service messages).

Elements in the Communication Process

All messages follow a process:

(1) The sender creates the message and encodes. By encoding, this means the process of creativity of the message.

(2) The message is then send out via the medium chosen. At this point is must also compete in amongst what is known as ‘noise’- these are all of the conflicting messages and all other interference that can distract the target receiver.

(3) Once the message is received via the medium, the receiver must decode the creativity of the sender, which is heavily biased by their own perceptions, judgements and past experiences, to finally receive the message.

(4) After this, a response action is triggered, whether it be dismissal, negative, positive, purchase, and so on.

(5) Concluding the action, feedback from the receiver to the sender is sent, which must also go through the ‘noise’ or interference factor before the sender can use the data.

Different elements of the promotional mix approach this cycle in different ways. For example, personally selling is effective because it completes the cycle entirely in almost one transaction, whereas Public Relations campaigns are slower and can experience high amounts of noise.

Developing Effective Communication

(1) Identify the target audience

(2) Determine the objectives and goals of the communication message

(3) Design or encode the message creatively, catered to what would spark the interest of the target audience.

(4) Select appropriate channels

(5) Establish a budget for this message so as to determine best use of resources

(6) Determine which elements of the promotional mix to utilise

(7) Measure results

(8) Manage the IMC system

(9) Collect data on this experience to improve the next message

Reach and Frequency

When it comes to marketing communication strategy, reach and frequency are the two main factors that must be decided upon.

The reach is all about the level of access to the target market. How many segments within the target market need to be accessed? What times? What demographics? Which media do they use?

The frequency is about how many messages through those reach channels, above. If, for example, a magazine is the selected medium, then how many issues is the communication present in? How many times does the advertisement run on television? And so on.

There tends to be an “S”-shaped response curve that occurs with frequency and effectiveness that all marketers must take into consideration. It is generally accepted that a low frequency of communications, such as between zero and three exposures, is not very effective at all. A medium frequency, above this, gains a high acceptance with the target market and thus is very effective (usually between three and ten rapid exposures). However a high frequency starts to lose its effectiveness and can even become negative if the target market becomes saturated and over-exposed to the content.

Advertising

Advertising, also known as paid-promotion or ‘above the line’ marketing is any communication message that is paid for by an organisation to a medium sponsor (such as a television station, a magazine, a bus shelter, a billboard, a radio station, and so on) that presents and promotes a product, non-personally. This means that it does not involve a personal, one-on-one interaction.

These kind of promotion offers the organisation almost complete control of the message as they can purchase a space and advertise however they’d like, within reason. This is usually the most expensive and competitive form however is extremely effective.

Marketers today, however, face a lot of challenges in advertising as there is a lot of noise and consumers are starting to filter out the ‘same-old’ advertising thrown constantly at them. As consumers are becoming more de-sensitised through over-exposure, marketers have to be far more creative to cater better and more effective messages to the target audience.

Marketers now tend to use different forms of advertising, such as ‘crowd-sourcing’, which is getting the target market actively involved in the advertising and creativity for a reward. This has large uptake by a target market as they feel involvement as worth their attention.

Advertising has five functions when being utilised: informing, persuading, reminding, adding value, assisting organisational efforts and favourability. One message can perform one or a combination of all of these functions. Favourability tends to be utilised more today- if a message is liked by an audience, it will tend to have more cut-through than an ad that rubs the audience the wrong way.

Public Relations (PR)

This is known as ‘below-the-line’ marketing and involves creating good relationships with the organisation’s publics and stake-holders through favourable publicity, positive corporate and product image and managing or debunking unfavourable rumours, reviews and messages.

PR can be positive or negative and can function as an outlet for information or promotion, depending on the context. Unfortunately, PR isn’t always in control by the organisation. Whilst some forms can be intentional, such as a press release, sometimes PR can be written or circulated without the knowledge of the organisation. Organisations such as Greenpeace tend to use witty PR campaigns to gain momentum for the causes within the community.

