Twitter for Marketing Your Business

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Tiger Tari & the Davis Entrepreneurs

2009 Small Business Marketing Guide

As a business owner you know that marketing is one of the most integral parts of driving your bottom line. Sales keep you in business, but marketing keeps you in sales. However, marketing does not have to be expensive. In fact some of the best ways to build a small business are through inexpensive marketing strategies. Listed below are some great ways to build your business without burning a hole in your pocket.

Chamber of Commerce Councils:
The general chamber can be too big and not worth the effort if you're in the city (Jacksonville is second largest in the US for example). I suggest starting by choosing a local council to get involved with. For those in Jacksonville, check out the following link which has a listing. (http://www.myjaxchamber.com/general.asp?id=572) The women's council in Jacksonville is very strong and the networking is phenomenal. Not in Jacksonville? Just google “[city name] chamber of commerce.”

American Marketing Association:
Develop relationships with people who get what marketing is all about. Business is all about relationship building. This a good source for building your natural market since most of these people are professional networkers and marketers. Listed below is the link to find a local chapter.(http://www.marketingpower.com/Community/_layouts/FindaChapter.aspx)

Search Engine Optimization:
Websites need to be submitted properly to all search engines in order for them to start showing up in people's searches. Use map tools to get your business to show up on google maps, mapquest, etc. Identify appropriate key words for your website. Having appropriate keywords is helpful to boosting your websites search rankings. The better your content and keywords, the better quality of the visitors that go to your site.

Not sure how to set up Search Engine Optimization? Be careful when considering hiring an SEO consultant. Many are novices and deliver poor results, causing you a loss on your investment. Consider doing some basic research to understand what SEO is and how it can help your business. Tangent specializes in creating effective web marketing strategies. We offer SEO packages as well as per hour work.

Here is an informational link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

Craig's List for Recruitment:
You can also post listings on Craig’s List (www.craigslist.com) for business opportunities and it is free and is a huge resource for both job seekers and job posters.


Social Networking:
Online social networking communities (facebook, myspace, linkedin, etc.) are growing rapidly and can be used effectively to promote your business and products/services, many times for free. Here is an article on how to get started and doing effectively.

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008/07/28/facebook-for-business-what-it-needs-what-it-has/

www.myspace.com
www.facebook.com
www.linkedin.com
www.twitter.com

Trade Associations:
Look at the statewide as well as local trade organizations. Many times you can sponsor meetings or be an associate member. This will give you some opportunities to get in front of your target audience. Listed below two examples of Florida trade associations. Almost all professions have some sort of association, and many of them have a statewide association with chapters in individual cities.

Examples:
http://www.fcachiro.org/
http://www.ficpa.org

Not in Florida? Just search google or yahoo to find one in your state.

Printing Costs and Production:
Kinko’s and other print shops are extremely expensive. As an example, Kinko’s may charge around ¢.50 per color copy. Our company’s rates start at just ¢20.9 per color copy and ¢3.9 per black and white copy. We also deliver right to your home or office.

Marketing your Business’s Events:
Press Releases - Write up press releases. It is important to know how to write an effective release. Poorly written releases end up in the trash. It is well worth the investment to find someone with experience to write them. Tangent charges between $20.00 and $40.00 for a professional release and submission to local newspapers.

Newspapers - Do some research and see if your paper has a column about your area of expertise. Start submitting content to them. Write something original. Remember, if it's published in the paper you are an expert in your field. If you’re short on time, consider outsourcing the work to a marketing firm. They can conduct research and put together professional work. Tangent does this on a per hour basis.

Craig's List - Under the community section you can post information about your events. This is FREE exposure for you and it takes 10 minutes. You can also post multiple listings in different communities within your city.


Gift’s that Keep on Giving:
Referrals - How much do you pay for your leads? Are they even hot? A referral is a free lead with an excellent response rate. Never cold call again! Get your customers to talk about you (positively). Provide your customers with incentives for talking about your product. Many people spend lots of money on marketing materials like pens and coffee mugs. While these can have a nice touch they are much less effective than a customer who sings your praises. Create a culture with your employees and clients that makes referrals an expectation. Be proactive, ask for referrals. Referrals are the cheapest and often most effective way to drive your bottom line. Not sure how to ask? See the link below:

http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/ArticleReader/website/default.aspx?Print=1&ArticleId=Learnhowtoaskforreferralsandgrowyourbusiness

Email Newsletters - Using email marketing campaigns is a great way to stay in front of clients and increase your sales. It is extremely important however that you use email marketing effectively and appropriately. Sending too many emails will turn off customers. Sending too few won’t produce results either. There are many different opinions on what is appropriate, but we recommend sending around one per week (typically on Monday’s). How many emails do you get that you don’t even read? Would you read them if you felt there was actual value in the email? Of course you would! Make sure you understand your customers needs and wants and provide them with tons of value!

I had the chance to meet Ryan Allis, CEO of Icontact.com at a conference in November. His company is one of the best for email marketing software. Go to www.icontact.com to try a free trial. If you like it you can sign up for next to nothing.



Happy Marketing,


Grant Deken
Tangent Initiatives
Tel +1 (904) 254- 5768
Fax +1 (904) 212-1520
Email Grant@tangentinitiatives.com
www.tangentinitiatives.com

Davis Entrepreneurs to Host First Meeting

The Davis Entrepreneurs, formally known as the Jacksonville Entrepreneurship Club, have reorganized to launch themselves as the premier business organization at the Davis College of Business at Jacksonville University. The organization plans to help students compete against some of the top schools and entrepreneurship programs in the world. "Business competitions, conference opportunities, and renown speakers are all part of our newly rolled out plan," said president Chris Salley.

