This one secret is at root of *all* marketing success - and failure - whether online or offline. Grasping it will *greatly* accelerate your progress and improve your financial status fast. Ignoring it will guarantee that you stay stuck in a rut. It's that powerful.

It's not what you think. Most people who are attracted to marketing start out by focusing all their energy on learning *techniques*. There's nothing wrong with learning marketing techniques. I'm always looking for new ways to improve my own marketing and - if I'm convinced of value - I think nothing of jumping on a plane and flying half way around world just to pick up an extra 'edge' that I didn't have before.

But technique alone is not enough. Not by a long shot.

You can buy every e-Book, purchase every home study course, attend every seminar, fill your home with books, hire best consultants and coaches, but it's all for nothing if you ignore 'the secret.' In fact, knowing a lot of marketing techniques and not knowing 'the secret' can be downright dangerous to your financial, not to mention your mental, health.

Are your curious yet what 'the secret' is? Good!

Here it is and I hope you burn it into your brain because it will serve you over and over for rest of your life and it very well could burst seams of your bank account some day...The most important decision you'll ever make when starting a new business is not what product to sell, not what headline to use, not which super-duper Internet marketing technique to employ...it's this:

"The battle is won or lost on day one...when you pick your MARKET."

Successful marketing is not so much about WHAT you market or HOW you market as it is about WHO you sell to. If you get WHO right, everything else will fall into place. If you don't, not even greatest marketing in world will help you. The 'WHO' is market you choose to sell to.

The word “branding” is frequently tossed about in marketing and advertising world by marketing professionals and customers alike. Many times, what is being referred to as branding can be more accurately described as logo development or corporate identity programs at best. While a logo and corporate identity certainly are part of a branding program, they are only one piece of puzzle. And when companies start their branding program with development of a logo or corporate identity package, they are getting cart before horse.

So what exactly is branding? In doing research for this article, I came to conclusion that branding is very much like what has been said about pornography: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”

I define a brand image as being picture that appears in a member of your target market’s mind when they see, hear or think about you, your company and your service. In this sense, your logo and print materials become symbols representing everything you and your service stand for, much like letters of alphabet are symbols that when combined form words and sentences with a common meaning to everyone who understands language.

We often think of branding as being something that only big corporations must attend to. However, a strong branding program is as critical to smaller businesses as it is to Fortune 500 companies. And smaller businesses are challenged with building our brands without mega resources of huge corporations. So how can a business with limited resources, develop an effective brand image? Here is a step by step guide to steer you through process.

Step 1: Define your desired brand image. What is picture you want your target market to develop in their minds when they see, hear or think about you, your company and your service? The more clearly you can see image better able you are to communicate it to your prospective clients. Start to define your brand by answering these questions in writing: •What do we stand for? •What are we passionate about? •How are we different from other businesses that provide same or similar products or services? •What are our strengths? •What is our specialty? •What are our values? •What do our clients most value about what we provide? •What are we trying to accomplish? •What problems do we help our clients solve? •What do we want to be known for? •Do we have any “quirks” that we can incorporate into our brand image?