For other people, the musical industry can be broken down in to genres, which can then be broken down further into sub genres. The sub genres can then be even further broken down to the point where only one aspect of the industry is being focused on; the niche.

Finding a niche is like doing a mathematical equation without numbers: you keep subtracting facts and descriptions until you get down to the lowest common denominator for that market- the niche in other words. When you are doing niche marketing, you are exploiting the needs for that particular part of an industry- that small segment of the targeted audience who may have a specific and very definable need.

Keeping with the musical industry theme, we focus on this genre of the musical industry: the marching band. For each section of instrument types, there is a sub genre: the brass, the woodwinds and the percussion sections. Taking the brass section sub genre then, we can break that down into the niches: trumpet, French horn, tuba and trombone. Of those four niches, there are some similar needs that can be addressed, but each will have specific needs that have to be focused on as well. Niche marketing would address those specific needs for each of the four niches found within this sub genre.

The music that is written for a trombonist for instance, is different from that of a French horn. You could never fit a tuba into a trumpet case, and if you did, that thing is never coming back out of there, and you owe someone a tuba. There is never a trumpeter that will need a comfort strap to play his instrument. All of these separate aspects of the same basic family have different needs that must be met. Have defined your targeted audience? Have you defined your niche? Now its time to find the best ways to market your product or service to that audience.

For example, the product is music lessons. You could offer the generic “music lessons” but then would find that you are being flooded by calls for oboe or electric guitar. The problem is simple- you do not know how to play neither the oboe nor the electric guitar. By clearing defining the niche that you are marketing to, you save yourself needless expense on ads that will greet the wrong people and you save your customers time by spelling out exactly what you can offer to them.

The more defined or specialized a niche, the higher the demand and the lower the supply meaning that you will be able to garner top dollars for a need that is not being fulfilled. The wider your appeal, the more likely you are to have competition and therefore have to keep your prices low to remain comparable and fair.

Define your targeted market and you can rule that particular niche. Find the lowest common denominator that will satisfy enough need to be a valid pursuit and keep enough customers to be financially worthwhile and you will be struggling to keep up with the demand in no time.

Think of your customer as the motor oil. You do not want them to run all over the place- you do not want them having to investigate this company and that company before they come to you for a product. You want them to be one-minded, to be focused on your name, your product, your brand, discounting and disregarding all others. From the moment they first hear about your product or service, from the first time they notice your name or other information, they should be directed by the funnel to the sale, and hopefully to the level of satisfied and repeat customer.

At the top of the funnel is the curious customer, at the bottom is the satisfied customer. When you do the right marketing research for your particular product, you will know what it takes to make the sale from those most likely to need or want it. In business, this is known as “creating interest”. You create interest by speaking to a customer about something they need, or something that they want in the words and style that makes them feel as if you were directing your attention to them, expressly. After all, everyone wants to feel special and important!

After you have created an interest, you must then make sure that the customer develops a sense of urgency, a sense of need. (Need can be something that they would like to have, whether it is important or a legitimate ‘need’ or not.) The need can be overwhelming to some customers or may be important enough that they will check things out, but may hold off a day or so before committing to a purchase. That is okay, as long as you keep both the interest and the need levels high enough.

With needs comes certain expectations that are inherently or expressly given by the marketing campaign and by the product itself. The customer wants the item to work well, of course, and to accomplish all of the promises made. But, the customer also expects other needs to be fulfilled as well. They expect that they will receive prompt and competent customer service when they order, check the status of their orders, complain or contact the company for any reason. They expect that the site will be secure, so that their personal information, especially their billing info is free from thieves. They expect that there will be adequate follow-up after the sale is completed (especially important in goods and services that will have built in use life) for instance a supply of vitamins will only last for 30 days or so, and then will need to be reordered. If they were not as good as advertised at the start of the funnel, or the customer service was lacking in any step of the chain, that customer is less likely to continue on with that product then.

