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When the Centrino 2-equipped ThinkPad X200 waltzed into our Labs and demonstrated not only impressive performance but also jaw-dropping battery life, we wondered when our other favorite ThinkPad, the X300, would be spruced up with Intel’s latest components.

Turns out we won’t be waiting long: today Lenovo announced the ThinkPad X301, a component refresh to its popular 13.3-inch laptop. The new version will incorporate an ultra-low-voltage Core 2 Duo processor that’s expected to be unveiled at the Intel Developer Forum this week. The ThinkPad X301 will also come equipped with DDR3 RAM, which (combined with the new processor technology) will make it “20 percent more powerful than the X300,” according to the company.

Other enhancements include support for DisplayPort video output, a 128GB solid-state drive option (available in September), and, later this year, WiMax connectivity.

Pricing for the ThinkPad X301 starts at $2,599, and systems will be available from Lenovo beginning August 26.

Proper implementation of a marketing strategy is essential for business success. In today’s post from strategy expert and author, Scott Glatstein, we learn how to properly choose and implement marketplace strategy.

Research shows very few companies actually know how to create an effective strategic plan AND successfully implement it in the marketplace. Is your company one of them? Failure to properly implement your marketplace strategy does much more than create glitches in the business. It can actually lead to business failure. And, in many situations, an incorrectly administered strategy is worse than no strategy at all.
Why Strategy Disconnects Occur - And What It Can Mean to Your Business

Disconnect begins when businesses make a promise to the marketplace without first completing a self-assessment of competencies. When creating their marketplace strategy, most organizations research customer needs, competition promises and relevant gaps between the two. Yet, most companies do not recognize their current capabilities and limitations when considering their strategic options. Or they overestimate how much change they can absorb in pursuit of the strategy. Either misstep can have a tremendous negative impact on delivering on the promise.

To Succeed in an Increasingly Knowledge-Based Economy, You Must:

* Determine where the real and future market gaps in your industry exist
* Identify opportunities that align with your existing image and resulting marketplace “permissions”
* Confirm that your organization has the right capabilities or realistic odds of creating the necessary capabilities
* Envision how your strategy will be implemented at each key customer touchpoint
* Define clear roles and chain of responsibility * Remain flexible and responsive to marketplace shifts Most organizations have a number of strategic options and viable paths to potential marketplace success.
Understand and use my three general rules when it comes to settling on the best strategic option for your organization:

3 Rules You Must Know When Choosing Your Marketplace Strategy

1. Your marketplace strategy must communicate a compelling and relevant promise to customers, regardless if it is faster turnaround time, luxury style or lower prices. In short, it must address a customer need.

2. The marketplace strategy must align with your organization’s capabilities. Capabilites can grow and change over time but the organization is limited by how much change it can absorb in a specific time period.

3. Your go-to-market strategy must leverage your current image and resulting marketplace permissions. For example, few of us would pay McDonalds $20 for a filet mignon. It’s hard for us to believe a fast food restaurant could deliver the quality worthy of such an expensive meal. Remember, a Marketplace Strategy In and of Itself Will Never be Enough.

The key lies in executing your marketplace strategies flawlessly. That means you must capitalize on existing strengths. An organization can only truly and consistently deliver products and services that its people, processes, tools and systems are capable of generating. Anything else is just empty talk. That’s why your company needs to assess its strong points from the start. Your organization’s strategies must be aligned with its strengths.

You can’t lose focus by chasing after spurious targets that are promised by the competition if they do not fit your business model. For example, consider the wholesale mortgage lender that built its business and reputation around high touch personalized service. Real people answered the phone when customers called.

This was their historic strength. During the refinance boom the marketplace began to change and competitors began promising high-tech, low-touch solutions to solve short-term capacity constraints. Our lender decided to go with the flow and do the same, for the wrong reasons and with the wrong setup. The lender abandoned its original strategy of high touch service, which aligned with the company’s positioning, image, promise and differentiation.

