Frugal advice for a down economy

What should I do? What should I do?

With the economy being in an "official" downturn here are some thoughts to keep everything in perspective. Based on an article by by Mark Tewart

1 - Don’t read too much into the news reports
Things are rarely as good as they seem and things are rarely as bad as they seem. If you allow yourself to give in to the news you will determine your destiny. When people tell me about the bad economy I tell them I have chosen not to participate.


2 - You can’t cut your way to a profit
Expense management is done at all times not just in bad markets. Cutting expenses in bad times is a misnomer. You set your good and bad habits in good markets not bad. Be selectively extravagant and prudently frugal. I have never seen a business survive and thrive a down market by trying to cut expenses as their long term strategy.


3 - Don’t cut your life line
Some of the easiest variable expenses to cut out are advertising and marketing. That also takes a bad situation and makes it worse. When your business drops and you take action to stop the flow even more, you are doomed. Be smarter with your marketing budgets, rely on a more planned out approach and save where you can.


4 - Spoil your existing customers
The past and present customers are the life blood of any business. These customers are also the most over looked and underutilized asset in ALL businesses. Do you have a relationship building program that creates over fifty positive customer contacts per year? The people who have done business with you already like and trust you and will most likely do business again and bring others if they are appreciated, rewarded and yes asked. There is gold in them thar hills.


5 - Spin the bad news into something good
Use all the bad news and the fear and negative emotions associated with it to your advantage. Use the headlines in your marketing and advertising and become the solution provider in a bad economy.


6 - Stop Boring Me to Death
Be creative and use trash can mailers, wallet mailers and other dimensional mail. Stop trying to get the lowest cost per piece and concentrate on the highest ROI for your mailings and other marketing. Boring does not sell in any media format.


7 - Go back to the basics
Instead of cutting your education, double your education efforts. If the market is really that bad then you should have tons of time to educate yourself and your team. If your opportunities are fewer then you must maximize each customer contact. Think like a customer. Examine your process from a customer’s point of view and ask yourself what creates heartburn for those customers.


8 - Super-size it
You can impact your bottom line immediately by increasing either transaction size or the gross margin. You can do this through add-ons, bundling, value-added presentations and better process for asking for and negotiating money. Do want fries with that and do you want the large popcorn for 25 cents more are not accidental questions.


9 - Create Multiple Campaigns
If your customers buy one product or service from you then they will buy more. Sending a one time mailing for a discount oil change does not constitute a continuity program. When you create a continuity program you will insulate your business from bad economies in the future because you will be less dependent on conquest customers.


10 - Attitude of the Boss with effect the Crew
As the leader thinks and acts, the team shall too. If the leaders of your business talk bad economies and bad markets the team will believe it. What are your leaders doing right now? Spend every minute of the day in the pursuit of things that will create customers and incomes now and in the future. If the leader does not believe, don’t expect the troops to.

Taking your green to the bank

turn it off for profits sake...

Here is a very interesting mini-report regarding return on investment (ROI) for green products. I have edited it down a bit from the original.

Saving energy makes sense any time, but particularly now, given our short supplies of oil and the pollution and climate change we create when we burn any fossil fuel. Many consumers are under the generally false impression that adopting "green" (energy efficient) technologies is beyond their financial reach. And especially during these economic hard times, even the suspicion that something will cost more is enough to deter its purchase.

That's why the concept of Green ROI is so important. Green ROI offers a way to calculate what the purchase of a green product is worth both in the short term and a longer way down the road. In other words, if you spend X dollars on a green product today, how long will it take you to realize a gain — in real dollars — and make the purchase worthwhile? Well, consider a few of these Green ROI calculations, courtesy of GreenandSave.com, and based on a ten-year performance period:

1. Programmable Thermostat save money going green Automatically adjust indoor air temperatures to reduce the amount of gas or electricity you use with a programmable thermostat. Cost: $115 Annual savings: $180 ROI: 156.5%

2. Power Strips Use energy-saving power strips on office electronics and home appliances to reduce energy use when in "standby" mode. Cost: $20 for two strips Annual savings: $24 ROI: 120%

3. Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs Replace 20 incandescent bulbs that are 60 watts and have a life expectancy of 1,500 hours with CFLs that use only 14 watts and last 10,000 hours. Cost: $3 - $6 per bulb Annual savings: Each bulb saves on average $4 to $7 per year in electricity ROI: 133.3% See how saving energy saves money — a lot of money — over the long term?