The funnel concept is very simple, whether it is at a local shop or you are talking about an online marketing funnel:  the start of the funnel is the point when your name, your brand, your product is introduced to the targeted audience and interest is created. After interest builds, the customer will start to feel a need for the product or service that you are marketing to them. With this need comes expectations that must be met or you will lose the customer either from the start or as a repeat customer. If the expectations are met, there will be fulfillment and customer satisfaction which are more likely to turn into future, repeat sales as well as potentially mean other new sales as the customer recommends the product to friends and family.

To put it succinctly, we will use the following math problem:

Marketing + Customer = Interest

Customer + Interest= Need

Need + Marketing= Expectations

Expectations + Good Customer Service + Good Product = Fulfillment

Fulfillment + Satisfaction = Future Sales and Continued Success

Yes, it really is that simple.

As a user, you would simply pick from one of the three available packages that Fillz ‘em offers and complete the short form that request the most widely accepted information throughout all sites.

There are two types of packages.

1. Filled Profile- Filled means that the social network or directory is completely filled with all relevant profil information inculding, name, phone, email, website URL (2 URLs if there is room), business logo and personal image as well as a short and long bio. This will protect your brand and substancially increase your backlinks, therefore increasing your off-site SEO.

2. Reserved Profile- Reserved means that the username that you have selected is simply reserved with the ability for the user to login and add any content on their own.  This is mostly for protecting your brand.

Then Fillz ‘em then takes this information and completes all profiles based on the package chosen.

Within days you will receive your complete profiles with all of the information completed and will see your search rankings improve almost instantly.

Again, this is an awesome service for new and old brands alike.  Think about how many people on a daily basis are buying domains and starting social sites.  It is more than likely that if you dont create these sites yourself immediately, you will notice that others will begin ‘squatting’ or ‘hi-jacking’ your username across social sites and directories.  This can potentially cause a deterimental issue if negative or inappropriate information is being released through a site that you dont have control over.

Take a look at how it works here.

Fillz ‘em also offers a great affiliate program that pays out 20% commissions on any of the packages that are purchased!

As with most elements of Internet Marketing, the concept of social media marketing is widely misunderstood. Enhancing the performance of your business through social networking, online and off is a distinct possibility. However, it requires more than simply slapping a few social media website pages together and hoping for the best. It requires forethought. It requires education. It requires strategy. It requires a specified plan for implementation. In short, if you wish for your social media marketing to be effective, then you need to realize, that even though it is very enjoyable, it is still a very serious undertaking.

Give your business a human touch with social networking!

Every online entity wants clickthroughs. That is a given. But a clickthrough by itself holds no real value. What you want are clicks from customers who feel a personal attachment with your products, services and information presented. People need human connections. That is the very reason why social media is so hugely popular and widespread on the Internet. In fact, it is what is shaping all online trends more than anything else in existence.

Rules for effective social media marketing:

➢ Firstly, you need to understand that this is not a game. Major organizations including Coca-Cola,
Nike, Starbucks, Dow Jones, GM, GE and so many others dedicate an ever-increasing percentage of their marketing budgets to their social media efforts. They do not do this haphazardly.
➢ Identify the behaviors, desires and needs of your targeted audiences.
➢ Define specific objectives and desired outcomes for your social media marketing campaigns.
➢ Develop a comprehensive strategy including which tactics and technologies you will utilize.
➢ Have a preset plan in place for measuring the success of your efforts.
➢ Remain focused and stay on track.
➢ Consistently and effectively manage your available resources.
➢ Remain accountable for the success, or failure, of your campaigns. Learn from your mistakes.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that you can simply throw a FaceBook and Twitter site together and expect marketing miracles. Your business is not a game; it’s a business! You need to bring your marketing efforts together with effective communication standards, customer-pleasing public relations and enjoyable socialization. You need to realize that even though search engine placement algorithms are constantly shifting, high-quality content and the creation of solid community relationships are still the most significant factors for success.

To realize your marketing goals and maximize effectiveness, you need to approach social media marketing with a mindset based in business success. Of course, you still need to enjoy yourself and make sure that your visitors enjoy themselves as well. Just don’t forget what your focus is.

