Month: March 2023

News Media Interviews – 7 Tips on How to Prepare For Mainstream News and Feature Media Interviews

Today, many business people are focused on social media, new media and on-line media. While these efforts are important and necessary for marketing, traditional media outlets are still important and can play a major role in your business success.

So, the question is, “Will you be ready when Oprah or Donny Duetsch from The Big Idea calls?”

You will be if you prepare now. Following are 7 tips for conducting successful media interviews:

  1. Define your agenda: decide what you want the audience to do. Buy your services? Attend your event? Support your cause?
  2. Know your story: to effectively assert your agenda, you must deliver your message confidently, calmly and concisely. You are the expert on your topic. Stay focused on your agenda during the interview.
  3. Develop key talking points with supporting proof points: prepare three key points you wish to make during the interview. Then support each talking point with three points that offer tangible proof including stories, case studies, and other examples.
  4. Know the interviewer and the media outlet: before agreeing to an interview, do your due diligence. Research the media outlet and the interviewer. A quick Google search will give you an idea of what to expect and how to best prepare for the interview.
  5. Prepare the interviewer: reporters are very busy and anything you can do to help them is greatly appreciated. To this end, provide background information as well as sample questions on your topic. You will often find that they will use these exact questions.
  6. Anticipate questions and controversy: Your preparation is not complete without anticipating questions and controversies that could arise in the interview. Create a list of all anticipated questions. Then answer each question. Be sure to include the ones that could be asked – remember; “if you dread it, you’ll probably get it.”
  7. Practice, practice, practice: nothing takes the place of practice. It alleviates pre-interview panic and post-interview remorse. To hone message points and to prepare for actual interview questions, even the most polished spokespeople find there is simply no substitute for practicing out loud. Better still, role play with a buddy or coach. Are your answers coming across? Are they concise? Are they believable or do they need more support?

Follow these tips and you will master mainstream media opportunities. And, who would not want to be interviewed on the Today Show?

Big News – Forever Living Products Opportunity Review

Big news and a big product line-up, does this add up to an income opportunity? Aloe Vera nutritional products from Forever Living Products for over 30 years bringing success home. Is this a cool network marketing opportunity or just another in a long line of Herbalife pretenders. This is my review of what this opportunity has to offer.

The founder and CEO of Forever Living Products, Rex Maughan loves helping average ordinary people become millionaires. A prosperous and healthy lifestyle are two major aspirations of this business opportunity. So much of this is common to most all network marketing or multi level marketing companies.

Of course Forever Living Products and their distributors have found some success promoting and selling Aloe Vera and Bee derived natural products. The company is large, doing business in 137 countries around the world and their naturally healthful products can be a fine addition to anybody’s nutritional routine. Forever Giving a charitable foundation dedicated to improving the lives of children around the world is one of the best achievements related to Forever Living Products.

Yes, it is true that for centuries people around the world have used Aloe Vera for it’s health enhancing properties. Also true that Forever Living Products manufactures fine quality products and has garnered the Aloe Science Council Seal of Approval related to product consistency and purity. The product packaging is eye catching and the flavors and nutrients that make up these products are appealing. Overall the company and products do make an attractive presentation on their website.

The bottom line is Forever Living Products offers a genuine opportunity for success. Are the company and it’s products positioned well in an ocean of similar nutritional products? That answer remains to be seen. The key to success in this business will prove to be how well a person can recruit masses of people into the opportunity and in turn help those recruits become successful. Of course the product is essential and people must be enthusiastic about the promotion of these nutritional products. Always be diligent when seeking home business opportunities. Operate your business with a firm belief in developing new skills and marketing ideas in yourself and those with which you share the opportunity. Your business success will rely more on your ability and tremendous effort in promoting yourself as well as mentoring or coaching others into success. Rather than the contents of the product you offer in trade for dollars.

How To Predict A Call From the Media – The Could It Happen Here Story

Wouldn’t it be great to know ahead of time when and why your company or organization would be getting a telephone call from the media? Believe it or not, you already have that ability right at your fingertips. Sure, there are instances where you could pretty well guess that a phone call is coming such as in the case of a strike, a product recall, an environmental disaster or a workplace fatality. But what about those times when a call comes in that you were not expecting? While half of your brain listens to the voice on the other end of the line, the other half is frantically asking, “Why are they calling? What did we do? What has happened that I don’t know about?”

What’s happening here is what is known in the news business as the Could It Happen Here Story. Whenever there is a story gaining national attention, local news media outlets will always try to localize the event. When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 which resulted in the deaths of 168 people, news outlets across the country went into Could It Happen Here mode. Officials were questioned about security at local federal buildings and federal workers were asked if they felt safe in the workplace in light of the Oklahoma City incident. When tornadoes strike a portion of the nation, local media outlets air stories about local preparedness for such a disaster. When several children were sickened after playing on a lawn newly treated with chemicals, landscaping companies across the nation were forced to defend their own practices.

The bottom line is that if there is a story that is making national news and if the story is in any way connected to your business, there is a possibility you could be on the receiving end of a Could It Happen Here call. Your job is to simply be aware of the possibility. As you read the morning newspaper, listen to morning radio news or watch morning television news, keep a careful eye and ear out for stories that relate to your business. If you find one, rehearse mentally what you would do and say if you got to the office and the media called. That way, when the call comes in, you’re prepared to confidently tell the media that because of your company’s standards, policies and professionalism, it Couldn’t Happen Here!

Online Press Releases Create Loads of Free Publicity for Your Home Business

Online press releases are one of the fastest and easiest ways to get your home business in front of your target market.

Many times when people think of the term “press release,” what comes to mind is a major life-changing news story published by a large corporation or government agency. According to the World English Dictionary, however, a press release is simply “an official announcement or account of a news item circulated to the press.”

What does that mean for the home business entrepreneur?

You have a powerful tool for generating publicity and getting noticed — right at your fingertips.

Why Online Press Releases?

In the past, news was released in print, on television and on radio. In recent years, however, the internet has completely changed the way individuals and organizations get the word out.

The average consumer now expects to get their news immediately, especially online, so when you publish a press release about your home business on the web, it’s possible to see a major influx of traffic to your business within hours and minutes instead of the weeks and days it used to take.

Here’s why it works.

Many of the press release sites are considered important authority sites by the search engines, so if you optimize your report properly as explained in this article, your news item will appear higher in the search results for the terms your prospective customer cares about.

Moreover, the fact that they are identified as authority sites means the links from the press release sites to your website are given more weight. So from the search engine perspective, you are more of an authority and your website rank increases, making it easier for your intended audience to find you online.

Additionally, due to the relevance associated with press release sites, your perceived authority in the minds of your readers multiplies. You then have an avenue by which you can educate the consumer about your home business, build rapport and truly form a connection.

But What Would I Write a Press Release About?

As stated above, a press release doesn’t have to be about an earth-shattering event (although big news can garner a lot of attention quickly, as you’ll see below). Here are 10 ideas you can use to gain free publicity using the power of the press:

1. Announce the opening of your business. If you’ve been in business for a while and have never written a press release about it, write a piece announcing your mission statement. Tell the world who you are and what it is you have to offer.

2. Publicize a new product or service you’re launching. Share the benefits your customer can expect, and tell them how to do business with you.

3. Announce your teleseminars and webinars. A press release is a fantastic vehicle for attracting attendees, so always include enough information to ensure you’re drawing the right audience.

4. Reveal a special sale or any special offers you have going on. Tell your prospective customer exactly why they should do everything possible to seek you out.

5. Remember that major news story? Link big news with something happening in your company. As an example, about two weeks before the time of this writing, Prince William announced his engagement to Kate Middleton. The Franklin Mint then announced the production of a limited edition Kate Middleton portrait doll.

6. Start a Meetup group for home business owners in your area and promote it with a press release. You can announce the establishment of the group itself and send a news release before each event. In this way, you grow your membership and increase attendance at the meetings.

7. Publish a news piece when you launch your website and every time you make a major change to it. Be sure to include an incentive for the reader to actually visit your site.

8. Create a press release when you hire support staff. This is an implied statement that your home business is growing rapidly and your prospects need to do business with you now, while they can still work with you personally.

9. Set up a charitable event and tell the world via a press release. One of the best ways to implement this idea is to offer a product for sale and commit 100% of the proceeds to the charity of your choice. This is especially effective if the product for sale is an information product because it minimizes your cost. Don’t have an information product? Set up an interview with a well-known figure in your market (let them know it’s for charity), record the interview, and sell the mp3 download.

10. Start a contest and write a news article to announce it. Include enough information that the reader can clearly understand the rules and benefits. Contests are fantastic tools for building your list of prospects.

