Steps Toward Better Direct Marketing

Digital printing today provides for many tools to employ during your direct marketing campaigns. Postcard printing provides for highly cost effective postcard marketing campaigns. Oftentimes the limited "real estate" on a postcard forces a marketer to focus their message with beneficial results. Having to drill down to the core basics is a good exercise in identifying your product's core strengths.

During the holiday season smart business owners print greeting cards to send to all major customers and prospects. This personalized touch goes a far way to cementing customer relationships. Pictures of staff included on the card serve to personify your business and create a personal relationship with those you deal with.

Business brochures are excellent tools when the volume of data you must convey is large. Professionally done, a business brochure is the perfect choice for many types of businesses. Many business owners fail to realize that not all prospects will proactively search them out online. Direct mail remains the only way to reach many potential prospects.

The design and colors employed in your postcard printing and when you print greeting cards is important. Each business and industry is unique and requires a different decorum. One running an extreme sports business would obviously not employ the same tactics as someone running a managed care home. You must know which tactic is right for you.

The key therefore is to fully know your audience. Attempting to communicate with the unknown is a sure formula for failure. Market research can be had in many forums. The interactive nature of the Internet provides for good customer and prospect feedback. A little extra postcard printing to allow for return feedback from customers is also well worth the expense.

Your actual copy within materials is obviously the key. Firstly, you must create urgency. Human nature is such that action is usually not taken until it is necessary. People are natural procrastinators. Your copy must create the requisite urgency which leads to your call to action. The copy, colors and design must all work towards this end.

Secondly, you must position your product or service as the ideal solution to the urgent situation you have created. You must make a good case why the customer needs to go with you and not one of your competitors. Differentiating yourself from other products is a step many unfortunately fail to do.

Finally, the urgency you create must inspire immediate action. The mind quickly forgets once it moves on to other things. Unless your copy prompts action it may very well be quickly forgotten. You must fully illustrate why the customer must take action now and not later.

These simple tips can greatly improve your direct mail ROI. Failure to adhere to a marketing plan translates to wasted dollars and squandered sales.


Visit My Online Blog

Make Money Fast in 30 Minutes a Day With This One

If you want to enjoy online business success, then this business will give you it in 30 minutes or less a day. Anyone can learn it and you only need a few hundred dollars, to open it up and you're all set to make big profits.

Before we look at this business in more depth, let's list the advantages out and you will see why it's such a great opportunity to make money fast.

Here are the advantages.

- You don't need much to start just $500.00

- You can borrow $95,000 to invest against it - no credit checks required!

- You can learn it in about 14 days

- You can run it in 30 minutes a day

- There is never a recession

- You don't need any staff or stock just a PC and an internet connection

- You can run it from your home

- You can seek profits everyday.

And the business is becoming a currency trader from home - Hang on! I couldn't do that it's too hard, complicated and I know nothing about it, you may say but read on and this is not a problem.

The business is easy to learn, let me ask you a question:

Can you read a graph and spot repetitive price patterns?

Of course you can, with a little practice and you can spot and trade changes on a currency chart.

Currency trading is not complicated,it's a simple business and can be learned by anyone. The fact you know nothing about it is not an obstacle with the right training and study.

The Major Advantage!

Is if you put down $500 in your trading account, your broker will grant you a leverage of 200:1, allowing you to trade $100,000. This means your profit potential is huge - but of course it's a double edged sword and leverage can work for or against you.

If you trade with discipline and learn to cut your losses quickly and run the big forex trends, you can make a lot of money.

The key to this business is cutting losses quickly (there your overhead lets say), then making your profits by running your winners. In this business, you simply have to keep your losses small and take them cheerfully and you can win.

The above of course requires discipline but that's a learned skill to.

If you have been looking around for online business success this one can give it to you. If you have a burring desire to succeed and a willingness to learn you can do it and get on the road to a great second income or even the road to financial freedom.

If you want to succeed in this business, you can and its one of the few, where the road to online business success is open to anyone with desire, belief and a willingness to learn.

It's a challenge - but that's what life is all about and this is a challenge you can win, discover the world of currency trading and you maybe glad you did.

Visit My Online Blog

Work911 Ezine - Some free not-so-light reading for the Summer months, news on book on small business.

