There are so many different ways that a person can market their business. Business owners tend to miss some of the most creative ways to promote their business as well as some of the obvious. Below you will find some ways to get creative with your marketing.

* Email signatures - This is one of the easiest forms of advertising that many marketers miss. All it takes is a one time set up and you could be marketing your business each and every day with out any more work involved. Simply add your name, your title, your company name, address, phone number and email address to your signature in your email. Other things you can include is a special offer such as a free report, product or information that will entice your readers to click on your link. That’s it, every time you send out an email, your signature line will show. Think about what happens when your readers forward your email to their readers? That is viral marketing at it’s best which is free advertising for you.

* Flyers - This is still a very effective way to build your business. Post them up on bulletin boards around town, in laundry mats, barber shops, grocery stores, ATMs and any other place you can think of.

* Articles - Articles have a viral effect to them in that you write them once and they generate sales for years to come. Publish your articles in magazines, newspapers and online content sites.

* Run a contest - People love contests and drawings because they get to win something for free. Give away a free product. This will help increase product credibility and if they like your product enough, they will end up purchasing more.

* Magnets - Give away free refrigerator magnets with your business logo on it. These are a great form of advertising because your business pops in peoples'minds each and every time they open their fridge.

* Joint Ventures - This a where you partner with another business and share advertising. You market their products to your list and they market yours. Typically, you pay them 50% of each sale you make from their list and they do the same for you.

Marketing can be fun and creative if you put your mind to it. Think outside the box when coming up with ideas, however, do not miss the most common, right under the nose type of advertising either.

I remember the days when going Eco meant somehow going without – we had to sacrifice looks or performance or both if we were going to do our little bit to help the planet. Well it seems that those days of gone and the latest Enigin blog, confirms that Eco equals beautiful!

I was very excited to read that Sony had launched four new ranges of notebooks, and even more excited when I realised that they were designed with environmental impact in mind. The environment, and our impact on it, is always foremost in my mind. I am a firm believer that the climate change that we see happening so much now is man made. We all need to act now to safeguard the future of our planet and of course the main way that we can do this is to reduce our carbon footprint. You may wonder how the actions of one person can make an impact upon the environment but if we all do or little bit then I am confident that eventually we can reverse the damaging trends of climate change.

That is why I am particularly supportive of companies like Enigin, who are committed to helping businesses and consumers save energy, so when I saw that they were praising the new Sony Vaio ranges I just had to check them out!

The range that particularly appealed to me was the Sony Vaio ‘W’ Series. This is the smallest computer in their range and is being marketed as being ‘eco-friendly’. To all intents and purposes this is a netbook running Windows 7. I love the netbook concept and have been happily using my Acer Aspire for the last year or so but I now plan to purchase a Vaio W. The 10 inch screen is small but perfectly formed and is LED lit but the thing that I like most about the design of this computer is the casing and its beautiful green glow. Green in every sense of the word as the body is 23% made up of recycled CDs (see there is a use for Lady GaGa after all) and the outer case is recycled from plastic bottles.

The battery life is fantastic for a notebook, and this only enhances its eco friendly credentials. As far as I am concerned, when I get my hands on my Vaio W the future’s bright, the future’s green!

Running a business whether it’s new or not can be a challenge especially when your budget is small for advertising. One way to get some well need mileage is through using a Public Relations strategy. When you do PR effectively your business will be benefiting through brand development, more sales, and product exposure. Here are five tips for quick and effective PR.

Market knowledge

It is very important that you have a clear understanding of who you are marketing your product r service to. This helps in your determining the medium through which you are advertising should be focused. The more specific you are concerning your target audience the more effective your efforts will be.

Product benefits for target market

Your potential customers are usually more concerned with the benefits the product will bring them and not its features. Keep in mind that your efforts at present are geared towards media exposure so you will want to extol the benefits of your product.

Set your product apart

Make sure you have the ability to show proof that your product is more effective, cleaner, faster, or saves the user more money than the competition. This is good evidence the media can use when they feature what you are offering.

Testimonials

When used properly testimonials can be a very effective way to improve the credibility of a promotion. You can also use testimonials in your editorial material although the presentation will differ somewhat. make sure the testimonals you use are used with consent.

Go where your target market is

Use the medium that your target market is using. Do your best to know your business’ target market’s type of media and outlets. There may be certain radio, television show, or magazine they viewing or listening to. Do the required research to find this out and be aware that this may take you some time.