So What Goes In a Press Release Anyway?

One of the keys to success with online press releases is to write your news item so that it will be found when people are searching for what it is you offer.

In order to do this, spend several minutes brainstorming and writing down specific words and phrases your ideal prospect is likely to enter into the search box when they’re looking for the solution you provide. Then use a keyword research tool, such as the Google External Keyword Tool, to identify the most popular search terms in your market.

Select 4-5 of the most popular terms. One of these will be your main keyword, and the rest will serve as supporting – or secondary – keywords. These are the words you’ll focus on when writing the press release for your home business.

Now that you know your keywords, let’s look at what to put in the press release.

1. Title. A good press release title is short, starts with your main keyword, and grabs the reader’s attention immediately. Use action words and power words such as results, secret, risky, revealed, and announces. Remember the goal is to motivate the audience to want to read more.

2. Summary. The summary is one or two sentences that describe what your news item is about, and it should include 3-5 secondary keywords. The summary should entice the prospective reader to read the entire article. It’s also a good idea to place a link to your website in the summary of a press release so the reader can immediately visit your site if they so choose.

3. Dateline. The dateline must include the date and a clear, concise declaration of the news. When someone reads the dateline, they should have an immediate understanding of what you’re reporting.

4. Main Body. The body of your press release should be 300-800 words long, written from the third-person, neutral point of view. It must answer the 5 W’s — who, what, where, when, and why. The body text should focus on a single news item and must not be written like an advertisement. Instead, tell the reader what’s happening and why they should care. Be certain to include 1-3 links to your website in the body of your press release. At least one of the links should use your main keyword as the anchor text (the visible, clickable text in the hyperlink) and at least one of the links should use your actual website address as the anchor text. Take the time to be sure one of your keywords is in every paragraph of your press release.

5. About/Boilerplate. Give the reader of your press release a high-level look at your home business. Tell them about any special certifications, awards, and honors you’ve received. Convey your unique selling proposition. Then place a call to action, with a direct link to your website, as the last line.

6. Contact Information. Provide your name, the company name, your telephone number and the website address for your business so the reader and members of the media can easily contact you. Do not use a personal email address.

So I Just Write a Press Release and People Start Calling?

Well…no.

After you write your press release, you do have to submit it to the online distribution services. These services share your news items with multiple websites so your content is published all over the web, thereby increasing your exposure and the likelihood that your target audience will connect with you and learn about your home business.

While there are some paid services, there are also several that allow you to distribute your news items for no cost.

Affiliate Marketing – An Online Business That Is Recession Proof

Are you looking for an on-line business that is recession proof? Would you like to start a business that no matter what the economy is can still provide a substantial income that would allow you to maintain a quality lifestyle for you and your family? Well look no more, that business is called Affiliate Marketing.

Picture this scenario: You visit a huge warehouse stocked with thousands of sale items. Let’s say you decide you want to sell some of these items but you don’t want to purchase them upfront (in case they don’t do well); you don’t want to stock inventory of the items in order to bypass the shipping; and you really don’t want to keep track of the orders. Basically, you just want to know when the item sells and that you’ve made a profit.

The bad news is, if you went to a physical warehouse and told the owner that this is the way you want to do business, you’d be shown the door. The good news is, as an Affiliate Marketer, you could run your on-line business exactly this way. The warehouse would be your websites or blogs which is where your visitors would come. The links on your site page will take the visitor to the on-line merchant who has the inventory of products you are promoting. If it is a material product that requires shipping, that is handled by the merchant. You will become a member of an Affiliate Network that will handle promotions, tracking orders and making deposits into your on-line money account! The best part is, your business would be a 24/7 operation, which means you could be making money while you sleep.

No matter what the state of the economy is, people will always make purchases on the internet. It ranges from impulsive buying to purchasing items of necessity, to buying gifts for others or buying information to help improve the quality of life.

Is this an easy business to start, not in the sense that you don’t have to invest the time required to set up your sites, your networking accounts and tools to help generate traffic to your sites. But there is a plethora of free information on the internet about Affiliate Marketing. Do your research and get the knowledge, the tools and develop the skills that will ensure your success.

Here’s to Great Success!

A Short Story on a Travel Theme – Strangers

We arrived more than two hours later than planned, but the west of England summer light had not yet faded even to dusk. A soft golden glow was just growing across the sunset, which had just tinged a flat-calm sea beyond this tumbling village. We were tourists here, strangers in this small, tightly-knit place.

For us it was just part of a tour, a long weekend snatched in common from the clutches of our combined, ever demanding careers. I felt utterly liberated, that beautiful evening, as we walked the quarter mile or so down the steep dry cobbles from the obligatory car park into the car-less village, the deadlines and demands of advertising for once confined outside the limits of this small place. And I could tell from the spring in Jenny’s step that her battles with bottom sets in Lewisham were now further distant than our three days on the road.

There was a small gift shop, a tourist-trap trinket place, just a hundred yards along the lane. I bought the newspaper our early departure from St. Ives had denied me, my daily fix of political gossip now long established as an essential feature of my adoption into London life. I explained that we were strangers here, had driven down the side road in the hope of finding something interesting and had nothing booked.

The shopkeeper said we had just three options – the Old Hotel just down the lane, a bed and breakfast at the bottom by the harbour or the farm near the junction with the main road, back where we had turned off.

“It was different years ago,” he said, “when lots of people used to stay over, but now it’s all day trippers and holiday homes. Ten years ago we had half a dozen guest houses, but they’ve all closed down.”

The Old Hotel was just two hundred yards from the shop, at the head of the steep cove that housed the tangled triangle of the village. It was a bit beyond the price we usually paid and had AA stars framed over its reception desk, but we fell for the place and checked in, just for one night. It was the kind of mock Jacobean black and white inn, whose lack of a straight line just might have suggested it was original. But the beams were hollow and the plaque above the entrance said, “Refurbished 1958.”

“Do you have any luggage to bring from the car park?” the receptionist asked. The name tag pinned to her blouse said, ‘Hilary, Manageress’. “We have a man with a donkey and sledge who will bring it down for you.” She wasn’t joking.

I lifted our two hold-alls and said it was all we had. She smiled, offering politeness but communicating knowledge tinged with judgment. It was in an era when it was still unusual for a couple to sign in without obviously trying to appear married.

We took the key for room number six. There were only eight and the other seven keys were still hanging on their hooks when we took the lift – yes, the lift! – to the upper floor. Number six was at the back, of course, right above the kitchen extractor fan and overlooked an enclosed yard with a yellowed corrugated plastic roof. It hid an array of lidless dustbins, from which a hint of an aroma sweetened the still air when we opened the windows to encourage the previous occupant’s cigarette smoke to leave. We dropped the bags and walked down to the sea to absorb the last of the late springtime sun at its setting.

The beach was shingle and small, hard-packed against a harbour wall that extended a good fifty yards into the shallow sea. A couple of clapperboard buildings, largely rotten, clung to its prominence, their profit long past, but their structures all but remaining. There were doors missing and one structure had no interior, the uncovered entrance revealing merely sky beyond. At one time, clearly, the locals had something of a living from this place, fishing perhaps, maybe small trade, smuggling in poor times, salvage by design, who knows. And then came the tourists, the stranger trade of nineteenth century invention that evaporated when the trunk road widened and rendered the place no more than a day trip from anywhere this side of Birmingham or London.

As we walked back up the deceptively steep single track that bisected the village, we passed several open doorways seeking air on this unseasonably balmy evening at the end of May. After London everything here felt so cosy, so small, warm and unthreatening, as if the place itself were welcoming us into its embracing fold.

We saw just two other people, both descending the path, and independently both offered greeting. “Isn’t it pretty,” said Jenny. “Don’t you wish you lived here?” I declined to answer.

We ate at the Old Hotel. There was nowhere else. We ordered the grilled sole with parsley butter. Potatoes and broccoli were the ‘legumes de saison’. It took over half an hour for the food to appear. We finished the bottle of house white we had ordered to go with the fish long before even the smell of cooking wafted through from the kitchen. We got significant giggles speculating on how far out into the Bristol Channel the boat had to go to catch our order. We ate. It wasn’t bad, and then we moved across to the bar, the four steps needed to change location effectively redefining us from guests to locals. A concertina glass partition separated the areas in theory, but tonight it had been opened wide for ventilation. The rest of the evening became a tale of three women, Hilary, Sue and Sandra, all of whom have dreamt.