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Cognitive psychologists are very interested in determining how the brain works. Social media marketing practitioners are very interested in determining how to increase conversion rates. When these two groups of people share information, it becomes very evident that including specific types of effective imagery on your social networking websites becomes imperative for your success as an entrepreneur.

The visual interpretation of images has a profound impact on increasing conversions!

You see, when we understand the detailed mechanisms that affect the brain’s performance levels, we are better able to communicate and collaborate with others. That is what social media marketing is all about! We want to establish a positive vibration with every visitor on our sites. We want to stir their emotions. We want for them to remember us and return to visit us often. We can accomplish this efficiently by tapping into their brains – by giving them physical representations of what we want for them to learn in addition to the text-based content that we provide for them.

Human beings use vision as a primary input device for knowledge building.

Information that is taken in through our eyes is transferred directly to the primary visual cortex in the rear of our brains. This information is then classified and transferred to up to more than 30 other parts of the brain. The three main parts of the brain that deal with our visual input patterns are:

➢ The ventral stream – determines what objects are;
➢ The dorsal stream – classifies objects according to available physical space;
➢ The limbic system – attaches emotions and feelings to those objects;

In order to be optimally effective at social media marketing, we need to stimulate each of these areas of the brain. When we make our visitors’ brains fire up with activity, we create more engrossing and memorable experiences for them. That is interesting. That leads to increase sales.

Characteristics of effective imagery:

An effective image inspires visual interpretation by inviting the eyes to move around on it. Human beings create meaning in a large way through visual interrogation of their surroundings. Therefore, you can increase the power of your social media marketing endeavors by:

➢ Using images to clarify what you wish to communicate;
➢ Making your images more fully engaged by including an interactive element in them;
➢ Making your images more memorable by creating an unmistakable persistence about them;

Learning how the brain works, and how to inspire visual interrogation of the images that you include in your social media marketing vehicles, are imperative elements to the success of your campaigns. You have to take the time to get to know what your visitors are looking for – and then deliver it to them in the most powerful, simplistic ways that you can. Effective imagery will increase your conversion rates!

Click Above Headline To See Video…

Consumer engagement is the entire purpose behind all forms of social based media.  From times past when all information transference occurred by storytelling – to novels – to radio – to television – to cable television – and now the Internet, gaining the attention of prospective consumers, in order to introduce them to products and information, is the entire name of the game.

The evolution of informational transference is happening – and always has been!

The computer and the television are both roughly 60 years old now.  And as technological evolution would have it, personal computing – specifically the Internet – is far more popular, especially amongst America’s and the world’s youth, than is television.  The children have lost their interest in television.  If they wish to view a show, they can do that on their computers – as well as 1000 other things.  Make no mistake; computers have become the primary vehicles for delivering all forms of media and entertainment.

Consumer engagement has always been required for the success of any media outlet.

Whether you’re talking about old radio shows, old television shows or modern Internet applications, actively engaging your visitors is a key element of success.  You need for your audience to have a role in the outcome.  They desire to, and need to, interact with what they are giving their time and attention to.  The success of widespread communicatory vehicles has always been based upon creating an extreme interest in others.  People love to feel like they’re a part of the lives, emotions, situations, thoughts and feelings of other individuals.  It engages them.  It holds their attention.  And it makes modern marketers loads of cash.

Digital convergence is all about gaining consumer recognition and selling products!

Radio stations, television stations, cable television stations, major motion pictures, and Internet 2.0 technologies are all driven by marketing – selling products and services.  The information age was catalyzed in the 1960s and 1970s as people for and against Vietnam, rock and rollers, women’s lib advocates, black rights advocates, hippies and loads of other groups realized that computers could greatly enhance the success of their movements.  It became understood that connecting people was the most solid foundational building block for change.

As time passed and technologies grew more sophisticated, micro computing naturally became the huge phenomenon that it is today.  Society simply must continue to utilize current technologies, and to develop ever more efficient technologies, in order to advance.  In essence, the evolution of the human race itself has become substantially dependent upon Internet based technologies - social media networking in particular.

