What Precisely Is Internet Marketing?
This article is aimed primarily at anyone thinking of starting a business in internet marketing. Any new venture in any aspect of human life will have its excitements and its challenges. Internet Marketing is no different It is very important to know the key principles before becoming involved or your internet marketing business could be shot down in flames before you even begin.Many people new to internet marketing waste a great deal of time and effort because they simply have not taken the time to research exactly what is involved. Doing business on the internet has a well-rehearsed and well-documented process. This process needs to be fully understood before launching into the unknown. You must look before you leap and really study how to start an online marketing business before you make a commitment of either time or money.The fairly obvious and literal response to that headline question is that it is marketing products or services using the internet rather than traditional business methods. Like any other marketing, selling online involves advertising, promotion and sales. The nature of the business will mean that most newcomers will need to learn new techniques. These techniques may be simply the basics of marketing or they may be more specifically related to the use of the internet. Both the words of the title, internet marketing, have to be understood and applied correctly to achieve success. It is probably true to say that the ‘marketing’ part is the more important as this is what actually generates the income.Internet marketing will involve the marketer in doing lots of research in a way that traditional marketing doesn’t. We must know our marketplace; know our consumers and know how to communicate with them. Because we rarely meet our customers face to face we need to market in a slightly different way. Words are a vital part of our approach. The writing of excellent sales letters and other promotional copy is at the heart of what marketers do because it is through words that we communicate with our potential customers.Internet marketing is primarily based on the sale of information products. These can be DVDs, CDs, printed reports or digital products which can be downloaded directly from a website. (This form of business is sometimes referred to as ‘digital marketing’) So, to answer that opening question, “what precisely is internet marketing”, it is the process of finding a market, sourcing a product and promoting that product to your chosen market online.One other facet of the business which attracts many people is that it is a very low-cost business with enormous profit margins. It will cost £1 – £2 to produce a single DVD which can be sold for $67, $167 even $967, because what the customer is buying is the information on that disk and not the disk itself. The start-up costs of the business are a fraction of traditional marketing start-up costs. Products can be sourced for a few pounds, creating and hosting a website will cost peanuts.The one item where some financial investment is required is in promoting your product. Even that can be done using free techniques if you choose to go down that particular route. This is especially helpful for those starting a business with very little disposable income. It is easy to work within your means. If you have little to invest but time you can begin slowly and build up as the income starts to increase.So, to summarise, – “What Precisely is Internet Marketing?” – it is a bringing together of both marketing techniques and internet technology. The skills required to achieve this are:1. An understanding of how the internet works and how to use it2. The ability to write sales material, etc.3. The patience and perseverance to do the necessary researchI hope this short internet marketing guide has been of help. If you are thinking of setting up your own home business, then I wish you all the luck in the world.
How Efficient Content Marketing Pays Off an Organisation?
The power and dominance of content has increased manifold in the recent years, as content has the ability to transform a business completely. There are many companies that are producing content over decades, and they are still doing it. This is mainly because of tremendous benefits possible from content, provided it is marketed in a correct way. There are many factors that are required to be considered in doing appropriate content marketing.As for example, it is important that the content to be marketed should be targeted to specific audience, and it should provide relevant message to the target audience selected. It is also important that the content to be produced should be free from any kind of errors, and it should also refer to facts and figures, so that its overall authenticity can be proved to the intended target audience. The content to be marketed should have the potential to be sharable because social media has a significant impact in making content available to intended target audience easily. The selection of appropriate marketing medium is important, as the use of article and blog posting sites such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Huffington Post provides a good platform to reach millions of visitors, and the trust factor on the content posted on these reputed sites is also higher. By way of considering these strategies, it can become possible to do content marketing in an efficient way.According to Alex Ionides, there are different important ways in which efficient content marketing pays off an organisation. The benefits from content marketing are far better as compared to the benefits possible from traditional marketing methods utilised by most of the organisation. The most important reason for which content marketing is attracting more and more of attention is because people have shown interest towards online media such as social