But what about climate change, you ask?
Take programmable thermostats. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which administers the federal Energy Star program, calculates that in 2006, consumers using programmable thermostats not only saved a total of $14 billion on their utility bills, they also saved enough energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking 25 million cars off the road. Want to know how additional investments will create Green ROI?
Go to GreenandSave.com.

Jobs at risk

No it can't be me I'm too important...

Car salesmen, real estate agents and investment bankers are among the most likely to lose their jobs this year, a new study says.

Bricklayers, catering contractors, boat builders, tire manufacturers, prawn fishermen and some miners also will do it hard.

The findings come from business analysts IBIS World's survey of industries most at risk in 2009.

Anyone connected with the international tourism industry may be wise not to make to many long-term plans.

The study predicts traffic from key markets such as China, Japan, the US and most of Europe will fall dramatically.

On the other hand the future looks good for vets, childcare workers, community health care providers and nursing home staff.

Nursing homes will be a boom industry, with the number of over-70s moving into care set to surge and the baby boomers to follow.

The ageing boomers will also keep radiographers and other people in diagnostic imaging busy as they will need more tests to keep them on their feet.

A cheep logo will make you loose $

I am a great businessman because I have a logo that only cost $5... NOT

Here is a great article (edited) about why cheep logos from the internet are a bad idea. For a full version of the story please go here.

Logo design in today’s world is totally under rated. People do not understand how important a good logo is and how valuable it is to their business. In this article I am going to outline the ways in which you should NOT go about getting your logo designed… that is, if you are truly serious about business.

Logo Design Contests The worst deal you could probably go for is a logo design contest. Although this sounds like a mighty good deal, the quality is usually far from anything you would want to represent your business. You will be wasting your money and in the long term, in terms of damage done to your business, that amount could be quite considerable.

Too Good To Be True Deals If you do a search on ‘logo design’ on google you will find many businesses offering logo designs for very cheap and unbelievable prices. Such deals as “5 design concepts from 5 designers!” or “6 logos from 5 designers only $200″ - Stay away! These deals are extremely deceiving and the quality is far from satisfactory. Have you ever wondered how much thought they actually put into your logo design?

Stock Imagery This is a huge no-no. Did you know that stock imagery gets downloaded by thousands of people? This should be reason enough not to use stock imagery as your logo. If you do this, other people will have access to your logo design and can and will use it in places that will potentially devalue your business.

Do It Yourself Logo Design Closely linked to the stock imagery scenario above, business owners or those wanting a logo will try to do it themselves. I highly recommend against this and suggest you leave the design to a professional, much as you would leave your dental work to a dentist.

Free Logo Makers You will find many free online logo makers on the web. Not only do these logos look unprofessional, hundreds of other people could have the same logo as you and what is the point of that? These logos have no thought, concept or memorability about them, they are merely symbols.

Getting A Design Without Feedback Before approving and implementing a design, ensure you get feedback from your clients, peers, and stakeholders. Getting feedback on a design is a crucial part of the logo design process as it ensures that your logo is going to be successful.

What is the cost of a professional logo design? An obviously important question, but one that can’t be answered without details of your logo design project. Every company is different, so it makes sense to tailor a quote to your individual needs. Prices vary depending upon a large number of factors. Take the size of your company as an example. A small start-up business might expect one or two initial logo ideas before finalizing a design. On the other hand, a large multi-national might require exhaustive documentation analyzing the competition and may need to explore a wider range of design variations.

