ADUTAINMENT: Advertising as Entertainment
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Video Email And Its Impact On Internet Marketing
Email is a revolutionary means of communication facilitated by the advances in information technology. With the acceleration of e-commerce as a consequence of these same technological innovations, email is now a significant means of marketing products and services through the internet. Through email, myriad companies and businesses have a convenient means of reaching potential consumers. Through email, marketing copies get delivered directly to a person?s inbox; companies no longer had to wait for consumers to come across their ads in the internet.

Dealerskins' Digital Video Viral Marketing Project for Auto Dealers Takes Internet by Storm
Dealerskins, (www.dealerskins.com) a division of Dominion Enterprises and a leading provider of automotive dealer web solutions, has launched a video and viral marketing project to promote its highly successful nationwide user groups. The video can be viewed at; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn09XoUySFg It tells the initially sad tale of a dealership Internet sales team, and ends with a strong redemptive finale at a Dealerskins User Group. There is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Glengarry Glenn Ross with a cameo from company founder; well know ...

Internet Advertising: Viral Ads
Viral ads are called so because they are sent through emails, from account to account, spreading like viruses. The negative connotation of the name is merely due to its dispensational nature and not necessarily to any potential ill-effect brought on by its presence or any possible disruptive intent of the Viral Ad?s designer.

Free Web Advertising: Chat Room Marketing Secrets Of Internet Marketing Gurus Exposed
Have you ever been to a chat room?Have you ever posted a message?If yes, now you may learn some free web advertising secrets on how to market your products and services in chat rooms.Chat Room Marketing is the use of online chat rooms to promote your product or service.

Best Email Advertising of 2008 to Be Named by Web Marketing Association
The Best email advertising in 86 industries will be judged as part of the 2008 Internet Advertising Competition awards. Companies or agencies wishing to nominate their work for consideration may do so at IACAward.org (http://www.iacaward.org?gad=CNvQkJkDEgjMICey2iA0NRi6nML_AyCb88Qv) before the deadline of January 31, 2008.

Internet Marketing - How to Make your Online Advertising Business Produce Money on Internet Marketing
The success or failure of your Internet marketing business depends largely on the Internet users. If they are interested on the products and services that you are offering for sale, definitely you can expect hundreds to thousands of dollars in revenues from your online business. On the other hand, if they are just too lazy to hear what you want to say and what you are offering, better shut down your personal computer unit and find some other ways of earning money.

How to Incorporate Viral Marketing Techniques to Your Internet Marketing Arsenal
Viral marketing is not the last disease found, nor a virus to your desktop

Viral Marketing: Internet Marketing Strategies
First of all, I realize that anything with "viral" in the name doesn't conjure up images of something you want close by, but there is a new type of Internet marketing known as "viral marketing" is worth investigating. Despite its unflattering appellation, it is an effective Internet collaboration marketing tool, and one that is important to understand if you want to expand your business.

Viral Video Evolved - Startup LonelyBloggers.com Launches With Viral Marketing Case Study
LonelyBloggers.com is proud to announce a 7 episode, 40 minute viral video series called LBTV that can be watched in it's entirety on YouTube right now. Despite recent reports that a viral video now cost up to $250,000 to produce, LonelyBloggers was able to produce our viral video series with only a $5000 budget. Internet marketers need to understand the growing importance of adding video to your marketing mix as people flock to video sharing sites like YouTube. This means potentially free website traffic as a result, all the time presenting your brand in an exciting manner. Viral Marketing has to be considered as a key part of your future marketi...

Social Advertising Changing Internet Marketing: Moving From Forced Advertising To Opt-In Ads
SplashCast CEO Helps Define The Emerging New Marketing Field At L.I.S.A Conference - First Forum Dedicated To Social Advertising

Mortgage Marketing - Viral-Email, Referral Marketing Strategy
This is a devastatingly powerful way to extend your marketing reach. For this to work right you need a website that promotes your business.