Owning a small business can be the difference between getting by on a limited paycheck or building a financially free lifestyle. However, there are a few steps you need to take to get your small business running and making profits.

The first thing you need to consider is capital. You will need money for start up costs, advertising and everyday expenses. Short from saving your money until you have the required budget, there are some things you can do. For instance, you could take out a small business loan, but when starting out you should really keep the costs down as much as possible. A small loan will do. You can slowly increase your business budget with your profits.

Once you have your budget figured out, you want to decide what type of business you will own. Will you be selling products or providing services? After you decide what you want to promote, do a little research and check out your competition. Take careful note on how they run their business, what their price tags look like and how they are advertising.

Will you be doing business out of your home or in a more traditional brick and mortar setting? If outside the home, you will need to decide on location and deal with rent or leasing responsibilities. Running a home business might be a better idea when first starting out as it is easier on the pocket. With a home business, there will be no for paying monthly rent, employee wages, benefits,e etc. Most of your advertising can be done online and will even reach a larger audience than if done offline.

These are just a few things to consider when starting out a small business. You must understand that building a business does not happen overnight. It takes careful planning and constant elbow grease to get the job done.

Just before I go I want to ask you all for a bit of help, my sister has recently started an online bookselling business and was desperately looking for ways to reach out to her clients. Since she new site went up, her mailing list has gotten to an unmanagebale point and she has been looking into email marketing, does anyone know a good site who do this for small businesses for a good price?

The work-life balance should operate in perfect equilibrium for us to achieve success both in business and in our personal lives. All too often, however, the scales seem to be tipped in favour of ’work’ and when taken to an extreme this can have a disastrous impact on both our health and our social and familial relationships.

As the recession keeps on biting a climate of fear seems to have gripped many within the business world. Job security is an issue within even the largest corporation and those at the top of the tree seem to be as much at risk, if not more so, than those at the foot of the corporate ladder. It is this inherent fear that is driving many in business to work increasingly long hours, to be seen to be going that extra mile and earn valuable kudos. The economic uncertainty is also leading some people to work longer and harder to build up their savings as a homegrown ’insurance policy’ against an uncertain financial future.

There is another way: many people are stepping away from the office based rat race and finding the home based way to redress the work-life imbalance. The recession has seen an increase in the number of people working away from the office: start up businesses, freelancers, contractors and virtual assistants are all finding the benefits of working from home. There are several key benefits to the business person working from home:

• Flexible working conditions mean that you can fit your work around the needs of your family rather than work dictating when you can spend quality time with those you love.
• Being your own boss means that job security is down to you and you alone.
• Create a working environment that suit your tastes, from the decor to music, to cut down on stress.
• Have breaks and holidays when you need them. Not to mention you will never need to cancel those three valleys ski bookings again because you boss ends up saying no to your holiday request.
• Less travelling means more time can be spent doing the job itself and reduces your carbon footprint.

It can seem a big step to take the plunge and branch out on your own, whether it be as a freelance or consultant or even starting your own SME. Increasing numbers of business people like you, however, are making this move both as a means of beating the recession and a way of balancing the ’work-life’ balance!

There are many business owners who do not have business insurance or have inadequate policies that are putting their business at risk should any disaster such as a fire occur.

When buying insurance you are likely to need the services of a good agent. Choosing an agent to work with may in itself be challenging so you should become informed as to the different types of policies that other business owners currently have so that when your agent is discussing the different policies with you, you are somewhat prepared. Also, when choosing an agent you can opt for either a captive agent, insurance broker, or a risk consultant.

When choosing a policy keep in mind that if your business has earnings up to $3million gross, it is likely that you get a Business Owners Policy. This kind of policy has a base set of coverage but also allows you to add additional coverage as you see fit. These policies are different for different companies so be sure to do your comparisons accurately.

For business earning above $3 million gross chances are policies will have to be bought separately.

If you employ more than a few people you should have the following policies, workers compensation which will cover disability pay, medical expenses, and death benefits, and property insurance which will cover any damage to the physical premises and equipment.

General liability insurance is usually included in most business policies and covers any damages or injuries caused by your company. Depending on your company’s earnings you may consider adding more of this coverage.

You may want to consider an Occurrence policy, which gives you coverage for accidents when they occur.

It would be good to get a business interruption policy to take care of loss of sales, pay rent, and payroll costs should an accident occur. It will also pay for any necessary rental of office space and equipment while you work to get the business running again.

Before you make any decisions be sure to get estimates on the cost of acquiring each policy. Also be aware that if your business changes location your insurance cost may increase.

