Remember when you were young your parents would tell you to always look neat and smart? Even at a young age, you were beginning to learn some basic lessons in marketing yourself. Back then, your parents were teaching you that looking neat and smart creates a positive first impression so vital to your success.

However, as you grew older and wiser, and life became a lot more complicated, looking neat and smart, while still vital, is no longer adequate. Whether applying for a job, meeting with a business client, winning the heart of that very special someone, or running for public office, you need to be effective in marketing yourself to win.

Here are five effective tips you may find helpful in marketing yourself:

1. Always look neat and smart:
As a tribute to parents who have always worked hard for your success, looking neat and smart will always be on top of this list. People will always gravitate towards a winner. If you look like a winner and smell like a winner, people will treat you like a winner. And you yourself will certainly start feeling like a winner. High profile politicians and business icons who have the money even hire the services of an image consultant just so they would have that winning advantage.

2. Appear bigger than you actually are:
Oftentimes, size does matter. Again, this boils down to people wanting to be with or work with winners. There seems to be this accepted mindset, actually a misconception, that winners should be big. This is why you see small local businesses adopting fancy multinational-sounding business names to make their small business appear globally big. Or they would have their business stationery printed with the flags of several countries to imply they have multinational affiliates. Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. But they certainly look big. Having a virtual office “staff” makes you look big, too, even though your “staff” could be just your mother, sister or your wife. In Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki refers to his cat as his “business partner” whenever he has to enter into a contract subject to the approval of his “business partner”. Business Process Outsourcing and Contact Centers are there to create an impression that you have a big business. A business website is a very effective platform for marketing yourself as your website exposes your small business to a global market.

3. Highlight your achievements:
So what if you don’t have a Ph.D. on your resume? Or if you are just a start up business with very little credentials to show off? Do not dwell on what you do not have. Instead, focus on the benefits you can offer with what you do have and highlight these benefits when marketing yourself. Remember that almost all big industry players started out small at some point in time and were given the opportunity to grow.

4. Be a wide reader, research a lot:
Saying the right things at the right time leaves a very positive impression when marketing yourself in front of your business clients or when applying for a job. Reading and researching on a wide variety of topics gives you a wealth of information that you will find tremendously helpful during business negotiations or job interviews. Sometimes, just one brilliant remark can be all it takes to break the ice or seal the deal. In election debates, the candidate who gives the more intelligent, more relevant answers usually gets the votes. When marketing yourself, it is not enough to just look smart, you also have to talk smart.

5. Be multi-lingual and multi-cultural:
In today’s global economy, marketing yourself often requires the ability to speak several languages and be sensitive to diversities in cultures and traditions. Showing your clients you have taken extra efforts to learn about their language and culture earns you their respect and that all-important positive first impression. You can also get a lot of referrals from these clients as they usually are clannish and closely-knit.

A bounty of opportunities await you if you are effective in marketing yourself. You need to constantly keep your best foot forward, highlight your achievements, be sensitive to your markets’ needs, and always have that winning positive first impression.

The school grades you received for tests measured, in a limited fashion: how well you took tests (often designed to be tricky), memorized, understood (or liked, from your side of things) what you were tested on, and-though more from your perspective than the system’s-whether or not you believed you’d have a use for the information now or in the future (felt it was applicable to your life experience or goal).

Whatever was being evaluated, your ability to conform was included, even though this measurement was subtle. There was little allowance or reward for thinking or performing “outside the box.” Play by the rules to be rewarded; failure to follow or conform received a penalty. (”Outside the box” is where inventions, innovations, and masterpieces live.)

What school grades didn’t measure was the truth of your unique intelligence and how you express it, emotional intelligence, common sense, creativity, humor, self-learning or self-adjusting abilities-and they never, ever measured your worth (as a contributing member to life) or self-worth (priceless, as you’re one of a kind).

When you consider what wasn’t measured, you can see the system was set up in a way that required you to adhere to limited and restricted criteria (rules of the game) in order to meet specific (limited and restricted) outcomes. It was never about who you really are, what you can do or flourish at or contribute, or your potential to expand at the inner and outer levels, as a unique individual.

Also, remember how obvious the restriction of high school seemed once you graduated, especially if you went to college and could schedule the classes you really wanted and at the times you preferred? You could chew gum, get rewarded for creativity (usually), and do lots of other things you couldn’t or didn’t do in that more circumscribed environment.

There’s a similar system in place when it comes to worth and self-worth, especially in regard to money. Adhering to the system is what mucks with most people and holds them back from playing a better game, the one where their worth and self-worth is a given, no matter what.

You’re taught that the number in your bank account or on your assets sheet is real and measures a particular “something” about your worth and self-worth. But, it doesn’t. It only measures how well you play that particular game; how well you conform. You’re taught you have to work certain ways, usually for an hourly or salaried wage; work an “acceptable” number of hours; and so on. Yet, we know people who do this differently and have fun and prosper. How do they get away with this?

They play a different game-because they don’t allow others to measure their true value.

Let’s presume you’re a spiritual- or metaphysical-minded person. Maybe you’re a Law of Attraction advocate (not necessary). If the number in your bank account is lower than you’d like, does that number reflect the Truth of You or does it reflect your belief in how your worth and self-worth is measured or should be-because others who adhere to “the game” told you it was so?

If you believe the latter half of the last sentence above, how does this influence or impact your ability to believe in yourself? What does belief in self have to do with success (the way you define it for you) or your ability to have a fulfilling life?