The organization could not have come at a better time. With students looking for competitive opportunities to apply what they are learning in the classroom, organizations like the Davis Entrepreneurs are there to make it happen. "Students often take the concepts they learn in the classroom and file them away. We don't let that happen. We're preparing students to be better than the competition. People in our organization come out with the skills to start, run, and grow any type of business. You don't find these types of skills in most recent grads, who spend their summer breaks working in the retail or the restaurant business," said vice president Grant Deken. "We are aggressive, organized, and know what it takes to set ourselves apart."

If you're in the Jacksonville area, the organization's next meeting is January 22nd at 7PM at the Davis College of Business at Jacksonville University. For more information you can contact Chris Salley at Csalley@jacksonville.edu or Grant Deken at Gdeken@jacksonville.edu.

Lets Talk Private Equity

I recently had the opportunity to interview the chairman of a mid-level private equity firm. Here's what he had to say about private equity, business degrees, and people skills.

Q: How did you find your way into this business?

A: I started my career as an attorney working on numerous types of mergers and acquisitions. I brought one of my clients into a deal based on my judgment and in turn made them about $350 million dollars. Soon after they asked me if I would be interested in starting a private investment firm with them and a few others. The rest as they say is history. We’ve been doing business for fourteen years now.

Q: It was tough to find much information out about your firm prior to our interview. Do you guys keep a pretty low profile?

A: We like to be mysterious. We find that being under the radar we are able to target the specific types of investments we want. When everyone knows about your firm you tend to get hundred of business plans and phone calls a week – most of them are exactly what you are not looking for.

Q: So how do you approach prospective businesses you may want to invest in?

A: Actually we don’t. We have a third party marketing firm create the initial marketing tools to contact prospective businesses. The reasoning behind this is that the marketing firm knows how to make us stand out from the crowd. If we just sent a letter out chances are it would get thrown away.

Q: How does communication play a role in what you do?

A: Communication is one of the most important aspects of this business. When we’re involved in a deal with a business and we need to find very specific people or resources, we are on the phones networking with everyone we know to find what we need. The interpersonal skills are invaluable in this business. We are a small firm so our ability to leverage our contacts and networking to find what we need is imperative.

Q: Leveraging resources is so important in this business. As a small firm, how are you guys competing with other firms how have so much more at their disposal?

A: We started a fund a few years back. We have social events for members to interact as peers and get involved. The events are huge for networking. People know what we’re investing in and since they have a stake they start sending us referrals for top-tier finance and management professionals we otherwise wouldn’t have known about. Since everyone has a stake in the investments people are eager to give us names and numbers. It makes getting your foot in the door that much easier. I can call a CEO and set a meeting. No gatekeepers, no voicemails.

Q: How do you primarily communicate with your team members and prospects?

A: I love email. While we do have a team, most of us are involved in specific things. One person usually stays somewhat involved as a back up person. Usually we keep each other informed primarily through email.

Q: One of the main documents you are giving me as a writing sample is the Letter of Intent. Can you tell me a little more about it?

A: The letter of intent is what we send businesses we are seriously interested in working with. It’s essentially a loose contract that formally states that both parties are interested in conducting business with each other. It’s very wordy and there is a reason for that. If we begin to work with a company and things go wrong before we commit [financially] we can get out of the contract. It’s important to build a back-door into everything. Sometimes things are not what they seem going into something.

Q: You graduated from Harvard Law School. Looking back, has a brand name like Harvard given you opportunities that other schools could not? Does the School make or break your options?

A: I’ve worked with people from all over that have been to top law schools and average law schools. Typically the person either has it or they don’t. The law school you go to doesn’t guarantee anything. I will say that going to Harvard provided me with excellent connections. All in all, going to a top school just makes it easier to get where you want to go.

Q: What’s some sound advice you would give to a business student who is on their way to graduating?

A: Two things come to mind. The first is to make sure you are very familiar with balance sheets and have a good financial background. A lot of people forget the basics. Don’t forget that stuff. Secondly, get solid experience. I can not count how many highly intelligent kids come out of top business schools with MBA’s but have no real experience.

New Network for Young Entrepreneurs

Today’s youth are emerging as entrepreneurial powerhouses, and more and more are putting new ideas into action. These entrepreneurs refuse to accept things for the way they are. They’re relentlessly trying to push new concepts and practices into the world. They’re young, motivated, and unparalleled given today’s vast amount of available technology and resources.

Under30CEO.com is the birth child of this “young entrepreneur” paradigm. A new social network geared primarily towards young entrepreneurs has emerged and is pushing the boundaries of social networking and interaction. My inherent first question was, “do we really need another social network?” I was sure I knew the answer to my somewhat rhetorical question. There’s so many networks out there all playing tug of war for users. It became clear soon after joining that even in its infancy, the guys at Under30 had asked themselves the very same question and vowed to make it clear that there is still plenty of space in the social network world.

“I remember when we first thought about this,” said co-founder Matt Wilson. “We all had finance, accounting, and business degrees, and graduation was coming up quick. Companies like KPMG and Price Waterhouse Coopers were recruiting from our class, but a few of us had this realization that the corporate job and lifestyle just wasn’t for us. We started thinking of a way to connect young entrepreneurs like us together to brainstorm and share resources.”

