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Small Business Taxes Gone Wild In California

I estimate that 99% of Californians do not understand the implications of the new small business tax that Governor Jerry Brown signed into law yesterday. This law would mandates online sellers like Amazon.com and Overstock.com to start collecting sales taxes on items shipped to California if they have some sort of relationship with an affiliate. [...]

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You Got the Opt-in, Now What? Here Are Some Top Email Strategies

The first part of email marketing is to get your visitor to opt-in your email list. Once they opt-in, the visitor becomes a prospect. The second part of email marketing is to move the prospect along your marketing funnel towards them becoming a customer. An important element of that is relationship marketing done via trust. [...]

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Linkedin Company Page Follows the Leaders Facebook and Yelp

There was a time when Linkedin was cool. Well, maybe “cool” is too strong of a word for this early social networking site. Let’s just say that Linkedin was *the* place to network as a business professional. You sign up for Linkedin, you make connections with people you work with, you ask for a recommendation, [...]

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A Way to Promote Your Business with Facebook Events

Let’s assume you’ve already set up your own Facebook profile and a separate Facebook Page for your business. Maybe you’ve also created a Facebook Group that relates to a type of product or service that your business provides. What are some ways that you can promote the special events your business sponsors? One way is [...]

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How to Remove Antispyware Soft

Marketing online is fraught with risks. One category is business risk. The other category is technical risk. Business risk is when you try to execute a digital marketing strategy and it fails. Technical risk includes the risk of not implementing your websites and/or scripts correctly. But technical risk also includes the risk from cyber-attacks. One of the most common form is viruses pretending to be a friendly program ... like a trojan horse. This blog is about how to remove Antispyware Soft. … Read More...

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Web Logo Design Important for Branding

Your web logo design is an essential component of branding.

Many website businesses don’t even have a logo. Instead, they rely on color schemes or page layouts to help customers identify the business. This is not enough. Think about large household names like IBM or Microsoft. Who doesn’t recognize their logos? The IBM website is really plain Jane, with the basic blue and white corporate looking page. However, their logo is distinctive. Microsoft has a logo which is a bit more colorful, but just as easily identified. Logos are a major component of branding. Every marketing piece, product label and stationery is embellished with the company logo.

Let’s say your website does not have a logo, but you do have an HTML e-newsletter. When you send out your newsletter, using the color scheme of your home page, your readers are not going to easily identify with a simple color scheme. There are, after all, only so many color combinations. However, with a good web logo design, readers don’t need to think at all about who you are. A glance at your logo is all it takes.

A carefully planned web logo design creates several psychological advantages. First, it’s visually appealing. It’s interesting, but not too ornate. It’s different enough to be easily identified and associated with your business. The psychological effects of such a web logo design? It creates a warm and fuzzy feel, with a friendly aspect. For example, let’s say your sister sends you letters regularly, using stationery decorated with roses, which also appear on the envelope. When the mail comes, her letter stands out from the crowd. It’s the piece you’ll open first. This is what branding is all about.

It’s clear that a good web logo design can help identify you, as well as subtly creating a positive feel towards you and your business. Your logo deserves plenty of thought and research, because you do not want to change it. This will only create confusion in the mind of your visitor. Think about the Morton salt box, with the girl holding the umbrella. This company has been around for a long time. While they’ve occasionally made small changes to update the image, this logo is still easily identifiable.

So, how does the web logo design process begin? You’ll first want to surf around to your competitor’s sites and see what they’ve done. If you’re in the gardening business or any kind of ‘green’ business, you may be surprised to find that green and yellow ochre are the most common colors used. It’s not smart to go along with the crowd, in this case. This color branding concept has been overdone. You need to think outside the box in order to distinguish your business from theirs.

Here’s just one example of a good web logo design: I remember one garden site I purchased supplies from, subscribing to their newsletter as well. Their logo was a large red tomato, a simple photo placed against a white background. It was truly eye catching. Following my purchase, some months later, I received a piece of snail mail, their seasonal catalog, bearing their distinctive logo on the front. The catalog was shrink-wrapped in plastic and contained a frig magnet – you guessed it – a large red tomato. It is both cute, useful and eye catching. It’s still on my frig. Every time I see it, I think of that company. What a smart move!

If you’re not artistic, hire a graphic designer to create your web logo design. It’s worth every penny. You want your customers to remember you in a positive light. You don’t have to be as big as IBM to accomplish this. All it takes is a good web logo design!

You can also contact us 925-895-1837 to handle the web logo design for your business.