The hotel bar is the only place to drink, so it’s a pub, complete with its regulars. A half a dozen men are collectively and determinedly engaged in preventing the oak top from rising, their planted elbows firmly ensuring its continued sojourn on earth. They are passing the time of night with what seems to be a predictable set of platitudes. “I bought the D-reg because I thought it would work out cheaper in the long run, what with the smaller servicing bills and the like… …But you ought to do more of that sort of thing yourself and then you wouldn’t have to pay anything at all… … Yes, I know, but I just don’t have the time. Have you, these days?… …Give us another, Sandra… …You go just beyond the first turning… …Down past the egg farm where my brother used to work… …They are really cheap if you buy them by the sack… …bloody heavy, mind you…”

She is forty going on sixty, utterly contemptuous of what she sees before her, yet utterly resigned – or condemned – to servicing its every need. She is rather large and quite square, both in face and body. She’s been like that ever since she can remember. Black hair, cut quite, but not very short and swept to a wave at the front showing that she has spent not a little time tonight cleansing and preening herself before starting work behind the bar at the Old Hotel. On the other side of the argument is a series of slobs, one of whom we only ever seem to see from the back. His head is triangular with apex at the base. A pair of key-in-keyhole ears protrude. He was probably called ‘wing-nut’ by his classmates at school. I resist the temptation to grab an ear-key and twist it to see what it might unlock. From the bar talk we can clearly hear, the answer surely is not much.

Mr Ears is something of a leader, he thinks. He rarely lets any conversation that is shared by the others to pass without his own inserted comment. He wears a boiler suit, heavily stained, and a pair of Doc Martins that have seen better decades. His skin is rough and darkened, but probably not by sun. His head is shaved, but shows a shadow at the edge of his baldness. He seems to lead with his head, which he sticks out to emphasise every voluminous word he speaks.

At one point there seems to be a lull in the conversation. Mr Ears picks up one of the wet cloth runners from the bar and throws it at Sandra. He thinks it’s very funny and nudges his neighbour in the ribs as he flings. Sandra is hardly amused. She tries to say, “Please don’t do that” just as he raises his arm, but she is only half way through the “Please” by the time he has flung it. To say that she is not amused is to understate the utter contempt that fills her eyes. But still, it’s a living.

Her son has been helping out with the washing up in the under-staffed kitchen. He is fourteen, at least that is what Sandra immediately chooses to tell us the moment he appears. She gravitates towards our end of the albeit small bar, placing the maximum distance between herself and the group that we now learn includes her husband, Mr Ears. Darren, the son, is just like her, the same shape, but with brown, not black hair. I sense Jenny concluding that the mother’s is dyed. Darren is still very much his mother’s boy, not yet his father’s threat. Knowing that she will have to put the place to rights tonight before she leaves, she has him wipe down the tables and stack the stools, destined to be unused this evening. Mr Ears, he of the triangular head and key-in-keyhole ears, smiles a mild pride a little as he drinks whisky chasers at some rate.

He orders a round of drinks for himself and his mates. He almost theatrically flips open his softened leatherette wallet and then pulls a face deigning surprise when he finds it empty. Sandra’s expression is both knowing and tired as she, reluctantly, scowling when she turns her back to him, writes out an IOU and places it in the till. It’s no doubt in her own name. She takes some pence in ‘change’ from the chit, which she offers and he pockets, rattling the coins against a set of keys in his deep pockets, as if ensuring that it has fallen to the bottom. A few minutes later he needs another refill costing eighty-five pence, but he produces only twenty-five from his pocket. Sandra makes up the rest from her purse, her lips pressing a silent curse as she operates the till.

A minute later Hilary appears from the kitchen. She hands Sandra a brown envelope. A slight smile confirms that these are wages, perhaps for the week. Sandra immediately extracts a note, places it in the till and retrieves her IOU, which, after attracting her husband’s attention, she pointedly tears into small pieces and ditches into an ashtray, an ashtray that she will have to clean out later. Mr Ears barks and growls a little, maybe sensing a put down in front of his mates, but later we are told that really wants to have the paper intact so he can read the amount to check that Sandra’s not fiddling him and arranging to keep something for herself. “Never trust people in business,” he says, loudly to his mate, “but never vote against them!” He laughs.

Sue follows Hilary from the kitchen. We know her name immediately because Sandra greets her, as if she has not seen her for weeks. Her white, side-buttoned jacket identifies her as the person who grilled our fish. She is a very good cook. We enjoyed our sole, I tell her. She says thank you, but then immediately delivers a bout of self-deprecation, apologising for the fact that she has never had any training. Her words are like a magnet for the other women, who immediately move to our end of the bar, as far from the locals as it gets. Sue then tells us of a coffee fudge cake that prompted one guest to propose to her. The ladies laugh, including my Jenny. Her husband, however, was the one who taught her how to cook fish. It’s all in the salt. After all, they live in salt water, don’t they?

Perhaps because we are strangers, Sue wants to talk. Clearly the locals at the other end would not be interested in the fact that she often has to cook for thirty people in a kitchen that’s the size of a dog kennel. Hilary, Sue and Sandra are clearly not happy with their lot. Hilary, especially, seems tense and dispirited as Sue tries to explain the facilities at the back. When she invites us through the bar to inspect where she works, Hilary looks perturbed, even threatened. “Look”, says Sue, with a wave of an arm, “there’s one piddling microwave, a gas cooker from year dot and a freezer that wouldn’t service a family of four. And when the place is full of trippers, I have to do twenty bar meals an hour at lunchtime.”

Hilary ushers us back the right side of the bar There’s not much work around here, she tells us. Having us visit the kitchen was clearly more than her job was worth, so she changes the subject. “It’s nice here, but I feel that life is passing me by. I’m a city girl. I’m from Walsall. I’m not used to living in a small place like this. I envy you two. I’d really like to be in London, but my boyfriend is a herdsman and there’s no call for them in Mayfair.”

But she does make sure we register that Sue is slaving away in the kitchen for next to nothing. And the owner who often supervises rang in to say that he would not be around to lend a hand this evening because he was sick, when she knew full well that in fact he and his wife had been invited out to dinner by the Cowan’s at their farm.

“At this time of year, when the sky is clear and the air is fresh and the weather’s nice, you would think that this is a really nice place to live. But just go and have a look at the backs of these places. Go round the side and have a look. Give me a modern bungalow with double glazing and central heating any day. They are falling to bits. In winter you can have the heating going full blast and still have a gale blowing in around the window frame. On nights like those I’m almost glad to be working here. At least it’s warm.” The words were qualified by a nod towards the regulars. “But then you have to sit here and put up with the rubbish that lot talk about all evening… Honestly in winter, in the dark nights, there are times when you wish you were anywhere apart from here. And this is the best work in the village, despite the fact that the owners never want to put any money into the place. And the people from here can’t get it into their heads that it’s in their own interest to invest in the place, to make it more attractive.. But then you get up in the morning and the sun is shining and the sky is blue and you can see across to Lundy Island and you walk the dogs across the cliff top and everything seems fine. I don’t know.”

It was then that she changed. An overlooked duty resurfaced from a forgotten cell. A moment later she returned from the reception. She had another brown envelope for Sandra, who smiled as she took it. The word ‘bonus’ could be heard, but there was a question mark of sorts. By then we had decided to go to bed and, as we left our bar stools, we only had time to bid her goodnight.

The following morning we walked around again. There really wasn’t anywhere to go, except where we had already been. You could go up or down. Up was back to the car. Down was to the sea. We chose down. Up would come later. We walked along the harbour wall, past the dilapidated clapperboards to look at the flat calm lying below a grey but light sky There was a buzzard, an intruder, screaming as it was shepherded away by pecking gulls. We watched the pursuit for ten minutes or more as the local nesters made sure that the unwanted foreigner was well and truly escorted off their patch.

As we stepped off the rampart and back onto the shingle, a British Telecom van appeared from the town. We assumed that he must have special dispensation to drive the main street, a privilege afforded only to the corporate. At the bottom the driver sped to a halt and then engaged reverse. This was clearly only a change of direction, there being nowhere along the main street to turn once you had entered the village. A group of men to our right noticed the noise and broke off from their idiotic task of trying to move a rusty old hulk across the shingle with makeshift crowbars. It was the hint of wheel-spin that attracted them Here was someone who did not know the place. Here was potential profit. A hint of forward movement in the van dissolved into an engine race as the rear end sank as far as the body into the loose stones.

Crowbars discarded, the blokes surrounded their captive in a matter of seconds. “He’s got that well and truly…,” grumbled Mr Ears, who was one of the first to arrive. He recognised us from the bar and actually spoke directly to us, but the words were for the van driver’s benefit. He scratched his head a few times as his mates appeared. They too mumbled as they crouched to inspect the depth of the problem. The van driver and his companion had got out of their seats, their doors scraping into the shingle. Mr Ears then said quite a lot, but I caught only an odd word. He scratched his head again. “It really isn’t my day today,” he said to me as he passed.