Under30CEO launched at the 2008 Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization in Chicago, IL. The site is utilizing a wide range of media to build a library of essential resources for young people looking to start a business.

“Whenever people start these things, they’re thinking, OK, how can we drive as much traffic to the site as possible. That’s the wrong mindset. We want the type of users who keep coming back and want to contribute to the site. If we build a great user base, and the mindset is kept on producing valuable content the rest will fall into place,” Wilson said.

You can check out Under30 at www.under30ceo.com. For more information on Under30, or to explore sponsorship opportunities, contact Matt Wilson.

www.grantdeken.com

So You Want to Sell Advertising

Many people start sites with the preconceived notion that they can make tons of money by selling advertising. Don't be fooled, the road to riches is more detailed and complex than you know. For those of you moving forward, here are some tips for getting started.

What you need prior to selling anything is a detailed breakdown of your traffic. Understanding the types of visitors and members you have is going to be essential to successfully finding advertisers. You want a user base that is targeted, but not so targeted that you are limiting advertising prospects.

You need to know that in addition to users being interested in your site's primary focus, they are also within 'x' age range, 'x' income level, gender, etc. You absolutely need to understand figures such as bounce rates, the average time spent on your site, where the majority of traffic is coming from and the rate of growth/month.

Being that the economy is presumably slower than it was in the ad boom we saw about a year ago, you can be pretty sure that budgets for advertising are somewhat smaller. The rate of spending is still increasing, but at a slower rate than before. Because advertisers are a bit more cautious, a Pay Per Click (PPC) package may be more attractive, since the ROI is much more tangible.

CPM advertising (cost per thousand impressions) is the other alternative. Advertisers looking to maximize exposure in a specific market will likely flock to this option. Again though, the ROI is less tangible, and MOST companies, in my humble opinion, are looking at PPC options.

When you structure deals you want to emphasize the uniqueness of your audience and understand who your key prospective advertisers are going to be. Offer all encompassing advertising packages in addition to a single banner, like what you see on sites such as break.com, where a company gets the banner, in-video ad, and perhaps a "free offer" opportunity from the advertiser. Sponsorship is a great word to use and paradigm to embrace since it feels less "advertisy" to consumers.

Traffic: this will be a tough barrier to overcome given that you probably don't have start up capital to spend on advertising yourself. My suggestion is to structure a vigorous grass roots campaign Which is often much better for long term results and for generating a consistent user base.

Blogs are a great first step in spreading the word and building natural traffic. Submit value based content to article databases as well. Original videos are also an emerging tactic that can build viral traffic to your site. My suggestion is keep it somewhat short, and very funny. Humor is key. Submit releases to other websites that may have an interest in your site. Offer to write stories on other companies in order to get them to post your story on their blogs.

Be creative. The more creative you can be as far as distribution methods the better.

Be patient! Don't expect your traffic and page rank to skyrocket over night. But also know that the harder you work and the more time you put in, the faster you will see results.

Visit Grantdeken.com to get more ideas and information on how to boost your company's marketing efforts!

Jacksonville University Creating CEO's

The Davis College of Business is out to make a name for itself and this past weekend was no different. The College of Business, along with the JU entrepreneurship club, sent three students to the Collegiate Entrepreneur Organization’s annual conference in Chicago, Illinois.

Roughly 1,400 students, faculty, and entrepreneurs gathered together for three days of networking, workshops, and keynotes by some of today’s most prominent business leaders. “It was a rewarding experience to be surrounded by a group of people who have many of the same goals as you, that think the way you do,” said Grant Deken, a senior economics major and founder of a small marketing firm, Tangent Initiatives, LLC. “We came out of the conference with a different paradigm. The three of us feel energized and confident we can take our businesses and our organization to the next level.

The conference featured more than twenty workshops from basic concepts to more advanced subjects such as venture financing and search engine optimization. Veteran attendees competed in business plan and elevator pitch competitions for large cash prizes. “The workshops and keynotes were amazing,” Said JU Entrepreneurship Club president Chris Salley, “but the opportunity to network with peers and business leaders was truly invaluable. We are really thankful to have the support of Dr. Rossiter, Dean McCann, and the whole College of Business.”

The JU Entrepreneurship Club currently meets once a month and focuses on bringing in local entrepreneurs to discuss different aspects of starting and running a business. “We have big plans for our organization this year. We want to continue to bring in speakers, but also move towards bigger things, like competitions, more conference opportunities, and social entrepreneurship within the city,” Salley said. “Our organization encourages anyone interested in starting their own business to attend our events and meetings.”

If you would like more information about this topic or to schedule and interview with Grant Deken, please call him at 904.254.5768 or e-mail at Gdeken@jacksonville.edu

Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization 2008 – Chicago, IL

It was like a breath of fresh air, being surrounded by 1,400 young, motivated, big thinking, wealth aspiring entrepreneurs. This year the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization hosted its annual conference in the heart of the windy city and between the speakers, the company, and the city, it did not disappoint.

Speakers like Robert Kiyosaki inspired and motivated us with stories of triumph and failure and most importantly, overcoming failures to go on to triumphs. As first time attendees to the conference, the experience was an unforgettable one. Advanced workshops gave insight into specific issues like venture capital, internet marketing, and understanding the importance of bootstrapping (and how to do it effectively). It was a hub of unbelievable resources for anyone aspiring to start a business or take theirs to the next level.