Speaking of Insurance - Vaction planning: We do need to look into getting a Caravan insurance quote, I am assigning this to Sandra.

In the past he has been likened to Stephen King but this is not a very good comparison at all. King has written quite a few good novels but he is more of a typical horror writer. Koontz on the other hand has explored a number of different genres.

It has lead me to one of my favourite pastimes in the winter however. Most nights you will find me curled up on my sofa, having called up my heating oil supplier to make sure I stay toasty all winter with a Dean Koontz novel!

I myself make money through writing and I also own my own home based business. These two have been giving me enough income to help contribute to the household. Other ways that I have found where you can make money from home is:

* Article writing
* Blogging
* Get paid to sites (although most are legit, these really only bring in a few bucks)
* data entry
* forum posting
* paid to review

There are many others and they are simple to find. Just go to any “work from home” forum and look for the telecommute board or work from home board. Good luck!

Want to rock the Vatican? Hell yer, of course you do. If you need a hostels in Rome their load on Hostel Club. We are getting their on the 10th and we will be their until 17th. Come on you know you want to.

Unfortunately, once you reach the age of 30, you can expect to start seeing the signs of aging. This includes those wrinkles and puffy bags under your eyes as well. You cannot stop the aging process, however, you can slow down the appearance of aging when it comes to your skin and eyes. There are a couple options. There are cosmetic procedures you can go through such as Blepharoplasty or you can soak in the power of anti-aging eye creams.

Usually, testing out a variety of different eyes creams to see which work best is the better option before going through the extremes of eye procedures. You want to find eye cream that eliminates eye imperfections and firms that for a youthful look. Some ingredients to look for are Cynergy TK, Vitamin E and A, Wakame Kelp and Manuka Honey. These types of eye cream help moisturize the skin and absorb collagen.

Give these creams several weeks to see results. If all else fails, you could turn to an eye procedure such as Blepharoplasty to get those youthful looking eyes.

Be Careful With Enigin - You Don’t Always Get What You Pay For!

I don’t think I have ever paid a bill in a restaurant without at the very least glancing at the bottom line… if it seems too high I invariably look to see if I have been charged for something I did not order – and on a number of occasions - I HAVE – most responsible people will do the same; it’s not that we are mean penny-pinchers we know you don’t ALWAYS get what you pay for!

Ironically however, when it comes to one of the biggest expenses for many businesses - energy bills – all too often companies just pay them without ever checking if they are correct. In fact I have known examples where for years people have been paying for part of an adjoining neighbours bill without ever knowing. Of course it’s difficult because energy is ‘invisible’ and your bills are always ‘historic’.

It’s a simple truism that if you can’t measure energy you can’t begin to control it or save it.

One solution; By using effective “real time energy management and historical data logging” you get to know exactly what you are paying for and how you can reduce the size of your bill… An excellent example of this is the Eniscope Real Time Energy Meter from Enigin PLC. So… companies like Enigin can help you be careful by putting you in control and ensuring you always get what you pay for!

The Eniscope has highly relevant information presented in salient graphical display that you can see on any lap-top, PC, iPod anywhere in the world. You can even project the information onto a large Plasma screen for displaying in receptions and public areas to show your visitors you are taking your ‘carbon’ responsibilities seriously.

This is proving to be a great boon in the educational sector, especially in schools and colleges where pupils and students are being taught the value of managing our personal carbon footprint and doing our bit for the future of our planet.

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Archived from June 2009
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Enigin Partners & Distributors – Don’t Waste YOUR Time!

(Can we learn anything from these guys?)

Enigin PLC is a company at the forefront of the energy saving business. They might know a lot about energy saving products but what do they know about training new partners and distributors to succeed in building their business from scratch in was is obviously a difficult economic climate?

So… some understandably want to know; are Enigin really capable of training and empowering new distributors and partners?

Here is what a recent graduate from Enigin’s training had to say upon his return home from partner training after implementing the techniques taught: -

“As an Enigin partner in Australia for almost 12 months now I can report that Enigin PLC are a company who support their partners and provide the basis (framework, methodology and tools) to build a strong business that with some commercial savvy and hard work provides real value for all stakeholders - 1) customers, 2) product manufacturers, and 3) partners.  The business opportunity in the energy management industry is real.  We are somewhat ahead of the curve but there is sufficient demand in the market for a viable and thriving business now and more importantly, well positioned to capitalise on the significant growth that will occur in the next 5 years.”
Dominic Da Cruz, Managing Director

Well in reality training is probably one of Enigin’s greatest strengths, I should know better than anyone because in the mid-nineties I wrote, presented and co-produced the “Winning More Customers” video based training programme that was used as an in-house training resource by the likes of Barclays bank PLC, Norwich Union, British Glass, MacDonald Hotels PLC and a whole host of others – so I know what skill sets are needed. Furthermore, I am now Managing Director of Enigin PLC and take a personal interest in the content and structure as well as the quality of delivery.

