In school, during both my undergraduate courses and my MBA classes, I took Marketing 101, or something close to that. I learned the four P’s: product, price, place, and promotion. I aced the class.

When I started my first business at age 13, I ran an ad and was able to get clients. It was no big deal. When I wanted to earn some part-time money during college doing bookkeeping (before I passed my CPA exam), I answered an ad and found clients. It was no big deal. When I started a part-time photography studio in the 1980s, I sent out press releases and direct mail and got clients. It was no big deal. I was doing all of this on the side while I had full-time jobs paying the rent and everything else.

But when I got laid off in the 1990s and needed clients in order to go out on my own and pay my own rent, something in me snapped. I was scared to death. I suddenly had no idea how to get started getting clients. I could have run an ad, but I didn’t. I could have sent out direct mail, but I didn’t.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know the nuts and bolts of marketing. I did.

It was that there was an ingredient to marketing that was missing for me. The problem with marketing is that you can take all of the Marketing 101 classes in the world, but still be lousy at marketing and not have enough clients as a result.

The problem is that there is an ingredient missing they don’t teach you in school, and that’s confidence.

What made marketing harder in the 1990s for me were three things:

It was important. My business now had to pay the rent. I had to live off of my own self-employment for the first time in my life. This is pretty scary to most people.
I was selling myself. I was no longer selling bookkeeping, photography, or horseback riding lessons. It was personal. When they rejected my business, they rejected me.
I had the know-how, but I didn’t have the mindset. I lacked the level of confidence I needed.
As an entrepreneur, here’s where you need to be completely honest with yourself. Ask yourself how much of your marketing challenges are:

From lack of hard skills. Do you have no idea where to begin, really? You don’t know what networking is, you don’t know how to hire a webmaster, and you don’t know how to get your business cards done? This requires a Marketing 101 class.
From lack of implementation. Do you know you need to go to networking meetings but you don’t? Do you know you need to send out direct mail, but don’t? Do you know you need a web site, but haven’t updated it? This requires a Marketing and Mindset 101 course. You need a mindset shift along with what to do. You need a boost in confidence and a support system that will help you change your reluctance to market.
Here’s a great example of what you need in #2: A regular marketing course will give advice such as “You need to have a follow-up system.” A marketing course with mindset coaching will give advice like, “You might feel like you are bugging them if you follow-up. Here’s how to get around that.”

It’s not easy to develop the confidence to sell yourself. It’s tough. Even after 16 years of self-employment for me, rejection hurts. Losing the prospect is painful. Criticism aches. Returns are bummers. Even unsubscribes sting. But life and business go on, and you learn to deal with it in a constructive and businesslike manner. Most importantly, you can’t let it throw off your rhythm. You have to implement; you have to execute.

You’re unlikely to get rich in this economy with just the hard skills of marketing. Having the right marketing mindset, with confidence, is the missing ingredient that will make you incredibly wealthy.

Whenever I have a new member starting on my team I always get the question from them as to what internet marketing strategies should I use? That is always a valid and a very important question to ask. In this business utilizing the marketing strategy which is just right for you will ultimately determine your success in your home based business.

So getting back to answering those two key questions. What are the best internet marketing strategies and how many different ones should you use? Well lets start with the second question first. The advice I always give to my new members is to use from one to three strategies. You really don”t want to go off into too many different directions. You really don”t really want to focus on too many things at once.

The key here is to focus on one thing at a time, acquire the knowledge and skills and get really good at it. If you try too many strategies at once, at best you will become mediocre in your internet marketing. By focusing on one or two strategies you will become a master in no time and believe me you will see the results.

Now getting back to the first question. What are the best internet marketing strategies? I always recommend using at least one direct response marketing strategy. That is what is always going to get you the quickest and best response, and the largest lead flow. These strategies would include article marketing, video marketing, blogging or e books. When talking to my new members I always stress the importance of passion. Having a true passion for what you are doing will have a direct impact on your success in your internet marketing home business.

