Repost – Small Business Tax Workshop

I went to one of these last year when I started my own business and found it very beneficial.  I learned a lot, and I would encourage attendance for those thinking about or who already have a small business.

The Clemson Small Business Development Center is presenting a FREE tax workshop for prospective and new small business owners. The workshop will be held from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM on Wednesday, May 26, 2010 in Room #2 of the Greenville Technical College Admissions Office (McAlister Square), at 225 South Pleasantburg Drive in Greenville. To reserve a seat, please call the SBDC at 864. 370.1545.

http://greenvillesbdc.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/free-small-business-tax-workshop-to-be-held-may-26-2010/

What’s Better Than One Geico Testimonial?

Two Geico testimonials!  I am very fortunate today to be able to post a second testimonial from my local Geico Office, this one from the marketing manager.  Click below to take a quick read.

Testimonial_2010_SCROD_Geico2

New Testimonial Letter – Geico#1

Just got another great testimonial letter for the 2010 calendars and how they’ve helped get the word out about GEICO’s LOCAL OFFICE affordably

Testimonial_2010_SCROD_Geico1

Print Media for the Same Cost as Online Social Media?

I’m a big proponent of a multi-media campaign for any business, including social media on the web.  Some social media is essentially free, except for your time, and some have added advertising opportunities.  I’ve come across a lot of people lately who keep saying how cheap some of the social media advertising can be.

Well, in the spirit of cosportunity, I just checked into paying for some of my own social media ads.  Once I got far enough into the process and saw the pricing I said ‘Whoa! This is very similar to my pricing.’  So I double and triple checked and sure enough, my print media costs are identical to a certain very popular social media’s cost.

And this is why I launched cosportunity in the first place.  It’s fine if you prefer social media advertising, or print media advertising, or radio, or television, or whatever.  But please, make an informed decision before you discount one type over another based solely on your impression of what it may cost. We all offer benefits over one another and we all increase your exposure to your market.  Meanwhile, I just figured out how I’m going to plug myself this week,  telling everyone who will listen that I’m as cheap as….

“I Never Advertise!”

If only I had a nickel… for every time I here those words. I always laugh on the inside when I meet someone at networking events and once they find out what I do for a living their first comment is “oh, I never advertise.”  That happened just the other day at a ribbon cutting event and my response was that they were advertising at that very moment.  After all, they had shown up at the event with a stack of business cards attached to a special limited time offer in the form of a coupon.  It’s advertising, just less expensive but more time consuming than other methods.

I certainly don’t think in this instance that the person was fibbing to me, as I had never heard of the store they were representing and I’ve lived in this area for 4 years.  And having worked in the same industry previously, I thought I knew most of the shops around.  So, no, they haven’t advertised.  Which is probably why they were at a ribbon cutting event, to gain some ground with the best method of advertising out there, word of mouth.

Word of mouth is why I go to all the networking events too, it works.  But it also requires the most amount time.  Social networking sites are shortening that amount of time, but they also work both ways.  In fact, people are more likely to complain about a bad experience than they are to endorse a good one.  If you put a price on your time while you were out advertising via word-of-mouth, I think you’d be surprised at how cost effective some media is in comparison.  Meanwhile, I think I’ll start putting a nickel in my jar every time I hear…

New Testimonial Letter

Hey, just got a great testimonial letter from one of my Town Planner sponsors. Click on the link below to open the pdf.

Testimonial from Downtown Sweets & Eats

Advertising Chicken Salad

I had a lunch networking event on my calendar today, one where you bring your own lunch, so I stopped by one of my Town Planner sponsors on the way and used one of the coupons she placed in the calendar.  That gave me a chance to support her business, talk to her about how the calendar has performed for her so far, and to try her chicken salad that I had heard good things about.

Being the industrious networker and advocate for my sponsors, I took my chicken salad wrap to the networking lunch.  A couple of people looked at it when I first unwrapped it, but it got lots of attention when I took out my blackberry and photographed it.  “Why?” they asked?  So I can put it on facebook of course.

It has already made it on Facebook, a picture of the chicken salad wrap and an entry telling my fans where I got it and that I used a coupon from the calendar.  Not even TWO minutes later I received an instant chat message from a fan commenting that it looked really good and asked me if it was.  I described it better for her and now she’s on her way, coupon in hand, to go and try some herself.

So, one chicken salad sale took some print media, some social media, and some word of mouth promotion on my part.  But I’m blogging about it to drive home the point about marketing and segmentation.  Not all of your customers are on Facebook, not all of your customers read the paper, and not all of your customers watch television.  That’s why a comprehensive marketing program is best.  Keep the things that work for you, but don’t limit yourself to not trying new things because it could spark an interaction to make a sale.

The Reach and Repetition Teeter-Totter

So here’s the $64,000 question… where’s the balance point between reach and repetition in your advertising?   If only it were a simple answer.  Truth is, every person is different and every market is different and how they react to your message is different.  It may take only 5 impressions for Joe, but Sally is a harder sell and requires 20 impressions before she trusts the message.

