Sunday 27 December 2009

Promotional Merchandise - Effective Marketing tool of 2011

By Liz Logan

The UK is in one of the longest recessions in history with 6% of economic output lost. Despite quantitative easing banks still are not lending to smaller businesses. An estimate of nearly 30,000 businesses closed in 2009 and we are still not out of the woods yet. As a business, if you have made it this far, that is great news. You may have seen some of your competitors fail, lessening the competition in the market. This means even though the market share may be less, you have a bigger slice of it. In the end it will be the strong companies that will survive. The ones that are easy to adapt to a crisis and probably will be strong for years to come.

Even though there are continual economic issues, it continues to be vital to efficiently market your business. A business that doesn't have efficient marketing won't be able to keep thriving. It might be necessary for you to decrease your budget and maintain the areas with the greatest rate of efficiency. Cutting the budget completely could be a huge error. A business that's not obtaining new customers actively can't grow. As current clients go away, the customer base diminishes which means that halting marketing completely might be a deadly error.

What all this boils down to is making sure that your marketing has a lot more punch and is well targeted. All of the budget must be spent on reaching the right market in the right fashion. Your marketing campaign must be engaging. It should capture the imagination of your target audience and make them sit up and notice your brand. You need to give your customers a reason why they should go to you and not your competitors. Your campaign must have an impact and to do so it must last for a while. Things like spending your entire budget on a single 30 second commercial must be avoided.

This could seem like a lot from any strategy of marketing, yet I'm about to show you one way that includes every one of these components. This way is used by nearly every business that has achieved success on this earth and currently the web has become so broadly utilized that this way is even simpler to use for your business. The solution rests in promotional merchandise.

Promotional merchandise is when a product branded with your logo and possibly company details is given to your target audience. You can choose from 1000's of different products that may reflect your company or the audience. This is much more effective that any other form of advertising as everybody loves a freebie. You can choose exactly who you want to give the items to and these products are taken in to the home or office of those very people. Promotional merchandise does not have to be expensive. There are products on the market from 8p. I know of no other advertising method that starts from this value.

This is not only a good strategy for customer acquisition but is a great method of retaining and rewarding your existing client base. Corporate gifts not only reinforce your brand, but keep them within your clients view all the time. This boosts customer loyalty and greatly increases the life time value of your customer for your business.

About the Author:

2012 - Surviving The Coming Earth Changes

By Dr. Jay Polmar

Emmerich's film 2012 caused a big panic, and all the disaster-porn films we've seen for the last 50-60 years or so is scaring the heck out of viewers. So badly are they scared of the end that they are watching the same movies of disaster, over and over, with different actors, different titles, and different producers - all aimed to scare you and empty your pockets.

The World Isn't Coming To An End, it's just Hollywood, trying to make a buck.

Let's get real. Let's discuss some of the pin-point targets:

1. The World Will End With Planetary Alignment and the repositioning of the Earth along the Galactic Equator - .... R-I-G-H-T! The phenomena of placement of the stars and galaxies in space is not new. These things have occurred before, and it wasn't the end of the world. Actually, the date predicted, Winter Solstice, 2012 is not as significant as other astronomical phenomena happening before this. This is just fear-mongering of the formerly unemployed ' of the world writers' with nothing better to do than create movies to scare the bejesus out of little kids.

2. There is no Mayan Prophesy says the world is coming to an end. There is no known prophesy that the world is coming to an End and whoever said that should know that it can't be. The records of the Maya civilization were effectively destroyed, like all other Meso-American histories by the Spanish Conquistadors, who just pillaged the valuables, raped the women and then killed the men and sometimes the women, but not necessary in that order. And, what information that was kept - was kept in secret archives to keep the truth away from the public because it would destroy the Catholic Church. The evidence indicated that the majority of the Meso-American population was, in fact, the lost tribes of Israel. This was written by Franciscan Monks at the time of the invasion, and British and other archeologists later. The actual Mayan Prophesy was simple - 'Live naturally, in natural time, or your biosphere (Earth - our mother ship) would not survive. We'll we did it. No lying about that. For the past umpteen years, we have been just like conquerors, raping, murdering, and killing mother earth. OOPS! I didn't do it - you didn't do it - the politicians allowed it - all for greed. Oil, Gold, Silver - rape the earth suffers the consequences. The end date of the Mayan Calendar had nothing to do with the end of the planet, it had to do with the end of an era.