The world is directly in the midst of a renaissance period – again.  This is a time of never before seen opportunity.  Forward-thinking individuals will recognize the awesome power presented to them to position themselves early on as Internet-based technologies continue their wildly successful reign as the planet’s leading vehicles for consumer engagement.  Social media networking sites on the Internet are connecting people, uniting people, educating people, empowering people – and creating massive change worldwide.

Begin your participation right now!

Facts about generation Y startups and social media marketing:

➢    More than 70% of high school individuals state their plans for launching their own companies;
➢    Of the entrepreneurs listed in the 2008 Inc Top 30 Under 30, 18 of them have Twitter accounts.  Additionally, 19 of them are responsible for maintaining either personal or business-based blogs;
➢    Strategies for social media marketing are looked upon as completely necessary in order to grow businesses, especially from younger generation entrepreneurs;
➢    Generation Y entrepreneurs realize their positions of power and are acting diligently to change the face of the business landscape;
➢    GenY startups are very commonly based upon themes of status quo dissatisfaction;

Generation Y social media marketing strategies are reinventing corporate structures.

In example, Aaron Patzer, being very unhappy with traditional methods for customer service, launched his company, Mint.com, at just 25 years of age.  He uses Twitter for both personal tweets and company customer service provision, along with his corporate blog, to keep his client base efficiently informed of all company happenings and developments.  It took him only 26 months to gain over one million registered Mint users.

Through the use of strategic social media marketing, Generation Y startups on the Internet are able to achieve staggering growth rates.  While Fortune 500 companies still rule the roost, young businesses are implementing technological and communicative innovations that capacitate them to satisfy the wants and desires of their targeted niches excellently.  As a result, the entire foundation for global business is being reformed.  The traditional rungs on the corporate ladder have broken.  And Generation Y entrepreneurs, in the meantime, have begun wearing jet packs.

The benefits of social media engagement:

According to a study conducted by the Altimeter Group and the Wetpaint Company, the ENGAGEMENTdb study, companies that effectively utilize social engagement strategies see an average annual increase in revenue of 18%. Additionally, companies that fail to initiate well-planned strategies for social media marketing are very likely to see their revenue margins decrease by more than 6%. These numbers are not trumped up. The Internet is the most powerful business tool that has ever been created. All businesses, small and large, must comprehensively integrate the unlimited powers of the Internet if they wish to succeed.

The manners in which you relate to your targeted audiences directly and dramatically affect your bottom line. To put it simply, if you do not endeavor at creating trust online through social media engagement techniques, then you’re setting yourself up for failure. The importance cannot be overstated. In fact, the following companies have created social media teams that do nothing else except maintain and update their accounts on Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, company blogs/wikis and more. They include:

➢ Starbucks;
➢ Dell;
➢ Microsoft;
➢ Google;
➢ eBay;
➢ Nike;
➢ Amazon;
➢ SAP;
➢ and many more…

That’s good company to keep! Creating social reputation and trust online is imperative to your success. Social media engagement is all about listening to your customers and finding out what they want. In that manner, you are able to deliver their desires and necessities and create a loyal following.

To learn more about this topic, read this article.

4 elements that will help to maximize the effectiveness of your social media engagement:

➢ You need to be transparent in your social media engagement endeavors. Lay it on the line and always be honest. If you mess something up, simply apologize and promise to do better in the future.
➢ You need to keep your social media content relevant to the needs and desires of your customers and prospective customers. Also, deliver your information via the format that they find most convenient. Twitter them, email them, send them a text message or an IM; whatever they want give it to them.
➢ Realize that you have less than 3 seconds to captivate a given customer’s attention. People are absolutely flooded with information from various sources, all day long, every day. You have to get to the point – and make sure it’s a good point.
➢ You have to be original. You have to be different. Don’t feed your customers the same old story that they keep hearing everywhere else. Give them something the bite into. Make yourself memorable. Provide them with unique, valuable information.

Creating trust online by utilizing techniques for social media engagement, when done regularly and effectively, will increase your revenue margins very appreciably. Welcome to the future of business.

