Friday, February 27, 2009

Future Purchasing Trends

Buyers reporting a decrease in commodody prices in January.
48%
While prices are low, demand for materials is down. Only 4% of buyers polled in January plan to increase inventories and 61% said incoming orders were down.

Buyers who say business is down compared to last month
59%
Most areas are down but in a micro economy they don’t have to be. Look over your “kingdom” and start making your mark in market share.

Electronic purchasers who say they are cutting inventory levels
61%
With the downturn, lead times are sort and there is no need to carry much inventory. Is this a good time to test Just In Time inventory with your key suppliers?

November drop in BTS freight transportation index
41%
The tsi index which measures changes in the output of freight transportation services, hit its lowers level since January 2004.

Buyers reporting a drop in transportation costs in January
58%
A year ago only 4% of buyers reported freight cost in decline while 75% were reporting increases.

Amount of goods that the U.S. imports or exports by water
78%
A report says that government support for the system of freight transport must anticipate and respond to a potential bottleneck that could serve to undermine any economic growth.

Larson note: Ok so commodity prices are down. What are your future needs in the short (6 month) term? If you can swing it I might be an excellent time to make your next purchase a little larger than normal. Or if you are looking to keep your inventory low a good tactic might be to let your suppliers can carry your inventory at current prices on their books. Ask. As for transportation, this could be the right time to lock in a long term contract or get a more favorable discount over posted rates. Sure can’t hurt to ask can it? For us at Larson’s, we are still in a double digit percent growth pattern. It is a nice feeling with the aggressive growth plan we put together for the year. Do your sales match your business plan so far?

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week to talk about marketing for businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Beureau of Transportation, purchasing magazine

Why Buying Local Matters

Where did you go last time you bought a CD? Online or down the street to the local store? How about that digital camera or I-pod?

Where you buy things does matter. It does not have to be a choice on what is cheaper, faster, better, or more convenient. Right now there should be one more element that is important. If you don’t buy from a local or at least US company (if you are not an American company just plug in your own countries name) why should those same people buy from your company? When we purchase local we keep our neighbors employed. It’s a fact that for every $100 spent locally, $45 is returned to the area’s or country’s economy according to a report by Civic Economics, a consulting and research firm.

Buying online or overseas might save on sales tax but those dollars help pay for basic services like police, fire and schools?

It is easy to help our community and countries get though this economic mess just by taking a little time to consider where the manufacturing of the products we buy is.

Larson note: Think locally, with a global perspective. From my view point, in the times I have made sales calls on foreign own companies 99% of the time they are buying there art and design, their printing and marketing form their country of origin. Even there telemarketing centers are set in the Philippians and India. And don’t think I have not tried, I even went as far as to have double sided business cards printed in both English and Japanese to no avail. If they buy from me, great Ill buy form them. If not? Think about it. If Americans are not employed and making money to spend on my products and services who will. And if I don’t support local and US employment, who will?

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations a week for marketing your business. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Civic Economics

Thursday, February 26, 2009

SEO is Both Important and Misunderstood

In a survey companies said overwhelming said that search engine submission optimization (SEO) is an active part of their online marketing efforts and that they believed it accounted for a significant portion of their web traffic, but many of those same companies identified SEO tactics, like purchasing links, as an effective way to boost their pages' performance.

The survey was conducted over the entire month of January 2009, and had 117 qualified ecommerce merchants respond. Collectively, 94 percent of the merchants said that SEO was part of their current marketing efforts. And 62.4 percent believed that their SEO efforts accounted for 50 percent or more of their site traffic.

When asked about effective SEO tactics, the majority of companies correctly identified forthright, effective, and ethical SEO practices like keyword-focused content, internal linking, and siloing.

It was clear that many of the companies surveyed did not understand the difference between good SEO tactics and questionable ones, even those bordering on unethical practices. For example, 69.5 percent of respondents said that purchasing paid links was a somewhat effective SEO tactic. But paid links that transfer PageRank are really an attempt to trick a search engine into displaying less qualified results. Moreover, 53.9 percent of those surveyed said that keyword stuffing, another poor and potentially unethical practice, was at somewhat effective.

Only 25.6 percent of these companies surveyed had ever hired a paid SEO professional to help them. Many of the respondents said that SEO services were just too expensive for their company or that they believe there was enough information available for free to do a good job without professional help or training.

Larson note: It is true that most of the professional seo do not know the exact way of effective SEO techniques, as many of them use software such as web SEO, elite SEO software and don’t do much more. For an effective marketing of site to rank: keywords in content and a good title tag are necessary.

If there are any companies who would be interested in setting up a reciprocal link with our respect websites let me know. It could be arranged if there is a good synergy between us.


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week to talk about marketing for businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Armando Roggio

Still More Bottom Line Priority Thinking

Here are still more low-cost CRM ideas and strategies for when your money is tighter than tight.

1) Conduct interviews with your best customers to find out what they want form you or how you might improve.
2) Fire your worst customers. The ones that are the black holes of your bottom line no matter how you try to do the right thing.
3) Engage in innovation discussions with your employees at the lowers possible level.
4) Set Plans and goals for the future and share them with you customers and seek their opinion. Remember they are a “stake holder in and of your business.
5) Train and retrain employees. And do it as a reward not as a punishment.
6) Ask customers and employees what they don’t need or want from you.
7) Sign up but remember time spent on free trials is also a cost.
8) Look for ways to get more out of your CRM system that goes beyond the basics. There is a wealth of information in those records.
9) Clean up your data. The cleaner your data the more usable and useful your data.
10) Do the little things Write those thank yous, remember your client’s favorite team, their hobbies and passions in life, and pick up the phone rather than a quick email.

Larson note: Push yourself. Get the dead weight out and set yourself free.IN suing every one you can for ideas you might find that golden nugget you are looking for. Search and you shall find.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations a week for marketing your business. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Customer Relations Management

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Low Cost Ways to Market Your Business

It’s not nice out there. You, me, everyone is getting hit from all sides. You want to push your business ahead but funds are running on empty for marketing. So what can a business owner or marketing manager do?

First change the way you are thinking from spending on marketing tools to investing on smart strategic execution.

