John Botscharow Marketing Journal

I guess my first order of business should be to explain my rather extended absence. To put it briefly and bluntly, my bing away was due to a pain in the ass, quite literally. I have sffered with hemorrhoids for years, but in the last year or so, they have become quite severe. I had a severe attack in May of 2007, so sever in fact that my wife and Ispent the early hours of Mother's Day 2007 in the emergency room because doctors no longer are available on weekends. More on that subject below

I nearly had the surgery to remve my henorrhoids that sunner, but I chickened out after I found some herbal remedies that seemed to control the problem. Then, two weekends ago, after more than a year of repsite, my hemorrhoids struck again, worse than ever. My wife and I spent six hours in the emergency room on A Sunday. It seems that my little friends wait until the weekend to become a problem.

One of the biggest problems for me when I come back to writing after an extended absence is regaining my train of thought. I tend to get on a theme and stay with it for awhile and each post is usually a logical progrssion of the previous posts. It's rare for me to jump to a completely new topic tht has no logical connection to what came before. Howver, that ma be the case here for a little while until I can gatger ny thoughts and re-establish the train of reasoning I was riding prior to my absence.

Just a short note to let you know that I will be away till Monday. We bought a new lap top computer and we have some shuffling and reconfiguting to do that will make it hard for me to work online until Monday. I should have a new post ready by Monday or Tuesday. Until then, pace.

One of the most widely used online marketing tools is email, which is the topic for today. Before we begin discussing the pros and cons of email marketing, I want to establish my bona fides as as an expert in email marketing. Npt that long ago, I was an email marketer. I published several email newsletters. sent email advertisements to my subscribers, and even bought an email mailing list from a supposedly reputable dealer in such lists. Using that list got me into trouble with my ISP and onto several email blacklists. For a short time, I was branded a spammer.

The ultimate goal of all marketing, whether indirect or direct ,is to make the sale. Something that creates income. Sometimes it does not. The point is that when you market, you must sell something.

That's the first part of the last paragraph of my post from last Friday, Basic Marketing Concepts: Indirect and Direct Marketing. At the end of that paragraph I promised to explain what I meant by those two sentences, and that is what I want to do today. In doing so, we will end up with a working definition of what marketing is, which will serve as the basis of all future discussions on marketing.

Marleting is selling, pure and simples. Every time you market something you had better be trying to make a sale or you are not marketing. But, there is selling and there is selling.