This is a favorite topic of mine, since I tend to become heavily involved with promotional activities with clients, as part of my consulting practice. Many of my clients are at a stage where gaining (or regaining) market traction is crucial to moving the company forward. So finding successful, profitable promotional programs is quite often one of the key activities that we’re concentrating on early in a consulting engagement.

Same old, same old doesn’t work

So what’s the best way to promote software and other technology products? If you’re asking that question, thinking there’s an actual answer, you are likely on a path to failure. One-size-fits-all promotional programs rarely work, and if they do, it’s probably just lucky. The most important thing to remember about promotion (and marketing in general) is that each company and product line is a unique situation. Even with the exact same company and product line, a promotional program that worked 12 months ago has a high chance of failure today. Markets are not static, particularly fast moving, high growth technology markets. And there is a wide range of market types within the high technology business sector. The proper promotional approach for a $100,000 software package with 1000 potential customers is far different from the best approach for a $49 software package with 5 million potential targets. If you find yourself falling back on some tried and true formula, you’re thinking “behind” the market, not “ahead” of it. I always chuckle a bit when I see ads for a new VP Marketing that is seeking candidates only from 10 specific software companies that have had recent success in a particular market. It’s very likely that one of those candidates will bring along the “formula” that made “Giant Software Company C” a huge success. Unfortunately, the strategy may be terribly inappropriate for their new company, particularly at a new time/market stage. This is an example of “shooting behind the market”—and with promotional programs, thinking ahead of the market is required.

The reason is what usually works in promotions are novel new approaches (or new spins on old approaches, or approaches from other markets). Once something works, others in the market take notice, and the copy-cat campaigns flood the communication channels, and greatly reduce a successful program’s effectiveness. Nothing works forever, so you need to constantly being trying to find the next new promotional program—again, out ahead of the market. It’s similar to when the coach of a sports team installs a new system for his team—it throws the competition off balance for a time, but they eventually adjust, and match or counteract what is providing the advantage.

First Art

So how do you approach finding a successful promotional program for your company—do you just guess? Well, not quite. I always say that promotion is a combination of “Art” and “Science”-with unfortunately, the Art coming first. The thing is, you will NEVER know with any level of certainty whether a promotional approach will be successful, until you do it. So there is a bit of Art in formulating the initial “test programs”. But of course you don’t guess. The initial program is put together utilizing the experience of the marketer, their past experience with programs in similar market conditions, a snapshot reading of the market conditions and product position currently, the amount of budget available, and of course the goals of the company. So up front, the key is to make small, intelligent bets.

Then Science

The key word in the above paragraph is “test”. This may be the most important concept in the whole topic of promotion-and unfortunately, one that is dramatically underutilized.

Marketing promotional programs are all too often put together haphazardly, without much analysis of the specific situation. Often they are designed in a certain way because the VP Marketing or CEO has always done it that way, or are comfortable with it. Executives without much marketing experience like to see print ads, because in their minds, that’s marketing promotion. Of if the VP Sales is involved, Trade shows might be what he’s used to. Or seminar promotions might be preferred, if the executive comes from a market with high price points. While all of these methods may be very applicable to an individual situation, they are, on average, some of the higher cost, lower return activities in the promotion bag of tricks. I see thousands (and sometimes millions) of dollars wasted on programs that have been given very little thought, prior to large execution expenditures. Worse yet, these programs are often approved and implemented with no ability to judge whether or not the chosen programs end up being a good investment for the company. This brings me to the measurement part of promotional marketing.

I’ve never been a big fan of marketing programs which aren’t measurable. When measurement doesn’t occur, it’s often because program implementation just isn’t thought through well enough, and accurate measures could have been put in place—but aren’t. Some programs however, such as “Image Advertising”, just don’t lend itself to correlating the program results to the corporation’s performance. While there is, again, a place for such programs, I recommend that they be left to those monster corporations who can afford ambiguous results within some segment of a very large budget. For the preponderance of companies out there for which every nickel counts, I highly recommend that you stubbornly stick to programs with results you can easily measure.

A question that often arises when my consulting practice engages with early stage companies is “How should we sell our product? Should we build a sales force, or sell through distributors, dealers or OEM partners?”

