Best Practice for Small Business. Marketing ideas for small business.

If there were a way you could help the planet and the economy at the same time as saving your business lots of money, wouldn�t you want to learn more about it? Purchasing HP 9000 Toner reduces workplace expenses in a couple ways; it reduces the basic price of the toner in addition to the cost of every refill. Now you can save your company tons of money simply by converting your entire office to compatible toner. Companies can decrease expenses by nearly twenty percent each year without compromising efficiency or quality. All our compatible toner cartridges undergo proper quality control testing. You can rely on your compatible toner’s reliable performance. Buying compatible toner will contribute saving natural resources and energy and will diminish your costs. It’s time to GO GREEN by saving money and helping the planet. Recycled products are more cost-efficient than manufacturing new ones. For example, you can switch to compatible toner and use up to 95% less energy. The right toner aids you to decrease the world’s pollution and waste. HP 9000 Toner makes less waste, thus reducing the amount of waste that accumulates in landfills, and conserving the space for other trash. Because there are numerous companies that offer compatible toner products, you should be able to locate the best prices by comparison-shopping on the internet.

from B2B News

If you want to know more about the threats and dangers pose by spyware, I strongly suggest that you keep reading. There are some real risks that you need to know about, like how spyware can violate your online privacy, and even steal your personal details for use in crime. You can lose a lot of money if the wrong people get their hands on your credit card details!

Spyware is more of a problem than most people think. In 2005, 62% of all computers were infected with Spyware - by now, it is more. This means that you are quite likely to be already infected, even if you think that you are safe.

Spyware is software that is installed on your computer without your knowledge. It is designed to secretly monitor your actions, record what you do, and to copy the information that yo type or save on your computer. When you are connected to the Internet, it makes a secret connection to a server and sends this information back home to the designer. This person can now use this information for his own purposes - which are usually criminal.

The spyware also is often used to display advertising to you. It does this by first analysing your behaviour - what sites you visit, what links you click on, what you buy, your demographics, interests, etc. When it has a good idea of what you will buy, it will start displaying ads to you. Usually this advertising is quite blatant, in the form of flashing pop-ups that appear every minute or so. Sometimes it is more subtle, such as banner ads that appear on websites that do not normally have banner ads.

Whatever form this advertising takes, it is intrusive and can be very annoying, or even disturbing.

The bigger threat is in the form of personal information which can be stolen. It is very easy for a computer program to search through all the files of your computer looking for a certain pattern - such as a credit card number. When it finds this information, it can send it to the remote server. Add this to the address and other details it is able to extract, and the spyware designer will rapidly be able to gather enough information to steal money from you, or to open up a bank account in your name.

This account then will be used to commit fraud, and you will usually be left to blame as the person responsible. This can be extremely damaging to you, and difficult to prove.

We have looked at how spyware can pose a serious threat to you. We’ve seen how it is used to spy on you, bombard you with unwanted adverts and even to steal your money or identity. I’m sure you’ll agree - this is a serious threat, and one you would be happy to avoid. Unfortunately, there is a better than even chance that your computer is already infected.

What you need to do now is get software to detect spyware. Trying to perform a adware spyware scan yourself is nearly impossible, as the spyware is designed to avoid detection. Luckily, the anti-spyware programs are designed to do this automatically. If you are worried about price, there are even cheap spyware detector programs that you can use.

from B2B News

Ah, the holiday season! Truly a season of giving. Unfortunately most of us suffer from the gift that keeps on giving: holiday debt. Americans on average will take 6 months to pay off Christmas debt. Here are a few tips to keep your holidays bright and debt free this year.

Before the holidays arrive, do some careful plotting and planning. A few hours spent in preparation can mean less money spent on gifts. You don’t have to be Scrooge, you just have to be smart.

1) Decide how much you are willing to spend, and stick to it. Pretend you are spending cash. How much can you afford out of pocket this month? If you cannot afford it right now, consider that you cannot afford it at all.

2) Make a list of everyone you will be buying gifts for, and estimate how much you want to spend on each person. Include the smaller gifts for teachers or your mailman. Include the price of cards and stamps, because Christmas cards count as gifts when it comes to your budget. Then, add it up and compare the total to your budgeted amount. Make the necessary adjustments. Your brother-in-law may only get socks this year.

3) Cut down your list. This may sound harsh, but look closely at who you are buying gifts for. When saving money is an issue, you don’t need to give gifts to everyone you know.

4) Be creative. Determine if maybe some people wouldn’t be happy with a nice card or maybe some home-baked cookies. Remember, the holidays aren’t about presents, but about good will towards man. Good will comes in many forms and does not always need wrapping paper. If you have a skill or a hobby, use it: needlework, knitting, art, poems. Make a photo album, or offer to plant their garden.

5) Carry your shopping list with you. Take every opportunity to shop. Start early and look for sales. This gives you a chance to comparison shop. It also takes away some of the stress and reduces your risk of overspending just for the sake of getting shopping over with.

6) Have willpower. Stick to your estimates and you won’t go over budget. eBay is a wonderful shopping tool if you remember to start early enough to account for shipping time. Find the right item, bid your budget price and leave it. If someone outbids you, don’t get into a bidding war, just bid on something else within your price range.