July 7- 2008 - Contents - Free Summer Reading and Learning Content

Coming Soon News:

Robert Bacal and Nancy Moore have almost completed the first draft of
Perfect Phrases For Small Business, which is scheduled to be published
by McGraw-Hill in October, 2008 (although I suspect it will be a bit
later). We'll be renovating our small business site and blog (http://
smallbusiness411.org) soon, and including more details about the
upcoming book. For those of you who would like to see the entire list
of books by Bacal, or order them, may we direct you to
http://www.work911.com/books/booksbybacal.htm . From there you can
order his books from amazon.com.

In This Issue:

In this special summer issue we're offering you some free Summer
Reading resources. Ok. They may not be light reading but if you want
to do some learning or professional development during the Summer,
here's some good choices. All the items here are available free of
charge unless otherwise indicated. If you want to browse a huge
selection of free promotional publications ranging from magazines, e-
books, whitepaper through to free webinars, go to http://workhelp.tradepub.com

Our Training Blog

In addition to the excellent free articles and resources at The
Training and Development Center at http://thetrainingworld.com, we
also have a blog with some irreverent, candid and controversial
remarks by Robert Bacal. You can enter the blog at http://thetrainingworld.com/wp
. Read Robert's views on what's wrong with trainers and the training
profession.

Vulnerability Management For Dummies (E-book)

This is a free Ebook on the topic of computer network security, but
it's not just for huge corporations. If you have even a small network
that you want to keep secure, and to ensure your data is safe, no
matter whether it's business numbers or personal photos, check this
out. Ideal for those in charge of networks. Grab it at
http://workhelp.tradepub.com/c/pubRD.mpl?sr=oc&_t=oc:&pc=w_qa18

Free - Coaching Skills For On-The-Job Trainers Manual

This is a free manual designed to cover off coaching skills for
trainers and managers who do on the job training. It's produced by the
CDS, Workplace Safety and Health Division.

You can get it in pdf format free of charge by clicking on this
address: http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/mining/pubs/pdfs/2005-146.pdf

It's in the form of a workbook with exercises. Watch out for common
training and learning myths embedded in the text, which goes to show
you that even so called experts repeat misconceptions about learning.

Getting the Most for Every Dollar: Tools and Strategies for Expense
Management at Mid-Size Companies

For the sixth consecutive year, American Express has teamed up with
CFO Research Services to identify how finance executives manage
spending programs to yield sustained business results. This year's
research, Getting the Most for Every Dollar, is a guide for CFOs
interested in gaining insight on how other Middle Market companies can
strike the appropriate balance in achieving price, service and quality
to manage indirect expenses. Get it here:

http://workhelp.tradepub.com/c/pubRD.mpl?sr=oc&_t=oc:&pc=w_amex01

Help With Angry and Hostile Customers

Get free chapters from our book, Defusing Hostile Customers at our
customer service resource center. To go direct, the address is:
http://customerservicezone.com/products/defusingcustomersbook.htm

The chapters are towards the end of the page.

Some of Robert's Favorites

There are several topics that are dear to my heart and mind. One is
performance management, and the other is talent management. Here are
some available free publications on these.

The Looming Leadership Void: Identifying, Developing, and Retaining
Your Top Talent http://workhelp.tradepub.com/c/pubRD.mpl?sr=oc&_t=oc:&pc=w_tale08

The daunting combination of the high volumes of outbound talent and
the low levels of available skilled labor have brought into focus the
need for succession planning - a combination of process, tools, and
disciplines that enable an organization to plan for anticipated
leadership needs as well as identify, develop, retain, and allocate
key talent.

The Business Case for Performance Management Systems
http://workhelp.tradepub.com/c/pubRD.mpl?sr=oc&_t=oc:&pc=w_tale07

This white paper, a compilation of survey responses from 245
organizations, is a roadmap for organizations that desire to achieve
superior performance through Best-in-Class use of succession planning
with regards to strategy, capabilities, and technology utilization.

Leading companies use self-service performance management systems to
manage performance reviews online. But what are the business drivers?
And how do you justify the costs? Read this handbook and build a
winning business case that successfully communicates the benefits of
ROI and employee performance.