You need to use this slow down to think about how to make smart investments rather than more. Take a hard look at the assets you currently have in your company and change those in ways that can help build your business. Write or have your people write content that can be used as bogs, newsletters or whitepapers. These can be used to capture names and create an email list.

You can use these papers as content to boost your search visibility or added content on your web site. You can also make yourself into an industry or topical expert where clients and prospects turn to when they need advice.

You can push out press releases and place them on your site as well as distributed to the free online PR sites as well as traditional newspapers.

Larson note: You need to use what you got at hand or improve those things you are now using or use them in a more complete way. You object is, even in a downturned economy to put your name out in front of people any way possible, to get your web site more active and more visible to the various search engines. Don’t go putting more money, that you don’t have into your marketing, just use and refine what you got going on better.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week to talk about marketing for businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Lorrie Thomas

How To Be An Industry Expert

If you want to be the (Wo)man in your industry. The person people think of when they need answers. That special go-to person you need to define what your specialty is. Mark your territory. Claim your rightful place.

Think about who you are, your knowledge base, your experience, your background and how you can relate them to the world as we know it today. Then find a way for potential clients and editors to make the connection between you, your topics, your answers and the issues affecting people today.

A few ways to do this is to place your bio on your web site and blogs. Arrange speaking engagements, seminars, workshops, lectures, panel discussions at clubs, associations and industry events. Have these recorded and (if good) make it available as a podcast on your site.

Larson note: Stand out from the crowd. The world is looking, waiting for leaders who will step up and speak their mind on issues. Being an industry leader is not for the faint of heart. It takes guts, courage and moxy to be the (Wo)man.

And for the record, yes I do talk in public F2F, belly to belly.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week to talk about marketing for businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Julie Springer, Leapfrog Online

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Consumer Food Spending

Consumers are cutting their food spending by 3.7% in the fourth quarter from the previous 3 months.

-15.9% Beer at home
- 2.7% Wine at home
- 0.9% Liquor at home
- 1.2% Fast food
- 3.8% Eating out
- 5.1% Candy

Larson note: The most disturbing thing (keep in mind this is form a month and a half ago) is that this was during the holiday season. If it was at different time I would not wonder so much.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week to talk about marketing for businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Commerce Department

Targeting Profitable Customers Online

When putting together an online campaign, marketers should push down past general demographics to include pockets of the population that have been identified as profitable new customers such as, students, business travelers, health club members, trade show attendees.

Pushing past that level to further pinpoint behaviors and interests such as travel or technology brings in a complex mix do demographics, geography, contextual and behavioral factors that should go into making your plan so it speaks directly to the customer in the language and terms they want to hear and respond to. If you can key in ton your most profitable target audience by refining every aspect of the campaign to market directly to them in a one-on-one basis, you will up your hit and sell ratios, not on a one to one factor but on a mass scale.

Larson note:
Having specific landing pages for market segments is a perfect way to go. Language and graphics are all part of the way we can talk to certain segments of our market. Certainly you would not talk to a 55 year old man the same why you would talk to his 20 year old daughter would you? So why have 1 home page that tries to talk to both of them when you can create a landing page that can talk to each one in a way they know, understand and like.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week to talk about marketing for businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Julie Springer, Leapfrog Online

Monday, February 23, 2009

Most Effective Use of Telemarketing in B2B

In an economy like the one we are going through it is normal to see companies that use telemarketing in alignment with sales efforts will probably be increasing their telemarketing dollars and those that use the phone as a broad based awareness for surveys and general awareness campaigns will most likely decrease their dollars in this direction.

Focus the majority of your telemarketing efforts on measurable activity that drives leads to your sales team. As you are rolling out the campaign be sure to keep in contact with your salespeople as to how the kind of and quality of leads are coming in so that everyone is pulling in the same direction. Having a reporting system in place ensures that you can communicate quickly and with facts, not guesses as to what is really happening.

Larson note:
If anything is essential it is record keeping. Knowing what is coming in as well as what is going out. If good leads are coming in and not closing, do your sales people need training? If the leads are not hitting the mark as to your idea client, do you need better list management, script writing or call center training?

“Dialing for dollars” is an art if you don’t have the time to do it, do it well and do it consistently, maybe you should be calling a company like ours.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week to talk about marketing for businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Kathy Rizzo, TeleNet Marketing Solutions

The Week Ahead for February 23-27, 2009

Monday:
Tuesday: February consumer’s confidence
Wednesday: January existing home sales
Thursday: Weekly initial jobless claims, January durable-goods orders, January new-home sales
Friday: 4th quarter revised GDP, February Chicago purchasing managers indexLarson note: It starts in these reports. Not across the board good things but I’ll go out on a limb and say to look to home sales to pick up a little bit.

At the same time Larson & Associates gross sales for February closed higher last Friday for February 2009 than all of 2008’s February sales with one week remaining. Must be doing something right.

Want the same results? Call us


Howard’s out of office public schedule for the week:
Monday: Tuesday:
Wednesday: Thursday: 6:30am Group running training at Midtown (free)
Friday:

Trade show schedule:
International Home House wares show 2009 March 22-24, 2009

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/larsonassoc1979/1
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week to talk about marketing and your business. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

P.P.P.S, subscribe to our newsletter "Mastering Marketing Monthly" at larsonassoc1980@yahoo.com

Friday, February 20, 2009

10 Practices To Make A Marketing Impact!

1. Revisit inventory management.
Yield-management and scheduling tools can help get more value from your inventory and bolster thinning margins. You need have it on the shelf you can’t sell it, yet too much inventory is death.

2. Use facts for your business.
Making decisions is often a rushed practice based on perception rather than facts. Necessary information can take too long to collect into digestible, actionable analytics. Take in all the facts you can then go for it.

3. Embrace measurement.
Digital and direct are measurable. Expectations in all media now go beyond basic delivery and fulfillment metrics.

4. Develop creative packages.
Marketers, agencies and planners are selecting media partners based on their ability to drive consumer action, as well as impressions across multiple media platforms, brands and geographies. Creative packages deliver greater engagement, and bundling products and services enhances greater consumer brand affinity.