They chased a technology-superiority strategy focusing on an aspect of the business (technology) that had never previously been one of their strengths. Investments were cut back in recruiting and training of personnel and instead put into building new advanced systems. The results were anything but positive.

The “me too” strategy was not the way to go. Here’s why:
* Their customers bemoaned the loss of the personalized service orientation,
* Customers didn’t believe that this particular lender could deliver technological excellence
* The organization risked losing its relevancy and preferred vendor status with many loyal customers.
* The lender disregarded its best marketplace strategy.one that was compelling, differentiating and feasible.
The moral of the story: There are many different viable strategies. The point is to determine the marketplace strategy that is best for your organization and stick with it. Follow my strategic planning advice and you will create a marketplace strategy that actually gets results.

Make no mistake — you’re in a rough spot. Exhibiting is a competitive environment. You’re vying for attendee’s attention, against companies that are larger, better-funded, with newer exhibits and cooler ideas than you’ve got. What this means is that anything you can do to differentiate yourself from the crowd is a “Very Good Thing.” Being different gives you an edge over the masses. On the other hand, being different invariably costs money. Or maybe not.

You can differentiate yourself effectively by embracing the ‘power of questions.’ Having a team that can ask the right people, the right questions, at the right time, is the single most cost effective thing you can do to guarantee fantastic show results. Very few people know how to ask effective, powerful questions, and quite frankly, those who do, tend not to wind up working the show floor.

Luckily, asking great questions is a skill that can be taught to those who don’t already have it. If you’re like me, and weren’t born with that great skill, here are seven strategies your team can start using today to make themselves better exhibitors:

Strategy #1: Listen The best questions begin in silence.

Train your people to embrace the 80/20 rule — they should be listening 80% of the time. Listening is more than not talking. It’s an opportunity to focus on the information the visitor is providing. The data they’re sharing is invaluable and helps frame more appropriate questions throughout the conversation. For sales people in particular, listening is a real challenge. Yet, if they conquer and embrace this skill, they could easily boost their performance in flash!

Strategy #2: Determine Identities Quickly

One of the first questions your team should ask is some variation of “Who are you and what do you do?” Never, ever rely on badges. People can easily swap them. This is probably the most commonly used competitive intelligence gathering strategy. You want to determine identity quickly for a number of reasons, but the primary one is this: Knowing who you’re talking to allows you to deliver information in the most appropriate fashion: a buyer for a powerful chain is a very different attendee than an intern at a friendly competitor!

Strategy #3: Ask Open Ended Questions

The first question you ask a booth visitor should never be one that they can answer with a simple “Yes” or “No.” This is an easy way to give them permission to end the conversation quickly. Known as “closed questions, “Yes” or “No” answers, don’t usually help you to understand your visitor’s needs. The better alternative is to focus on questions that invite attendees to tell you more about themselves, their challenges or their particular situations (their stories). These include questions such as: - What are you doing about X? - How do you handle X? - When do you need X?

Strategy #4: Follow Up With a Relevant Question

When a visitor spends time telling you their story about a particular situation or challenge, your very next question must relate to what they’ve just told you. This then demonstrates that you’re actually listening, and care about what they have to say. Failing to do this is likely to damage, if not destroy any credibility you may have established throughout the conversation so far. Since this is such a common mistake exhibitors make, it’s well worth having your team practice this skill in pre-show role-playing exercises. Have them work at this until it’s automatic and starts to feels completely natural to them.

Strategy #5: Compliment Them

If you find yourself with a visitor who’s somewhat reluctant to talk about their situation, try complimenting them. It’s a subtle yet powerful way to stroke their ego. A simple “I’d really like to know what you think about X,” or “What’s your opinion on Y” will often get people talking, especially those individuals who love to show off their knowledge. I’m sure you know the type! Remember that everyone likes to be valued and recognized. Be careful with this. You always want to appear genuine, without seeming to fawn over your visitors.

