I vividly recall retiring from The Street/CME with an early buyout and found myself wondering what I was going to do for the rest of my life. I had basically spent my entire life trading stock/bond/futures (wherever I was needed) and wasn’t sure I wanted to continue down that path. Even more disturbing was my unfamiliarity with retail trading. I’d heard e-mini trading was gaining some traction and thought scalping with smaller contract sizes could be an interesting and profitable career choice. Besides, it wasn’t like I knew how to do anything else.

After due thought, I signed up for a demo and was shocked. I thought the trading oscillators and indicators had a distinct Fred Flintstone quality. All the indicators available for use were J. Wells Wilder-style lagging indicators; simple and exponential moving averages, stochastic, MACD, RSI, ADX and a host of trading systems that went against everything I was taught at the institutional level; gone were my Tier 2 quotes, real time volume domes and real time proprietary software of the firm.

I suppose there are traders who make a great living using the lagging style trading model, but I have always had a problem with “showing up late to the party” when taking a trade. If this style of trading is profitable for you, I tip my hat. On the other hand, most traders I have observed trading with lagging indicators have developed a deep understanding of the market and sense movement intuitively.

Most of the lagging indicators are anywhere from.5 bar late to up to three bars late in getting you into a trade. In my mind, it is a quantum leap to assume that directional movement for two bars will translate into a productive trade in the same direction. With the level of randomness in the market and an absolute army of co-located computers (for High Frequency Trading) with which to do battle, I felt a little outgunned by trading the same machinery I had operated for most of my life. I was on the other side of the fence now, so to speak.

I muddled through several years of trying to make these laggards into a productive system, with some good success, but not the kind of success I enjoyed while I was a professional trader. I needed to know what was going on at the point of auction and size and scope of resting orders above and below the auction point on the DOM.

The last two years have produced some amazing real time order flow and tape reading programs. Jigsaw Trading has a wonderful suite of trading products reminiscent of the prop house trading programs where I got my start. (I want to note that I have no financial interest or agreements for compensation with the two companies I am going to discuss, I just like their style) Carl Weiss at Sceeto is my absolute favorite and the one I use in my trading room and personal trading. This program allows me to see the actual order flow, alerts me to periods of High Frequency Trading, reads tape and has a complementary set of indicators to further increase your trading accuracy.

I highly recommend investing in real time software, you will be amazed, once you learn the nuances of this style of trading, at the accuracy you can achieve. I suppose there is a small delay in order flow because of varying speeds of the data feed you may be using, but that is the only bottleneck in this style of trading. Carl has even added a new suite to augment Sceeto that performs wavelet analysis.

Though I prefer one of these real time programs over the other, they are both highly effective, relative to the slow oscillator models, than any of the retail trading products I have seen. While the real time software approaches the type of set up you might find a professional trader utilizes, it gives the retail trader a toolbox that provides useful signals far earlier than have ever been available. They have made this trader feel like a pro again, as oppose to take oscillator signals and hoping the market keeps going in the direction of your trade.

In summary, I have described some of the newer tools available to traders who may want to experiment with a more professional set of e-mini trading tools. Further, I have attempted to contrast the lagging style model to the emerging real time model of trading. Best of luck in your trades!

Content marketing discussions among B2B, B2C and nonprofit marketers continue to take center stage. What tactics to use? What should the message be? And, does content marketing really work?

Some light has been shed on this by two recent studies conducted in 2012 and 2013 by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. The overwhelming majority of B2B marketers reported that in both years they employed content marketing and, further, that they used a wide range of different content marketing tactics:

Social media (other than blogs) was used by 87% of marketers;
Articles on their websites and Enewsletters were each were used by eight out of ten;
In-person events and Blogs were used by three-quarters of marketers;
Case studies, Videos and Articles on other websites were used by seven out of ten marketers;
White papers were used by six out of ten, while about half used Webinars/webcasts;
And, sixteen other tactics were employed by 10 to 44 percent of marketers.
Given the wide variety of tactics employed, it is not surprising that these marketers also reported using content marketing to achieve a number of different goals, chief among them – increasing brand awareness, customer acquisition, lead generation, customer retention and thought leadership.

So, while these studies confirm the popularity of content marketing (as do similar studies among B2C marketers), across many platforms and with a number of different goals, the key question still remains – what messages should you communicate through all of these tactics?

Understand Your Prospects And Customers With Market Research
With all of these opportunities to engage your customers and prospects, it strikes me that it would be prudent to fully understand their wants and needs in buying a product or service, as well as how these wants and needs are met by your brand and competitive brands.