After a few minutes our little crowd still surrounded the prey when the Land Rover appeared. Mr Ears told us that it normally does the ferrying back to the car park for those trippers who can’t bring themselves to walk back up the hill. “It doubles as a tow truck for the boats,” he said. He tied a small thin rope to the tow bar and then selected a suitable place to attach it to the Telecom van. A whistle to the Land Rover produced a crawl. The rope broke, of course. Mr Ears scratched his head again. He was clearly having to work hard today. A mate went off to find a heavier rope, which was duly attached. The Land Rover growled as the van driver raised a scream from his engine. There was a splutter at the back end of his van and then it was free. There was a round of applause. A note was offered and Mr Ears took it, but clearly expressed a belief that it should be bigger. “The things I have to do to earn a living,” he said as he shuffled past the two of us, pulling and rewinding the rope that probably belonged to someone else. As British Telecom whined its way up the hill in second gear, we set off towards the Old Hotel to retrieve our bags, check out and get under way. Jenny and I shared a joke about Mr Ears, referring to elbows and arseholes.

Sandra was waiting for us. She had a cloth bag in her right hand and her son’s hand in her left. He really was a very young fourteen. Clasped by her thumb, and pressed against her son’s grasped fingers was a brown envelope, presumably the envelope that Hilary had passed to her just as we left the bar. The envelope was torn and a single sheet of paper flapped loose. Jenny stayed with her while I paid the bill and got our bags.

“She wants a lift into town,” said Jenny when I returned. She got the sack. They have accused her of taking money from the till. She’s leaving.” I cast a glance back down the hill, but there was no-one in sight. Mr Ears was still down there, earning, when the four of us, all strangers now, set off towards the car.

Never Again Hear Your Kids Say During The Summer, "I’m Bored!"

Every parent (to include me) has heard their kids say – with the incredible freedom of summer all around – “I’m bored!” As a life and executive coach, I find that every summer I am asked by my clients who are parents to tell them what they should do to keep their kids active, engaged and not bored during the greatest three months of the year (for kids).

You know how it works. Your children are excited about the upcoming summer as the school year comes to a close. Then, for the first week or so they are all fired up and balls of energy. Then, they run out of energy and things to do. And you hear, “I’m bored,” and “What should I do?” Your summer has just turned ugly.

First of all, let me say that it is easy for kids to get bored during the summer because they have so much freedom. But childhood freedom often becomes the strongest of all chains; a slave master who uses mind-numbing boredom as punishment. My belief and study has shown that kids do not need unfettered freedom. Kids need structure in order to grow and feel fulfilled.

Here’s my simple 3-step process for eliminating your child’s boredom during the summer months.

Step 1

You should sit down with your kids before the school-is-out-for-the-summer season hits and write a list of their GOALS for the summer. Setting goals is the most important step you can take to keep your child from getting bored during the summer. Ask your kid these questions (and have them write down the answers):

– What new sports do you want to learn?

– What new challenges do you want to tackle?

– What new books do you want to read?

– What new sights do you want to see?

– What new skills do you want to learn?

– What area(s) do you want to improve in?

Step 2

Next – using the goals as your guide, you and your kid(s) should write out a week-by-week schedule of summer activities for them. (I actually recommend you have the entire summer scheduled out day-by-day, but let me allow you to ease into this.)

Step 3

Then, follow the schedule.

My kids have not uttered the phrase, “I’m bored,” since I began this approach to their summers. They are too busy, engaged and happy to be bored! And yours will be as well. And I know that your kids and mine will look back someday (as we parents do) and say how great this or that summer was because of what they did.

To help you get rolling, I am providing you (below) a list of 301 things that your kid can do during the summer. Many of these are low cost or no cost. This list makes sure that no kid need ever be bored.

The following list of 301 activities will help your kid, your family, and you take full advantage of the warm weather season and spark the creativity that makes summer the best time of the year! Your kid can look over the list and choose any activities they are interested in and get started. Some of my suggested activities require parental permission, but most are suitable for your kids to complete on their own.

301 THINGS YOUR KID CAN DO DURING THE SUMMER

1 Act in a play

2 Adopt a pet

3 Attend a concert

4 Bake cookies

5 Barbecue shrimp

6 Become a model

7 Become a photographer

8 Become an expert cupcake, cookie or brownie baker. Give them a funky name and sell them. That’s how Wally ‘Famous Amos’ got started

9 Become an expert on something. Choose a topic you interested in and study it a little everyday. By the end of the summer, you’ll be one of the leading experts