Event Sponsorship

Event sponsorship is a form of PR, where an organisation pays to be an official branded sponsor. This kind of PR allows for positive brand association with the event. However, for this to be a success, it is important that the product ties in well with the event- it can be a waste if there is no leverage by the organisation. Just a brand at an event isn’t enough; there must be some related activity such as a stall at the event. A good sponsorship PR campaign capitalises by promoting the tie with the event.

However, with event sponsorship, ‘ambush marketing’ threatens to take advantage of such events. This is where an organisation will advertise with the event’s theme unofficially so as to appear to be a sponsor and steal the limelight, when they’re in fact not.

Experiential Marketing Campaign

A good way to gain positive PR is by letting customers trial a brand or product as an experience so that they consume the brand in a favourable experience setting and then share this with the market. For example, wine tasting in a beautiful vineyard or sports drinks during a volleyball game on the beach.

Sampling is another similar example of this, where consumers are given access to free trials to promote the product and break through distrust barriers.

Sales Promotion

Sales promotion is a short-term incentive given to customers to spur and increase purchase behaviour, such as the push and pull strategies discussed above. These can come in the form of discounts, buy-one-get-one free, coupons, lotteries, competitions and so on.

It is important, however, than an organisation avoids the sales promotion trap, which is over-incentivising to a point where the discount becomes the norm and the organisation can no longer remove the promotion.

Diverting can also occur. This is where someone or an organisation avoids the restrictions of a sales promotion, purchases these discounted goods in one region, and then sells in a non-discounted region.

Direct Marketing

This type of promotion began with physical mail marketing and has evolved to email and mobile phone marketing. Basically, it is any form of advertising that utilises an interactive media to gain a measurable result and response at any location.

Unfortunately, direct marketing tends to bombard consumers, so a good ‘call to action’ together with something that sparks the interest and curiosity of the target market enough to get them to respond.

The Internet’s Role In Marketing

The internet is a fantastic resource for marketing efforts. It can perform the following functions for an organisation:

- Public relations
- Investor communications
- Customer service
- Prospect qualification
- Product sales
- Customer interaction and feedback
- Internal communications
- E-Commerce

It is very important that the use of the internet is consistent with the marketing strategy as, because it can perform so many simultaneous functions at once, all must be correctly utilised and managed to ensure a united front and message (a good IMC).

On why it is important to understand mass psychology and the psychological processes of cognition for any successful advertising endeavor…

Advertising has been a form of glorifying or gaining publicity for goods and merchandise since very early times. In fact, advertising has been around as an informal concept since the beginning of civilizations and former methods were oral advertising or claiming the benefits of products verbally when merchants sold goods to people directly on the streets. However with the advent of paper and writing, advertising took a more formal shape.

Egyptians and Ancient Greeks used the papyrus for advertising and rock painting was also used. Advertising in English in magazines as we know today dates back to the end of the 17th century and newspaper advertising in America began during the first part of the 18th century with advertisements for estates. With the growth of mass media and different forms and avenues of communication like radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, and of course the internet in the 20th century, advertising started becoming an important aspect for commercialization of products. People started understanding the potential of advertisements and it became a business with the establishment of advertising agencies with the first advertising agency in US opened in 1841.

With advertising becoming a business in itself, the methods of using advertisements became even more formalized, controlled and systematic and the advertisements for products started appearing as newspaper ads, on billboards, hoardings, as handbills, leaflets, on magazines, newspapers, on TV and radio as commercials and more recently on the internet. Web advertising is now a very powerful means to take the message across to the customers. However to actually appeal to customers, advertising will have to work in accordance with the principles of psychology and sociology. Thus an advertiser or an advertising professional will also have to be a sociologist and a psychologist to really have an impact on the minds of consumers.

The principles of advertising are largely based on cognitive psychology and the psychological processes of attention, perception, association and memory to bring out the complete impact or uses of a product or ‘brand’. Any advertisement will have to first focus on the attention that it is able to capture of the consumers. Strong messages, strong visuals and glaring colors are sometimes used on hoardings and billboards. For commercials, attention catching clothes and attractive models are sometimes used.