Now back in Jacksonville, I’m more ready than ever to continue with my plans to create a multi-million dollar enterprise. But it’s not all about the money, and that was a point of emphasis that CEO illustrated. The success of business allows us to think bigger, change the status quo faster, and access the needed resources to solve the world’s problems. It’s our responsibility to create jobs, find better sources of energy, and end the disease and hunger that millions of humans face every day.

So here’s my challenge to you. Stop what you’re doing and just think for a minute. Where do you want to be in five years? Do you want to be a millionaire? Do you want to help people? Even better, would you like to be a millionaire helping people? The questions are a bit rhetorical, but I sincerely hope you consider that entrepreneurship is the key that can open the door into a new world of thought and freedom. Can you work hard enough to obtain that? Do you want to?

Managing a Marketing and Sales Transformation

Authors: Joel Claret, Pierre Mauger, and Eric V. Roegner

The marketing environment is unprecedentedly changing and becoming more complex. The result is a need to reorganize brand portfolios, rethink spending approaches, generate more fine-grained customer insights, overhaul pricing and segment management, and restructure sales, service, and channel strategies. Each change is a challenge in its own right, and some companies are tackling more than one: GE, for example, has been trying simultaneously to improve the way it approaches innovation, brand management, and customer care. This level of change represents a commercial transformation—that is, a transformation of the company's broad-based marketing and sales elements.

It's difficult to carry off change of this magnitude at a brisk pace: deeply ingrained habits keep employees from embracing new techniques, skill-building efforts break down, and leaders lose focus. To counteract these problems, companies have developed a variety of change-management approaches, particularly in operations, where techniques such as Six Sigma and Total Quality Management (TQM) have flourished. Making change stick typically requires both planning and action—centering change on a powerful aspiration, establishing systems and processes that reinforce the goals of change, modifying mind-sets by creating a sense of shared purpose among employees, conducting targeted skill-building efforts, and creating role models for employees.¹ While such change-management practices are useful, they are difficult to apply to marketing and sales. One reason is that these organizations—encompassing brand managers, market researchers, and segment and channel managers, to name just a few—are more diverse and complex than the shop floors where many improvement programs take place. Figuring out how to keep disparate parts of the organization working together is a key challenge of change. Second, the rationale for transforming a marketing organization is often to jump-start growth. That requires creativity, not just strong execution, so the change effort is more difficult and the related decision making more complex. Finally, the responses of competitors and customers to marketing changes are difficult to predict, so it is hard to eliminate variability (a goal of many operations change efforts); maintaining flexibility is essential; and the establishment of goals and metrics is complicated.

In our experience, five critical ingredients of transformation are key to overcoming these issues (Exhibit 1):

1. Leadership, aspirations, conviction, and clarity of purpose: committed leadership that can bring together disparate parts of an organization to achieve an ambitious and clearly articulated aspiration
2. New ways of working: a combination of improved processes and tools that help make sense of complex information, redefined pivotal roles, and performance management that drives the transformation forward; together, these serve as the foundation of a commercial operating system that, when fully developed, improves consistency, coordination, insight, and decision making
3. Capability building: on-the-job apprenticeship and high-caliber coaching designed to upgrade critical skills while delivering results
4. Changes in mind-sets and behavior: necessary steps such as removing cultural barriers to change and developing a tailored set of interventions to shape behavior
5. Transformation design: an approach that delineates the scope of the journey of change and the support needed to meet its objectives

You can read the rest of this article and others at http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com

Grant

How Retailers Can Make the Best of a Slowdown

Moving quickly to improve performance can help retailers to recover faster.

Ashish A. Kotecha, Josh Leibowitz, and Ian MacKenzie

September 2008

Downturns are tough on retailers. Recent McKinsey research indicates that during the last two recessions (1990–91 and 2000–01), growth slowed for nearly every retail subsector in the United States. Ninety-three percent of the retailers surveyed that existed during both downturns experienced slowing revenue growth in one of them, and 59 percent endured it in both.¹

Unfortunately for retailers, their position on the front lines of consumer spending doesn’t translate into a rapid turnaround when the general economy experiences a subsequent uptick. The average retail subsector growth rate during the first year of recovery following the 1990–91 and 2000–01 downturns was 0.3 percent. And 12 of 15 retail sectors lagged behind even that rate of growth during one or both upturns.²

These downturn dynamics—declining sales followed by a sluggish recovery period—mean retailers should move quickly to minimize performance deterioration. The challenge, of course, is that retailers have a large number of options to sort through, ranging from cutting costs by shutting stores or restructuring support functions, to increasing revenue by refreshing stores or overhauling promotions. Many make the mistake of focusing on what is easy or known to them and fail to tackle more challenging goals that might improve their competitive positioning during the inevitable upturn.

In our experience, some basic rules of thumb are invaluable for helping retailers rapidly sort through their options and set priorities for action—in particular, determining whether to take an offensive or defensive approach. Combining a tough self-assessment with a hard-nosed scan of the environment can help retailers decide on the relative importance of reducing costs, increasing investments, creating financial flexibility, and seeking near-term revenue growth (exhibit).

Retailers should start by taking a rigorous look at the health of their balance sheets, management teams, and overall operating performance. Companies with reasonable cash reserves and ready access to credit lines, for instance, have options—such as investing in stores, people, or acquisitions—that weaker competitors simply lack.