2a. When the Earth was first inhabited there was something of a 3 degree axis tilt and the planet was green, and water blue, and life was abundant. What by the name of God have we done to our mother?

2b. YIKES, we're at 23 degree wobble now. Yes, something is happening, changes are occurring, but it's not the end. It scares people to think that changes are coming - people fear change. CHANGE IS GOOD!

2c. People will die. Yes, we've burned fossil fuels, destroyed our air, cut down our forests, created deserts where there were none before and previously the planet cleansed itself with great floods. People are dying, we are more aware since Hurricane Katrina, that things are not right due to global warming, and Tsunamis, great floods, and thousands more deaths in countries where floods were a rarity.

2d. Many species are dying. Faster than ever before species are disappearing. One indication that might be considered, or two, are the frog population which began disappearing a few years back, and the bees. We are impacting nature and we don't step lightly - our footprint is huge and visible, and we are destroying all of life without mistreatment of our mother.

2e. There are more diseases now, more horrible, more incurable - a sick society and planet produce all forms of diseases.

3. Human Nature - It's obvious that the nature of the human being is to conquer. The continuous development of warfare, atomic, and nuclear weaponry is solely aimed at the destruction of mankind and hurting the planet. Previously, we had been the only big bully playing with nukes, now every schoolyard bully has them and someone is likely to play war games just to demonstrate my 'thing' is bigger than your 'thing'.

3a. Human Belief in Ancient Religions - I must mention this, because this is the greatest manipulation of human beings on Earth. Sorry, priest, ministers, rabbis, I honor you all for what you know, but your DOGMA is not helping the situation. Each one of you has chosen an individual branch as part of the Tree of Life, and none of you are on the Expressway to God. Please stop telling your people they are sinners - as men of God, many of you have been caught with your own pants down around your ankles and some honey taking some money for some SINFUL and LUSTFUL experience you needed to have. It may not have been you, but we all know of whom I speak. I am not judging you - just stop judging others and stop playing the blame game which results in guilt. As you know - guilt has absolutely no survival value, it is responsible for many illnesses that do not resolve and result in death. Stop guilting others, or ...

3b. Did You Know That Humans Mistreat Each Other and Mother Earth Too - imagine all the drilling, the cutting of trees, the burning of fields, everything normal and beautiful of earth destroyed by greed to steal the resources and be billionaires, all at the cost of our mother. Imagine our planet as a great big fluffy dog, filled with life. And the dog feels the burring of something drilling into it - just like a flea. And another, burning like burning the trees - the dog begins to scratch and shake fiercely and the fleas fall off. You got a parachute for when this happens to us?

4. The Mayan Calendar - Interestingly enough does end on the Winter Solstice, 2012. Why? Not because it's the end of the world - it's just the end of the 5th Cycle of Life on the Planet. The 6th Cycle that begins immediately thereafter and is called the Age of Enlightenment. It's sounds like an exciting time to be alive - so get prepared!

WELCOME - this is reality.

Many of us will fall off, many of us will die. Those who are not prepared, and those who think they are better or more greater, more important or more powerful than Mother Earth that we live on, will suffer.

Richard Branson is really making his fleet of Intergalactic Space ships to take the rich and wealthy off the planet, just like Roland Emmerich has set of Arks in his movie. Branson's ticket price is much cheaper.

I'M STAYING RIGHT HERE ON EARTH

In 1987, the Harmonic Convergence, which was written about by Dr. Jose Arguelles, and my participation in it - by doing long travels through endless ruins, culminating at the El Tule Tree in Oaxaca in Mexico, spoke the prophesy that we had 25 years left of life as we knew it. We must return to natural, non-destructive living. Dang people, we blew it!