Some marketers believe they understand their customers and hope they understand their prospects. But in today’s cluttered world of information, facts trump opinion. Without the right message, all of your efforts in content marketing may be perceived as just noise – and sometimes a lot of noise – by your target audience. Not a very efficient way to spend your money or resources.

Therefore, before you spend your limited time and marketing communications dollars, wouldn’t it be a lot smarter to learn directly from your audiences what they consider to be the most important to them in brand selection? Ask them what is most important to them – quality, reputation, price, distribution, delivery terms, manufacturing standards, reliability, eco-friendly, healthfulness, etc. Once you know this, and how these attributes are related to your brand and to competitive brands, you’ll be able to align your strengths to competitive weakness to meet you buyers’ needs.

In addition, this knowledge will also provide your employees with meaningful insights that will impact their relationships and dialogue with customers or prospects. And, as a bonus, the research you conduct for your content marketing efforts may lead to improved marketing and marketing communications across all of your programs.

Marketing Communications Consultants Or Internal Staff
Having the skills and time to develop your messaging, regardless of content tactic, is another issue to consider. Whether you use internal staff or external professionals, this type of research provides meaningful and specific direction on what to communicate to improve your ROI. Then the question becomes how to communicate this message.

Skilled professionals will not present the research findings as a blatant “brand speak” message. Rather, the objective should be to establish trust with your audiences through communications that meets their needs without a “hard sell”.

So, as you continue your discussions of when, where and how to employ content marketing, I hope you will agree that meaningful messaging, coupled with the right content marketing tactic – be it as simple as a post on Facebook or as complex as an in-person event – can improve your reputation with existing customers and prospects.

Email Marketing is one of the oldest online marketing methods, but even today, it is still as effective as it was, if not more. This method has been helping businesses in keeping touch with their existing clients, and also for reaching out to the new customers. Hence, it is important to integrate email marketing with your other business marketing campaigns.

In this post, we will look into the various intricacies that are involved in email marketing, and also why is it important to hire a professional email marketing company to grow your business online.

Email Marketing – The Best Communication Bridge

Despite the strong emergence of social media, e-mail marketing still holds great importance and relevance for online businesses. It offers you a best platform to communicate with your customers, and let them feel that they are special for your business.

It’s not just about answering the customer queries and orders, but it’s a lot more than that. However, you’ll need to seek professional email marketing services to take your business next levels, and boost your profits.

It helps you -

Convert anonymous visitors into email subscribers
Connect, share, and build relationship with customers/subscribers
Focus on your targeted market
Follow-up your customers in real time
Get high chances of increasing profits with more sales conversions
Why you should hire a professional email marketing company?

Save Your Time

When it comes to marketing a business, then time is always of the essence. Marketing professionals will always make attempts to reach out to more people in lesser time. Moreover, connecting with people via emails is even more complex.

It would involve tasks like creating a professional e-mail template, headers, content, tags, etc, which consumes a lot of time if you decide to do it manually. The professionals have access to different helpful tools that help them create stunning email templates.

They hire professional copywriters and content developers to make attractive newsletters that will surely hold the attention of your prospective customers. Also, they will use software like the auto responders to streamline the entire process of sending emails, and doing the follow-ups. Hence, outsourcing this tedious work can save you a lot of time.

Affordability

The world is your playground, and you can reach out to thousands of people, no matter which corner of the world they live in. However, it is very important to send your marketing content to your targeted audience.

If you have a business which only caters to the certain locality, then your campaign should specifically focus on connecting with people from that specific place, and not from around the world. A professional marketing company will help you in getting the opt-in leads, based on the type of business you run, and the demography of the people you wish to target or cater to.

You can hire email advertising services without having to spend too much, because their services come in affordable plans and suitable packages. Sending a business email will cost very little, and thousands of marketing emails can be dispatched with a single click.

Flexibility

With email marketing, you cannot make the mistake of sending general or common emails to all your subscribers. The successful email marketing campaign is the one that offers flexible options to the clients. You can know about the interests of your customers, their needs, web navigation patterns, and then send them the emails that are closely relevant to their specific interests.

Engage Your Potential Customers

You cannot expect your website visitors to make purchases on their very first visit, unless you are very lucky. In order to engage effectively with your customers, you will need to keep in touch with them, and more importantly, make them feel special.

It’s often challenging to get someone’s attention, and if you do it well, you will have won half the battle successfully. Now, what you have to do is to convert those interests of your clients into the actual sales. Professional marketers will know how exactly to direct your potential customers to right pages, which will then lead to sales conversions.