At the same time, retailers need to be realistic about the potential of their businesses. Do they operate store formats or play in a subsector with strong growth prospects? To what extent is the market already saturated, and where does the retailer stand versus competitors? Recent growth rates, market penetration figures, and a serious review of the strengths and weaknesses of competitors are all important factors to consider.

Companies with good financial strength in markets with significant growth potential should lift investment to gain strategic advantage over competitors. Big bets, such as doubling down on new stores or remodeling old ones, are one possibility. Equally important are smaller bets, such as recruiting talent from weaker players or investing in more precise local market execution. For example, when one specialty retailer began suffering from declining foot traffic in its stores, the company built an analytic tool to help merchants and members of the central marketing organization more effectively use data from customer-relationship-management (CRM) and transaction databases. This allowed the retailer to better predict local demand and decide which items should receive how much space in its advertising circular. Comparable store sales have risen between two and four percent in test markets employing the new promotion-effectiveness tool.

Retailers with good financial health in mature industries can also go on the offensive, taking actions to quickly grow revenue by driving traffic into stores through more compelling offers and ensuring that staff is ready on the floor for the assisted sale. For example, a North American soft goods retailer has reversed declining sales, improved customer satisfaction, and increased the frequency and average size of transactions by focusing on eliminating out-of-stocks, raising the effectiveness of front-line salespeople, and making small store-layout changes that help customers find the goods they want.

Companies with weaker financial health will need to focus more aggressively on reducing costs. Our recent experience suggests that weak performers have major opportunities to rationalize inventory stock keeping units (SKUs)—freeing up working capital—and to renegotiate terms on direct sourcing. These companies can also increase shop-floor efficiency, an area where they frequently lag. By applying lean operations techniques to redeploy labor, they can shorten the time staff spend on noncustomer-facing tasks and increase the time spent helping customers. The focus should be on getting more from existing sales resources, not just on cutting labor hours. Indeed, the key driver of economics is sales—not just cost as a percentage of sales.

More broadly, retailers should bear in mind that the least effective thing to do during a downturn is to simply “hunker down” and “weather the storm.” Though there’s no escaping some pain, moving quickly to improve performance can reduce the odds of a deep dip in sales and position retailers to participate fully in the inevitable upturn.

Original Article: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Retail_Consumer_Good/Strategy_Analysis How_retailers_can_make_the_best_of_a_slowdown_2188

Leverage Your Marketing Efforts

Today's economy is volatile and unpredictable. Markets feed off of each other like nothing before, and the world economy is one marketplace. Consumers today are smart. They research purchase options, talk with others, and can make or break a business. Understanding how to engage this marketplace changes is essential to being successful. However, complex problems tend to come with long complex answers and complex answer eat up precious time. So, for our purposes, I have shortened some simple small business recommendations into short, easy to understand strategies that every business should be actively engaging in.

1. Enterprise Branding - Many companies are doing an exceptional job branding at the micro level (product) but is missing the mark on creating an enterprise presence. Evolving your company's - not just product - brand is an essential part in growing the business and establishing a larger market presence.

2. Analytics and Email -

a. Leverage the internet by employing an email marketing initiative. You can use this to put your products in front of more people, more often while at the same time increase the availability of feedback and behavioral data from consumers. This will also help with enterprise branding, customer loyalty, and market exposure.

b. What are you currently spending on marketing and where is it going? Based on current pay per click (PPC) rates, what kind of turn over are you seeing. How leveraged are your key words respectively to the search volume of those key words?

c. Home Page - What is the click through rate on your home page? Bounce rate? Building high value content into your home page, such as product demo’s or a welcome video to captivate an audience will encourage a higher CLR and a lower Bounce rate. Ideally, to work in conjunction with enterprise branding, consider re-tooling your home page.

3. Economic Outlook - An economic slowdown will take a toll on businesses expecting U.S. retail to maintain its current pace. To hedge against losses, consider some of the following:

a. Inventory turn over - Has it gradually slowed? Keep less inventory on hand if so and more cash available.

b. International Markets - Consider putting your sites in multiple languages and buying country specific domain names (.cn - China, .se - Sweden, .uk - London). This can help you penetrate similar target markets in foreign countries. Be sure to do some thorough research to ensure you are marketing a product correctly given the cultural differences of foreign consumers. This is an ideal growth strategy (if done correctly) but can be even more rewarding when you need to find new channels of distribution due to economic slowdown.

These are some of the essentials that every business can employ with little real capital while at the same time seeing exceptional results.

Stocks tumble as bailout plan fails in House

Monday September 29, 2:26 pm ET
By Tim Paradis, AP Business Writer

Stocks tumble as financial bailout plan fails in House vote; credit tightens further

NEW YORK (AP) -- Fear swept across the financial markets Monday, sending the Dow Jones industrials down as much as 705 points, after the financial bailout package failed the House.

As the vote was shown on TV, stocks plunged and and investors fled to the safety of the credit markets, worrying that the financial system would keep sinking under the weight of failed mortgage debt.

"Clearly something needs to be done, and the market dropping 400 points in 10 minutes is telling you that," said Chris Johnson president of Johnson Research Group. "This isn't a market for the timid."

While investors had some worries that the vote would be close, many investors appeared to believe it would ultimately pass.

The markets were highly volatile, with the Dow regaining ground then falling backing again, trading down 577.37, or 5.18 percent, to 10,565.76.

Broader stock indicators also tumbled. The Standard & Poor's 500 index declined 79.35, or 6.54 percent, to 1,133.92, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 146.72, or 6.72 percent, to 2,036.62.