10 Blow up balloons and give them to your friends and family

11 Build a sandcastle

12 Build a tree house

13 Build an electric train model

14 Build your own plane from a kit

15 Buy a DVD projector and host a movie that you project on the side of your house at night

16 Call a president of a large company and interview him/her about what they do

17 Check out the stars with a telescope

18 Clean up a nature trail

19 Clean your room!

20 Climb a tree

21 Collect sea shells from the seashore

22 Cook something you’ve never cooked before

23 Cook your breakfast on an outdoor fire

24 Create a family photo album of summer activities

25 Create a terrarium

26 Create a treasure hunt

27 Create a web site

28 Create your own holiday – a Festivus-for-the-Rest-of-Us

29 Create your own science club with friends

30 Design a new clothing line

31 Determine 10 goals you have for your life.

32 Dig for fossils

33 Do 25 jumping jacks each day

34 Donate some of the toys and clothes you no longer use

35 Draw a self-portrait

36 E-mail a friend you haven’t spoken to in awhile.

37 Send your question about life success and life’s challenges to us.

38 Enter a chili cooking contest (or host your own)

39 Find a new favorite author or book

40 Find a pen-pal

41 Find the cheapest flight you can to a foreign country and go on a vacation

42 Fly a kite

43 Get a job as a lifeguard at the local pool

44 Get a job or an internship.

45 Get a ride on a paddle wheeler

46 Get a summer job with a friend

47 Get a temporary tattoo

48 Get in better shape! Exercise everyday

49 Get in touch with a cousin you’ve never met

50 Give your dog a bath.

51 Go backpacking

52 Go beachcombing for driftwood, shells and stones

53 Go birdwatching

54 Go boating

55 Go bowling

56 Go camping in a national park

57 Go camping in your backyard

58 Go camping on the beach

59 Go canoeing

60 Go deep sea diving

61 Go explore caves

62 Go fishing

63 Go for a hike

64 Go go-karting

65 Go hunting

66 Go on a boat ride

67 Go on a glass-bottom boat ride

68 Go on a hayride

69 Go on a long bike ride

70 Go on a rollercoaster ride

71 Go on a walk and take pictures of trees, flowers, dogs, etc.

72 Go out for lunch with one of your parents

73 Go outside and find 20 different kinds of flowers

74 Go paddle boating

75 Go parachuting

76 Go prospect for gold

77 Go river rafting

78 Go sailing

79 Go swimming

80 Go to a baseball game

81 Go to a camp

82 Go to a museum

83 Go to a national park

84 Go to a new restaurant

85 Go to a party

86 Go to a pre-season practice being held by your local pro team

87 Go to a science camp

88 Go to a Shakespeare festival

89 Go to a waterslide park

90 Go to an amusement park

91 Go to an antiques show

92 Go to an opera

93 Go to the fair

94 Go to the movies with friends

95 Go to the movies with your siblings.

96 Go to the playground and swing or play on the monkey bars

97 Go to the top of the tallest building in the nearest big city

98 Go to work with your parents and observe

99 Go vegetarian for a week

100 Go whale watching

101 Go window-shopping at the most expensive stores with a friend

102 Go without email for a day

103 Go without TV for a day

104 Hang a bird feeder

105 Have a bonfire and roast marshmallows

106 Have a bubblegum blowing contest

107 Have a ‘classic movie’ night with friends

108 Have a family game night

109 Have a paper airplane contest

110 Have a picnic

111 Have a sleepover with your best friends

112 Help an elderly person with house or yard work

113 Hike to a waterfall

114 Host a 24 hour soccer game for charity or just for fun

115 Host a 5k race to benefit charity

116 Host a dance and you be the DJ

117 Host a real clambake

118 Host a scavenger hunt in the neighborhood or with friends at a park

119 Host a water balloon fight

120 Host a yard sale

121 Increase your vocabulary. Learn 5 new words each day from the dictionary

122 Invent a new dance

123 Invent your own board game

124 Invite friends over and have a tea sandwich party

125 Keep a journal of what you do during the Summer

126 Learn a foreign language

127 Learn a martial art

128 Learn a new card game and play it a lot

129 Learn about fireworks

130 Learn CPR

131 Learn how to be a comedian

132 Learn how to make balloon animals

133 Learn how to make crafts

134 Learn how to make jewelry

135 Learn how to make sushi

136 Learn how to play chess

137 Learn how to play the conga drums

138 Learn how to play the guitar

139 Learn how to rappel down mountains

140 Learn how to refinish antique furniture

141 Learn how to sail

142 Learn how to sew

143 Learn how to sew or knit

144 Learn how to snorkel

145 Learn how to swim

146 Learn how to throw a boomerang

147 Learn or teach a new sport with someone

148 Learn origami

149 Learn some new outdoor games

150 Learn to how to paint

151 Learn to windsurf

152 Listen to a motivational audio program

153 Look for sand dollars and shells at a beach

154 Make a bird feeder

155 Make a collage from magazine photos and words

156 Make a delicious ice cream float

157 Make a fire plan for your home

158 Make a new kind of sandwich

159 Make a scrapbook of everything you do this summer

160 Make a scrapbook of your baby pictures.

161 Make a smoothie so tasty it makes your toes curl!

162 Make a time capsule and bury it in your backyard

163 Make an obstacle course in your back yard

164 Make dinner for your family

165 Make homemade fruit juice.

166 Make homemade ice cream

167 Make popsicles in your freezer.

168 Make purses and sell them

169 Make something from recyclables

170 Make the world’s best root beer float.

171 Open a savings account at your bank

172 Organize a bike safety clinic

173 Organize a scavenger hunt

174 Paint your family

175 Plan a trip to Disney World

176 Plan the vacation you want to take next summer.

177 Plant flowers in your yard.

178 Play a computer game

179 Play backgammon

180 Play badminton

181 Play croquet

182 Play crossword puzzles

183 Play in a summer sports league

184 Play monopoly

185 Play pool

186 Play pool volleyball

187 Play putt-putt golf

188 Play soccer

189 Play Twister

190 Play volleyball

191 Play Wii

192 Play with the family pet

193 Play with your siblings

194 Produce and direct your own movie

195 Put up a basketball hoop in your driveway

196 Read 25 (or 50 or more) books this Summer

197 Read a book about a famous super-achiever

198 Read a book based on a movie you have seen

199 Read a story to someone

200 Read the newspaper (your favorite parts) everyday

201 Recycle bottles and donate the money to a local charity

202 Re-decorate your room

203 Rent a bicycle-built-for-two and go for a ride with a friend or family member

204 Rent a houseboat

205 Research your family tree

206 Ride a mechanical bull

207 Ride a rollercoaster

208 Ride every ride at the carnival

209 Ride on a train

210 Roast marshmallows

211 Set up a lemonade stand

212 Share your favorite DVD with a friend

213 Shoot 100 free throws

214 Show off your green thumb! Buy some flower seeds and plant them in your own garden

215 Sign up at your local library for their summer great books reading program

216 Spend time with your grandparents

217 Start a babysitting business

218 Start a band

219 Start a blog

220 Start a business

221 Start a collection of something you find interesting

222 Start a diary and write in it everyday.

223 Start a dog pooper-scooper business

224 Start a dog-walking business

225 Start a grocery shopping business

226 Start a herb garden

227 Start a lawn care business

228 Start a magazine for kids your age

229 Start a snow-removal business. (Send out flyers now so everyone remembers when the winter season comes)

230 Start a tutoring business

231 Start a yard cleaning business

232 Start an errand running business

233 Start an internet based business

234 Start an investing club with your friends. Buy stock. Sell stock. Make money!

235 Start practicing to become an Olympic Athlete

236 Start saving for a trip to Europe (or Canada, Hawaii, Alaska, Japan,… ) next Summer

237 Start your own soccer camp

238 Stay at a Dude Ranch

239 Stay in a hostel

240 Stay up and watch the shows that air from midnight to 7am

241 Study a school subject during the Summer

242 Subscribe to a new magazine

243 Swim with dolphins

244 Swim with stingrays

245 Take a boat ride

246 Take a course on mountaineering

247 Take a dance class

248 Take a family vacations

249 Take a first aid class

250 Take a helicopter ride

251 Take a jeep tour in the wilds of Arizona or New Mexico

252 Take a math class

253 Take a ride on a dinner train

254 Take a singing class

255 Take a trip in an RV

256 Take a vacation on a cruise ship

257 Take a walk and listen to the sounds of nature

258 Take a yoga class

259 Take an orienteering class

260 Take flying lessons

261 Take Pictures of interesting buildings, homes, birds, trees, waterways, cars, roads…
262 Take up golfing

263 Take up trampoline jumping

264 Take your dog for a walk.

265 Take your dog to dog-obedience school

266 Tale a class on animation

267 Teach your grandparents to use email

268 Throw a cultural heritage party in your neighborhood

269 Tie-Dye a t-shirt

270 Track the moon phases

271 Train for running your first marathon

272 Try to break a Guinness Book of World Records record

273 Use a compass or GPS to map your neighborhood

274 Visit a farm

275 Visit a National Park

276 Visit a tourist spot near your city

277 Visit every professional baseball or football stadium in the country

278 Visit Mt. Rushmore

279 Visit the aquarium

280 Visit the desert

281 Visit the Grand Canyon

282 Visit the Great Wall of China

283 Visit the Rocky Mountains

284 Visit the zoo

285 Visit Washington, DC

286 Visit the U.S. service academies (West Point, Annapolis, Air Force Academy, Coast Guard Academy… )

287 Volunteer at a local nursing home

288 Watch a cricket match

289 Watch a favorite TV show with your friends

290 Write a book

291 Write a comedy TV show

292 Write a fairy tale

293 Write a letter to your best friend

294 Write a letter to your grandparents telling them how much you love them

295 Write a list of the 10 most important questions you want to ask you grandparents. Then ask them the questions

296 Write a list of the 10 most important questions you want to ask you parents. Then ask them the questions

297 Write a play and get your friends to act it out

298 Write a poem

299 Write a song

300 Write a speech on something you find interesting

301 Write letters on airplane air-sickness bags and mail them to your friends

Summer Fun

My Goals Are…

1. ______________________________________

2. ______________________________________

3. ______________________________________

4. ______________________________________

5. ______________________________________

6. ______________________________________

7. ______________________________________

8. ______________________________________

9. ______________________________________

10. _____________________________________

Marketing Under Pressure – A Look at How the Current Economic Climate is Impacting the Way We Market

As recession begins to bite hard, ‘spending’ is the watchword of the moment. While the government introduces financial initiatives designed to encourage higher spending, people and businesses are looking for ways to cut their budgets. Despite the recent reduction in VAT and government appeals to banks to increase lending, businesses can’t ignore the lower revenue figures as customers retreat in large numbers.

In times of financial uncertainty, a review of business operations will highlight those functions deemed non-essential or over-resourced. Historically marketing is usually among the first to be culled. It is not a well understood discipline and invariably its implementation is lacking. By and large, it is seen more as a cost centre than a revenue generator, working to bring new sales leads to the business. Properly conceived, planned and implemented marketing strategies can raise an organisation’s profile in the marketplace, in turn strengthening brand awareness and loyalty, all of which eventually leads to more customers and ultimately more revenue.

That said, here are a few words of warning. Cutting your marketing budget without thought to the business impact can be devastating. Experienced marketers know this but are under pressure to reduce spending nevertheless, and never more so than now. Conversely, there are those organisations that hold marketing up as one of the tenets of business success in all weather. These are the companies that believe if you throw enough money at marketing, eventually more customers will come and the coffers will start to fill. But without a plan behind the intent, this approach is simply a waste of money and potentially fatal to the business. There is another way.

It is accepted wisdom that marketing is essential to a prosperous business. But is it possible to maintain marketing effectiveness on an ever-decreasing budget? To answer this question, we first need to understand three things: what exactly is marketing these days, why is it so important anyway and how is it changing?

MARKETING’S EVER INCREASING IMPORTANCE

To the uninitiated, marketing is a synonym for a wide range of disciplines and activities that somehow fall into the same bucket: advertising, public relations, exhibitions, promotions. It’s true that marketing covers all of these and many others, but what actually is it?

Marketing is essentially project management in disguise and has already been functioning well through outsourcing for a significant period of time. The proliferation of marketing activity, widening supplier resources and the increasingly short term view of the role of the marketing director have all combined to create the right environment for outsourcing marketing from the strategic through the bottom line operational level.

As recently as ten years ago, certain businesses did not need to market themselves as we understand it today. Businesses such as estate agents, housing developers and banks simply opened their doors and customers would come to them, ready to buy. These businesses saw marketing as a way to rise above the competition, but there was still essentially plenty of business for all of them. However, as markets have fractured and changed, the competition has become ever more fierce and new business models are continuously being developed. On top of that, in the current economic climate it is these traditional pillars of the economy that are suffering the most.