Now the cards are laid out on the table. Natural disasters are not done by nature but by those politicians who paid no heed to the warnings.

What can the scenario possibly be -- to cause the end of life as we know it? Who knows, asteroids, meteorites, some crazy Anti-Semitic Iranian ex-president who stole the presidency from the people in order to try to wipe out the State of Israel, some angry Korean president who is dying because of his anger at the United States over a 60 year old situation, or errors by our own major powers in their thinking that nuclear energy is stable enough to survive what our earth going through with hurricanes, tsunamis, typhoons, earthquakes, and worse. All the time our earth, which I'd like to assimilate it to be life this this big furry yellow dog who it tired of all the baggage she's carrying and begins shaking off the fleas. The fleas are US!

HOW TO SURVIVE THIS?

Like a Boy Scout: Be prepared. More than anything else - it's your mind and soul that need preparation. Since we all know that the soul is immortal, you will survive in one form or another. We have prepared the first of several guides on survival. This first one was just updated Nov. 2009, originally written in 1991 - to help you survive what is undoubtedly going to be a life-changing experience.

It's called - "The World is a Mess, and We Are Responsible - Isn't It Time To THINK RIGHT?

About the Author:

Are You Trying To Take Your Company Public? How To Go Public Easily 100% of the Time!

By James Scott

There are many ways to use capital without using bank loans, lines of credit and other shady methods like shelf corps and bogus platform scams. If you are truly trying to raise capital for your company here are some simple breakdowns of your options with a quick definition for each one:

PIPE: Private Investment In Public Equity this is used primarily by mutual funds and private investment firms where they buy discount stock in order to raise capital, there are two types of PIPE's traditional where common and preferred stock is issued at a set cap to raise money for the issuer and a structured pipe issues convertible debt.

DPO: Direct Public Offering is when you sell equity shares directly to customers, suppliers and employees.

PPM: Private Placement Memorandum is also known as an offering memorandum takes advantage of Regulation D rule exemptions 504, 505 and 506. This process came into existence with the'33 securities act and popularized in the late'80s, companies can raise money from the public via private placement; there is virtually zero interaction with the SEC after you file form d as long as you stay legal. (most popular form of fund raising).

IPO: Initial Public Offering: extremely expensive, need SOX 404 audits, must have board of directors, quarterly financial reports to shareholders, report heavily to the SEC and 1 out of every 1000 companies that want an IPO actually qualify. I love participating in these but most companies just can't qualify for one reason or the other.

OTCBB: Over the Counter Bulletin Board is an electronic quote system that is the next best thing if you can't go public via IPO, there is minimal red tape to start-ups and small businesses and is legitimized by the stringent ongoing reports to the SEC which keeps investor confidence high (these are extremely solid and I suggest this structure to companies when I am hired by their company or legal team as a consultant as a fast, easy way to raise big capital from the public otc)

Pink Sheet: you can look at pink sheets as the Burger King, while the OTCBB is McDonald's, they are competing OTC mechanisms. Pinks sheets are commonly referred to as penny stock and notorious for 'pump em' and dump em' controversies and a lot of crooked people are involved with this platform. This is not a long term process that will allow one's company to grow, pink sheets companies are typically short lived but it is cheap to set up but not a professional structure that could be upgraded in time to an IPO.

Reverse Merger: a group funds the filing and creation of a public shell, they then sell that shell to a company that wants to go public, the established company merges it's entity into the public shell. The sellers retain around 30% equity after they charge an upfront fee of 300k to 1m. 99% of reverse mergers are successful with the merger, but unsuccessful to bring them to trade and the entity basically just fizzles out.

Taking your company public is actually quite simple and inexpensive when you have the right consultant putting the structure together for you. There are countless ways to raise capital quickly and easily. It's important that you understand your options before you waste time entering into the red tape infested banking system for a loan.