Strategy #6: Get Off Topic

Exhibiting is not just about making those immediate sales. There’s far more that goes on with your booth visitor. Building long-lasting, profitable relationships is key! To do this effectively, you may need to take the conversation ‘off-topic.’ Don’t be afraid to use questions to do this. Ask questions that allow you to get to know the visitor better. This can be as simple as “Where are you from?” Look to visual cues — clothing, jewelry, pin, etc. - anything that allows you to go further conversationally and further reinforce the relationship.

Strategy #7: Go After Low Lying Fruit

Visitors often indicate, often unconsciously, what they want to talk about. If they mention a subject repeatedly, or devote considerable time in one particular area, that’s a pretty good clue to let you know that this topic is important to them. Yet many times, either exhibitors don’t hear what’s being said, because they’re tuned into their own mind or, they might ’shy away’ from a topic because it’s sensitive, or something they just don’t know about. They might avoid the latter not to show their ignorance.

Speaking from experience, that’s not a good, solid plan of action. What’s it says to the visitor is that “you’re just not interested” in them or their situation. It takes courage to ‘grab the bull by the horns’ and frame questions directly around that topic, inviting visitors to elaborate further. For example, “You seem to have concerns about our widget’s durability. Could you tell me what’s troubling you?” Addressing these concerns head on is the best way to build a prospect’s confidence in your products and services.

Asking questions is only half the battle. The other half of the equation concerns what you do with the answers they give you. If your team asks great questions, listens to the answers, and then responds with the standard boilerplate one-size-fits-all answer, you’ve accomplished nothing.

Instead, answers must be customized on the spot - responsive, not only, to the client’s needs, but also to the tone and timing of the conversation. Brief your people on the need to take things further than just the familiar and often, boring, sales pitch. Keeping the focus on relationship building and the lifetime value of the customer helps make this easier and takes a lot of pressure off of your team. It’s far easier to concentrate on having a meaningful, value-laden exchange if your team knows this isn’t their only chance at bat. With any luck, this is just the beginning. They’ll be asking your customers questions for years to come!

The truth is, there is a fine line between advertising and spam and unfortunately many business owners do not understand the difference between the two. This is important because while a creative, well developed Internet marketing campaign can help to attract new customers and keep existing customers loyal, spam of all kinds is likely to alienate both new customers and existing customers. This can be extremely damaging to your business.

There are a few basic Internet marketing strategies we can focus on to illustrate the multiple types of spam that may be hurting your business and the success of your marketing campaigns such as banner ads, email campaigns and message board posts.

Banner ads are one of the most popular strategies which accompany an Internet marketing plan. These ads are usually ads which appear at the top of websites and span the width of the website. It is from this appearance that they earned the name banner ads but actually banner ads can refer to ads of a variety of different sizes and shapes which appear in an array of different locations on a website.

In many cases the business owner purchases advertising space on these websites but the banner ad may also be placed as part of an exchange or an affiliate marketing campaign. Banner ad exchanges are situations in which one business owner posts a banner ad on his website in exchange for another business owner posting his banner ad on the other website. These agreements may be made individually between business owners with complementary businesses or as part of exchanges facilitated by a third party.

In the case of affiliate marketing, an affiliate posts and advertisement for your business in exchange for compensation when the banner ad produces a desired effect such as generating website traffic or generating a sale. The terms of these agreements are determined beforehand and are generally based on a scale of pay per impression, pay per click or pay per sale or lead. Now that you understand what banner ads are, it is also important to understand how they can be overused and appear to be spam.

Placing your banner ad on a few websites which are likely to attract an audience similar to your target audience is smart marketing, placing your banner ad on any website which will display the ad regardless of the target audience can be construed as spam. Internet users who feel as though your banner ads are everywhere they turn will not likely take your business seriously and are not likely to purchase products or services from you as a result of your banner ads.

Email campaigns can also be very useful tools in the industry of Internet marketing. These campaigns may involve sending periodic e-newsletters filled with information as well as advertisements, short, informative email courses or emails offering discounts on products and services.

Loyal customers who opt into your email list will likely not view these emails as spam and may purchase additional products and services from your business as a result of this marketing strategy. Additionally, potential customers who have specifically requested additional information on your products and services will also find this type of marketing to be useful.

