How to Boost your Business Marketing
Business marketing in an economic downturn demands a critical re-examination of your existing marketing plan and finding low-cost yet effective ideas to remain profitable. While it may seem logical to cut back on advertising and promotions during a slow economy, it is essential to keep your business name and logo in the public eye if you want to be perceived as successful, reliable and enduring. The solution lies in identifying smart alternatives that will help your business achieve this objective. Savvy marketers suggest that instead of ‘playing it safe’ by cutting back on your advertising budget you should rather initiate a campaign to rejuvenate your marketing strategy. However, in order to be effective these low-cost ideas need to be creative, unique and original. First, start by re-evaluating your target market to find out who exactly is buying and why; it’s also critical to identify which advertising options work best in generating sales in a downturn economy and then increase the budget for these options while reducing other ‘business as usual’ areas. Second, re-focus by rethinking your marketing mix and adapting your plan of action but not the overall budget. You may want to boost your business by launching a PR and Publicity campaign, which should include sending out press kits to relevant media for publication; make sure the press releases are newsworthy and that your focus is to connect with customers’ needs while at the same time promoting your brand image. Low-cost marketing ideas in a downturn economy: 1. Embark on a market research campaign to re-acquaint yourself with your industry. Gaining a fresh perspective of consumers’ expectations will be worth the time and expense and provide new opportunities to establish a relationship with investors, suppliers, customers and prospects. Consider exploring new opportunities such as ‘going green’ or ‘frugal practicality’ to boost awareness of your business. 2. Update your web site on a regular basis to showcase your business. Offer time-sensitive special discount deals. Also include information rich content that provides solutions to problems associated with reduced disposable income; people are always looking for ways to stretch their budget. Create links on your site that enables prospects to download free information (catalogue, price list); make sure the download is linked to special offers on your product or service. Keep a database of customers’ personal information; send them electronic holiday cards, birthday wishes, newsletters and notices of special offers and sales. A good way to collect personal data is to include a registration card with your product to capture the name, address and other information about your customers. Ask their permission to forward material to their email address. 3. Join social network groups on the Internet. This will provide the opportunity to communicate market-related information to potential consumers. Networking with consumers through this medium also opens doors to new markets at little or no cost. 4. Increase your involvement in community or charity work. Your business name will receive valuable exposure and offer opportunities to receive free publicity. People are generally prone to supporting businesses that give back to their community. 5. Corporate gift giving is your opportunity to make a lasting impact on customers. When most businesses are cutting back on giving branded gifts to customers, now is your chance to make an impression with a unique corporate gift. An effective corporate gift need not be expensive, but it should be memorable. Besides, it’s the thought that counts. 6. Hand out seed-embedded calling cards. Handmade from recycled paper, these calling cards are embedded with seeds (to grow a patch of flowers or culinary herbs). The card is attached to...
Read MoreTactical solutions needed to strengthen workplace productivity
Today’s workforce is made up of four distinct generations with conflicting attitudes, skills, and expectations. Generally referred to as Veterans, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y, these four generations—when well managed under a flexible strategic umbrella—have the potential to make the workplace more productive and comprehensive than it has ever been. Here are some solutions to help employers with workplace productivity at a time when many businesses are under increasing pressure to change the work environment by offering work-life balance as a necessary perquisite to compete within the 24-hour global economy. In order to establish a flexible strategic umbrella to bring about better fitting work-place and work-life arrangements, it is important to understand the individualistic motivations and expectations of the people currently in your employ–which might include all four generations–as well as the constantly evolving needs of an emerging intrinsically different generation of employees. Biggest impact on US economy Bear in mind that while the largest workforce today–made up of 85 million baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964—have hit the tail end of their customary working-life cycle. Although this group will continue to have an enormous impact on the consumer marketplace, labor forces, and government finances, many Americans now in their mid-50s or easing into their 60s might be forced to delay retirement longer than their parents or grandparents due to financial constraints. The oldest of the baby boomers will turn 62 next year, the age at which they become eligible for Social Security benefits, which in all likelihood will be inadequate for many to sustain a financially secure old age. A recent government survey shows that while many workers by necessity have to stay on the job because fewer companies offer health insurance to retirees and an alarming number of private pension funds fail, most U.S. workers nearing retirement age prefer to scale back by