5. Partner for innovation.
Be opportunistic as well as strategic. Leading organizations work with customers to develop and adapt to new platforms, technologies and measurements, as well as to build innovative business models. New trends can present immediate opportunities

6. Build an adaptive organization.
People and organizational structures can create as many operational issues as they can competitive advantages. Organizational hazards -- from misaligned skills to internal competition for valuable resources -- damage productivity. Leading media firms react with the speed, skill and flexibility that marketers and agencies need, thanks to well-defined and self-adjusting roles, procedures and processes.

7. Make it easier to do business.
This is perhaps the most underrated differentiator in the market. The goal should be to create strong relationships and to become the partner of choice. Make sure every transaction is as easy as possible.

8. Don't lose sight of the little things.
Operational setbacks are more than mere annoyance. They negatively affect margins, cash flows and client relationships. Even "minor" communication breakdowns have significant impact. Instead of celebrating the short-term heroics needed to resolve inevitable operational crises, leading companies focus their efforts on redesigning processes and improving procedures to avoid inefficiencies.

9. Promote areas of expertise.
Companies frequently focus on delivering at the best price but often don't highlight their other stronger points of quality. Avoid being viewed as a commodity; diferenciate yourself from your competition.

10. Deliver on promises.
Marketing plans are about driving product awareness and consistent messaging. If you can’t live up to what you say you can do, don’t say it. Of the initial promise adversely affects the media planner's credibility and relationships. Identify the root causes of under delivery and place better controls across media scheduling and execution to minimize lost revenue.

In times of crisis, it's easy to miss some of the basics. Having a solid foundation of operational excellence will create competitive advantages and position your firm for the future


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week to talk about marketing for businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Howard Bass

Oversized Postcards

In a recent poll a week or so ago the direct marketing association’s members 50% felt oversized postcards were not worth the cost. I disagree.



Personally I love oversized.
Oversized anything!

To me the biggest waste of money
is not getting noticed.






Larson note: Postcards, over sized postcards, over sized envelopes, letters that are bulky. Anything to get looked at, noticed, opened. The key is your ROI not your overall cost in any marketing attack.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week to talk about marketing for businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Direct Marketing Association

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Top 4 Tech Tips

You have the right approach to technology, regardless of the economic circumstances. You need to take the time to know what you need before you waiste your time and money,

1. Generate different business models: Stay relevant not just through innovation but with organization structures, competencies, processes and partnerships.

2. Harness the creativity of all your employees: Look internally to drive grassroots innovation, creatively address leadership and social media tools.

3. Reorient the entire organization to be customer based. Let your customer dictate research and development projects.


5. Sustain competitiveness with innovative management tools: View innovation as a continual process not just a onetime problem to be solved



Larson note: Technology can make or break you. If you get everyone possible involved in the process, you can find what you need to fit the needs of all involved parties so each ones needs are filled and met, you, your customer service team, your sales team and your customers all have a stake in you and your decisions. The more they are involved in the process the better. Any technology should be as user friendly as possible and still get the job done, Look around and test, test, test!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week to talk about marketing for businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: CRM

Larson’s Stimulus Bill Report Card

ON a scale of 1-5 with 5 being high (good) Total Score 203 Grade 4.06
(I’m being generous to the administration here)

Spending $506 Billion (total points 154) Grade 3.5 C+

Health Care $141.3B - Grade 2.6
Assist States with Medicare $86.6B - Grade 3
Subsidize heath care of unemployed under cobra $24.7B - Grade 4
Modernize health information technology $19.0 - Grade 3
Construction of National Institutes of Health facilities and research $10.0B - Grade 1
Prevention wellness programs $1.0B - Grade 2

Infracture $91.7 – Grade 4.75
Transportation including highway and bridge repair $48.0B – Grade 5
High-speed rail construction/Amtrak $9.3B - Grade 5
Mass Transit – 8.4B – Grade 5
Expand broadband internet service $7.2 – Grade 5
Clean and drinking water projects $6.0B – Grade 5
Army Corps of Engineers - Grade 5
Repair defense facilities $4.2B – Grade 4
Public housing improvements $4.0B – Grade 4

Education $87.3B – Grade 4.25
Aid to school districts to prevent cuts - $44.5B – Grade 4
Special Ed and NO Children Left Behind - $25.2B – Grade 4
Increase Maximum Pell Grant buy $500 - $15.6B – Grade 5
Head Start - $2.0B – Grade 4

Aid to poor and unemployed $67.0B – Grade 3.75
Extend Unemployment benefits - $40.0B – Grade 5
Increase food stamp payments - $20.0 – Grade 4
Job Training - $4.0B – Grade 1
Temporary welfare payments - $3.0B – Grade 5

Energy $41.2 Grade 4.875
Smart Grid - $11.0B – Grade 5
Clean up nuclear weapons production sites $6.4B – Grade 4
Energy efficiency and clan energy grants - $6.3B – Grade 5
Subsidize loans for renewable energy - $6.0B – Grade 5
Weatherize modest income homes - $5.0B – Grade 5
Improve efficiency in federal buildings - $4.5B – Grade 5
Electric vehicle advanced battery grants - $2.0B – Grade 5

Direct cash payments $14.2B Grade 5
One time $250 payments to SS recipients. Poor and people on supplemental security income and veterans receiving disablility and pensions - $14.2B – Grade 5

Housing $9.5B Grade 3.75
Repair public housing projects - $4.0B – Grade 5
Redevelopment foreclosed abandoned homes - $2.0B – Grade 5
Pay shortfalls in public housing accounts - $2.0B – Grade 3
Shelters for homeless - $1.5B Grade 2

State Block Grants - $8.8B Grade 1
Help states defray budget cuts - $8.8B – Grade 1

Science $5.6B – Grade 5
National science foundation research - $3.0 – Grade 5
Research on climate, biofules and physics $1.6B – Grade 5
NASA - $1.0B – Grade 5

Law Enforcement $4.0B – Grade 1
Grants to states and local departments to hire officers and buy equipment - $4.0B – Grade 1

Homeland Security $2.8B – Grade 2
Including airport screening equipment $2.8B – Grade 2

Other Spending $32.6B – Grade -2
Other Spending $32.6B – Grade - 2


Taxes $281B – Score 49 Grade 4.45

New Tax Credit - $116B – Grade 5
New Tax Credit $400 per person, $800 per couple, for 2009 & 2010 - $116B – Grade 5