Email recipients who did not request information are likely to view your emails as spam. Harvesting email addresses in a deceptive manner and using these addresses to send out mass emails will likely always be considered to be spam. Only send the specific information requested to those who requested it!

Finally, message boards provide an excellent opportunity for business owners to obtain some free advertising where it will be noticed by members of the target audience. If the products and services you offer appeal to a specific niche, it is worthwhile to join message boards and online forums related to your industry of choice. Here you will find a large population of Internet users who may have an interest in your products.

You might consider including a link to your business in your signature or posting the link when it is applicable to the conversation. However, care should be taken to carefully review the message board guidelines to ensure you are not doing anything inappropriate. Conversely, replying to every message with a link to your website when it is not relevant to the conversation is likely to be construed as spam by other members. This can devalue your posts and discredit your company or website.

Think through all of your existing marketing tactics and ask yourself, “Is this borderline spam?” If the answer is yes, think about changing your tactics or clarifying your communications. Your prospects and your business will be glad you did.

Now that you’ve focused on finding the right keywords, setting up your Adwords campaigns, and choosing your bids, it’s time to divert your attention toward landing pages. Internet marketers have proven that a change in landing pages, to accommodate your specific keyword groupings, can have a positive impact on results.

We all know landing pages are important and A/B testing is a common phrase among search marketers, but are we as an industry taking landing pages to the next level? Search engine marketing traffic is highly engaged and quite honestly, different from other online media. So, why do we direct this traffic to the same generic landing pages?

There is a new movement that centers Web design around search intent. Strong keyword groupings that in the past didn’t have a good “home” will now get a custom built landing page with tailored content. For instance, for a travel client, we created new landing pages with content specific to the psychographic intent of the search phrase or phrases.

Landing pages like this take time and effort to brainstorm and build, but the rewards are worth it if thought out. These custom landing pages are also lead generation forms. They created a great experience with tailored content for the consumer and also increased conversions by 25% when compared to the previous destination pages.

In another instance, we built out landing pages for certain geographic based terms that were important to our client, as it was a service offering that had not been hitting our online metrics. When a new landing page was created around the context of the keyword groupings, the cost per lead dropped significantly (think hundreds of percentage points).

The moral of the story is that search marketers should think more strategically in their landing page decisions. It is more than A/B testing these days. Work with your client and creative teams to enhance the full search experience from start to finish.

If your marketing material is not generating a response from potential clients then you need to follow this “two step” method of getting your marketing materials right. I recently received the following question from a reader: “I’m not getting massive success with the marketing I’ve done so far. In fact, not one person has called me because they’ve seen my flyers. I’m starting to think people may be turned off by them. Any suggestions on how I can judge if they’re a turn off?”

First of all, if the telephone isn’t ringing, you know you need to do something differently, but this question highlights exactly why I don’t recommend just printing up a bunch of flyers and randomly distributing them. The flyer itself may be perfect but it may not be getting seen by the right people. Or the flyer may be reaching the right people but not doing a good enough job of motivating them to take action.

The problem with this method of marketing is that it’s hard to get feedback on what specifically you need to change. So first of all, you need to ask yourself, have you got the right brochure reaching the wrong people, the wrong brochure reaching the right people, or worst of all, the wrong brochure reaching the wrong people! The one thing I know for sure is that when you have the right brochure reaching the right people, you are well on your way to becoming a ‘Client Magnet.’

So here a couple of things you can do to make sure that you have the ‘right’ marketing materials, and secondly making sure that it reaches the right people.

Getting Your Marketing Materials Right

1. What action do you want the reader to take, as a result of reading your brochure/flyer/web-page/email/sales letter? The job of your marketing material is to motivate the reader to take action, so first of all, you need to be really clear on what you want to accomplish. Try to accomplish too many things simultaneously, and you will fail.