rather working flexible hours as opposed to abruptly stopping work altogether. This arrangement in itself should be viewed as a positive alternative by employers because new human resources benefit from the all-important knowledge transfer and also averts potential skills shortages. An effective exercise is to give new staff member’s hands-on orientation experiences by having them spend at least a week working alongside experienced operators within their first month on board. You could even request that they write a one-page summary of what they learned from the experience. Employers are urged to make adjustments within the workplace to allow older people to continue working, such as introducing more flexible hours and re-designing pension plans. Simultaneously, the first wave of new young recruits, who are now in their mid-20s and younger, are starting to take their place in an increasingly multigenerational workplace. Statistics show that there are over 82 million young people, highly diverse in terms of attitudes, preferences and ethnicity, who are stepping up to join the corporate workplace. Competitive workaholics Baby Boomers comprise nearly half of the current American workforce; they represent the largest generation in history and have had a tremendous impact on our economy. They place a great emphasis on individuality, value creativity and risk taking, challenge opinions, and resist exploitation. While they are generally optimistic team players and highly competitive “workaholics”, adjusting to new technologies have been a challenge to some; even so, their contribution has humanized the workforce by focusing on the endeavors of individuals to initiate innovative solutions. Baby Boomers are committed to working long hours and as a result have difficulty juggling the demands of their work and domestic lives. Work-Life Balance Generation X is significantly different than its predecessors. Born between 1966 and 1977,...
Read MoreSales Tactics to Boost Your Bottom Line
Online markets are becoming increasingly competitive. Search engines are continually listing more and more sites that offer similar products. And let’s not dismiss the power of comparison shopping; people are increasingly going to remarkable lengths to discover high-value, cost-effective deals. But just when you think you’ve improved operations to remain competitive, given your site a fresh slant and created a new approach to feature your range, your competition seems to have had the same brainwave and you’re back at the start line. A key route to boost your bottom line is to commit to a policy of continually developing multi-valued propositions to augment your sales tactics. This is done by capitalizing on major changes in consumer behavior; achieve growth and outperform competitors by enhancing the consumer experience with personalized customer service. Consider that consumers today use social media as a tool in the purchasing process to interact with suppliers and fellow consumers and to research brands, share opinions, and recommend or condemn a business. Consumers are “demanding” products and services tailored to their specific needs. Online marketing experts recommend capitalizing on merchandising tactics such as search technologies, product enhancement features and customer services to increase sales. Here are a few tips to consider when developing strategies to boost your bottom line: Invest in advanced search optimization applications such as SEOMOV or Google Analytics. Clients and customers need to find the right information quickly, and a slow and ill-defined navigation reading on your site can drive them away; Become skilled in SEM and SEO. SEM refers to Search Engine Marketing. This broad term describes any form of web traffic or web marketing coming to your site via search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and others (either through free organic traffic or paid traffic). SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization, including on-site (ensuring that search engines can determine what your site is about, what to rank it for and to make your site much easier for search engines to crawl) and off-site SEO (focuses on driving relevant, authoritative links from other sites back to your site or blog so it will rank well in the search engines). To obtain good rankings, the search engines need to easily find your site when it is “crawled” and easily see what keywords you want to be ranked for. As your site is indexed it should move up the rankings with the correct SEO in place. It’s therefore imperative to invest dedicated time and effort in developing your website to reap the rewards; Put in place “flexible” organizational models that enable the company to be more responsive to change, including modifying existing revenue sources. Companies feel pressured to assume greater efforts to optimize available resources. Work organization is instrumental in developing human resources to interact better with customers and promote an organization capable of adapting to market contingencies, its social and technical skills, and capacity to adopt new concepts; Create “rich” information. In other words, the information must be informative enough to prompt the customer to cultivate a good impression and make a positive purchasing decision; Continually evaluate and redesign your site; use the latest editing and developing tools such as template-driven WordPress or Macromedia Dreamweaver to make your site interactive and customer friendly. Communication with customers should be continual. Simply updating your site, sitting back and hoping it will attract visitors is no longer feasible. Keep the site current with newsworthy content, an active blog and uncomplicated response forms are important tools to boost sales figures and prompt return visits. Plan ahead by determining clear quantifiable goals and making it measurable; a number of variables will determine the structure of...