Alternative minimum Tax - $70B – Grade 5
Alternative minimum Tax Protects about 24 million tax payers from higher taxes in 2009 & 2010 - $70B – Grade 5

Renewable energy incentivizes - $20M – Grade 5
Renewable energy incentivizes – Tax incentives for 10 years including for energy produced by wind, geothermal, hydropower and landfill gas - $20M – Grade 5

Child tax Credit - $15.00 – Grade - 4
Child tax Credit provides the $1000 per child credit to more families who don’t make enough to pay income taxes - $15B – Grade 4

Expand College Tax Credit - $14.0B – Grade 5
Expand College Tax Credit Increases tax credit for college tuition and expenses for 2009 and 2010 - $14.0B – Grade 5

Home buyer credit $6.6B – Grade 3
Home buyer credit Ends the requirement that an $8,000 first time home buyer credit be paid back over time for homes bought between January 1 and November 30 - $6.6B – Grade 3

Bonus depreciation - $5.0B – Grade 5
Extends a provision allowing businesses buying equipment such as computers to speed up depreciation though 2009 - $5.0B – Grade 5

Earned income tax credit - $4.7B – Grade 4
Earned income tax credit expands the tax credit for low income families with three or more children - $4.7B – Grade 4

Auto sales - $1.7B – Grade 5
Auto sales tax on new care purchases can be deducted on tax returns - $1.7B – Grade 5

Repeal Bank Credit -7B – Grade 5
Repeal Bank Credit Ends credit allowing firms that buy money losing banks to sue more of the losses as credits to offset the profits of the merged banks for tax purposes, Will increase taxes on merged banks by $7B over 10 years -7B – Grade 5
Other Tax Provisions $35.0B Grade 3


Larson note: It rates higher than what it really deserves but is a 3.5 out of 5 good enough? Way too much pork in this package. ON the tax incentive side much better but the whole package does not really have enough on the incentive side to make me do handstands. Such a pity.

If I had my way I would boost the Infracture and tax incentatives to individuals by 100% but what do I know?

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week to talk about marketing for businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Chicago Tribune, Daily Herald, Wall Street Journal

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Social Media Advantage for B2B

How can a B2B company take advantage of the various Social Media Networks running around out there?

I would start by staring with the creation of a company blog. If you don’t, can’t or don’t have time to write there are companies (like ours) that offer blog writing services. This will or can get you into an interactive situation with your customers as they make comments on your blog. A side benefit is that a blog can make and get your company web site a higher ranking as well.

Do a search and look at the top 3 or 4 rated blogs in your industry. Make appropriate comments that are not blatent attempts to sell yourself but rather work at establishing yourself as an industry expert for people to run to for their problems.

Twitter is a place where corporate markets should also look at. When you post articles, press releases and blog updates this is an excelent way to help drive traffic to your site.

Then there are the Social Media Sites themselves MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, MerchantCircle, Ning’s. These do tend to be slanted more towards B2C than B2B but there are some sites that do push the B2B more than others but at the same time businesses contain people and if you can collect your business associates as your followers and friends you are well on your way.

Larson note: You can find your market though Social Media. Blogs as I said are a very good start and one every business should be involved in, As for SM sites, they can work well in for B2B situation but there is a learning curve. You can learn on the run, but run fast!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week for to talk about marketing for your business. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Laura Grimmer

Improving Your Direct Marketing Program

All direct marketing programs from the biggest to the smallest have three parts. A pre, a mid and a post. To get better results you should always be doing and getting feedback and keeping records of the results of what you find out to improve your program (or your next effort) as you move along. For example using contests, coupons or incentive offers might work wonders and be getting replies but unless you record the information do you know?

If one kind of offer is working, why is it? Is it the kind of offer? Is it the headline of the offer? Did you discount? Did you have an ending date? A limited supply?

Larson note: Keeping good track of what you do, who you do it and what the response is, is only the start. Keeping careful records of each Direct Response effort you lay out there is as important as is the way you present it to your target market. You might use coupons once; they try a mailing package the next time with the same basic information and see what the responce is. If not good, add in a time deadline, or for a quantity limit.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week for marketing businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Cynthia Nelson

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The 80/20 Rule of Being In The Now

We are still basically at the start of the year so in an a way I am looking back at 2008, In a down economy one area I am looking at is being in the now, the moment, and when I stop being in the moment how I waste my time.

Waist might be too strong a word, but I must say I have knocked myself on the side of the head some days when I see what I have accomplished over what I could have gotten done. Looking at wasted time and missed opportunities. Sound familiar?

Tinkering with social media sites with little to no payoff
Projects started but not pushed through to completion
Direction less surfing, tweaking and chatting
Discussions and enthusiasm for potential opportunities that go nowhere
Etc etc etc

I don’t want to be bashing myself or you as to wasting time because in these efforts I have achieved some good stuff. I have gained some great knowledge. The important thing is not to dwell on mistakes but learn from them. So I need to plan for productivity. For getting more organized, and forward thinking as to outcomes of time spent.

The first step towards this plan is I have started abandon some SM sites as an active participant in. Some of these just don’t have the kind of prospects and clients I am looking for so why be there. I don’t need the ego rub. Extra SM sites just seem to be a terrible waste of time and a distraction towards me and my company’s goals for the year.

I’m also going to take more breaks, turn off the computer at 5:00 or 6:00 PM and not turn it on again until I start work the next morning. Being online and available 24-7 is dumb and not needed.

Besides I am in training for a Marathon in 14 weeks and don’t have the time.

This and other common sense stuff will help, but the core of my plan will be to focus on what directly or indirectly produces results.

Monitor where my time goes, plan my time better
Trim the 20% of non-productive tasks that leach 80% of my time
Focus on the 20% of tasks that produce 80% of revenue and results
As you can see, I am aiming to base my work around the 80-20 concept.

This 80-20 rule, or Pareto Principle, suggests that a small percentage of your effort brings most of your results, while a much smaller part of your achievement comes from where most of your time goes. Zeroing in on the time-draining aspects versus those productive tasks could be a quick and easy fix. It is identifying the correct targets for promotion or deletion that is the tricky part.

This is where my time log will come in. I just need to follow it better.


Larson note: I am sure there are other things we can do to make 2009 more productive than 2008, share your advice, let me know your tips, articles or links. My main push for the first half of the year is to be where I am, not where I want to be.