2. Does your marketing material inform or persuade? Many people think all they need to do is print up some information about themselves and the services they offer and then wait for the telephone to start ringing. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that! I think of marketing literature as a ’sales person in print’. In other words, it needs to do all the things a real live sales person would do: get rapport with the reader, engage in a dialogue about their needs, understand their problems, recommend a solution, overcome objections and close.

Take a long hard look at your marketing material, does it do all of these things? If not, then you need to change it. Even if the action you want the reader to take is ‘phone for a consultation’, you need to include all of the above steps. When you have done the above, then you need to make sure that your marketing material gets read by the right people.

Getting Your Marketing Material Read By The Right People

As I said above, I don’t recommend randomly distributing flyers, because you have no way of measuring their effectiveness. You can’t tell who saw your brochure and who didn’t. You have no idea who was tempted and who was put off. So for this reason, I favor a ‘multi-step’ approach which focuses on getting your target audience to ‘raise their hands’ first, then you send your brochure and now at least you have some way of measuring the effectiveness of your brochure. The number of sales divided by the number of brochures you sent out equals your conversion rate! So this is where you need to get creative.

Start to brainstorm lists of places where your target audience is likely to congregate. Will you find them online, offline or both? Are they members of clubs or associations? After you have identified a few places, you need to give them a reason to ‘raise their hands’. I like to offer an ‘Ethical Bribe’ such as a free report, e-course or teleseminar. When people raise their hands, then you can send them your material (by post or email) and gauge the response. The point I want to make for now is that you need to take steps to make sure your marketing and sales materials are being seen by the right people.

It doesn’t stop there… So, now can you sit back and wait for the phone to ring? If you have followed the above advice, you can certainly expect some response, but the thing you now need to do is measure the effectiveness and see what you can do to increase conversion rates. This is the fun part of marketing, as you can start to see what small changes can bring huge results. But my overriding message for you is this: just changing your sales literature - whether it is a brochure or a web page - without paying attention to who is looking at it, is just a stab in the dark.

When using email marketing to sell a product or service you can’t just start selling to your readers in the first email. The reason is the odds of the reader knowing who you are or what you are all about are pretty low, even if they subscribed to your newsletter from a form on your website.

People do not purchase from those they do not know. So the key to a successful email marketing campaign is “warming up” your readers to the sell.

The “warming up” process can be broken down into five distinct phases. It’s a good idea to keep these in mind as you work to warm up your lists.

Phase 1 — “Cold Readers”

These are folks who have just filled out the form on your website, or whose details you have received via co-registration.

You know nothing about them, and they know nothing about you, so at this phase, your primary job is to introduce yourself, and begin to establish yourself as a source of credible and useful *free* information.

I emphasized the word *free* in that, because “cold” leads are very unlikely to buy anything from you, no matter what you do.

PHASE 2 — “Curious Readers”

At this phase, people may have opened one or two of your emails and have at least decided to stay on your list long enough to find out what you’re about, and what they can gain by reading your emails.

Another way of thinking of this group is that they are the ones who are actually opening and reading your emails, whether they open the first or the tenth that you send them.

Your job with this group remains essentially the same as was true at Phase 1 … you are still in the process of “warming them up” to the idea that you are credible and trustworthy.

Again, not a time to be trying to sell them things, because few of them will buy, anyway.

PHASE 3 — “Interested Readers”

These are the folks who have opened and read several of your emails, and now continue to read them. Perhaps they have “moved” themselves from your “cold” list by opting-in to one or your newsletters or free mini-courses.

By doing so, they have “told” you that they are interested in what you have to say, willing to read more of your emails, and may, in due time, buy something on the basis of your suggestion.

One way to know who your “interested” prospects are is to offer a free ebook or mini-course, and make them “register” for it by opting in to a second autoresponder.

Another is to run a survey form on your site, invite them to participate, and capture their contact information when they do so.

The point is they have taken some “action” based upon your previous emails, and have told you by that action that they are interested in what you have to say, and willing to read what you write to them.

PHASE 4 — “Excited Readers”

These are folks who are almost ready to buy. They may have written you asking for more information, or visited your sales page several times. Maybe they are thinking about joining your business opportunity, but for some reason not quite ready to sign up and pay their money. They need some sort of “push” or “nudge” to get them to take action.