Internet Marketing and Viral Marketing Techniques
It seems as if viral marketing is one of the most successful strategies that one can employ with Internet marketing. Viral marketing is an Internet marketing practice that employs referrals, recommendations, and reviews in order to quickly spread word about a product or service. Gmail, Utube, and various viral videos on the Internet have all been transmitted by the viral marketing technique. These online entrepreneurs have enjoyed immense success by employing the viral marketing technique. For more details visit to www.paylock-generator.com .Think about it as an exponential effort once launched its benefits and effects only get stronger.

Internet Marketing And Viral Marketing
Viral marketing is a unique tool designed to create so much buzz about the article itself that even the largest sites will want to publish it.

MJM Internet Adds Internet Video Production to Enhance Dealership Websites With Tactical, Online Video Marketing
Automobile dealership website production firm, MJM Internet, has added Internet video products to enhance their clients' online marketing. Produced quickly, and at low cost MJMI internet video's feature online actors, and dealership personnel. They help bring car dealerships' online marketing to life using the site, sound and motion of video seemlessly added to their websites. Flexible and effective, integrated video should prove to give dealerships a competative advantage.

Using Viral Advergames For Worldwide Advertising and Marketing
Branded online games are being used more and more as an advertising medium by everyone from small businesses to big worldwide brands, but can branded games really help as part of your marketing efforts Branded online games (or Advergames as they are commonly known) can be one of the most effective viral marketing agents, if used correctly

Rules to Setting Business Goals and Objectives: Why and How to be SMART

We all know that nothing runs without a plan, and a plan cannot run without having its objectives set.

That applies to any kind of plan, whether we're talking business or personal finances, university degrees or NGO programs, website promotion or weight loss.

Setting objectives and milestones is of crucial importance for any planning activity and is the core of its success, or failure. Knowing how to set objectives is not exactly rocket science in terms of complexity, but any strategist should know the basic rules of how to formulate and propose objectives. We will see in this article why objectives play such a major role within a company's planning and strategic activities, how they influence all business processes, and we will review some guidelines of setting objectives.

The Importance of Setting Objectives

One might wonder why we need to establish objectives in the first place, why not let the company or a specific activity just run smoothly into the future and see where it gets. That would be the case only if we really do not care whether the activity in discussion will be successful or not: but then, to use a popular saying, "if something deserves to be performed, then it deserves to be performed well". In other words, if we don't care for the results, we should not proceed with the action at all.

Setting objectives before taking any action is the only right thing to do, for several reasons:

- it gives a target to aim to, therefore all actions and efforts will be focused on attaining the objective instead of being inefficiently used;
- gives participants a sense of direction, a glimpse of where they're going to;
- motivates the leaders and their teams, since it is quite the custom of establishing some sort of reward once the team successfully completed a project;
- offers the support in evaluating the success of an action or project.

The 5 Rules of Setting Objectives: Be SMART!

I am sure most managers and leaders know what SMART stands for, well, at least when it comes of establishing objectives. However, I have seen some of them who cannot fully explain the five characteristics of a good-established objective – things are somehow blurry and confused in their minds. Since they can't explain in details what SMART objectives really are, it is highly doubtful that they will always be able to formulate such objectives.

It is still unclear from where the confusion comes: perhaps there are too many sources of information, each of them with a slightly different approach upon what a SMART objective really is; or perhaps most people only briefly "heard" about it and they never get to reach the substance behind the packaging.

Either way, let us try to uncover the meaning of the SMART acronym and see how we can formulate efficient objectives. SMART illustrates the 5 characteristics of an efficient objective; it stands for Specific – Measurable – Attainable – Relevant – Timely.

1. Be SPECIFIC!

When it comes of business planning, "specific" illustrates a situation that is easily identified and understood. It is usually linked to some mathematical determinant that imprints a specific character to a given action: most common determinants are numbers, ratios and fractions, percentages, frequencies. In this case, being "specific" means being "precise".