There is an old story I remember that said:

Somewhere there is a man out fishing with his son thinking about work and somewhere there is a man at work dreaming about going out fishing with his son.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations periods per week for marketing your business. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

7 Rules to Work Less and Get More Accomplished

In order to get more done, you need to invest more time, right? Working ten hour days will make you more accomplished than a colleague that only works seven, right? Studying three hours a day will get you better grades than the guy who skims through a few chapters before the test, right? More work = more results.

Not necessarily. If you learn to work smarter you won’t have to work as hard and in some cases working more can actually diminish the amount you get accomplished. I know this oh so well. In both cases, the degree effort matches outcomes have been overstated.

Working less and accomplishing more isn’t easy. It requires thinking of ways to find a more effective way or ways of doing things. But first you have to open our mind to the possibility that your way of doing things is not necessarily as efficient and effective as they could be. Once you let go you can look for ways to get more accomplished and creative. Here are a few ways to start looking:

1) The 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule (Pareto Principle) basically suggests that a small amount of inputs contributes to a much larger amount of outputs. Using this rule means to minimize time spent in the unproductive (or less productive) 80%.

In reality, you can’t simply cut everything that doesn’t directly contribute to your bottom line. Some things, however trivial, still need to get done. The purpose of 80/20 is to force you to be more ruthless in cutting time in areas that contribute little. Here are a few suggestions:

Cut e-mail time to invest more in larger projects.
Say no to people who want commitments that don’t contribute enough value.
Spend more studying core concepts and key terms than less important details.

2) Parkinson’s Law
Parkinson’s Law states that “work will fill the time available for its completion.” This is a side effect of focusing on doing work instead of getting projects completed. Give yourself strict deadlines and cultivate a desire to finish projects, not just check tasks off on a to-do list.

Here are some applications:

Set a timer for 55 minutes to finish a small project. When the timer sounds, you can’t continue working on it, so think fast, work fast and don’t waste time.
Take large projects down into smaller pieces. Strive to complete those pieces, rather than just working on the entire project as one big huge task.

3) Energy Management
Energy management, as opposed to time management, forces you to think of results as a function of energy, not time invested. You can’t management time anyway you can only really manage your focus. Working intensely for a short period of time can accomplish more than working for days, tired and distracted. When you are working in one of these periods of intensity, be where you are. No phone calls, no email, no nothing except the task.

You can’t do this forever or long. Pushing yourself is like a runner doing a surge in the middle of a race to push ahead of the completion at a crucial time in the race if you try to sprint the whole thing you will end up on the side of the road depleted, or in a low energy mode and actually accomplish less than if you passed it out. Here are some ideas:

Work in bursts or surges. Divide yourself between a complete focus surge, paced workflow and rest.
Finish things up. Don’t spread tasks that only take a few hours to compete over several days. Sit down and finish them. This method keeps your energies focused and satisfaction and esteem high.
Your health, rest and having fun do matter. Enslaving yourself to your work and being a work-o-holic can actually accomplish less. You can have an identity of yourself worth form your career and profession but working 7 days a week is not good. Let yourself be recharged when you need it.

4) Only Use Sharp Tools
There’s an old story of two lumberjacks in a tree-cutting contest. The first was a big burly fellow who instantly picked up a rusty axe and ran into the woods immediately to start chopping trees. The second, a lean tall fellow promptly sat down and spent 15 minutes sharpening his axe. 4 hours later he spent another 15 minutes to sharpen his ax again and take a quick breather while the other lumberjack kept whacking away at tree after tree. At the end of the day the tall lean fellow’s output was vastly greater than the strong burly lumberjack.

The moral? Take time to sharpen your tools and take a break every now and then.

5) Outsource things you don’t excel at.
Don’t waste your time doing things you don’t intend to be excellent at. Outsource or delegate them to someone who does have the knowhow and sharp tools to get it done quickly and correctly. And for the things you do want to master, make it a priority to sharpen your tool beyond what is necessary to cut. Skill saves time.

6) Rule With Numbers
Assumptions are the biggest waste of your time. Don’t guess at things. When your intuitions about the world don’t match the way it works, you can never be efficient. The only way to combat false assumptions is to test them and follow them up with numbers. The results of a test can save you hundreds of hours if it shows a current process has no impact or suggests a faster alternative.

Here are a few examples:

A/B Tests - Test out two different methods simultaneously. This can allow you to know with greater accuracy which method works best.
Track Numbers - Don’t just weigh yourself or count calories, track them. See how they go up, down or change over time.

7) The Rule of Quality
Is it better to be a perfectionist or sloppy? One can never get a project finished if another project you “finished” constantly requires being working on and fixed. That is the biggest time waste. When the extra input you need to invest exceeds the output gained you have made a crucial mistake.

Measure the difference between different amounts of time spent. Try doing your e-mail for 30, 60 and 90 minutes per day. Compare the effectiveness changes when you change the amount of time. Can you really justify spending two hours doing e-mail?
Compare the amount of time spent polishing up a project with the time needed for repairing it. If it takes more time to repair than polish, you’re quitting too soon. If repairs are draining your time and polishing is fast, slow down and be careful.

Larson note: Be in the now. More than ever do what you do best and what brings you the best bang for your buck. Use people in their best areas or places or in places where you do not excel in so you can maintain your competitiveness. Above all watch out for the Peter Principal: promoting people to their areas of uncompetence.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate


P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week for marketing your business. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

Monday, February 16, 2009

More Bottom Line Priority Thinking

Here are some more low-cost CRM ideas and strategies for when your money is tighter than tight.

1) Sit down with your people and explain the rationale behind company decisions.
2) Streamline your companies technology to make sure it is all interconnected so there is no redundancy of keyboarding and that there is a free flow of information between departments .
3) Develop a process and a culture to use equipment to its fullest potential
4) The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule) still holes so take a big gulp. Maybe it’s time to trim the lowest 20% of your performers in all areas of the company.
5) Empower people to author articles and white papers for publishing. Maybe put a section on your web site for frequently asked questions.
6) Pursue a proactive messaging outreach to all stakeholders of your company. You, owners, employees, suppliers and customers.
7) Deploy self-service applications where they do not diminish the customer’s interaction with you.
8) Utilize workforce management tools to increase your people’s efficiency. This might mean an upgrade in CRM software or a better access to what you now have.
9) Intensify training initiatives for your people. Training should not be a punishment exercise use when something goes bad but a proactive tool.
10) Move CSR out of the domain of a few and into the hands of all your front line people.