The Federal Reserve declined to comment on the market's decline.

With Wall Street in turmoil, the yield on the 3-month Treasury bill fell to 0.32 percent from 0.87 percent on Friday. That showed that investors were prepared to get meager returns on an investment as long as it was secure.

Marc Pado, U.S. market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald, said investors are worried about the spread of troubles beyond banks in the U.S. to Europe and other markets.

"Things are dying and breaking apart while they sit there and vote on this thing," he said.

Sarah Palin: Qualified for Vice Presidency?

I think that everyone should know that if John McCain wins the election and dies, this woman will run the most power country in the world. What do you think?

Bad Break Causes United Airlines a Billion!

September 10, 2008, 12:09 pm

By Mike Nizza

From left to right, the journey of old news that would cost $1 billion. A Sun Sentinel story from 2002 resurfaced in an automatically generated area of the Web site, soon landed on Google News before getting posted to Bloomberg terminals.

What made a six-year-old article about a bankruptcy filing by United Airlines reappear on Wall Street traders’ screens on Monday as if it were fresh news, prompting a sell-off that erased $1 billion in the company’s market value in a matter of minutes? The path the article followed from forgotten archive entry to present-day stock-killer has begun to emerge, and it raises some interesting questions about how news rockets around the Web.

Both human error and far-from-foolproof technology seem to have played a role in the episode, which involved a 2002 Chicago Tribune report; the web site of the Sun Sentinel, a Florida newspaper owned by the same company; the Bloomberg News financial wire service; and Google, all apparently unwittingly.

The Tribune Company laid out the results of its preliminary investigation into the incident in a news release late Tuesday afternoon, beginning with a line that painted its newspapers as victims of circumstances beyond their control:

The December 10, 2002, Chicago Tribune article on United Airlines’ bankruptcy filing, along with thousands of others stories in the searchable database of the Sun Sentinel website, was accessible for years.

The trouble seems to have started on Sunday, when a link to the old article turned up on a page on the Sun Sentinel site that automatically lists the most popular business stories of the moment. Why did such old news suddenly garner enough attention to land it there? Tribune hasn’t offered an explanation so far, except to say that the story was not promoted elsewhere on the site. So one open question is precisely how many clicks it took to earn a spot on that ranking — dozens? hundreds? thousands?

Any effort to find out more would lead down the many roads that readers may follow before converging anyplace on the Web. Sometimes, there’s an obvious answer tied to the news. Sometimes, it’s seemingly random phenomena. Just one look at Google Trends, the search giant’s version of a most-popular chart, would yield both kinds of items.

Had the old article merely spent a bit of time on that Sun-Sentinel list before returning to the archive, no harm would have been done to United. But a second piece of software apparently stopped by to analyze the work of the first one, and it would call the article to the attention of a much larger audience.

Normally, Web sites welcome the arrival of Google’s “bots,” which “crawl” around the Internet, following links and cataloguing the content they find for users to search. Indeed, many sites have been optimized in recent years specifically to make it easier for Google’s bots to detect new material quickly and bring it to Google’s monstrous audience. Most-popular-articles rankings are one place where Google News bots find the headlines they aggregate for readers. Up it went.

And there lies a rather big catch, which constitutes the biggest disagreement between Google and Tribune. Google believes that the fact that the bankruptcy article dated from 2002 was not obvious to either robot or human:

It has been widely reported that many readers were unable to determine the original date of publication of this article, and our crawling was similarly unable to recognize that the article was old.

For its part, Tribune says that no one who actually read the story could have mistaken it for fresh news:

The December 10, 2002, story contains information that would clearly lead a reader to the conclusion that it was related to events in 2002. In addition, the comments posted along with the story are dated 2002. It appears that no one who passed this story along actually bothered to read the story itself.

Neither assertion contradicts the other, but Tribune seems surprised by a reading style that is commonplace in the age of Google. As Nicholas Carr wrote in an Atlantic essay entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” last month, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

As for preventing another similar incident, leaving sharper date cues for Google would seem to be far easier than changing the habits of millions of readers. In this case, though, it only took one reader to open the barn door for United stock’s shockingly swift decline — the one working at Income Securities Advisers, who saw the item on Google News and sent out a summary of it on Bloomberg News.

Stripped from its original context, the report gave traders who were already nervous about airline stocks just enough information — “UAL Files for Bankruptcy” over the weekend — to start them pounding the sell button, and not enough time to think twice about salvaging whatever was left of their stake.

Of course, software had a hand in the sell-off as well. “The damage was exacerbated by the growing use on Wall Street of automated programs that trigger stock trades without any human interaction,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

As the search for blame returned once again to something rather than someone, it appeared that United and its shareholders will have a hard time getting satisfaction after an astonishingly bad break.

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Phelps Real Estate Worth Big Money!

For a guy who wears a Speedo to work, Michael Phelps sure seems to have a lot of room on his person to advertise.

So much so that Phelps' corporate partners -- Speedo, Nike, Adidas and Visa -- have enjoyed estimated in-broadcast exposure valued at $9 million through Tuesday night, according to Joyce Julius & Associates in Ann Arbor, Mich.

The firm is one of a handful of media companies that track logos and corporate branding during television broadcasts in order to estimate the perceived value that accrues to sponsors.

Big money is involved. Back on July 9, Ticket To Beijing wrote about a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that set Nike's endorsement and sponsorship obligations in coming years at just under $3.4 billion. That's a huge jump from a decade ago, when Nike's endorsement and sponsorship obligations were about $500 million.