7) Increase your income for the season. During the holidays there are lots of ways to make a little extra money. Many stores hire part-time workers for the holidays. Since it is a party season, babysitting is in high demand. Be imaginative. You could be the Official Gift Wrapper in your neighborhood and wraps gifts for friends and neighbors for a small fee.

Last January, when you started paying those credit card bills, you probably mumbled to yourself, “Next year will be different!” It can be. A few hours spent planning can save you lots of money come January, and can make next year start off happy and holiday debt free.

American Credit Foundation offers a free self-help holiday spending guide. You can get one by clicking on the following link for a debt free holidays handbook.

from B2B News

Continuing what’s become something of a small business-themed week, today we look at how conducting DIY market research can be fraught with difficulty for the unacquainted and why it’s something that’s sometimes best left to the professionals.

In her article, Do-It-Yourself Market Research which recently appeared in Business Week, Karen E. Klein runs through some of the ways a start-up business can get to grips with their industry. Her suggestions include:

• Exhibiting at relevant conferences and disseminating surveys to attendees;
• Stationing one’s self on the pavement outside the such conferences, handing out surveys; or
• Hiring street teams to target particular areas;

Klein points out, however, that such techniques may end up looking like selling exercises and could even be misconstrued as harassment. Added to this, any business carrying out their own ad-hoc research would also have to be wary of the legal implications of doing so, as well as the issues involved in appropriate questionnaire design and sampling.

Given all this, and the fact that hiring staff or attending conferences could themselves be expensive ventures, the conclusion appears to be that there’s often no substitute for expertise where market research is concerned. As the article explains:

Sound advice indeed - Especially because there are few worse things a business can do than not understand their market or their customers properly, as demonstrated by the picture below…

from b2bsee * The Market Research Blog

Without vast marketing budgets to call upon and with acute time-pressure upon employees, small businesses can sometimes struggle to generate interest in their company.

Finding the most efficacious promotional strategy possible is something of a Holy Grail for SMEs – But without enough care, this can soon become an exercise in not seeing the wood for the trees. In essence, focus is key.

That’s why the notion of guerrilla marketing has become a bit of a buzzword amongst marketers in recent years. A simplified distillation of this technique is as follows:

• Concentrate your efforts on small, focussed areas of promotion that are effective; and
• Repeat them over and over again.

Colin Campbell, a sales and marketing professional from a large corporate background started his own business recently. In the following article, he reflects upon his own experiences of going guerrilla, and argues that a pared-down, but channelled, marketing strategy is what most SMEs need:

I launched my business at the end of 2005, and six months later I found myself in a position of trying to carry out too many marketing activities - yet I had too little business coming in.

I was going from developing my websites, to writing marketing collateral, to developing newsletters, to making contacts and attending networking meetings. All this was taking time and money.

Step back

Taking time out to think about what I was doing and how I was trying to develop my business proved to be the best thing I did.

I immediately discovered some problems. My marketing consisted of a series of activities - they were not linked up. I was meeting people, picking up business cards and not following up sufficiently quickly - people didn’t have a clear enough perspective of how I could help them or how they could help me.

I turned to the internet for answers - Perhaps people with similar business challenges could provide me with some new ideas. I went on some online networking communities and it was here that I came across the concept of guerrilla marketing.

Don’t do too much

The first key with guerrilla marketing is to seize responsibility and analyse the best marketing activities to undertake. One of my problems was that I was trying to do too much at the same time.

On top of this, I was attending a lot of networking meetings as I knew other people had very successful businesses through having a wide and deep network. I’d failed to realise that all these other people had achieved initial success through using one of these strategies, not all of them all at once!

Narrow your focus

The second key with guerrilla marketing is to focus on a small number of marketing activities and carry them out to the best of your ability. CJ Hayden, author of Get Clients Now! says that businesses often know what to do - they just don’t do enough of it, or get distracted.

I therefore concentrated my efforts on networking and following up. By doing this I was able to focus on building relationships with people I already knew and go to events to meet new people. When they showed an interest in what I did, only then did I hand them some of my marketing material. By putting people first, my business increased rapidly.

Repeat it again and again

The third key is to execute and repeat whatever works over and over again. In his Guerrilla Marketing books, Jay Conrad Levinson says:

Mediocre marketing with commitment works better than brilliant marketing without commitment.

I started a programme and five weeks later my business doubled. The growth was far greater than I could have expected if I’d continued with my previous approach.

Factors for success

Here are some other factors that are critical to success.

• Establish how much business you have today.
• Establish how much business you would like in the long term.
• Establish how much business you could add in 28 days, if you put your mind to it.
• Work out where you are stuck or need most effort - Most people think they need to fill the sales pipeline, in fact, most need to focus on following up!
• Work every day on putting the ingredients for success in place.
• Monitor your progress every day.
• Stick to your plan and it will work.

So what are you waiting for? Grab your gun and start your own bit of guerrilla warfare!

The above article originally appeared in the October 2007 edition of Better Business magazine

from b2bsee * The Market Research Blog