In light of these circumstances, marketing has taken on a new importance. It has become paramount not just to business success but also to business survival. Brand presence in itself is no longer enough. It is continuous brand strengthening and communication through robust marketing strategies that forms the foundation.

Ultimately though, marketing is about understanding your customers and your market. What have you got to sell, who are you trying to sell it to, and what is the best way reach them? In addressing these issues, the successful marketing programme will cover market research, define the most appropriate channels to market and the most effective media to reach the right audience, and articulate why the market should buy from them. This last point is the cornerstone to success marketing, otherwise known as the ‘Unique Selling Proposition’

Having outlined what marketing is and why it’s so important, surely it would be simple enough to work out a plan and execute it. Unfortunately for marketers everywhere, this is easier said than done. Why? Because marketing is undergoing radical change.

THE CHANGING FACE OF MARKETING

Since the dawn of the Internet age, online marketing has unfolded at an alarming rate. At no time is this more true than today. With the advent of the so-called ‘Web 2.0’ over the last few years, social networking has seen a proliferation of new tools and online media have opened up new and diffuse channels to market. Marketing today is in many ways unrecognisable from the discipline it was, even ten short years ago.

This change has brought increasing complexity to strategic marketing and planning. Internal marketing departments are being spread more thinly, relying increasingly on a growing list of supporting agencies each dedicated to a particular marketing activity. It has also meant that marketing managers and executives have taken on more of project management role as they supervise and coordinate an abundance of outsourced activities. Similarly, the marketing director’s role has become fundamentally project-based. Marketing directors are often tasked with a series of strategic restructures as the business continually morphs to adapt to its market. This has imbued the role with a short-term outlook, such that today it is unusual for a marketing director to stay with an organisation for more than two years before moving on.

In finding a solution to the challenge of achieving effective marketing on a strict budget, it is worth noting that the prevalent marketing agency landscape developed out of necessity, not through careful planning. Outsourcing on a piecemeal basis is not a cost effective formula. It has been technology driven, not marketing driven. And there are a few fundamental issues with this approach. Firstly marketing executives do not ordinarily make good project managers. They lack the advanced skills required to integrate and synchronise a myriad online and offline activities into a single, mutually supportive workflow.

Outsourcing marketing functions is not a new concept. In fact it is a tried and tested way to quickly reduce costs by moving core functions outside of the organisation. It was first widely applied to customer service through call centres. However sales and marketing departments quickly discovered that if you outsource on a purely tactical basis, it can backfire on your business. It is important to build in strategic processes and controls to maintain service quality. The challenge for marketing is how to achieve quality control across such a diverse and disparate range of activities. One answer could be to combine outsource partners with a project management team. Another approach is to integrate these functions and elevate the outsourcing relationship to a more strategic level. To identify the best approach, we need to understand ‘marketing integration’ and how this can create cost efficiencies.

INTEGRATING OFFLINE AND ONLINE MARKETING

While today every business considers having an online presence as a necessity, tomorrow it will be blogs, giveaway content in the form of PDF reports and email newsletters, online communities and social networking that will become essential to every marketing strategy, programme and campaign and not just the domain of the forward-thinkers.

These new ways of communicating with the market are moving seemingly further and further away from the real world. Aside from keeping up with developments, marketers are faced with the challenge of integrating online and offline channels so that they support and reinforce, rather than contradict each other.

On top of this, technology has levelled the playing field. Now anyone can try their hand at marketing. Publishing a newspaper or magazine is possible with a software programme and a broadband connection. Achieving professional quality media is now accessible to the man on the street. Similarly online marketing is open to everyone. However, the ability to market does not guarantee marketing success. Despite ease of online communication, the availability of tools for fast analysis of market data and the speed of digital delivery, superior marketing implementation can only be ensured when it is backed by a consistent business strategy and coordinated marketing programme. More importantly, integrating traditional offline marketing with the many disparate forms of tactical online activities in a strategic way will be essential to success.

COST EFFECTIVENESS IS MARKETING GOLD

As marketing agencies continue to proliferate and shift towards more and more specialised niches, it begins to make sense to consolidate the mainstream functions within an integrated framework. Logically, however, this would suggest higher internalised costs. To avoid these costs, without compromising effectiveness, suggests moving the mainstream function outside the organisation.

However, this makes little sense if executed at the tactical level. What is needed is a restructuring of the traditional outsourcing model so that the lines of communication are at board level. Strategic public relations and public affairs consultancies have worked this way for many years. The timing and conditions are now right for marketing to adopt this approach: to move from a tactical project management style to a higher-level strategic partnership with their outsourcers.

Put simply, modern outsourced marketing takes the accepted concept of interim management and retained agencies to a higher level. In an outsourced arrangement, highly skilled marketing consultants and managers liaise with specialist agencies to an agreed strategy and budget, in a well-constructed operating process to deliver on planned objectives and targets. By taking an holistic view from a brand perspective, outsourced marketing has the potential to lift the bar on performance and programme integration in a way that traditional marketing management finds hard to achieve within modern cost structures. Key to achieving this is integration of the internal marketing function at the strategic level of the business.

Outsourcing marketing execution is the traditional view taken by organisations when attempting to strip out costs, but within today’s marketing landscape this can only come at the expense of marketing effectiveness. Modern outsourcing should aim for strategic consistency across internal marketing functions. This has the additional benefit of placing overall responsibility and planning at an organisational level rather than with ultimately one departmental representative, the marketing director.

As a contractual arrangement, strategic outsourcing establishes common operating practices and reportage, which work in accordance with KPI measurements and agreed ROI indices. From a marketing perspective the strategic outsource model has the organisational intelligence necessary to achieve a balance mix of online activity and offline in an integrated manner.

CHOOSING A STRATEGIC OUTSOURCED MARKETING PARTNER

As a means of replacing high cost, high turnover internal function with a strategy partnership that communicates at board level, the outsourced marketing model has much offer. It is equally suited to growing companies that have yet to develop a marketing department as those that are downsizing. For those marketers working under the conditions accompanying a merger or acquisition situation, or companies and brands stripped of resource through administration, outsourced marketing also presents an attractive option.

If you decide that outsourced marketing is for you, you’ll want to ensure that you engage an outsourcer that agrees to a planning process that involves clear ROI and KPI objectives. Ideally this will be presented in the form of a marketing dashboard to allow a continuous evaluation performance on the fly. You should also be careful to select an outsource partner that can offer a complementary mix of senior consultants with skills that span all media and marketing channels. Naturally it is also critical that this experience covers both online and offline environments. Finally, it is important to assess whether your outsourcing partner can offer flexibility in its fee structure. For example, can it package a tailored launch service for an all-on cost but also provide supplementary services on a ‘top-up’ basis as and when required?

Cost savings are readily achievable with a fully outsourced marketing function, provided consultation is observed at board level. Since services are rendered on a ‘time block’ basis, it is easy to adjust the marketing resources ‘tap’ to whatever level suits the budget. Provided the partnership is structured correctly, marketing results should not be adversely affected. In fact, the enhanced planning and creative development process that comes through an outsourced arrangement can lead to improved marketing effectiveness and sales performance that proves to be as valuable as lower marketing costs.

Marketing Outsources is the UK’s first specialist organisation, which offers both in company management with external creative and production services to provide full executive resources and a planned programme of activity. Implemented at a substantially lower cost yet with an improved performance, making the most of technology and better planning and faster working.

With Marketing Outsources you get a topflight director just when you need the strategy and creative direction with board level input to overall company growth, backed with experienced marketing managers.

Marketing Outsources can deliver and implement your marketing strategy through a group of expert and experienced suppliers, embracing the benefits of new technology, whilst balancing online and offline spending to optimum effect.

Zero Cost Methods To Boost Your Business Marketing And Cut Your Costs Using Your Website

I Offer These Ideas As A Business Website Owner Who Uses Them

Think of this article as a letter from a friend who maintains a website for his own business, and wants to share with you some time/cost-saving methods he employs – at zero cost – to get more value from his website.

The Following Tools/Methods Can Make Using Your Site Easier/Less Expensive

In considering the resources featured here, you should keep in mind the fact that your ability to use them on your website may be determined to some extent by the type of web hosting package/functions you have purchased from your host. For those whose web hosting packages do not permit the easy use of these tools, I describe the very useful alternative of Remotely Hosted CGI Scripts and Resources towards the end of this article.

DISCLAIMER: Please note that I provide descriptions of the resources featured in this article for your information only. I cannot guarantee they will meet your requirements in any way.