Joyce Julius calculates that Phelps' corporate partners have combined for six minutes of exposure during prime time. The company estimates the value of on-screen time by calculating the cost of commercial spots running during NBC's broadcasts.

Phelps' races are won by cutting down on the number of seconds spent in the pool, but sponsors obviously win when the seconds mount up.

Nike's winning time through Tuesday night was 3:33 -- the minutes and seconds that Phelps wore his warm-up jacket with the Nike logo. Joyce Julius set the value to Nike at $5.3 million.

The Speedo logos on Phelps’ warm-up jacket, swim cap and bodysuit currently are in second place with 2:24 of airtime valued at $3.6 million. The remaining time was shared by Adidas and Visa.

Joyce Julius estimates that Phelps has accounted for 72% of Nike’s swimming-related exposure during NBC’s nighttime coverage, and 18% of Speedo's in-your-face time with Olympic fans.

-- Greg Johnson

Challenge to lose weight is offering a cash prize

By MAGGIE FITZROY, Shorelines

When Scott Rubenstein stepped off the scale, he got good news. He'd lost eight pounds in a week.
"You lost eight pounds?" asked his wife, Lynne, who was waiting in line for her turn to get weighed. "Good job," she said, slapping his hand in a high-five.

The Rubensteins are among 40 people taking part in a 12-week Weight Loss Challenge program that meets every Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at The Players Community Senior Center in Ponte Vedra Beach.

The program, led by personal wellness coaches Tracy and Steve Deken and their son Grant Deken, costs $39 to register. From that fee, $10 is donated to gofitkids.org, an organization that aims to raise awareness and prevention of childhood obesity. The rest goes into a pot, to be divided at the end of the 12 weeks by the three people in the group who lose the most weight.

The biggest loser will receive $500, the second will get $300 and the third will get $200.

So many people signed up for the program, which began July 16, that the Dekens began a new class Monday at the senior center on Landrum Lane. Classes are capped at 40 participants, and people can still join that one if it's not full. If it is, the Dekens, who run the program as volunteers, plan to create an additional class.

"We embrace any healthy method of weight loss," said Tracy Deken, who teaches the program with her husband according to guidelines of the company they are affiliated with, Herbalife International.

They offer a "lifestyle" eating plan for participants to follow, but she said their plan is not mandatory for the program, no products must be purchased and many people follow their own diets, some at the advice of their physicians.

The first week, they weighed each participant then took chest, waist, hips, thigh and upper arm measurements. On July 23, Grant Deken weighed everyone again, since getting weighed every week is a big part of the program. Then he took two full-length photographs of each person, from the front and side. During the last class, everyone will be photographed again for comparison.

After the weigh-in, Steve Deken led a 45-minute class on nutrition and exercise advice, gave a quiz on calorie counts of common snack foods, and then everyone stood to applaud each other for completing a successful week.

Some were more successful than others. Scott Rubenstein had lost the second-most amount of weight; a woman who didn't want to be identified lost 81/2 pounds. Leisa Atkins of Ponte Vedra Beach, who is taking the class with her mother, was happy that she'd lost 6.6 pounds.

Her mom, Charlene, wasn't as successful. She gained 2 pounds. Since the rules of the program stipulate that participants have to pay $1 for every pound gained, she had to put $2 in the pot.

Unlike some reality television shows, "we don't announce measurements and weights, and we don't ship anybody off any islands," Tracy Deken said. "We celebrate success."

Jeffrey Rubin of Nocatee, who is taking the class with his wife, Nancy, said so far he's happy with the 4 pounds he lost.

"Coming in to get weighed every week is motivating," said Nancy Rubin, who lost 1.8 pounds.

"Getting the appropriate education and exercising will hopefully do the trick."

"It's all about changing your eating habits," her husband said.

He doesn't expect to win any money, but "I'm not here for the money," he said. "I'm here to lose weight and feel better."

Maggie FitzRoy can also be reached at (904) 249-4947, ext. 6320.

Link:http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/073008/nes_310610012.shtml

Marketing in an Economic Downturn

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--According to a recent American Marketing Association (AMA) www.marketingpower.com survey, 60 percent of AMA member marketers believe that halting or reducing spending on key marketing programs is the biggest mistake marketers can make in an economic downturn. Marketers also report that focusing on short-term tactics and sticking to the status quo are some additional missteps marketers make.

“Our survey reinforces that these are challenging times to be a marketer,” said Nancy Costopulos, Chief Marketing Officer of the American Marketing Association. “Management is pressing for greater accountability from the marketing function, and the industry must rise to the challenge.”

Many marketers surveyed feel their greatest internal challenge is demonstrating the value of marketing when sales are decreasing. Other top internal issues include realigning marketing strategies to match business objectives and focusing on longer-term brand strategies.

To help the marketing community manage these mistakes and challenges, American Marketing Association offers the following four strategies to enhance marketing plans in a downturn: shape the message, don’t slash the price; focus on who NOT to target; stand apart from the crowd and invest in innovation; and sustain the brand.

1. Shape the Message, Don’t Slash the Price

“Focus on the company’s value to the market” – Anonymous survey respondent.

Survey Fact

Only 3 percent of American Marketing Association marketers believe that it is important for marketing functions to adjust pricing strategy to help sustain and grow business during an economic downturn.