Understanding Business Intelligence and Your Bottom Line
http://workhelp.tradepub.com/c/pubRD.mpl?sr=oc&_t=oc:&pc=w_sagb13

Business Intelligence (BI) is neither a product nor a system, it is an
umbrella term that combines architectures, applications, and
databases. It enables the real-time, interactive access, analysis, and
manipulation of information, which provides the business community
with easy access to business data. BI analyzes data—the data
businesses generate through transactions or by other kinds of business
activities—and helps businesses by analyzing the past and present
business situations and performances. By giving this valuable insight,
BI helps decision-makers make more informed decisions and supplies end-
users with critical business information on their customers or
partners, including information on behaviors and trends.

Given that virtually all small and midsized businesses (SMBs) can
benefit from BI tools, the real question is how much of this
technology constitutes a good investment of time and energy? Most of
the industrial-strength, BI-related tools cater more to the larger
enterprises whose business structures are highly complex and whose
budgets can accommodate the lofty implementation expenditures. While
many of these vendors would like you to think that their pricey, high-
end solutions are absolutely necessary for the SMB sector as well, our
research indicates otherwise.

Our Sites:

Just a quick summary of our sites that have information on the
following topics:

Leadership Resource Center: http://work911.com/leadership-development/index.html

Communication Resource Center: http://www.work911.com/communication/index.htm

Conflict (both workplace and family) http://conflict911.com

Business, Strategic and Personal Planning: http://www.work911.com/planningmaster/index.html

Performance Management & Appraisal: http://performance-appraisals.org

Customer Service: http://customerservicezone.com

Our Main Site: http://www.work911.com

Multi-Purpose Articles Database: http://www.articles911.com

To new subscribers: The work911 newsletter is published no more than
once a week (but usually no more than once a month) and contains
articles on all things work related, and contains other work related
resources, and updates about our sites, and their contents. Past
history indicates we publish about every ten days. Subscribe at
http://work911.com/newsletter.htm

Don't forget that you can access free, useable previews of over twenty
of our books and helpcards at:

http://www.work911.com/products

and that we continue to offer special freebie offers and discounts to
our newsletter subscribers!

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Work911 Ezine" group.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to Work911-Ezine-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Work911-Ezine
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

How to Get Your Business Card Into People’s Hands

Once you’ve done some stellar business card printing, you’re ready to get those little gems out to the masses and into people’s hands. But you can’t just stop people on the street and say “Here, please take my business card and keep it for future use.”Unfortunately it’s not that easy to get people to accept your business card. But it can be done.

Use the following tips to get your business cards out to the public:

Always have cards with you. You never know when an opportunity might arise, so keep a stash on you, in your car, at your desk, at home – everywhere. Many important business card exchanges have happened over the weekend at unlikely places (like when you’re going out to eat and you see someone important).

Hand out clean cards. No one wants a dingy or frayed business card. Make sure the ones you hand out are clean from pen marks or scruff marks. The best way to keep your cards clean and neat is to invest in a business card case. If you get a nice card case, which can even add to your image when you fish out a business card from your fancy case.

Ask for business cards. Generally, if you show interest in someone and ask for their card, it’s natural for that person to ask for your card in exchange. Show good business card etiquette by taking the time to actually read the card, and try to compliment the logo or card design. You can also strike up some other small talk based on the card.

Hang your card on a community bulletin board. Many libraries and local restaurants have community bulletin boards for people to hang up flyers and other materials. Take advantage of this free advertising and tack up some color business cards that will catch people’s eyes as they are walking past.

Practice your business card presentation. If you fumble around to get your cards out and just say “Here,” the receiver won’t be impressed by your well designed business card because your presentation was sloppy. Practice how you’ll get your business cards out of their holding place and what you’ll say as you hand it off.

Don’t ask someone of higher rank for their business card until they ask for yours. This is an unspoken etiquette rule. It’s rude to offer your card or ask for a person of higher rank for their card first. Let them initiate the exchange.

Hand out more than one card at a time. If you hand out two or more cards at a time, people can pass your card along to someone else. It helps if you make a comment like “If you know anyone who could use my services, please have them call me.”
Visit My Online Blog