There are many other scripts that do similar work available on the net. I have only described these ones because they are the ones I use – or have used.

If you choose to download and use them on your website, you will be doing so at your own risk. I have however used them all at least once, and currently use most of them/have done so for over 2 years – which is why I can recommend them.

1. Automated Website Membership Subscription Management

Resource: Membership Manager LITE

Source: [http://www.membership-manager.biz]

Membership is a feature that allows visitors to your website become members by completing a simple registration web form. Registered visitors will subsequently be able log in to restricted areas of your website using login details they would have specificed when signing up. You can even have two or more levels of membership(for instance Free/Basic and Paid/Premium).

Using this feature, you can enable your website provide member specific content like special offers, articles, email newsletters, and other interactive content. Offering membership on your website will definitely set it apart from many others which do not.

One nifty CGI script I have found quite useful to easily and securely offer membership on my websites is called Membership Manager. This programs uses HTACESS browser based login authentication(regarded as the most secure form of password protection on the Internet) to protect your restricted members-only directories from unauthorised access.

Membership Manager, comes in two variants – LITE(Free) and PRO.

A. It allows the owner to use a control panel to administer user accounts of members (who will also be on their automated newsletter mailing list).

B. The members have login ID and Password of their choice automatically used in creating a website membership account for them when they signup.

C. Paid Subscription Management is possible. If someone has paid for one year access, you can setup a 1 year member account access to a password restricted members area on your website where some premium content may be accessed.

D. Also, the system at the expiration of the 1 year subscription period, automatically disables the appropriate member’s account – and notifies the member and the owner.

E. In the PRO version, members can automatically retrieve lost passwords using a link provided on the site.

You can download the 30kb zipped folder containing the LITE version of the script from [http://www.membership-manager.biz] and follow the very useful installation instructions provided in the accompanying “Setup Instructions” HTML file.

2. Dynamic Website Contact Forms

Resource: All Purpose Form Handler

Source: http://www.BigNoseBird.Com

This is an amazingly flexible/customisable script that allows a user to quickly implement HTML based forms on different parts of a website. It is configured by information you provide in the form itself, giving the user a unique advantage of making the script handle data submitted in the web forms in a variety of ways without changing knowing ANY Perl programming or having to change the code/script.

The following can be done in any combination using forms that call the SAME script:

A. Web form completed by the user submits an e-mail to a specified person(s) – say the website owner – and CC to say other employees(e.g. marketing manager), or even another email address used by the owner.

B. The EXACT text of the title that appears in the subject line of the email the script sends to the site owner, can be specified in the code for the web form. This makes it very easy for you to know which contact form on your website was used to send you EACH message you receive.

C. The script sends the data submitted via the web form to a file for easy import into a database program. You, the owner will be able to locate the file(s) on your server in the cgi-bin.

D. The script automatically sends a response to the person who submitted the form. The content of the response can be varied for each web form. This is made possible by creating a text file(given a unique filename extension) to contain your message whose name you then place in the form code, so it is used by the script.

E. The order in which the data submitted via the web form appears in the email received by the website owner can be specified in the code for EACH web form.

F. The completion of required fields can be enforced by specifying such fields in the code for individual forms.

G. To increase user-friendliness, code for each form can be modified to call a unique “Thank you” or an “Oops!” page after the form is submitted.

How I Use It: I have found this script extremely useful in determining quite accurately what people who visit my website are interested in. For instance, on my website, I created a separate contact form(all outwardly similar) for EACH of the different services I offer, providing links to each web form from the body of text/web copy where the service is described. This way, I am able to quickly establish, from the title of the email sent by the script, exactly which service the enquirer was considering when s/he decided to contact me.

3. Tell-A-Friend Automated Website Referral Form

Resource: BigNoseBird.com’s Birdcast Site Recommendation Script

Source: http://www.BigNoseBird.Com

This is a very simple, yet powerful script that you can use to help promote your site. Easy to install, and to customize. It has a number of very useful features including the following:

1. Name/Email Address fields that can be duplicated for an unlimited number of target recipients per recommended page.

2. A multi line text entry area for the user to send a personal note with the e-mail.

3. Automatic page recognition (i.e. the script inserts the full url of the page being recommended in the e-mail that is sent).

4. Automatic Return to sending page (i.e. the script returns the user to the recommended page when upon successful submission of the form’s contents.

4. Domain validation. An editable line of code in the script allows the website owner specify whether this feature is enabled or disabled on installation. You would enable it to prevent it being used from any other website/domain other than yours i.e. protection against off-site abuse (Also available in the all purpose form handler script described above).

5. E-mail address and page capture log. Once the script is in use, you will be able to periodically check a log file of date/time, calling page and e-mail information automatically generated and updated by the script on your server. This can be quite useful if you want to know who is referring what page on your site and to whom.

4. Form For File Upload From Web page To Server

Resource: Upload Lite

Source: http://www.perlscriptsjavascripts.com/perl/upload_lite/index.html

This script works via a file upload form to allow anyone upload files to a folder on the website server. When this happens, the owner of the site automatically gets an “Upload Notification” email with a download link(s) which can be clicked to instantly download the file(s). The website visitor, who uploaded the document is in turn taken to an upload success confirmation page that you can customise. For instance, on my website the confirmation page displays a “Thank You – Your submission has been accepted” message.

Possible uses: The owner can invite job applicants to upload their applications and resumes using this form. A magazine publisher could have contributors/writers send in their write-ups(in various possible electronic formats(.pdf, .doc, .rtf etc) from any location in the world so long as Internet PCs are available.

How I Use It: On my Excel Heaven Custom Workbook Automation Mini-site, an upload form is provided to enable clients upload workbooks they want me to automate for them using Excel Visual Basic.

5. File Mailing (Alternative to direct downloading)

Resource: MailFile

Original Source: http://www.command-o.com

Latest Version Available At: http://www.FreeScripts.com

MailFile lets you require visitors to submit their name and email address in order to retrieve a file(s) from your site. It is a CGI script that works via a form which allows visitors to choose(by clicking checkboxes) specific documents from your site to be sent to the email address they specify in the email address field of the form.

When the form is submitted, the visitor is taken to a “File(s) sent!” page while the selected file(s) is sent to the visitor via the email address s/he provided. Apart from the fact that this method prevents third-party linking of your files, you also get to use the retained names/email addresses to build a mailing list with which you can follow up visitors for possible sales.

The script can also be useful when you want to give your busy visitors a time saving alternative to downloading.

Corporate visitors to your site, whose mails are stored on the company mail servers will find this particularly useful.

Here’s why. Assume a busy executive – with only 5 minutes left to attend an important meeting – discovers your site’s offering of five interesting PDF reports totaling 13 MB in size.

S/he can easily choose to use the MailFile web form’s checkboxes to select the files and click the “Send File(s) To Me” button. All the selected files will be delivered to his/her mail box on the company’s servers, and s/he would be able to return to view them without going back online at a later time or date.

There is no limit to the number of files that can be sent using this form. Additional checkboxes only need to be added to the form, and the appropriate filenames included in the form code.

Similar Resource: File Mailer

Source:
http://www.downloadfreetrial.com/scripts/php/file_upload_&_download4.html

Related Resource: Attachment Mailer
Source: http://www.perlscriptsjavascripts.com/perl/attachment/index.html

6. Get Your Target Audience Discussing On Your Site – Discussion Boards/WebLogs

You can install a discussion board(where people can register and discuss various topics in “discussion forums”) on your website. You can also use it to provide first level user support/problem solving services to customers.

For instance an IT/Telecoms company can invite customers to post questions or requests for help regarding problems they have with specific products/services supplied or supported. Answers will then be provided by the appropriate personnel online saving time/cost of going out – until it becomes absolutely necessary to visit the client physically to resolve the problem.

Some web hosts offer a discussion board as part of their hosting package. Most of the popular ones are however FREE to download/install, (being open source), two good examples being: PHPBB at http://www.phpbb.com and YaBB(Yet another Bulletin Board) at http://www.yabbforum.com . I have successfully installed and used phpbb in the past, and found it quite user-friendly.

Web Logs: My website host offers an easy-to-install phpbb board in my control panel, which I intend to install on my website in future. I however do not currently use a discussion board on my website, due to my decision earlier this year to discontinue its use, in line with a modified strategy. In its stead, what I use is a web log. I like to think of a Web LOG as a dynamic website which functions as an online diary allowing the owner make postings on any subject of interest, which her visitors can in turn read, and post comments on/responses to.

My personal web log facility is provided as part of my website hosting package. In hunting for a web host, you might look out for a similar feature, if you consider it relevant to your purpose. You can however get a more or less equally functional but FREE blog to use at http://www.blogger.com.