Implications for Marketers

• Conduct research to understand your competitor’s positioning and your target audiences’ perception of the economic environment.
• Hone and refine your messages.
• Highlight the value of your product or service, rather than slashing the price.

2. Focus on Who NOT to Target

“Fish where [your] fish are” – Anonymous survey respondent.

Survey Fact

Sixty-seven percent of AMA marketers feel it is important to mitigate the impact of an economic downturn by refining target audiences.

Implications for Marketers

• Assess which segments of potential customers you do NOT want to target.
• Demarket to inappropriate market segments. Simply stated, some customers are more costly to serve than to lose.
• Focus marketing strategies on customer segments that will produce the greatest ROI.

3. Stand Apart from the Crowd and Invest in Innovation

“Major opportunities when others are cutting back” – Anonymous survey respondent.

Survey Fact

A majority of AMA marketers, 66 percent, report that they would take the same amount or less risk with a new product and/or service innovation during a time of economic uncertainty.

Implications for Marketers

• Differentiate through innovation with a product or service that performs in a faltering economy.
• Invest in R&D now to ensure your company is in a position to compete when the economy rebounds.

4. Sustain the Brand

“Sometimes it is the reeducation of a product [that can help sustain or grow a brand]” – Anonymous survey respondent.

Survey Fact

Sixty-three percent of marketers believe that they can lessen the impact of a downturn by investing in brand building, as part of their marketing plan.

Implications for Marketers

• Establish access to executive officers to understand ongoing shifts in business strategy.
• Realign marketing strategies to match business objectives quickly to demonstrate a commitment to the bottom line.
• Qualify and quantify results quarterly to establish an ongoing dialogue with executive officers.

“The key to success for marketers in this economy will be supporting the short term, and managing for the long term,” said Costopulos. “It is more important than ever that marketers simultaneously run a sprint and a marathon.”

Survey Methodology:

From May 6, 2008 through May 16, 2008, the American Marketing Association conducted online interviews with 244 AMA members in the continental United States. The sampling error associated with a sample size of 244 respondents is plus/minus six to seven percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level.

For an executive summary of the data, please contact Christine Heath at christine.heath@fleishman.com.

About the American Marketing Association

The American Marketing Association is the largest marketing association in North America. It is a professional association for individuals and organizations involved in the practice, teaching and study of marketing worldwide. It is also the source that marketers turn to every day to deepen their marketing expertise, elevate their careers, and, ultimately, achieve better results. American Marketing Association members are connected to a network of experienced marketers nearly 40,000 strong.

American Marketing Association offers highly acclaimed Training Series, professional conferences and Hot Topic events focused on the immediate needs of marketers, as well as trends shaping the future. American Marketing Association’s website, MarketingPower.com, is the everyday connection to marketing data, articles, case studies, best practices and a robust job bank. Additionally, the American Marketing Association is the source for the field’s top magazines and journals, including Marketing News. Through local and collegiate chapters, American Marketing Association members are connected with the best people and the best practices.

American Marketing Association is also the creator of Mplanet, the unparalleled industry event that brings together the world’s most creative thinkers, including senior marketing executives, top academicians and other thought leaders, to share fresh insights, new concepts, the latest research and solutions for the most pressing marketing challenges and opportunities. Mplanet 2009 will take place in Orlando, Florida, January 26-28, 2009.

For more information on the American Marketing Association or Mplanet 2009, please visit www.MarketingPower.com

Idea of the Day

If you already know what I'm talking about, then you're probably mumbling and rolling your eyes as you think about that boss or manager who had serial entrepreneurial tendencies. The rest of you are thinking, "what is he talking about." Let me start off by saying that entrepreneurs truly are some of the most influential people in today's society. Fortunately we live in a society that rewards free thinking and creativity. However, in the business world - especially the small business world - the prevalence of the "Idea-a-day" mentality can be seriously hurtful to a business's longevity.

As an example, think of the stock market. Sound investments are typically well thought out and formulated for consistent long-term growth. The majority of day traders who are trying to buy and sell and make the quick and easy buck typically - although a few beat the market - grind their savings into sawdust.

The same goes for business strategy. You have to plan the work and work the plan as the old adage goes. Ironically, you would be surprised how many leaders get caught up doing just the opposite. People tend to get an idea and become excited and want to get it in place as soon as possible but typically observe the opposite.

My suggestion: Team accountability. Get together as a team and spend time to formulate a long term plan. Where is your business now, and where do you see it in five years? Write down the goals and vision of your business. Then work on a shorter term, 90 day plan to orchestrate your sales and marketing strategy. Take time to really plan things out. Often times I see excitement rush a project from conception to launch in just a few days and as a result it typically falls apart after a few weeks.

My step-by-step prescription for success:

1. Set your organization's goals. Make sure they're on paper. Ideally, you should have them hanging in every office. Open goals lead to more accountability. Where will your company be in 5 years?
   
2. Create a 90 day plan. This is where you formulate strategy. How are you going to grow the business? This is where you fill the proverbial tool box with the necessary items to be successful.
   
3. Stick to the plan. Work the plan. It's OK to have ideas, but develop them slowly and launch them accordingly. I can't tell you how many times Managing Directors and other executives have come to me with the next huge idea that they can't wait to start. Nine times out of ten they are a waste of time (the other one idea is the reason why they are managing directors).
   
4. Measure performance and make changes as needed. Monthly is ideal.

Do the research, plan your "investment" and attain consistent growth. The days of the day traders are few and far between.