The human race is currently experiencing a planetary shift concerning the ways that leadership is perceived – and that change is created. All levels of humanity are affected. In the past, people were led by moguls with unlimited cash reserves and/or limitless power. Today, effective leadership is based on connecting groups of like-minded individuals – and of course, the Internet is the primary vehicle utilized to do so.

What the Internet Was Supposed to Do:

Very simply, it was originally thought that the Internet would bring people together across the world- to create one homogeneous planetary people. It has failed to do so on a massive scale. Instead, the Internet has allowed specific groups of people to make connections with one another. It has allowed people to find strength in their diversity. It has encouraged the development of segmented groups that support each other.

The Power of Social Media Engagement:

The Internet is shaped and formed every day in the largest ways by entities such as FaceBook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and loads of both personal and company-based blogs. Massive groups of people are connecting via these social networking sites and powerful changes are being created all around the planet. These transformations materialize because people are finding connections that they never had before. They’re not being forced or manipulated into thinking in a certain way; they are happy to find others that validate and support what they have always thought and felt.

Down With the Status Quo!

Transformational leaders today fully recognize the importance of bringing diverse groups of people together. They understand that there still really is power in numbers. These bold leaders of the future refuse to accept certain elements of the status quo. Just because something is a certain way doesn’t mean that it should be. And so, they go forth trying to attract other like-minded individuals and educate them about what changes need to be made. It all begins with storytelling. When the story is good, people connect and get behind it. Movements are created in this fashion – and the result is a dramatic change.

You Need No Permission to Become a Transformation Leader!

Every single individual has the power to lead – and simultaneously needs to be led. We all have areas of expertise that we can share with others. Likewise, we can all benefit from the expertise of others. We all have individual thoughts that are unique, valid and inspire curiosity in others. We all have the ability to help others connect and use their conglomerate powers to inspire positive change for the future.

Ask yourself what is unacceptable to you. Ask yourself what is really worth standing for in this life. Decide to spread your story, your thoughts and your opinions. Challenge other like-minded individuals to stand with you. Connect those people. Bring them together and give them a purpose. They are waiting for you. They need you.

8 tips to integrate social media marketing into your business:

1)    Every online community has its differences.  You need to familiarize yourself with the social media etiquette system for each before beginning to build a following therein.  For example, people act differently when they’re visiting MySpace than they do when visiting LinkedIn.  Consider the audience that you are interacting with.
2)    Think about the website that you are attempting to send people to.  Make sure that it isn’t boring!  Attractive color schemes and an overall well-designed website will go a long way towards retaining the visitors that you drive to it.  Additionally, make sure that your web host has servers that enable your website to perform well and load pages quickly.
3)    Social media marketing websites have a certain percentage of visitors that tend to be negative.  Whenever anybody is experiencing any degree of success, these people like to try to bring them down.  Never take that personally; in fact, look it as a victory.  You’re getting people’s attention!
4)    If you are submitting content to websites like StumbleUpon and Digg, you need to be aware of your timing.  Assuming that you are in the United States, you are going to see the best results during the middle of the day and into the evening.

More ways to make social media marketing work for you!

5)    Leave your personal belief systems behind.  You are attempting to grow your business by utilizing social media networking websites.  The millions of people that frequent these sites tend to lean towards more liberalized political views.  They will join groups in number and also vote on content that they encounter in a like manner.  Beware of this and do not fight against it.
6)    Take every initiative to avoid spamming, or even appearing spam-like in any fashion.  More than ever now, especially on social networks, spamming is not permitted.
7)    Attempt to appeal to a given social community in a holistic sense.  Do not attempt to take advantage of the strong nature of the given website’s domain name. Nofollow tags are used to an amazing degree and search engines will not give recognition to any tagged links.
8)    Never engage in buying votes or one-way links for inclusion on your various social media networking websites.  It’s OK to ask even total strangers for a vote or a link.  That gives them the right and ability to judge your content for themselves.  Buying a link or a vote however, affords no personal discretion amongst the community’s members.

Building a following and developing a comprehensive strategy for social media marketing has a lot to do with getting to know a given community’s social media etiquette system.