Maybe they need a “special offer” of some kind, or simply a personal follow-up email or phone call from you. Whatever it is, these are your “Hot” prospects.

PHASE 5 — “Customer”

The final phase is, of course, obvious. These are the folks who have bought your product, joined your opportunity, or bought something that you promote as an affiliate.

In the long run, these are the folks who will make you the most money, because it will become easier and easier for them to act on your recommendations, as long as you don’t betray their trust by endorsing poor quality products or programs.

You need to think of these folks as *friends*, because that is what they really are. They have now given you permission to send them follow-up offers and program endorsements.

Even though they may represent only a tiny percentage of the entire population of your list, these people are your long term gold mine group.

Treat them with respect, they have warmed up to you and what You have to offer. Maintain a high level of integrity and they will continue to follow you for years to come

Insurance is very important because anything can happen in your life as an accident, fire and a much more likely to occur by someone or by yourself. Ez-insuranceportal.com offers a lot of insurance with a detailed description attached to each and every one of them. On the home page of this site, you can clearly see four types of insurance on the left. They are home insurance, automobile insurance, life insurance and health insurance. Ez-insurance portal also launched their blog, which aims to help people understand their services more clearly. It is easy to ask for an estimate on their part - just what you need to do is select the type of insurance you want to buy and enter your zip code and get a free quote instantly! You’ll find information on each type of insurance and issues involved. For example, auto insurance car insurance has several options.

The guarantee that the service is to benefit all people to secure their financial situation. Due to some unpleasant things that May occur even in the clip on your finger. About life insurance information on this site, you can learn more about life insurance, whole life insurance and universal life insurance opportunities Ez Insurance Portal. You can apply for a life without insurance quote. In this online offer, it would be our strength to have them on their backs, no matter what will happen. They also displayed on the site on the news in the insurance field. The new policies can be seen on the site. They provide many links with other governmental agencies of the United Kingdom. The terms and conditions are quite clear on the site itself. Ez-insuranceportal.com provides real-time online insurance quotes in relation to insurance.

For starters, applying for credit cards can sometimes be a total pain in the neck. But at yourcreditnetwork.com. Only three simple steps are to follow: research, compare, and apply.

Found on the leftmost part of their homepage are the different credit card issuers (American Express, Bank of America, Citibank, Discover, etc.), with the features these credit cards offer (business credit cards, student credit cards, reward credit cards, and more). bad credit cards could then narrow down the searches under their own preferences.

They even provide specific credit cards, that customers can choose from. There, credit cards are compared side-by-side. A detailed summary about those cards are present, as well. To help customers decide which among those offers are the best, honest ratings are available, with 5 being the highest.

Once you have chosen the perfect credit card for you, you can apply by hitting on the “apply button” just below the card’s name. Some companies can even grant applications instantly! Of course, you need be at least 18 years old, and has a fixed monthly income.

Yourcreditnetwork.com is a great resource for finding credit card information and from there quickly applying for the credit card you want. When you first enter the site you can find a credit card organized by different categories. There are low interest credit cards, instant approval credit cards, bad credit credit cards, student credit cards, balance transfer cards, prepaid credit cards, and more. Realize each credit card has it’s own benefits when it comes to interest rates and who is eligible for the card, so it’s important you check more than one category to make sure that you find the right card for you.

The site also gives you thorough information about each credit card issuing bank, such as Discover and Citibank. It is important to know as much as you can about a bank. Yourcreditnetwork.com shows you all the cards available for each issuing bank, so even if you already have a card with a issuing bank, you may find they have a special credit card that fits you even better.

Once you find the card you want, yourcreditnetwork.com gives you a direct link to apply to the credit card. They also has a informative credit card blog, covering topics such as what are the most popular credit cards currently, what are the latest credit card specials in the industry, and the blog articles are cited with additional resources to their reviews and respected 3rd party sites such as CNN where you can get additional information.