media, blogs and websites in order to gather relevant information. The medium such as television is not considered as the primary source of getting information especially by the younger generation of people. There is increasing level of trust shown by people especially on content in order to make relevant decisions. Content marketing has been emphasised more because it is not only attractive, but it has also been beneficial in generating significant amount of revenue. The prediction with respect to the revenue generation from content is expected to the voice US dollar 300 billion by 2019. This indicates the possibility of generating positive returns from doing content marketing in an efficient way.Content marketing is beneficial in the sense that it accounts for less effort and cost as compared to outbound marketing strategies applied for marketing businesses. At the same time, content marketing also accounts for generating higher leads as compared to outbound marketing strategies applied by organisation. There are thousands of promotional messages that are used by companies in order to target their customers. However it becomes annoying for people and they do not respond to any of those promotional messages that are placed in front of them, and simply ignore them. What they prefer actually is non intrusive content that they can easily access and rely on. With this strategy of content marketing, it can be possible to build a good customer base and at the same time, it helps in developing the brand profile as well. However it is important to intelligently pitch the content among the target intended audience through different channels, in order to achieve better pay off from content marketing strategy. The use of social media, email marketing, info-graphics, and also the consideration of video in providing relevant information is important, from the point of view of seeking the attraction of intended audience.Content is also highly valued by search engines like Google, and it pays significant importance to unique and quality content. Websites and blogs that provide unique and relevant content have better chances of getting indexed in major search engines, and this provides a good platform to marketers in reaching the intended target audience. However the content strategy needs to be right so that it’s easier for the search engine to index and promote it at the top to allow users to easily access to it. The conversion rate is also significantly higher among the customers in selecting a particular product over others after being informed through relevant and appropriate content. According to a study, 77% of people read online reviews before making a decision to purchase a product. They rely mostly on reviews rather than on the word spoken by sales people. The decision to purchase a particular product is highly influenced by the reviews seen by them across different online platforms. Getting positive reviews is therefore an important strategy from the point of view of doing efficient content marketing.With search engines supporting unique and relevant content, and people looking for authentic information, businesses should focus on targeting these areas to promote their content. Content marketing is an important strategy for businesses to achieve a great level of success. The probability of achieving multifold benefits in higher in case of content marketing as compared to traditional outdoor marketing strategy provided it is applied strategically.Further details on marketing strategies can be accessed at: https://australianassignmenthelp.com
Health Care Reform – Busting The 3 Biggest Myths Of ObamaCare
In the last few months we’ve seen a lot of Health Care Reform rules and regulations being introduced by the Health and Human Services Department. Every time that happens, the media gets hold of it and all kinds of articles are written in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the TV network news programs talk about it. All the analysts start talking about the pros and cons, and what it means to businesses and individuals.
The problem with this is, many times one writer looked at the regulation, and wrote a piece about it. Then other writers start using pieces from that first article and rewriting parts to fit their article. By the time the information gets widely distributed, the actual regulations and rules get twisted and distorted, and what actually shows up in the media sometimes just doesn’t truly represent the reality of what the regulations say.
There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what is going on with ObamaCare, and one of the things that I’ve noticed in discussions with clients, is that there’s an underlying set of myths that people have picked up about health care reform that just aren’t true. But because of all they’ve heard in the media, people believe these myths are actually true.
Today we’re going to talk about three myths I hear most commonly. Not everybody believes these myths, but enough do, and others are unsure what to believe, so it warrants dispelling these myths now.
The first one is that health care reform only affects uninsured people. The second one is that Medicare benefits and the Medicare program isn’t going to be affected by health care reform. And then the last one is that health care reform is going to reduce the costs of healthcare.
Health Care Reform Only Affects Uninsured
Let’s look at the first myth about health care reform only affecting uninsured people. In a lot of the discussions I have with clients, there are several expressions they use: “I already have coverage, so I won’t be affected by ObamaCare,” or “I’ll just keep my grandfathered health insurance plan,” and the last one – and this one I can give them a little bit of leeway, because part of what they’re saying is true — is “I have group health insurance, so I won’t be affected by health care reform.”