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Finance Power: How To Easily Control The Mind of an Investor

By James Scott

Discovering the 'thumbscrews' of investors is crucial to getting them to take action. In over a decade of dealing with global investors there are several elements that I've discovered to be universal truths about the mind of the private investor (angel investor, accredited investor).

When talking to an investor for the first time, it's more important to listen than to speak. It's more important to ask questions than answer them. It's more important to discover their needs and wants than to exclaim your own. Your first conversation with an investor should be all about piercing the armor and finding the trigger points that prompt a reaction that gets to the center of their 'childlike' state.

What I mean by this is, investors, just like anyone else, has insecurities that are rooted in their childhood and what they are outwardly today, is typically a polar opposite of what they are on the inside. For example, an arrogant, chest beater seems proud and obnoxious on the outside but the reality is that they are over compensating for an insecurity that is rooted in an individual or collection of childhood incidents.

Maybe they were made fun of as a child, maybe they're father was verbally abusive, maybe their teachers would single them out in class opening them up to playground mockery. When talking to these individuals it's important to listen to their voice and intonation when the conversation topic changes. Take notes on their psychological adjustments to the conversation. After you feel you have discovered the triggers that induce the 'pleasurable' responses, end the call, and set your second phone appointment with them.

On that second call, you want to have your conversation ready to go using the triggers you found in the first conversation. Play off of those insecurities that you found, become their best friend without being chummy but it is your mission on this call to be the "guy that understand me" to the investor. You want the overall tone of this conversation to have the response from your target along the theme of, "wow, this guy gets me" , "I can see investing in this company".

By using this method and not coming across as 'fake', you have become an investment opportunity and a shrink all rolled into one. You want to be the one person that this investor can lower his guard to because everything he says, you seem to be the one person who understands him at his deepest level. You seem to naturally be tuned into his insecurities, emotions, needs and wants. Sound strange? Try this out on the next investor you talk to, I guaranty you will be shocked with the results.

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Cash Advance Payday Loans.

By Jim Scott

You are in some kind of urgent situation that needs cash you do not have, what will you do? Your urgent situation might arise from several situations you need to travel to see an ailing family member, fix your vehicle, pay hospital bills or as well go on a holiday. The list can grow on although no matter what the requirements are with you, you have to look just as far as this for the reason that with cash advance payday loans, you can find the money you desperately want; even though you don't have a bank account. Therefore, just relax and go through this article to acquaint yourself and learn more on how to get on with this.

A person may get in situation where he needs a substantial amount of money to realize his needs. A few of prevalent reason as a result of which people may well be under pressure and pressing needs to get this loan are repairing a car, urgent home improvements, buying home utility things like microwave and blenders, paying college fees, footing hospital bills, and so on. For ordinary requirements cash advance payday loans has been structured in the shape of unsecured loan easily accessible to all classes of people easily.

Internet is of great help, lets you to get the necessary loan help without wasting your precious time. Without leaving your home or office, with the help of just a computer along with internet connectivity you can apply for cash advance payday. Search through the web for cash advance loan, there are more than a few online lenders offering such loans to individuals in need providing help just when it is needed the most. You need not fax any documents; just by filling a single online loan form with a few personal details is all that is needed to get approved.

As soon as you get the approval by the lender, you will find the loan money transferred directly to your bank account within 24 hours. No reservations even if you are having a bad credit past record like heavy debts, defaults, liquidation, bankruptcy, foreclosures and the like. Cash advance payday loans are free from credit inspection, no credit report pull outs from credit bureaus. You won't have to face any hassle to arrange expensive belongings or property to pledge as a security. Your forthcoming payday acts as a security to the lender against the borrowed cash.

Cash advance payday loans have a little higher rate of interest when compared to other type of loans. This is because of the fact that these are offered without any security that indicates the high risk for lenders. You can get cash advance payday loans with lower rate of interest by searching online for such loans. The settlement term is extremely short; the reason behind why it is as well called short term loan. It is necessary that borrower must repay the lent amount with the interest as fast as possible when he gets his next month's paycheck available. This offers the necessary money to draw on until your next payday arrives.

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