Larson note: Challenge yourself and your people to be proactive with knowledge If you reward the wrong things you will have knowledge mongers and fiefdoms built up where sales, marketing, customer relation people horde their own information as a safety tool and net. Get your team pulling together or they will pull you apart

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations a week for marketing your business. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Customer Relations Management

The Week Ahead for February 16-20, 2009

Monday:
Tuesday:
Wednesday: January housing starts, January industrial production
Thursday: Weekly initial jobless claims, January producers index, January leading economic indicators
Friday: January consumer price index

Larson note: Last week we had an unexpected surprise in the retail sales. That one cought me totally off guard. This week? I think there will start to show how we are bottoming out in this mess and that there is a upswing on the horizon. Nothing major but we should start to see something


Howard’s out of office public schedule for the week:
Monday:
6:30am Group running training Midtown (free)Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Thursday: 6:30am Group running training at Midtown (free)
Friday:

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/larsonassoc1979/1
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations per week to talk about marketing and your business. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

P.P.P.S, subscribe to our newsletter "Mastering Marketing Monthly" at larsonassoc1980@yahoo.com

Friday, February 13, 2009

Watch All the Super Bowl Spots

From Bud to Pepsi to Cash4Gold, They're All Here:

http://adage.com/article?article_id=134136

Did you miss one of the Super Bowl ads? Never fear, Ad Age gathered them all up and put them here http://adage.com/article?article_id=134136 for your viewing pleasure. From the Budweiser Clydesdales to the SoBe Lizards, watch them all as often as you like.

Larson note: I was not impressed with this year’s crop of Super Bowl ads. On the whole they lacked good advertising practices. They were not well made. They did not get there message across easily and they did not stand out in my mind to be remembered and talk about around the water cooler the next day. But then what know, they only want me to spend money on their products and services. Try again guys.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free ½ hour consultations for marketing your business. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Advertising age

New Web Site Going Up

Ok its happening. Yes finally. After a few set-backs and an out of business web site designer last year, the new Larson & Associates set is officially under development and construction at:

http://www.larsonassociates.ws/

This site will as all sites are a work in process.

Phase 1: Will entail me putting down the general concept in basic pages; get the flow going, working on some of the basic text, number of pages, page names and all that good web type stuff. You know, key words, page descriptions, etc.

Phase 2: Will be (is) going on at the same time will entail interviewing web designers to make the final (ongoing) edition of the site. This same person (company) will become my official web designer of choice and will have first rights on all and any web work that my company takes in. I believe that if I trust them to make my site and people looking at my site like what they see, that is what they are buying.

Phase 3: Get new professional site up and running.

Phase 4: Will be (is) ongoing is the search engine submission of the site to get it listed. This will be done internally until a professional company is found to take over the task. I have done this so I do know what I’m doing. Again if I do outsource this function this company will become my official web submission/optimization company of choice and rather than do the submissions as an internal function this will be outsourced to this company.

Phase 5: Start phase 3 all over again.

Larson note: This will be a work in progress and I encourage you to comment and make suggestions as to what and how a web site should work, look and function. I learned long ago that I need to accept other peoples comments and take it all in, think about it and use what is useful and through the rest away. So I hope you will join me in this journey as we make the new online Larson site. It’s for you our customers and prospects. We only stand behind the site with professional advertising & marketing services.

If you noticed here, I am or will be outsourcing many of the things you might think I would do internally. Think again.

Larson & Associates is a company that does some things such as New Account Acquisition and Target Guerrilla Marketing as an internal function, but in this, we are asking companies to outsource some of their sales and marketing functions to us. We in kind, outsource some of those functions to others who can do it better to them.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. Twice a week we offer 2 free ½ hour consultations for marketing your business. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Going on Twitter?

Some users of Twitter have turned the issue of followers into a bit of popularity contest. PR and marketing pros follow thousands of people to keep an ear to the market, a titled one but still there is some street talk going on and in some cases to help tout their brands over the service.

But following a lot of people can create an unnecessary distraction that will make the service useless for other than tracking comments.

When choosing to follow someone I would hope they have some kind of connection to you or your business should bring something compelling to your life. Now I will admit I’m in or on twitter for business and to make money, friendship is (sorry) secondary. If we become friends wonderful, but it is not my 1st objective

Starting with people you know. When you sign up for Twitter, you will be promoted to search for friends from your Gmail or Yahoo Mail accounts and show if you are on the service. Also you can use Twitter's search tool to look for people that might be twittering in your field. I would rather search for people in my prospect demographics profile but that’s me.

You don't need to know these people personally, that can grow in time, but they should relate to your interests or objectives somehow. You also might want to look for experts in your industry who might publish links to things they're reading with short comments on it so you can get their ideas on things.

Not long after you join, people will begin following you. Before you follow back, make sure you're going to get something substantive out of their tweets. I am always scratching my head on who to follow and who to STOP following.

I would urge you to somehow start to follow at least 100 people right away. Then you should be looking at quality people, but it's important get into the Twitter foray and see how information moves in and around you.

With Twitter, information flows to you, and from you On Twitter, after you select followers, the information just comes. The idea is getting in the flow of things and playing around with it a bit.

Larson note: There is one good reason to follow lots and lots of people provided they also follow you. CLICKS! Plan and simple, clicks. If you have a blog or site you want people to see, view or read, if you post it on twitter your link will get a 4% Click though, basically for free, see below for the study from Mike Seidle is the CEO of ProBlogService

Twitter Clickthrough Rates
Update 1-28-09: Compare Twitter’s average 4% CTR to the .03%-.11% CTR on FaceBook. It’s becoming increasingly clear that ads don’t get it done on social networks.
I’ve been running an experiment with four twitter profiles to find out what a good click through rate (CTR) is on Twitter. What I found out was kind of shocking and amazing: Twitter seems to have a 4% clickthrough rate. No wonder the affiliate marketers, spammers and get rich quick crowd are flocking to it. 4% CTR is outstanding in any internet advertising program:



Indymike –- 4.17 % average clickthrough rate, >800 followers
Profile “N” — 4.05 % clickthrough rate, >300 followers
Profile “M” – 4.2 % clickthrough rate, >200 followers
Profile “L” — 3.8 % clickthrough rate, > 50 followers

So figure out why you are a twit, your ideas and reasons for being there and then make it happen. Twitter like all SM sites are for active participation, even is as al lurker, not passive.