Well, the reality is that health care reform is actually going to affect everybody. Starting in 2014, we’re going to have a whole new set of health plans, and those plans have very rich benefits with lots of extra features that the existing plans today don’t offer. So these new plans are going to be higher cost.
Health Care Reform’s Effect On People With Health Insurance
People that currently have health insurance are going to be transitioned into these new plans sometime in 2014. So the insured will be directly affected by this because the health plans they have today are going away, and they will be mapped into a new ObamaCare plan in 2014.
Health Care Reform Effect On The Uninsured
The uninsured have an additional issue in that if they don’t get health insurance in 2014, they face a mandate penalty. Some of the healthy uninsured are going to look at that penalty and say, “Well, the penalty is 1% of my adjusted gross income; I make $50,000, so I’ll pay a $500 penalty or $1,000 for health insurance. In that case I’ll just take the penalty.” But either way, they will be directly affected by health care reform. Through the mandate it affects the insured as well as the uninsured.
Health Care Reform Effect On People With Grandfathered Health Plans
People that have grandfathered health insurance plans are not going to be directly affected by health care reform. But because of the life cycle of their grandfathered health plan, it’s going to make those plans more costly as they discover that there are plans available now that they can easily transfer to that have a richer set of benefits that would be more beneficial for any chronic health issues they may have.
For people who stay in those grandfathered plans, the pool of subscribers in the plan are going to start to shrink, and as that happens, the cost of those grandfathered health insurance plans will increase even faster than they are now. Therefore, people in grandfathered health plans will also be impacted by ObamaCare.
Health Care Reform Effect On People With Group Health Insurance
The last one, the small group marketplace, is going to be the most notably affected by health care reform. Even though the health care reform regulations predominantly affect large and medium-sized companies, and companies that have 50 or more employees, smaller companies will also be affected, even though they’re exempt from ObamaCare itself.
What many surveys and polls are starting to show is that some of the businesses that have 10 or fewer employees are going to look seriously at their option to drop health insurance coverage altogether, and no longer have it as an expense of the company. Instead, they will have their employees get health insurance through the health insurance exchanges.
In fact, some of the carriers are now saying they anticipate that up to 50% of small groups with 10 or fewer employees are going to drop their health insurance plan sometime between 2014 and 2016. That will have a very large effect on all people who have group health insurance, especially if they’re in one of those small companies that drop health insurance coverage.
It’s not just uninsured that are going to be affected by health care reform, everybody is going to be impacted.
Health Care Reform Will Not Affect Medicare
The next myth was that health care reform would not affect Medicare. This one is kind of funny because right from the very get-go, the most notable cuts were specifically targeting the Medicare program. When you look at Medicare’s portion of the overall federal, you can see that in 1970, Medicare was 4% of the U.S. federal budget, and by 2011, it had grown to 16% of the federal budget.
If we look at it over the last 10 years, from 2002 to 2012, Medicare is the fastest growing part of the major entitlement programs in the federal government, and it’s grown by almost 70% during that period of time.
Because of how large Medicare is and how fast it’s growing, it’s one of the key programs that ObamaCare is trying to get a handle on, so it doesn’t bankrupts the U.S. Medicare is going to be impacted, and in fact the initial cuts to Medicare have already been set at about $716 billion.
Medicare Advantage Cuts And The Effects
Of that $716 billion cut, the Medicare Advantage program gets cut the most, and will see the bulk of the effects. What that’s going to do is increase the premiums people pay for their Medicare Advantage plans, and reduce the benefits of those plans.
Increased Medicare Advantage Costs
Right now, many people choose Medicare Advantage plans because they have zero premium. When given a choice on Medicare plans, they view it as an easy choice because it’s a free program for them, “Sure, I get Medicare benefits, I don’t pay anything for it; why not.” Now they’re going to see Medicare premiums start to climb, and go from zero to $70, $80, $90, $100. We’ve already seen that with some of the Blue Cross Medicare Advantage plans this year. It’s going to get worse as we go forward in the future.