Look at biographies of some who’ve made a name for themselves in history. You’ll see there are those whose school test scores measured them as average or below average. It’s a good thing they didn’t allow this to stop them.

There’s a chance that, if you’re not doing as well as you’d like, you probably adhere to “outside” measurement standards that don’t serve you. Whatever your life (or bank account) looks like now is a reflection of your trying to play by rules that don’t fit you, especially if you know there’s more to “reality” than what you see. Two opposing thoughts/beliefs existing at the same moment, in the same space, cancel each other out.

Maybe it’s time you create your own game with its own rules-a game you win. One of the biggest wins you can have is to know your worth and self-worth, no matter the opinions of or rules set by others.

Joyce Shafer, Life Empowerment Coach and author of “I Don’t Want to be Your Guru, but I have Something to Say.” Learn about You Are More online coaching-on-the-go; 3 levels: Life, LOA, Quantum-at http://youaremoreempowermentcoach.webs.com/.

More people are wanting to start their own business, redundancies, the desire for greater flexibility in working hours, the increased satisfaction of working for yourself, have all contributed to the increase in business start ups. These fledgling businesses will eventually grow into the small/medium sized businesses which it is hoped will begin to revive the economy and provide much needed employment. However a word of caution needs to be voiced to the new business starters, the facts are that many businesses fail in the first year of trading and whilst the reasons are many and varied one of the main factors is that they did not have a clear vision of what they wanted from the business and they did not do their homework on the fundamentals, customers, the market they were entering, selling price of goods/service etc. So whilst the thought of having your own business and the rewards and freedom it offers are quite tempting a degree of caution should be noted as a great deal of homework needs to be carried out prior to actually starting the business.

Items to consider :-
What do you want from your business.
Do you want to build a business over many years, expanding whenever possible, looking to employ additional staff etc. or are you looking for a business which will provide a certain level of income with no desire to grow beyond that level envisaged, or are you the serial entrepreneur who will start the business and then look to sell it at some stage before moving on to the next project.

What product/service will your business provide.
Many people want to start a business but do not know what they are going to do, there are obvious advantages to offering a product or service in a market in which you have some knowledge of, or have previously worked in. Another option is to look to purchase a franchise which offers the opportunity to buy a business which is based on an existing business model and you will be allowed to run that business in a certain geographical area. The golden rule when deciding what product or service to offer is “make something that people want to buy”, this may seem obvious but many people start a business selling a product they like but ultimately the business fails because enough people do not want to buy it.

Other information you need to know.
Quite simply the more information you can find at this stage the more informed your decision will be on starting the business, as much information as possible should be obtained on the following :-

- customers

- competitors

- product

- cost of production

- selling price

- the product market

The work undertaken at this stage could prevent poor decisions being made and as a result save considerable time and money. Another golden rule to consider at this point refers to the proposed selling price of the product, “the selling price is not the cost of production plus profit margin, it is simply the price people are willing to pay for the product”. Consideration should also be given as to what the products unique selling point will be, what will make people buy this product rather than a competitors product.

The points outlined above are not intended to be exhaustive and some additional considerations may need to be addressed once the background work is undertaken, the important issue is that this work is done prior to starting the business, so that the decision to start is based on sound judgement and a clear vision.

Local search is one of the biggest things on Internet marketing in the past year. The Internet is now available in most homes and being used to look up local services. In a time when competition is at its peak and businesses are fighting for every potential costumer, getting into the first page of the search results could mean a huge increase in business for local services.

Many local services business are not yet aware of this change in consumer behavior is taking place, they are still in an age where a regular business listings in “the book” got you all the clients you wanted, and when a billboard ad outside of town made the business known in the area. When a traditional local service manager or owner gets to negotiate Internet promotion they could be in for a considerable surprise in terms of costs and time it would take to starting seeing some return.

What should local businesses expect from local Internet search clients? In short, they could expect everything, a local service could grow its client base considerably by ranking for their services on line, the business could also offer deals and special promotions through its Internet site, pushing one particular product to the public, creating value to the client and to the business.

Top local listings will result in emails and contact us forms, telephones and on line quote requests, but this will take time to happen, it does not happen overnight, and expecting it to have an immediate effect might lead to frustration and anger. It is the responsibility of the SEO expert to explain that planning the search engine optimization process and executing it can take up to two months, and one that is done it might take another 5 months for solid ranking and consistent stream of visitors to the site.

This issue is even more complex if the local business does not have a web site, or has one page of text that has no contact information or services list. In most cases it is possible to set up a quick blog to serve as the main page for the services and contact information of the business, but both search engine optimizers and business owners should aspire to have an individual site, with a domain name and a unique design, otherwise promotion might waste energy on pushing a temporary page.

Once a site is built and running the next goal will be to take over some market share and create a web name for the services of that local business, the target is to get as high up as possible in the natural search engine results so that potential clients could see and visit the site from the very page they ran the tern query on. Achieving first page ranking for a local business could mean much more than just that ego boost for its workers and mangers, having a site rank high for its natural services names, or for its products combined with the name of the location it is in makes a serious combination of branding and market power.

For example one of the businesses we have worked with in the past managers had told us a little story that explains how powerful it could be to rank well on the big search engines, after the business had finishing building its website and optimized its pages for search the general manager asked all the workers to stop using their business cards and tell anyone who asked them what is their number or contact info that they could be found by typing the name of the service plus the name of the town, and that it would show up on the first spot, this manager told us his website generated more business than they made through the phone in just 6 months.