Extra extra, just learned a new bird dog trick for twitter, Wait till I start using it for myself and customers!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/larsonassoc1979/1
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. Twice a week we offer 2 free ½ hour consultations for marketing your business. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

*Source: Mike Seidle, C.G. Lynch

Blogging For Your Business

If you follow my blog, thank you.

But why do I do it? I do it for a few reasons.

1) It keeps me sharp, I read and review mountains of stuff every day, some is good and some is not worth the time or effort (to me) to do anything with. My pile of stuff of unfinished articles and information is a paper salesman’s dream.

2) It is an advertising tool. Yes I do get business off of the blogs I put out. I use a soft sell and give hard and fast facts and ideas so that if someone wants to go off and do it themselves fine. Go for it. This is not brain surgery even if I have been in the advertising/marketing industry for over 30 years. There are rules to follow, because they work but you can do this.

3) I use what I write. Doing this forces me to try things out. Experiment, Play. I know I don’t have all the answers. I know I don’t know all the tools that are out there so I need to keep looking searching, trying experimenting and then the rules keep changing on me so why not go out and have some fun in this crazy world of promotion.

Now if you want to venture into the world of blogging in any way shape or form keep reading and think before you write:

1) Blogging is somewhat of a fad! That doesn’t mean there isn’t any long-term value or that it will disappear soon or ever. There is a large growth of the blogosphere and I seem a lot of people who will stop soon. Blogging does have long term value and blogging will be a useful and valuable tool for a long time to come. But keep it in its place and perspective

2) You can’t just go out and blog on whatever you think is cool and exciting and expect to build a large long term audience. You need to keep focused. You need to keep nitched into the area you know and can keep writing about. If you are already famous, you might be an exception. If you’ve got millions of raving fans, yes, you can blog on whatever you want and they’ll read it. However you’ll never build millions of raving fans this way. So you will need to pick a focus for your blog and stick to it in order to succeed.

3) Don’t give up your day job to blog. Less than 1% of bloggers will do blogging fulltime and professionally, and those that do will spent time on blog related activities you might not consider “real blogging,” like dealing with advertising, joint ventures, creating info products, etc., you know, business stuff. Blogging can be a business, whether you blog fulltime for yourself, as a paid staff writer for a blog network, or even if you just make a few extra bucks from your own blog. Don’t count on blogging paying the bills. It’s just not going to happen.

Larson note: I like what I do and blogging lets me enjoy it even more. I tell my people that if they are not offered a new job by someone once a month they are not doing a good enough job. Even I get offers, and own the place.

The only other point I would put in is that if you cannot bog at least 3 times a week you will never gather a following. Maybe my 5 to 15 times a week is excess, but then this is My Blog.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/larsonassoc1979/1
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. Twice a week we offer 2 free ½ hour consultations for marketing your business. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

When the Bottom Line is the Top Priority

Here are some low-cost or no-cost CRM strategies for when money is tight—plus counterintuitive approaches to spending your way out of the recession.

Closely monitor the returns on each of your channels to ensure they're worth the investment.
Integrate your marketing channels to avoid redundancy and create a comprehensive view of the customer.
Create an internal and/or external blog or discussion board where customers and employees can communicate with upper-level management to create transparency and solicit input.
Try out some virtual events over physical ones.
Tap into social networks for advice from your peers and maybe customers.
Analytics. Analytics. Analytics. (Google Analytics is free!)
Get out of your office. Go into the community and talk to your consumers.
Improve the usability of your customer-facing channels—especially your Web site.
Cost-per-acquisition networks (e.g., TrialPay) only charge when you make a sale.
Nurture your leads. Keep in contact, so when they are ready, you’re not starting from scratch.

Larson note: Keep it simple. Keep it cost effective and make use it is paying you back what it is suppose to, or drop it. Unless your name is Santa Clause you are not in business to lose money. So keep your focus tight and monitor all marketing expenditures in both time and money as to how they play out in your overall ROI.

I word of caution here is to look past the simple dollars and cents. You might be doing something that has a significant effect somewhere else in your over all marketing indicatives and is a catalyst for that channel. So don’t cut your nose off to save a penny. Marketing is an art, a rhythm of gut feelings that have certain rules that we follow, yet know when to deviate away from them. As a mentor of mine once told me, know the rules so you know when it makes sense to break them.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/larsonassoc1979/1
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. Twice a week we offer 2 free ½ hour consultations for marketing your business. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 3o minutes today.

*Source: CRM magazine

Starbucks Rewarding Loyalty

Starbucks has launched a new loyalty program as they looks for better customer engagement.

Starbucks has tapped Draftfcb to assist with direct marketing, loyalty and CRM efforts as the company even as the company enters a cost-saving and retention mode.

The program will focus on the card-based CRM program, Starbucks Card Rewards, that the coffee chain launched last spring, and its upgrade, Starbucks Gold Rewards, which launched in October.

According to a company release, “Positive progress has been recorded from customer response to the new Starbucks gold card,” and the rewards program now has more than 500,000 members, averaging 15 visits a month and spending 10% more per visit than non-members.

Starbucks needs these valuable customers now more than ever, with same-store sales down 9% in the first quarter over the same period last year. The declining economy and an upswing in lower-cost competition from McDonald's and other fast-food chains has keeping the pot empty in reguards to the company's revenues, which in the US fell 6% to $2 billion in the first quarter.

“In the midst of the weakening global consumer environment, Starbucks is following a well-developed plan to strengthen our business through more efficient operations and by preserving the fundamental strengths and values of our brand,” said Howard Schultz, chairman, president and CEO of Starbucks, in a statement. “We remain focused on driving the discipline and rigor necessary to create long-term shareholder value, and we are taking aggressive steps to excite customers by providing relevant value and innovation, even during this challenging time.”