Reduced Medicare Advantage Benefits
In order to minimize the premium increases, what many Medicare Advantage plans will do is increase the copayments, increase the deductibles, and change the co-insurance rates. In order to keep the premiums down, they’ll just push more of the costs onto the Medicare Advantage recipients. Increased premiums and reduced benefits are what we’re going to see coming in Medicare Advantage plan.
Fewer Medicare Physicians
And then if that wasn’t bad enough, as Medicare doctors begin receiving lower and lower reimbursements for Medicare Advantage people, they’re going to stop taking new Medicare Advantage recipients. We’re going to see the pool of doctors to support people in Medicare starting to shrink as well, unless changes are made over the course of the next five years. So Medicare is going to be affected, and it’s going to be affected dramatically by health care reform. Everybody’s kind of on pins and needles, waiting to see what’s going to happen there.
Health Care Reform Will Reduce Healthcare Costs
The last one, and probably the biggest myth about health care reform, is everybody thinking that ObamaCare will reduce healthcare costs. That’s completely hogwash. Early on in the process, when they were trying to come up with the rules and regulations, the emphasis and one of the goals for reform was to reduce healthcare costs.
But somewhere along the line, the goal actually shifted from cost reduction to regulation of the health insurance industry. Once they made that transition, they pushed cost reductions to the back burner. There are some small cost reduction components in ObamaCare, but the real emphasis is on regulating health insurance. The new plans, for example, have much richer benefits than many plans today: richer benefits means richer prices.
Health Care Reform Subsidies: Will They Make Plans Affordable?
A lot of people hope, “The subsidies are going to make health insurance plans more affordable, won’t they?” Yes, in some cases the subsidies will help to make the plans affordable for people. But if you make $1 too much, the affordable plans are suddenly going to become very expensive and can cost thousands of dollars more over the course of a year. Will a subsidy make it affordable or not affordable is really subject to debate at this point in time. We’re going to have to actually see what the rates look like for these plans.
New Health Care Reform Taxes Passed On To Consumers
Then there’s a whole ton of new health care reform taxes that have been added into the system to help pay for ObamaCare. That means everybody who has a health insurance plan, whether it’s in a large group, a small group, or just as an individual, is going to be taxed in order to pay for the cost of reform. Health care reform adds various taxes on health care that insurance companies will have to collect and pay, but they’re just going to pass it right through to us, the consumer.
Mandate Won’t Reduce Uninsured Very Much
During the initial years of health care reform, the mandate is actually pretty weak. The mandate says that everyone must get health insurance or pay a penalty (a tax). What that’s going to do is make healthy people just sit on the sidelines and wait for the mandate to get to the point where it finally forces them to buy health insurance. People with chronic health conditions that couldn’t get health insurance previously, are all going to jump into healthcare at the beginning of 2014.
At the end of that year, the cost for the plans is going to go up in 2015. I can guarantee that that’s going to happen, because the young healthy people are not going to be motivated to get into the plans. They won’t see the benefit of joining an expensive plan, whereas the chronically ill people are going to get into the plans and drive the costs up.
Health Care Reform’s Purpose Is Just A Matter Of Semantics
The last portion of this is, one of the key things – and it’s funny, I saw it for the first two years, 2010, and ’11 – one of the key things that was listed in the documentation from the Obama administration was: Health Care Reform would help reduce the cost that we would see in the future if we do nothing today. That was emphasized over and over again. That was how they presented health care cost reduction, that it would reduce the future costs. Not today, but it would reduce what we would pay in the future if we did nothing about it now.
Well, that’s great, 10 years from now we’re going to pay less than we might have paid. And we all know how accurate future projections usually are. In the meantime, we’re all paying more today, and we’re going to pay even more in 2014 and more in 2015 and 2016. People are going to be pretty upset about that.
Conclusion
Those three myths, that health care reform is only going to affect the uninsured, that it won’t affect Medicare beneficiaries, and that ObamaCare is going to reduce healthcare costs, are just that. They are myths. There’s nothing to them.
It’s really important that you pay attention to what’s happening with health care reform, because there are more changes that are coming as we go through this year, 2013. Knowing how to position yourself so that you’re in the right spot to be able to make the best decision at the beginning of 2014 is going to be really important for everybody.