The fact that all the course sessions are highly relevant and professionally delivered can be attested to by the 100% positive feedback received from delegates on each partner-training course. In fact on Enigin’s website there are lots of comments and real-life interviews with happy partners and distributors following residential training.

What helps is the fact that Enigin benefits from practical hands-on experience running its own DIRECT end-user sales operation so our people are dealing with real customer issues day in, day out. We also talk to our partners very frequently to determine exactly what strategies are working best so you can be assured each course is ‘bang-up-to-date’, with any subtle nuances in market forces.

So… what are the secrets of the world’s top sales achievers? It’s easy to think that those top performing businessmen and women have some natural advantage over and above the rest of us, but that simply just isn’t the case. When all said and done we all have the same amount of time available in each 24 hour day – the difference is not just the time we put in – but what we put into the time… and this is where Enigin excels in providing help, not only in delivering quality information but training partners in the effective use of some powerful, time saving, business tools.

The performing distributors don’t become so because they have a super-charismatic personality, the ‘gift of the gab’ or some other magical quality or gift that is denied to the ordinary businessperson. They become top achievers - often from a position of relative failure or mediocrity- because they have learned the pitfalls to avoid and the critical success factors that guarantee positive results, not just in marketing and sales but in all the other vital aspects of business.

These principles are available to everyone - the secret is in adopting and practicing them until they become the natural basis on which we can build techniques and methods, which work synergistically to ensure our success. With these secrets you can join the world’s most successful business achievers too!

Let’s consider how we use what is undoubtedly our most valuable asset…

To illustrate, when we open a Bank Account there are normally three things we get: 1 - A paying-in book so that you can put money into your account. 2 -  A debit card and possibly a cheque book so that you can pay bills and draw cash. 3 -  A folder for monthly statements so that you know how much money you haven’t got!

But can you imagine a bank account where all you had was a debit card, so all you could do was spend? Now wouldn’t that be something? Well, you already have just such an account, not in money, but a bank account of TIME.

Actually there are many similarities between time and money. We often hear the expression that ‘time is money’ - people spend, invest, run out, save… yet with our bank account of time we can never deposit, and we don’t get a statement telling us how much we have got left.

As far as each working day is concerned, we all have the same amount of time, yet often we complain, “I haven’t got time”. There’s an old saying, ‘if you want something done urgently give it to a busy person’.

As professional business people, we get paid for producing results, so our objective should be to achieve maximum results for a given level of activity. This requires effective management and use of your most valuable resource…. your time.

The fact is that in business today an immense amount of time is wasted on unprofitable exercises. The Enigin training programme is designed to ensure every session is packed with highly relevant and stimulating material. Many delegates have been profoundly changed as a result – even the occasional ones who started out as skeptics.

Since we have a set limitation on our time, without doubt time is our most valuable resource. So… Enigin partners and distributors… don’t waste YOUR time!

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Update on Enigin 07/12/09
I had a chat with the guys over at Enigin the other day about the recent training course that they have just done. They do a course every month for their “Enigin Partners” to learn about the new developments and technology in energy savings devices.
These include multiple sessions with the Managing Director, and a lot of one on one time with other various members of the Enigin team. They will also learn all about Eniscope installations, and even be able to watch one! All the stops are pulled out to make sure that by the time the partners leave for their home countries, they are confident and clear in their ability to use the systems to reduce their carbon footprint as much as possible. I think that this is a great way to do it, and if any of you are looking for an energy saving partner then you should really look into them!

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Enigin Update 14/12/09
Something that is very interesting to us here at Learning Capacities is the fairly recent advent of global trading and the interdependency of nations. I have found a few very interesting concerning this through our relationship with Enigin recently. One of which is new legislations passed by Russia stating that all large corporations MUST start to track their energy output and through this reduce their carbon footprint. I think that this is an amazing step for the country, and it makes me think that perhaps in some of the more important issues Britain is falling behind Eastern Europe. I really hope that the politicians realize this at Copenhagen, stop blaming other countries and look to ourselves a little bit more!