Example: when you tell your team "I need this report in several copies", you did not provide the team with a specific instruction. It is unclear what the determinant "several" means: for some it can be three, for some can be a hundred. A much better instruction would sound like "I need this report in 5 copies" – your team will know exactly what you expect and will have less chances to fail in delivering the desired result.

2. Be MEASURABLE!

When we say that an objective, a goal, must be measurable, we mean there is a stringent need to have the possibility to measure, to track the action(s) associated with the given objective.

We must set up a distinct system or establish clear procedures of how the actions will be monitored, measured and recorded. If an objective and the actions pertaining to it cannot be quantified, it is most likely that the objective is wrongly formulated and we should reconsider it.

Example: "our business must grow" is an obscure, non-measurable objective. What exactly should we measure in order to find out if the objective was met? But if we change it to "our business must grow in sales volume with 20%", we've got one measurable objective: the measure being the percentage sales rise from present moment to the given moment in the future. We can calculate this very easy, based on the recorded sales figures.

3. Be ATTAINABLE!

Some use the term "achievable" instead of "attainable", which you will see it is merely a synonym and we should not get stuck in analyzing which one is correct. Both are.

It is understood that each leader will want his company / unit to give outstanding performances; this is the spirit of competition and such thinking is much needed. However, when setting objectives, one should deeply analyze first the factors determining the success or failure of these objectives. Think of your team, of your capacities, of motivation: are they sufficient in order for the objectives to be met? Do you have the means and capabilities to achieve them?

Think it through and be honest and realistic to yourself: are you really capable of attaining the goals you've set or are you most likely headed to disappointment? Always set objectives that have a fair chance to be met: of course, they don't need to be "easily" attained, you're entitled to set difficult ones as long as they're realistic and not futile.

Example: you own a newborn movers company and you set the objective of "becoming no. 1 movers within the state". The problem is you only have 3 trucks available, while all your competitors have 10 and up. Your goal is not attainable; try instead a more realistic one, such as "reaching the Top 5 fastest growing movers company in the state".

4. Be RELEVANT!

This notion is a little more difficult to be perceived in its full meaning; therefore we will start explaining it by using an example in the first place.

Imagine yourself going to the IT department and telling them they need to increase the profit to revenue ratio by 5%. They will probably look at you in astonishment and mumble something undistinguished about managers and the way they mess up with people's minds.

Can you tell what is wrong with the objective above? Of course! The IT department has no idea what you were talking about and there's nothing they can do about it - their job is to develop and maintain your computerized infrastructure, not to understand your economic speech. What you can do it setting an objective that the IT department can have an impact upon, and which will eventually lead to the increase you wanted in the first place. What about asking them to reduce expenditures for hardware and software by 10% monthly and be more cautious with the consumables within their department by not exceeding the allocated budget? They will surely understand what they need to do because the objective is relevant for their group.

Therefore, the quality of an objective to be "relevant" refers to setting appropriate objectives for a given individual or team: you need to think if they can truly do something about it or is it irrelevant for the job they perform.

5. Be TIMELY!

No much to discuss about this aspect, since it is probably the easiest to be understood and applied.

Any usable and performable objective must have a clear timeframe of when it should start and/or when it should end. Without having a timeframe specified, it is practically impossible to say if the objective is met or not.

For example, if you just say "we need to raise profit by 500000 units", you will never be able to tell if the objective was achieved or not, one can always say "well, we'll do it next year". Instead, if you say "we need to raise profit by 500000 units within 6 months from now", anyone can see in 6 months if the goal was attained or not. Without a clear, distinct timeframe, no objective is any good.

Otilia is a young certified professional with expertise in eMarketing and eBusiness, currently working as independent consultant and ePublisher. She developed and teach her own online course in "Principles of eMarketing" and is also a volunteer Economics teacher. You can contact her via her Marketing resources portal at TeaWithEdge.com