The importance of repetition in advertising has been proposed since 1885 when Thomas Smith published his guide called Successful Advertising.  In it he laid out a schedule requiring 20 impressions before the average person would buy what was offered.  It took five impressions before the person even noticed the ad.  The modern day term for this is top of mind awareness.  Unfortunately, most businesses are constrained by this little thing called a budget and can’t afford to simply throw more money at advertising to keep their message in the public view.  So there has to be a balance point between budget, reach, and repetition.

My favorite example to illustrate the choices between reach and repetition is to choose a fixed cosportunity, for convenience let’s say that the cosportunity of your campaign is $1, and that you have $1000 budgeted.  You can spend your $1000 by any of the following schedules:

Send a message to 1000 people

Send a messages to 500 people, repeated twice.

Send a message to 250 people, repeated 4 times.

Send a message to 100 people, repeated 10 times.

Send a message to 50 people, repeated 20 times.

The worst thing you can do is choose the first schedule, sending one message to the biggest audience you can afford.  Your message isn’t heard and you’ve spent your budget.   You’ve essentially wasted your money and will soon be professing that advertising doesn’t work.  There is a time-based, repetitive aspect to advertising, just like learning.  Did you learn your multiplication tables the first time they were presented to you, or after repeatedly seeing them?

The point I’m trying to make in this post is that repetition is more important than reach for a limited budget.  Well, actually, for any budget.  But for the budget-minded, please pay close attention to any campaign you start and be in it for the long term, even if you have to reduce your reach.

4 Questions for Your Print Media Salesperson

Are you considering placing an advertisement in a newspaper, magazine, direct mail, or other printed media?  After you’ve evaluated the demographics they hit to ensure it’s the right media for your business, here are some questions to ask your sales representative so that you can fully understand the reach and repetition of what your buying.

1.  What is your circulation?

2.  Of that number, how many actually make it into the homes and receive interactions?  For a subscription based publication the number will be really high, after all, the subscribers paid for the publication.  But what about ‘free’ publication that gets picked up at various locations?  Just because they print X number of issues doesn’t mean they all get picked up.  They should have good handle on this number.  For direct mail, especially shared pieces, realize that some don’t make it into the home.  Ask how many, and where their number comes from, market research?  Are they willing to share that research?

3. What’s the frequency of the publication?  Daily, once a week, once a month, once a year, etc.

4. What is the shelf life of each edition of the publication?  Do consumers keep the publication on hand and refer to it more than once? If so, how many times and why?

Now, take all this information into consideration and look at your true cost for every time your advertisement is seen.  Multiply the circulation by a correction factor to get the true reach.  For repetition take into consideration the frequency of the publication as well as the shelf life and interactions.

What does all this information give you… the cosportunity!

10 Calendar-Based Promotion Opportunities for March 2010

There are corny and wacky holidays almost every day of the year.  A lot of them lend themselves easily to promotional opportunities for small and big business, especially those using social media to get the word our fast and economically.  Below are ten ideas for the month of March, 2010:

1. March is National Irish American Heritage Month – Promote Irish cuisine in your restaurant, or invite a bagpipe player to your event in March.

2. March is National Nutrition Month – Lends itself perfectly to local health stores and gyms.  If you’re a gym, why not feature some free educational sessions on nutrition, or go the store with some clients and teach label reading.  And for all those MLM’s out there in the health and wellness industry, this is your month!

3. March is National Peanut month, with Peanut Butter Lover’s Day occurring on March 1st – I know it’s short notice on this one for the first of the month, but the speed at which social media occurs there’s still time to promote your peanut based promotions.  Maybe it’s just to increase awareness that you serve free peanuts at your restaurant every day.

4. The second week in March in National Bubble Week – This one is a little more creative, promote anything having to do with bubbles, whether it be soap bubbles or people that live in a bubble.   There’s even been a word coined for your celebrations this week, bubblebration.

5. March 3 is I Want You to Be Happy Day – A great day to run a customer service promotion, even it’s just to request feedback from your customers.  Make all your servers say “I Want You to be Happy Today” and then ask if there’s anything else they can do, and be prepared with something to fulfill their happiness.

6. March 8 is Be Nasty Day – Opposite of March 3, this one has a lot of possibilities, from allowing your wait staff to be fake-rude on this day to getting dirty with some mud-fitness activities while playing Janet Jackson’s Nasty.

7. March 10 is Middle Name Pride Day – Give out nametags that say “Hello, My Middle Name is….” when your customers walk through the door.  Better yet, have someone standing there writing middle names to assist with the process.  If everyone in your store is walking around with middle name name-tags it will give them all something to talk about and remember your store.

8. March 14 is National Pi Day – The mathematical Pi because it’s 3.14, not the edible pie, but the tie in is obvious.

9. March 19 is Poultry Day – Chicken promotions abound, but why not create some special poultry based entrees for this day.  And remember chicken isn’t the only poultry out there…

10. March 29 is National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day – A day to embrace all the local people in your local community helping the local economy.  Take something related to your business to your local Mom and Pop stores today to say thanks for being a member of the community and they will remember you.