You know there are so many things that I really love about this industry. Now of course there is the obvious, the serious money that I am making. But second to that is the fact that I truly love what I do. The fact that I look forward to getting up early in the morning, sitting down at my desk and getting busy. I really enjoy using my God given creative talents and totally immersing myself into my business marketing. Where so often I get so involved I lose track of the time. But you know what I’m having fun doing what I do.

So the bottom line here is this. Pick a marketing strategy that you have a passion for, that you really enjoy. Have fun at what you do. It will ultimately show in your internet marketing results. And your business success will be massive.

Demand generation relates to a multitude of both strategic and practical sales & marketing activities. There are no rules as to which ingredients or sales and marketing strategies best fit a business’ needs and it is often a combination of both judgment and years of experience which allows organizations to formulate the right mix for their sales & marketing development strategy. There are professional demand generation specialist companies whom provide this consultative type service as a means of guiding organizations, and they often play a key role in ensuring that a business is given the right guidance, market intelligence and sales tools – thus being able to implement an extremely effective sales development business process and strategy in line with their clients unique requirements.

Demand generation is a philosophy which comprises the importance of utilizing the right mix of professional sales tools, services and techniques – thus being able to deliver an extremely effective sales business development model and strategy. The whole philosophy is one of which should take a bespoke and methodical approach towards the whole business development sales infrastructure, and should ideally incorporate: strategy, clear objectives, structure & direction, realistic market potential, market positioning, the right marketing mix, promotion, awareness, creating perceptions & expectations, market penetration, lead and appointment generation, potential to achieve market saturation, visibility of your industry and competition, tighter strategic control, business direction and a clear pathway to pole position.

The importance of implementing a water-tight demand generation strategy is critical in ensuring the success for any organisation. Many companies follow generic sales & marketing related routes, however, unless they utilise the right mix of activities, then this can be an expensive process and a major drain on critical company resources. Other benefits with getting the marketing strategy right; will result in an organisation achieving a far higher advantage over their competitors.

A demand generation strategy should have clear objectives and a realistic understanding of its market potential. Also by setting these objectives and strategic targets – this will allow organisations to work more closely together towards achieving company goals.

Lead generation and appointment generation which uses a high level of qualification, is often at the heart of a productive demand generation programme. These activities can often be easily measured as to their effectiveness and direct impact on the growth of the company’s sales visits, market penetration, market awareness, increase in quotations, plus a boost in annual sales revenue and profitability.

I’m sure you have heard that one of the best ways to control risk is to use stop loss orders. Well if you are trading options directional, stop loss actually guarantee that you will loss money. Just to be clear I do believe that you have to have systems & strategies in place that control risk and minimize your losses. But stop loss orders don’t work when in comes to trading options. If you have ever been in a position where your stop loss order was triggered just to watch the stock recover a few days or even hours later. then you know what I’m referring to and trust me I have been there. It can be very frustrating, to say the least, your left with a realized loss in your account and no position to take advantage of a move in your direction.

From my own trading experience and working with other options traders, I have found three main reasons why stop orders don’t work in directional options trading, and in fact will cost you money.

There are many factors that go into the pricing of an option one being implied volatility. Changes in implied volatility will result in changes in option pricing. News events may result in sudden, and temporary changes in implied volatility which will result in changes in option pricing. These changes in implied volatility create situations where stop loss on options can be triggered even if the stock or etf are still performing to your satisfaction.
The second problem with using stop loss orders on options, is time decay. When you buy a option each day that goes by you have time decay working against you. When price action doesn’t go in your favor you have a double edge sword working against you. Not only is the price action going against you but the option is also losing value due to Theta. This creates a situation where options are losing value at a faster rate than the underlining which can result in your stop loss being triggered.
Market volatility & computer driven markets make stop loss even more dangerous. The simple fact is that market volatility can move prices below or above a certain level triggering stop loss orders. These moves many times are temporary and can be driven by computers. The best example of this was on May 6 where we saw the DOW drop 1,000 points from computer trading, just to recover s few minutes later.
The fact is that options are not stocks and they have to be traded differently. If you are trader that wants to use options to take advantage of market, sector, or stock trends, we recommend option strategies that enable you to reduce the effects of market volatility, implied volatility, and time decay.