Business Promotional Items That Produce Buzz and Brand

Here are some internet business promotional ideas that can create buzz and help brand your business.

When you own a small business or work for yourself, you need to create a buzz in the community and spread the word on the internet. Competition is fierce online and offline, so you need to blow your own horn if you want to stay in business. There are many avenues you can explore to reach your objective. Successful marketing depends on strategies that get your business in front of as many potential customers as possible. One very fruitful avenue lies in business promotional items.

When you think of what makes you remember a particular business, such tangible items as pens, magnets and business cards come to mind. However, beyond the brick and mortar retail strategies, you have opportunities for more unconventional business promotional items that work well on the internet.

Let’s say you’re selling electronic widgets. There are many, many websites selling electronic gear. You’ve got to have something different, something more to offer your visitors. This is often described as a unique selling point or USP. You give your visitors valuable information or a freebie they won’t find any where else. One excellent business promotional item for the electronics internet seller is the ebook. Compile a short consumer buyers guide of the various products you sell, describing the pros and cons of each. Try putting it into a list format. People like lists. Think David Letterman and his “top 10 lists.” Your customers have different requirements and selling points. You can deliver the goods with a free ebook that they can download. The ebook also serves as a powerful business promotional item.

Be creative. A free e-newsletter can attract quite an audience for visitors who are interested but still on the fence. If you provide useful information, feature articles and links to freebies and such, your visitor may just get hooked on your website as a valued resource. This form of business promotional items costs little, but can pay big time. Your subscriber may pass your e-newsletter on to a friend who also finds your business interesting enough to become a new subscriber. Referral traffic is what it’s all about.

Other effective business promotional items include brochures on your products with your business name and website address. A good brochure design is a simple task for a graphic designer. The brochure can be downloaded and generate lots of business. If your business is food, offer free recipes your visitor can print right from home. Design a catchy logo with your website address that prints right along with the recipe. Your visitor will remember where they found this information.

The trick to spending your time and money wisely on business promotional items is providing your visitor with information they can use, while branding all of your materials. Keeping your name in front of your customer is the key to success.

Creative Advertising Inspires People To Take Action

Creative Advertising that is truly effective inspires people to take action. The action that people take is at the direction of the advertiser…scary but true. I know some people who professed to not be interested in branding and brand identity. Yet, these same folks would comment when they see an interesting commercial. But creative advertising goes beyond interesting commercials.

The really creative advertisors are the pioneers and risk takers in their field. Ideas like guerilla marketing, one-on-one marketing, viral marketing, tell-a-friend marketing, and others stared out as risky campaigns. Now they are the bread-and-butter of the advertising industry.

In what I do, advertising creatively is really important. I see to it that my diverse range of clients get their ads noticed. Even within my family, for example, my sister sells pet clothing in a competitive market. There are several big designers who market heavily in her metro area so creative advertising is a must. One of the most creative branding campaign that she did was borrowed from another industry — liquor and tobacco. You see, liquor and tobacco companies learned the power of giveaways, contests, and raffles inside bars at night. She used that form of advertising and and staged guerilla floor shows to show off some of her products. She gave out free clothing, sent out pet models dressed in her latest garb to draw attention to her latest fashion designs.

Her advertising tactic generated a ton of traffic and revenue putting her way ahead of her competitors. In fashion, image is everything. That is the whole point of that business. But creative advertising is also important for more “conventional” businesses too. For example, saturating a neighborhood with unconventional advertisements can get excellent results. I recently saw realtor type signs all over my town. What struck me was the message on the signs. I expected to see “Open House” or “House For Sale” or something like that. Rather, the sign said, “It’s coming…” or “Watch for the event this Sunday…” I was intrigued.

For a week straight, all people saw were these signs. When Sunday came, the signs pointed to an address. A number of the signs even directed people towards the address by being strategically placed. Curious, I drove along and followed the signs. Guess what I saw at the end? — a church! The signs were leading me to a new church!

Creative advertising need not be on a grand scale to work. Just look at Google PPC ads. These are small ads whose goal is to entice people to click. Clicking is the desired action of the marketer who created those ads. Once someone clicks, they are led to a landing page. The advertising on the landing page has a different goal. It may be for the visitor to buy a product. Or it may be for the visitor to opt into a mailing list. Or something else, — it doesn’t matter. If the marketer got his intended results, he has succeeded.

To learn more about creative advertising, I recommend that you read these marketing books. They are classics that are still used by smart advertisors today.

http://alextran.com/reviews/marketing-books

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