However he is a all park figure for a logo.
$800 to $2,400 yep that little... or that much!

It all depends on how much a budget you have. Logos are the foundation to your Brand. When you have a logo you should use it on the following places first.
- Business card
- Website and all other internet related communications
- Press Release
Once you get a bit more exposure you can start spending money on other items to expand the exposure of your business logo.

Predictions for 2009

Hocus pocus, mumbo jumbo stuff...

This is an edited report from John Battelle who has made some very accurate predictions in the past. I think a lot of this stuff is prity accurate and will definitlyy effect a lot iof us in the marketing world.

1. Macro economy: We'll see an end to the recession, taken literally, by the end of 2009. In other words, the economy will begin to grow again by the end of the year, but it won't feel like we're out of the woods till next year at the earliest. But until we have another year or two to really find our footing, it's going to feel like we're treading water.
   
   
2. The online media space will be hit hard by the economic downturn in the first half, but by year's end, will have chalked up moderate gains over last year in terms of gross spend. This will cause all sorts of consternation and hand wringing, but in the end, it won't matter. The web is where people are spending their time, the web will be where marketers spend their money.
   
   
3. Google will see search share decline significantly for the first time ever. Search is the ultimate harvester of demand, and Google has become search's Archer Daniels Midland - wherever a seed of demand might pop its head through the web's soil, Google is there to harvest it. The media business is more than a demand fulfillment business, and Google must learn to create demand if it's going to diversify. Google has a unique opportunity to become a new kind of branded media company. It will fail to do so, mainly for cultural reasons.
   
   
4. Despite #3 above, Google stock will soar in by the end of 2009, mainly because demand will pick up, and when demand picks up, it's like rain on a field of newly sown wheat. This after the stock tanks when the first half of #3, above, becomes apparent.
   
   
5. Yahoo and AOL will merge.
   
   
6. Apple will see a significant reversal of recent fortunes. I sense this will happen for a number of reasons, but I think the main one will be brand related - a brand based on being cooler than the other guy simply does not scale past a certain point.
   
   
7. Major brands will continue to struggle with the best way to interact with "social media." They will take budget reserved for media spending and start to become publishers in their own right. This is not a new tactic (many marketers, in particular technology companies, have published magazines, for example, and many consumer brands create or co-create television series), but given the plastic and social nature of online media, many marketers will see these efforts fail, in particular when the efforts are executed in partnership with major media companies. The reason has to do with putting the cart before the horse: in order to truly succeed in conversational media, the company must itself be fluent in that conversation.
   
   
8. Agencies will increasingly see their role as that of publishers. Publishers will increasingly see their role as that of agencies. Both can win at this, but only by understanding how to truly add value to real communities - not flash crowds driven by one time events. As opposed to simply being creators of media, media companies have realized (or will soon) that their job is to create platforms for communities to make media. Publishers are agents for communities, agencies are agents for brands. They need each other. It takes both agents to get good media made.
   
   
9. Twitter will continue its meteoric rise. The integration of search into the service, and the monetization of that integration. I think Twitter's management team (and its backers) will want to keep the service independent through 2009, both because prices are down but also because I think they want to prove something. The company has a tiger by the tail, and two really defensible assets: a passionate, committed, and growing community, on the one hand, and a valuable, growing, and meaningful database of realtime conversations on the other. But the key is the community and the conversation that community is having. By the middle of 2009, the integration of Twitter's community and content will become commonplace in well-executed marketing on third party sites.
   
   
10. Facebook will do something entirely shocking and unpredictable. It might be a merger with a traditional media company, a major alliance with Google, hiring a head scratcher as CEO, or something else at that level of "WTF!?" Facebook will "friend" Twitter and the two companies will become strong partners.
    
    
11. 2009 will see the year mobility becomes presumptive in every aspect of the web. Mobile will finally be plugged into the web in a way that makes sense for the average user and a major mobile innovation - the kind that makes us all say - Jeez that was obvious - will occur. At the core of this innovation will be the concept of search