7. Automated Business Marketing CDROM Promos

CDROM promos are a one-time expense, and they cost a fraction of what a decent newspaper advert does, while offering more targeted impact to the “right” prospect for a longer period. They are less expensive and you can mass produce them. I personally recommend the use of auto-run business marketing CD ROMs as an offline complement to other business marketing efforts/resources.

You can get excellent software for creating auto run business marketing CDROM presentations from a variety of sources on the net. One that I have used, and can heartily recommend that you try is CRE:8 MULTIMEDIA. This software enables you to create very impressive auto-run business marketing CDROM presentations quickly and easily. It has a very user-friendly visual interface, and easy-to-understand HELP documentation that enables users begin producing professional looking presentations in minutes. You can download a FREE 21 day trial from http://www.presentware.com.

8. Article Syndication

Article syndication is an excellent way to attract new visitors to your website, while at the same time boosting your credibility as an authority in your area(s) of expertise.

One place you can post your articles and be reasonably sure(if they offer useful real-world relevant information and are well written) of widespread syndication is http://www.ezinearticles.com.

Other options you can pursue of course exist, such as visiting and manually posting articles to different websites offering related content to yours or using automated article submission services – some of which are FREE.

You can also contact publishers of e-zines and online newsletters, who deal with target audiences similar to yours, offering your FREE articles for publication in their media or on their websites, in exchange for exposure.

9. Website RSS Feeds

RSS, stands for “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary”. It is an XML standard that is used by content owners(e.g. newsletter/website publishers) to distribute content to their target audience. Many companies today have RSS feeds that announce latest content updates made to their websites.

Visitors to your site can use either the content aggregator built into their My Yahoo! Page, or other RSS news reader software to retrieve and read the feeds.

Important Notes About CGI/Perl Scripts

Some of the tools I have described in this article are third party CGI/Perl scripts(files with .cgi and .pl filename extensions), which you may need to clear with your web host before using on their servers. The installation of these scripts requires some basic familiarity with server types, setting of file permissions(via CHMOD’ING), Perl scripting among others.

CGI Scripts Installation : Usually, to run CGI/Perl scripts, all you need is any executable folder ( cgi-bin ). Some of the scripts can even run in any folder. I suggest however, for ease of management, that you use a cgi-bin.

CGI Scripts Configuration : All the scripts require you to configure them before uploading to your server, though some have additional settings that will have to be specified AFTER uploading usually via a control/admin interface or panel. You can re-configure, re-upload and overwrite the scripts as may be necessary.

Typically you would open the script in a text editor(I use notepad, and sometimes wordpad, when text wrapping is a problem in the former). If an edit facility is provided in your web host’s control panel/file manager interface, you can also use this to make /save changes you want online post-installation. This latter option makes it unnecessary to re-upload the modified script.

CGI Scripts Upload: If your host has provided you a file manager interface in your control panel, you will be able to use that to upload the scripts. Alternatively there are a good number of nifty FTP – File Transfer Protocol – tools like CuteFTP(http://www.cuteftp.com), and SmartFTP (http://www.smartftp.com)

These FTP clients work in “auto” mode by default, making it unnecessary for you to have to set them to upload your scripts in ASCII mode, and your images or pre-complied programs in Binary mode. I suggest you refrain from changing their default settings except you know what you are doing.

Keep in mind however that whatever manner of upload you employ, you will still need to set file permissions(via CHMOD’ING) for the scripts and the files/folders they will be located in or working with.

Find Someone To Do It – If Necessary

Even if you cannot spare the time to learn to do it yourself, you can easily find someone appropriately skilled to do it for you. Also, your website host should be willing to provide you any information you may be required to verify/obtain in order to successfully install the scripts.

Can’t Run CGI/Perl Scripts On Your Site? Here’s An Alternative That Works!

Remotely hosted CGI scripts/resources(some of which are FREE) are available for those who may find they cannot use some of the tools described here directly on their websites. One very good service, that I used for over a year prior to purchasing a complete hosting package, is offered by Black Fire Networks at http://www.bfndevelopment.com.

Not only do they provide you access to free, customisable, remotely hosted scripts, but they actually do so with ZERO advertising. So, if you have designed you website, but lack access to a cgi-bin via your web hosting package, this service might just be for you. Among other things, you will be able to make your website dynamic, so it has a more professional”feel” to it, without spending any additional money.

Summary – Use A Combination Of Methods On Your New Or Existing Website

The best part of all the tools, features and strategies/methods described here is that you can have them integrated – at ZERO cost – into an existing site or added to a new site from the start. Either way, you get to maximise the potential value you expect from the website.

To get the best results in today’s marketing, one will often need to use a combination of methods. Using your business website in conjunction with a well thought out marketing strategy, facilitated in implementation by custom, value adding automation/features will increase your chances of marketing success, while ensuring you do not spend more than you need to.

This article’s recommendations can be summarised in form of the points outlined below.

a. Ensure “action-inducing”/”response-generating” web copy is written on your website, to effectively communicate the unique benefits you offer.

b. Develop and implement a web marketing strategy to ensure you maximize returns on your investment, by (i) making more of the right kinds of people visit your site (ii) seamlessly integrating your offline and online marketing efforts in such a way that they complement one another.

c. Make it easy to implement your web strategy for the long term, by incorporating zero/low cost automation tools on your website, and adopting value-adding features/methods. Examples include email marketing, article syndication, and information product publishing(ebooks etc).

Do the above, by adopting a suitable mix of the specific tools, methods and strategies featured in this article, and you should be able to clearly achieve one or more of the following: INCREASED sales and/or REDUCED expenses on marketing/advertising – which in turn will help you record reasonably stable or INCREASING profits.

3 Ways to Increase Email Open Rates

Email opening rates have remained stubbornly low for several years now. Various studies over the past three or four years have shown that only around 21% of all email marketing messages get opened. That means that eight out of ten of your customers are ignoring you. That’s not good.

The top sector – religion – is being ignored by over half its email congregation even with a whopping open rate of 48%. It seems that religious emails cannot preach to the converted as much as they would like.

So why is it that so many email marketing messages are ignored – and what can you do about it? Here are three things which will increase your open rate.

1. Have something interesting, useful and relevant to say

Email marketing messages that are just that – marketing – are frankly a waste of your time and money. Your emails are interrupting the day of your customers and potential clients. Put yourself in their shoes. Imagine you are sitting in a restaurant, having a nice time with friends, when suddenly someone rushes up to your table brandishing some product and says “would you like to buy this?” You would no-doubt politely – perhaps not so politely – ignore them or tell them to go away. Yet, when you are sitting working or doing interesting stuff online some email marketing oik does exactly the same, interrupting you saying “hey, how about buying this?” However, go back to that imaginary restaurant. What if your conversation is interrupted by the person on the table next to you with some really interesting and useful information? The chances are you are more likely to listen. The same is true with emails – if they are interesting and give useful information we can use then we are more ready to accept that interruption. The reason so few marketing emails get opened is because they are marketing emails. Make them information emails and you increase your chances of being opened greatly. Think “how can I help my customers” and not “what can I sell to my customers”.

2. Use your recipient’s name and other details

If someone talks to you and never once mentions you by name you distance yourself from them psychologically. Your name is one of the most important aspects of your self-identity and when other people use it you attach to them more easily. Similarly, when they ask you “how are your children” or “is your decorating finished” they are demonstrating they are interested in you. Emails get few open rates because they largely show interest in the company sending out the message, rather than the recipient. Email marketing software, of course, allows you to use the person’s first name – but personalisation is more than that. You could collect other personal details such as location, job title, interests and so on which you use in your emails. The more you personalise the better – indeed research shows that if you use the person’s name in the subject line of the email you dramatically increase the open rate. Showing people you like them as an individual will gain higher open rates.

3. Make your subject lines like newspaper headlines

Newspaper headline writers have spent years discovering how to craft the perfect group of words to make people want to read something. Studies show that the headlines which get the most readers are those which are active, not passive. They also contain emotion and are not just flat statements. Furthermore they include human interest. If you use the recipient’s name in your subject line, there’s your human interest. So that only leaves you with two other considerations – active emotion. Instead of saying things like “Update on employment prospects” say “George, here’s how to get a pay rise” – it is on the same topic, but it has emotion and suggests action. Also, notice the word count has increased. Headlines in newspapers and email subject lines that contain around 6-11 words tend to get the most readers. Avoid short subject lines in emails – aim for 10 words, that will get you more opens too.

So, there you have it, three key ways to get your emails opened. You might have noticed a theme – focus on your customer, put yourself in their shoes and you will increase your chances of your emails being opened.

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