As a cost-cutting measure, the coffee company is eliminating 6,000 retail jobs and 700 corporate jobs. The higher-ups are feeling the pinch, too: Executives did not receive bonuses in 2008, and base salaries were frozen for 2009.

On top of boosting loyalty efforts, the company also is said to be exploring “value menu” options to lure customers.

Larson note: 10% more spending per stop is worth rewarding isn’t it? Do you have a club? You could you know. Clubs are easy to form and if done right customers love them as much as they like the usual special discounts that go with them. As writing in a previous blog if you have a prememer showing of new merchandic or stock for members only it can go along way.

If you need or want special membership cards you can have “credit card” style cards produced for yourself. (yes we make cards like that here at Larson’s) of you can have paper cards made up or even printed off your computer printer and laminated.

Have a member’s only showing, anything it takes to help make people feel special and they will come back for more.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/larsonassoc1979/1
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. Twice a week we offer 2 free ½ hour consultations for marketing your business.
Call or email to get your spot today.


*Source: Lauren BellFebruary, Ad age,

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Obama Overtakes Hanks

President Displaces Tom Hanks of Most Influential Celebs.

According to the latest data from the consumer-research firm Davie Brown Entertainment, President Barack Obama has displaced Academy Award winner Tom Hanks as the nation's most influential celebrity.

For the last two years, Mr. Hanks has ranked atop the Davie Brown Index (DBI), an independently conducted survey that brand marketers and advertising agencies use to determine a celebrity's ability to influence consumer brand affinities and affect purchasing decisions.

Of the eight key attributes, Mr. Obama ranks first in four of categories: "trust," "influence," "trendsetter," and "breakthrough." The president also ranks second in terms of "aspirational" ratings, which reflect the degree to which respondents felt the celebrity has a life to which they would aspire, behind only Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Ironically, the president ranked fifth in the index's "endorsement" category, which reflects the degree to which consumers identify the celebrity as being an effective product spokesperson. In that category he finished just below Oprah Winfrey, the talk-show host whose October 2007 endorsement of Mr. Obama paved the way for his presidency.

Even more intriguing about the most recent Davie Brown Index is that eight of the top 10 highest-regarded public personalities in America are African-Americans: After Messrs. Obama and Hanks, the list is rounded out by actor Will Smith (No. 3); Michael Jordan (No. 4); Morgan Freeman (No. 5); Denzel Washington (No. 7); Michelle Obama (No. 8); Oprah Winfrey (No. 9) and Tiger Woods (No. 10).

In fact, the only other white celebrity to crack the DBI's top 10 was George Clooney, clocking in at No. 6.

Ranking over 1,000 celebs, the DBI is powered by a 4.5 million-person research panel, and is published four times a year.

Larson note: For years getting and having a celebrity to endorse you or your product has been the norm. How much people really pay attention to this I sometimes wonder, but then I am a cynical old man. Yet, if you had a celebrity you could use to promote yourself would you?

Sadly (not) I do. In my coaching and training business I am not ashamed that on one of my sites I have has a picture of me with Olympic runner and Illinois great,
Craig Virgin.
If you got it
flaunt it.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/larsonassoc1979/1
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.S.S. If you are in Credit Cards I have just signed up the services of an EXPERICENED merchant service salesperson. Interested in using him, call today.

*Source: Claude Brodesser-Akner, Ad age, Photo Credit: Jason Innes

Monday, February 9, 2009

Pepsi Places Will.i.am Ad in Grammys

Pepsi with Will.i.am will be placing an ad to appear immediately after the singer presents a Grammy award.
Add Image

Pepsi has made certain that after singer Will.i.am presents an award Sunday evening, a special "bumper" featuring the rapper's likeness will appear, then segue into a recently launched Pepsi ad featuring both Will.i.am and Bob Dylan. By arranging for the ad to appear immediately after Will.i.am will be on the screen, Pepsi hopes in this way to make the commercial more relevant to the viewing audience.

For decades, marketers ran their ads on TV by requesting placement that wasn't any more specific than Thursday prime time, or during a specific part of the day, or sometimes against a specific show. Now, with more consumers not just going to the refrigerator during a commercial they are fast-forwarding past the commercial breaks and with the economy wreaking havoc on the ad business, networks are willing to change their practices to guarantee that ads appear in more-specific places and for more-specific purposes.

At Pepsi, there seems to be a definite push to use network shows to whet consumer appetite for a particular commercial, rather than just peppering viewers with the same ad over and over again.

The people who manage the Grammys are known to guard the integrity of their show, awards, and property. These days, however, with networks' live ratings in dropping and marketers' ad commitments in flux or even being canceled, allowing ad tie-ins like this can mean the difference between lost revenue, found revenue and saved revenue.

Or course lets us not forget that in the aiding of the transition from awards-show moment to Pepsi plug is the fact that Pepsi’s advertising agency of record, TBWA also serves as the Grammys' ad agency. The ad shop has created a promotion for the awards program showing celebrity faces made out of the words of songs that have influenced them. Will.i.am's face, built out of song titles, will be seen during the "bumper" between his on-air moment and the Pepsi spot.

Larson note: You do what you got to do. Money talks and revenue in a down turn is increasing important so why not push the buttons and pull the levers of progress. If you had a record shop wouldn’t you use a “friend” who is well known? Do you? If you had a shoe store and could get a “friend who is not a well know actress to wear a pair of your shoes would you? Should you?

Now might be a good time to call in that favor.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/larsonassoc1979/1
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.S.S. If you are in Credit Cards I have just signed up the services of an EXPERICENED merchant service salesperson. Interested in using him, call today.

*Source: Brian Steinberg, Ad age

The Week Ahead for February 9-13, 2009

Monday:
Tuesday: December wholesale inventories
Wednesday: December trade balance
Thursday: Weekly initial jobless claims, January retail sales, December business inventories
Friday: February University of Michigan consumer sentiment index

Larson note: Good news this week? Don’t hold your breath. If there is anything good to report it is that the economy is starting to bottom out. We still have more unemployment to drop but I am looking for April/May as the time period where business can begin to take a collective sign and start to more on.

As for us here at Larson’s we brought a new account into the Larson family and look to move forward with our 2009 business plan as written in this year’s growth plan and adding 1 new associate by the end of March.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
larsonassoc1975@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/larsonassoc1979/1
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.