Increase your ROI (Return on Investment)

Email Marketing if done systematically will yield a lot of profits for your business. By hiring a professional email marketing services, you can surely expect increased ROI, provided that you choose the right company. What you can do is try out their services on a low budget campaign, and then see how it pans out.

Developing Trust

Building good relationships with customers was never been easier before. It takes too much time for companies to know each consumer, their opinions, needs, likes and dislikes and build a trustworthy brand. Keep in mind that a happy client adds value to your brand.

A professional email marketing company will help you create brand loyalty among your subscribers in fairly less time. They will send personalized emails to your prospective customers, which will in turn help you represent your business in a better way.

Drive Sales

Email marketing companies primarily focus on promoting your business and driving your sales. With direct email marketing practices, they promote your business, share special offers, and information about upcoming events. They will first understand your business goals to effectively decide a customized marketing campaign accordingly.

Boost Your Social Interaction with Professional Email Marketing Services

In the last few years, social media networking has grown quite considerably. Today, everyone knows the power and importance of social networking media in online marketing. A good email marketing company will integrate e-mail marketing campaigns with social media marketing. It ultimately boosts the social interaction of your business, and improves your brand popularity.

You can connect with your subscribers and allow them to interact with you on social networks, whether on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or Twitter. Sharing email campaigns on social networks will help in increasing the credibility of your businesses. If your customers/subscribers find your business to be trustworthy, they’ll most likely pass on the info to their friends and colleagues.

Opt for an e-mail marketing company that provides social integration service along with email-marketing campaigns. Nowadays, social media is playing a crucial role in online marketing, without which you’re certainly missing out on several opportunities.

As a direct sales company owner, team leader or direct sales manager, there are many leadership challenges you will need to overcome to build a successful direct sales business. While these include topics such as recruiting, training, marketing, recognizing your team, prospecting, and a variety of others; this article will provide strategies to assist you with successful direct sales team building.

# 1 – Leadership Challenge: Analyze Team Behavior Traits.

The results you gain through adequately supporting your team (advice, training, and goal setting) highly depends upon the individual’s behavioral style. Does your team member prefer sales strategies to be broken down systematically? Alternatively, would your team member prefer to create steps herself to accomplish a team goal? Does she thrive by jumping in and figuring it out as she goes? Is she bogged down by details? Does your team as a whole lean into the strengths of each member? These are the questions to ask to ensure that your support strategy compliments your support recipients.

# 2 – Leadership Challenge: Prevent Your Team from Running Hot and Cold.

Some team members expend all their energy in bursts, followed by none of their energy in bursts. This is a common and vicious cycle, as the energy crash can negatively affect sales bookings, home parties scheduled, and recruiting results, and ultimately lead to personal discouragement. As a team leader, you can better support your team by creating a higher level of consistency in your team’s daily, weekly and monthly direct sales routines. Coach your team to be self paced and to recognize and create consistency.

# 3 – Leadership Challenge: Keep the Ball Moving Forward.

After holiday home parties and New Year’s resolutions begin to fade, your recruits may do the same. Team motivation is one of the most important leadership challenges that each direct sales leader will address. As a strong leader, we must be proactive to keep our team engaged and to encourage them to not only meet, but to also exceed their sales goals. Remember to frequently remind your team to check in with their “WHY.” Why are they doing this? Why are they in this business? Why are they connected to their team? Lastly, keep the business fresh and fun. Humor reduces stress.

# 4 – Leadership Challenge: Bingo! Running Effective Team Meetings and Retreats.

Do your team members often leave your team meetings or team conference calls motivated only to become quickly deflated later? Does your direct sales team go home sounding charged up, but post-meeting produce little to no change? What went wrong?

Ultimately, this is a case of goals being too distant and not concrete. The actions were not defined and specific. The problem with a lack of concrete ideas is that it leads to disengaged team members.

Alternatively, is it also possible that you are saying the same message over and over and having a numbing effect?

The team might begin to play what I call, “meeting bingo” based upon what the leader says repeatedly at every meeting. This is not very different from the drinking games played at political speeches, where audience members take a shot or sip when a buzzword is repeated. Similarly, what we get with the repetition of empty buzzwords untethered to a measurable action step is a short-term shot of feeling good and nothing but a hangover the next day!

There is a big difference between saying “increase home party bookings”, “increase sales to meet your monthly goals or to advance in the compensation plan”, and a statement with measurable action and meaning such as, “meet a quarterly goal of 10 new home party bookings and become a Team Leader by April 30th.” As you recite motivating objectives for each meeting, be sure to include a monthly or weekly plan to break down that goal into manageable bites.

By proactively preparing for and overcoming these direct sales leadership challenges. You are on your way to building a successful sales team and to growing your home party business!