The answer, like most topics discussed in this forum, is rarely as simple or straightforward as the question itself. It depends—on a lot of different factors. First of all, if direct, does that mean building an expensive direct sales force, or a marketing driven model with direct sales from a website? If indirect, does it mean distribution through 11,000 mass retailers, or a select few, highly specialized, technical Systems Integrators? There are so many different options within the direct vs. indirect argument.

I will tell you upfront that I have a bias toward using multiple channels—direct and indirect—if at all possible. It’s always been my opinion that this is usually the best way of achieving the highest total return, from the high product development investments that are typical in the technology industry. But that’s a general rule, and one that won’t always hold up in individual cases.

Gamma: Gamma is derived from Delta is the odds of a change in Delta. It also informs in advance if the Delta could be changing. Gammas are positive for both the call and put. When options are deep in the money of deep out of the money the Gammas will be near zero as the probability of a change in Delta are very low. Likewise at strike price the Gamma would likely to e the highest.

Theta: Time decay is reflected in the option position as Theta. Options bought have negative Theta, which means that each day you do not sell that option, the time value is declining because of the time decay. In this case, time decay is making it worse for the buyer of the option. When you sell options, Theta is positive, meaning that time decay is good for the option seller.

Vega: How volatility affects the option pricing is reflected in the in Vega. In other words, its sensitivity to volatility. Options tend to have price increases when the underlying asset’s volatility increases. In this case, volatility is good for the buyer of an option and bad for the seller of an option. Vega is positive for long option and negative for short option.

Rho: Rho is how interest rates affect the pricing of the the option. When interest rates are high and it is good for the position, Rho will be positive. If interest rates are high but bad for the option position, Rho will be negative.

FX market does not have a fixed exchange. It is primarily traded through banks, brokers, dealers, financial institutions and private individuals. Trades are executed through phone and increasingly through the Internet. It is only in the last few years that the smaller investor has been able to gain access to this market. Previously, the large amounts of deposits required precluded the smaller investors. With the advent of the Internet and growing competition it is now easily in the reach of most investors.

With the advance system now days, you can trade Forex market with as low as US$200 with a leverage ratio of 1-200. Even with a free service of market charting information, updates and news. That’s why now days there’s more and more transaction in Forex market. Market also became very liquid also due to small investor that came in, in quantity which changes the market environment.

As you can see that person are introduced to the exciting world of Forex Trading in many ways: friends, current events, newspapers, television, and many others. For those of you who are new to Forex, the following guidelines cover the basics of currency trading. You even can start which a demo account which is a simulation of the live trading account data feed. The Broker will allow you to trial out using a simulation of $100,000 virtual money to trade live market.

In Forex Market, there’s always risk.. So a Stop-Loss is always a must in forex trading. With good strategy and discipline, you will success in Forex Trading. Trading is a mind game; you must change your mental attitude first from a normal person to that of a speculator. Almost all traders I have met, except a few successful ones who really made millions and billions trading in the market, simply waste all their time trying to learn the easiest part in perfection, like about how to read data and charts, and trying to perfect entry and exit skills, etc. Trading is a mind game and without having a right frame of mind, it is a losing game even before it starts. Training a trader’s mind is the first step for any successful trader but almost all new traders neglect that part and that explains why more than 95% of traders are a failure in the long run.

However, feeling your way around and relying on your gut feeling is hardly the best way to proceed. When dealing with your marketing issues, keep these five points in mind to ensure that you take a sound decision that meets your expectations and the needs of your company:

1. Decide on the information you need

2. Deal with the lack of background knowledge

3. Prepare your analysis

4. Choose your strategy

5. Sort out time and labor constraints; 1. Decide on the information you need

For anyone trying to grow a business, one of the first tasks is to map the competitive landscape. By understanding the market, your product and competition, you’ll be able to react to opportunities as they arise.

A sound marketing strategy should be based on information about the market, target customer group, competition, positioning, the product or service you are selling, pricing, advertising and promotion. The process of selecting which ones you need is a lengthy and confusing one. There are many sources out there and it is quite an issue to know which are worthy of your attention and which are not. Finding successful ways to defy rules of thumb is a great way to have a healthy business.