Read MoreAcademic Writing
The South African Writers’ Network offers academic writing and editing (correcting grammar & spelling) to students. All our services are confidential; no personal details are divulged to any third parties and any information collected remains the property of the student. All styles of referencing are catered for, including MLA, APA, Chicago Manual, and so forth. Contact Theresa (ecottage@gmail.com) or Gary (gayart@gmail.com) to submit a price quotation. Academic writing undertaken by SAWN includes Research Writing: Data is collected from a variety of sources to write or edit copy for Autobiographies, Tutorial and Research Papers, Presentations, Dissertations and Academic Essays; Critical writing: Reviews on art, literature, and products), magazine writing (sales literature, specialist topics for a specific industry, business or profession); Newspapers (specialized editorials on topics, e.g. business, education, farm, fashion, food, garden, real estate, science, sports, travel and lifestyles); Business and Industry (company publications, speeches, press releases, proposals, presentations); Magazine articles (non-fiction features, personality profiles, advertorials); Self-publishing (text books, non-fiction, poetry, manuscripts for printed books, e-books); Ghost writing (speech writing, books, feature articles, advertorials); Peer-reviewed...
Read MoreCreative Writing
Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic or technical forms of literature. Feature stories are considered creative writing, even though they fall under journalism. Both fictional and non-fictional works fall under creative writing, including novels, biographies, short stories, poems, screenwriting and play writing. Besides being a creative outlet, creative writing can be therapeutic as well. Many psychologists recommend creative writing to express feelings and explore the opportunity to examine unresolved problems. In creative writing, the author can use their imagination to put across any viewpoint or describe any scene, and help the reader to do the same. The intention of creative writing is to entertain the reader. Poems are great examples of creative writing. Short stories can be narrative, funny, mysterious, satirical, fantasy, or historical. Novels are always creative simply because the unfolding story depends on the authors imagination. Everyone has a story to tell, even if they don’t always realize it. While it helps to develop a framework before you start writing your manuscript – in terms of how many chapters your story will cover and the estimated word count allocated to each – it is important not to focus too much on the length. However, knowing what word count to aim for will avoid spending an enormous amount of time cutting copy later on. Contact Theresa (ecottage@gmail.com) for any writing, editing and book publishing requirements. How long should a book be? Adult novels (commercial and literary) comprise between 80,000 and 90,000 words; this is an acceptable range for literary, romance, mystery, suspense, thriller and horror. Sci-Fi and Fantasy should ideally aim for 100,000 – 115,000 words. However, there’s nothing wrong with keeping it short (90 000 words). Adolescent/Teen novels (aimed at ages 8 to 12 years) are considered middle grade, which should comprise from 20,000 – 40.000 words, depending on the subject matter and age range. When writing a longer book that is aimed at older teens (ages 12 to 16 years) the term “upper middle grade” is applicable; aim for 35,000 – 45,000 words. Young adult novels comprise between 55,000 and 70,000 words. The word count for this category is flexible and can go as high as 80,000 if the work is science fiction or fantasy. Picture books (ages 1 to 3 years; 3 to 5 years; 5 to 7 years; 7 to 10 years) contain minimal text. The standard picture book consists of 32 pages, with a total of 25 – 1,500 words. Children’s books (easy to read, ages 6 to 9 years) contain 1,000 – 1,500 words. Westerns are generally not very long, comprising anywhere from 50,000 to 60,000 words. Memoirs are the same as a novel; aim for a word count between 70,000 and 80,000. Poetry should ideally cover 50 to 100 pages; a poem can be as long as you need it to be to get your message...
Read MoreAbout Theresa
I’m a published author of four business books and have written a number of self-study tutorials [creative writing; editing and proofreading; business writing; and self-publishing] and an eBook [Workplace Harmony]. I am an experienced writer, editor and publisher. 
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