Marketing Refinement is Always a Step Towards Success

By Dean F. Mapa
Posted Thursday, November 11, 2004

A diamond is never a diamond until it's refined. When first mined it's an ugly piece of rock. When patient, skilled effort is put to work on it, removing the dross and shaping it, the diamond's value is revealed.

It's so much like an online business. The time and effort we put into it determines its value whether by us or its visitors. Thus, we must always place a high premium on refining our business.

In a previous blog, I wrote about taking a breather when marketing frustration seeps in (look for the title, "When Marketing Frustration Threatens to Overwhelm You," at my site). Let me add this as a sixth point: Take time to refine your business.

There are three areas you can refine:

1. Your organization.

I'm not talking about your downline or your staff, if you have any, but how you organize yourself. Frustration is built by going around in circles.

You must have an organized work time, whether you put in 2 or 10 hours in it. This means having a plan of action and an outcome of that action. For example, if your first hour is answering e-mail, you must know how that activity can help in your business. If a certain activity has nothing to do with your business, reorganize. It's always good practice to expend fresh energy on your business, especially the important aspects of it.

2. Your marketing strategies.

It would be pointless to continue on a strategy with little or no results. Or, for that matter, use a system that is fruitless. The Internet is full of marketing systems and programs that promise results. No doubt a good number of them work. Some are just full of it, if you get my drift. Yet many take some time and effort before you see any fruit.

The point is, you need to test different strategies and, if possible, find one that is compatible to what you can do or enjoy doing. Working on something that you have an aversion to can only lead to stress and frustration if it turns out to be fruitless. Thus, a refinement of strategies can only bring you a step closer to success.

3. Your resources.

Determine what you have. Do you have more time, less money; or do you have more money but less time? Perhaps you have an equal dose of both. Learn how to use both to your advantage. Contrary to what marketing trends want to dictate, there are still inexpensive and free resources one can use to effectively market. Go to my site and take a look what these are.

In contrast, there are expensive systems out there that give you nothing but hype. Worse, they're outright scams. You can try to find out what these are by going to Alexa.com and typing in a site you're doubting or you can visit the marketing forums, where you can get a ton of excellent information.

In conclusion, online marketing has to be valuable to you if you wish to succeed in this business. It will return to you what you make of it. If you treat it as cheap dirt, that's what you'll reap. If you treat it as a business worth maintaining and refining, you'll soon enough discover the gem that it is.

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