One of the unorthodox ways to do this is to use certain productivity software to help you understand what kind of information you need for your marketing endeavors. By following a wizard and answering some questions you can get a pretty good idea of what information you need to go out and collect. You need to know how you can compare your product to the ones offered by your competition – metrics like price, performance, brand awareness, product life cycle and many more are crucial for evaluating how you stack up against them. 2. Deal with the lack of background knowledge

Once you have settled on the types of information needed, the next problem arises – how to make heads or tails of the information. More often than not it is necessary to have a certain background to be able to use the data you have just gathered. In order to do that you have a handful of options: you can invest a few years of your time to attend college and study marketing or you can read on your own some of those marketing books available in the bookstore. The educational route is both expensive and time consuming, not to mention the fact that you are not going to turn into a marketing pro in the blink of an eye. You can also hire a marketing professional to do that for you on a full-time basis or outsource the activities to an external company. The downside is that you stretch your budget even further.

Then again, you can use software to try to solve the mystery behind your piles of data. The application you’ll be using will most likely have all the necessary expertise and tools for you to sort out your metrics. It is readily available on your computer so you don’t need to spend that much time to turn yourself into a marketing wiz. Yet you will have a full control and understanding of both your core business and that marketing knowledge, thus making the most out of your company’s current standing.3. Prepare your analysis

When you have sorted out the information you have gathered, you need to analyze it. It may turn out to be a staggering option to deal with all that number crunching and raw data you have. If you are having a hard time seeing trends through the sheer numbers, it is necessary to put them into a format that will be easily comprehensible. That means playing around in a spreadsheet program, coming up with a certain template and putting together charts to represent the data.

No matter whether the data is meant for you, your business partner or some client whom you are consulting, you should present the information in a professional manner. Neatness and attention to detail indicate that you are serious about what you’re doing. Using a spreadsheet program is by all means a viable option but there are a few issues to be faced if you go that route. You will have to manually enter the data and the formulas to perform the analysis – that means there is a possibility of error as manual data entry has always been error-prone. You have to select the most appropriate formula for your calculations and that may be somewhat difficult to do when so much needs to be taken into account. On top of that, you have to visualize the results of your hard work. The right chart can make all the difference for you – it lets you see facts that will remain hidden otherwise.

All this can be dealt with by using specialized software. You get the benefits from the time the experts have spent thinking and designing – you can visualize your research and historical data in the best possible way. Charts can be altered easily and as often as necessary, no matter how complex the data behind them is. Then the application draws the conclusions automatically for you by analyzing everything in a snap. 4. Select a strategy, learn something new or confirm your gut feeling

The right marketing strategy helps identify market segments of interest to a particular business and tailors product offerings, prices, distribution, promotional efforts, and services towards them. In a perfect world the strategy should address unmet customer needs that offer an adequate potential profitability. A good strategy helps a business focus on the target markets it can serve best.

There are a few alternative strategies to follow as you are running your business. Anyway, it would be nice if you could be offered a particular professionally developed one, based on your market situation. And if any particular metric changes or you think it will change eventually, you can react by simply tweaking the plan with a single mouse click. Of course, you may want to play around with more than one metric, or you may want to explore a few “what-ifs”. This is also perfectly achievable within the software you’re using.

If you work with clients and prepare marketing plans for them, you know the situation when a client drops in and wants something checked out or confirmed. Digging out that information on such a short notice is a pain in the neck for someone managing a handful of accounts, unless, of course, specialized software is used to this end. It will keep your marketing plans organized, easily accessible and editable. 5. Time and labor consuming

Time is money. You knew that all along, didn’t you? Well, selecting the metrics you need, gathering the necessary information, building your spreadsheet model and analyzing it takes up a considerable amount of time and a lot of work. You may even be tempted to quit doing all that stuff because it takes away too much of your limited time. The matter of fact is that it is crucial for your business and you can’t throw it away just like that.

If a quick reference is needed, your information must be readily available. You need a tool that’ll save you most of the time and effort. In comes the right software.

You can’t have too much effort put into your marketing analysis, it is simply never over-kill. The important point is to “work wiser, not harder” and putting intelligent software to use is a certain way to achieve that. The speed and correctness of the decisions based on such software will provide a competitive advantage for you. Thus it is not enough to know how to do your marketing right; it is also important to be able to do it in a precise and timely manner.