Once the attention is drawn with the colors and the sounds or words, the focus is on retaining consumer interests by using ‘association’. Themes or products which a particular segment of customers could associate with are used thus for baby food, mothers and babies are featured so association would have more to do with relevance or context of the advertisement. Certain colors also have associative value and certain brands and companies use a specific color to promote their products. For example easygroup uses orange and Vodafone uses red as standard color for all advertising. The company logo or symbol is also a part of developing a brand and helps in giving identity to a brand and has a strong associative value.

The association should be such that it not only serves the purpose of quick understanding and perception of the consumers but is also retained in their memory for a long time. Thus memory or retention is an important aspect of the psychology of advertising as only an advertisement that consumers can easily remember for a long time for its novelty or use of words, colors and figures will be the most effective.

The development of a ‘brand’ is just as effective because a brand helps in driving attention, in developing association (for example, we associate Coke or Pepsi with youth, celebration and a soft drink popular for all occasions) and in memory or retention of any image associated with a service or product. So branding is vital in advertisements as brands help in giving a name and distinct identity of a product. So a Gucci bag or a Sony camera is known for the brand rather than the product.

A brand is recognized in terms of its name, its quality and its reputation with advertisements these days highlighting the uniqueness of brands. For example, HSBC recent advertisements across airports around the world, focus on the differing points of view and different likes and preferences of people across cultures. So when you see such advertisements showing two different perspectives for the same thing, you know this is HSBC. Certain brands develop taglines or motto that sets the brand apart and gives it a distinct character.

You might have wondered why models look lifeless on fashion shows. Fashion shows are usually arranged for designer brands selling clothes and accessories and usually these fashion shows try to accentuate the clothes and that is why the models tend to be rather ‘expressionless’. Although these fashion shows project the clothes sans the emoting, in case of commercials, expressions are widely used because through visual medium, emotions have to be transported through the screen to the consumers to create an effect. Putting across a message through a medium is a challenge and advertisers use emotions widely to help people retain the message that describes the product.

Whatever it is, the mantra is to create an impact and have a lasting effect on the minds of the consumers. The message of the product, the motto of the brand and the mind of the consumer, these are the three Ms that are important in advertising.

However it is important to understand that advertising will have to be different for different media. Radio ads should focus on the strength of sounds and words; internet ads will focus on visuals and colors; newspaper ads will focus on space and the theme; and TV ads would focus more on the emotions and the context used. Using motion, capitalized letters, contrasting colors etc are all important and in order to draw attention to the product, some form of highlighting of the product is also done.

How does all this affect the masses, the consumers who will actually buy the product? Apart from the attention drawing process, the retention producing sounds and words that help memory and the associative value of the products and the advertisements, there is another factor namely necessity of the consumer. Advertising is not just enough, as a customer is driven to buy a product largely considering the necessity, quality, features and price of the product.

If a company solely focuses on the physical aspects of any product, like say – an Apple iPhone looks good on the table, then it’s probably not the best method to have an impact on the market. The features are as important as the price. Then of course, the ‘hype’ that triggers a certain mass psychology in a certain way so people sometimes queue up for newly released products. But trying to tap in on mass psychology or a kind of hype or hysteria for a product is only a short term advertising strategy. The longer term establishment of a product is through real quality, usability and price and all companies should emphasize on these ultimately.

Competition may have a lot to do with the type of advertising used by companies, so the weaknesses of other similar products by other companies are highlighted subtly although this may not always have a positive impact on the mind of the customer. Usually most products advertised as unique and not even remotely similar to other products can have a positive effect and can effectively generate hype and consumer curiosity. Focusing on the unique and highlighting the dissimilarity and novelty of a product in a way that attracts curiosity is a certain method to improve popularity of a product, so this gives consumers the reason to know more and they will enter the shops to enquire about the product. Although celebrities are largely used in advertisements to endorse products or promote a brand, the celebrity culture affects only the youth strongly so the entire value of celebrity advertising may be a bit overrated. This will require a separate discussion on celebrity culture.

The final goal of all advertisers and promoters is to ensure that products and services sell and to increase sales and potential consumer interest creating curiosity is a first short term step while introducing a new product into the market. Retaining customer interest is a different ballgame and requires reputation of the brand, product quality, right pricing and continued high quality advertising to ultimately ensure success of the product.