Now the average business will have a vague idea of what increased exposure would look like and an even vaguer idea of what the results will be. This lack of clarity creates two problems for your business. First, there is no benchmark to judge the performance of your campaign. If your site is currently receiving 100 hits a day, then what defines a successful campaign, 125, 250, 10,000 hits per day (if you are able to accomplish the latter, then open an internet marketing firm tomorrow!).  This may not seem like a big deal, but when you are investing money or time (for those of you handling it themselves) in a campaign you have to be able to judge whether or not the return is worth it.

Let’s flip the situation and say that you did your due diligence and discovered that for every 500 visits to your website you receive $800 in revenue. Now you have a real benchmark to base your campaign off of. If you are investing $1500 a month in an online campaign and only receiving an additional 300 hits a month, then it is time to reconsider your strategy.

The second problem that marketing without a benchmark presents is a lack of accountability. This is primarily for companies who employ people or companies to handle their marketing. Time and time again I come across people who were dissatisfied with the results of a marketing campaign. When asked what the goal of the campaign was, 9 out of 10 times the answer is vague and without benchmarks. Both parties are to blame for this and many times the situation could have been avoided by setting the benchmarks of a successful campaign. You’ll be amazed at the difference it makes.

What do you use to define successful campaigns?

The conflict between the elephant and the rider:

This is the symbolism of the feelings that everyone gets when they make strides for self improvement. The rider (your rational side) decides that this decision is what is best for you. This falls into all aspects of life; diets, traveling, learning a new language, etc. You make a choice to improve an aspect of your life and the rider tells the elephant to go that direction.

This is where the problem comes in. The elephant (your emotional and impulsive side), is just as the names suggest, a huge animal. The rider can tell it to go and in some cases can force it to go temporarily, but if the elephant decides it wants to go another way, the rider will always lose. That is why to make a change, you have to appeal to both the rider and the elephant (without the rider, the elephant has no direction).

When it comes to business, many people are resistant to change. Whether it be a new product/service, reorganization, process optimization or whatever else you can think of. As a marketer, I see this repeatedly. A company requests a way to stand out and bring in new customers that is “new, fresh, amazing” and you deliver exactly what they ask. The only problem is that, when the see the amount of change necessary, they panic. It’s just too different from what they are used to! I now realize that although we have satisfied the elephant, we have neglected the rider.

Now that I have a fresh understanding of this problem, I have taken steps to minimize this from happening.

What can you do?

Now carry this attitude through to the offsite workshop we discussed last time.  Your executive team will be watching you during the process.  They will be looking for visual clues and listening for verbal clues from you so they will know what direction they should take.  In order to overcome the inertia you can’t let that happen.  You must remain neutral and only offer suggestions after your team has responded making sure those suggestions support their ideas rather than squash them.  If you trust them they won’t let you down.  You hired a quality staff, now prove your faith in them.  You will be rewarded with ideas that will propel your company into a new future if implemented carefully and nurtured correctly.

Remember, your staff wants to help you be successful.  Trust them.  Help them grow.  They will return the favor tenfold.

Next time we’ll talk about how to effectively implement those new ideas.

What would happen to your business and your family should you become disabled or die unexpectedly?  Do you have key employees for family members who could step in and run the company in your absence?

Business Continuation Basics

It is essential to the future of your business and your family to have a succession strategy in place.  In order for your business to maintain continuity, you need to implement a succession strategy that coincides with your goals and objectives.  Your strategy should be flexible enough to handle changes within the company and its related industry(ies).  However, one of the keys to a succession strategy is determining who or whom your successor(s) will be.

Deciding on, and preparing a successor may require years to familiarize him or her with the finer points of the business.  Thus, it is important to select a replacement as soon as possible in order to maximize the possibility of a successful transition.  In smaller businesses, it is not uncommon for one or more family members to be at the top of the list of potential successors.

If you wish to pass your business on to future generations, you will need to make an honest assessment of the respective needs of your family and business, the qualifications of any interested family members, and whether the family and business would be best served by a continued relationship.  Communication with family members is extremely important in order to better ascertain overall interest or concern.

You can prepare yourself by honestly evaluating and reflecting on the necessary components of a well-thought-out succession strategy.  Here are some points that may require further elaboration:

• a thorough job description of each position, including details regarding areas of responsibility and delegation of duties;
• a management/organizational plan;
• Assuring the availability of cash to meet the demands of federal and/or state estate taxes;
• a list of potential successors to your ownership, taking every candidate’s job experience and academic background into consideration; and
• a mechanism to ensure extensive on-the-job training for the successor(s).

Other Considerations

A succession strategy may also include a buy-sell agreement funded by life insurance.  More than likely, your successor may not have the cash, or the ability, to borrow at the time of successorship.  Under such an agreement, the death benefit proceeds of the life insurance can be used to provide the cash necessary for a successor to purchase an owner’s share of stock in the event of his or her untimely death.

In addition, it may be prudent to explore how your unexpected disability could affect not only your plans for successorship, but also your financial well-being.  Under a disability buyout arrangement, a disability buyout policy provides a successor with cash to purchase shares in the event of the owner’s untimely disability.

You should consult with your insurance, legal and tax professionals to devise a plan of action that provides security for your business and your family. With proper planning, your objectives for business succession and securing your family’s future can be met.

This article is for general information only and is not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.  You should consult with your advisor, attorney or accountant with regard to your individual situation.

Search engine optimization experts recommend a variety of techniques, and one that’s particularly important, but not always understood, is the use of backlinks.

Backlinks are links from another website that point to your website. They are an important ingredient to SEO because Google rewards you with a higher page ranking when you have them. In fact, Google says on its website that “the more links you have, the more likely it is that the Googlebot will visit your website.” And the more frequently Google visits your site and sees new content, the more likely it is that your site will move higher up in page ranking.

However, Google also says it will penalize you if your inbound links come from web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” such as porn sites. So avoid these sites like the plague!

How do you get backlinks?

You can get them from a variety of sources including:

• Article submission sites such as Ezinearticles.com
• Professional associations, charitable organizations
• Directories – such as Yahoo, DMOZ.org
• Blog sites
• Online Press Release sites
• Social Networking – Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Don’t try to do all of these things at once. Spread them out over a couple of months time. Then, you can start checking on your progress by utilizing a free backlink checker site. Google’s Webmaster Tools can help you here. But there are also many other free sites available online.

One of these free sites is www.online-utlity.org. This free tool analyzes up to 1000 inlinks (backlinks, inbound links) to arbitrary page (or website) and shows the domains of backlinks. It also separately displays different classes of URLs like .edu, .mil, .com, .net, .gov and other. It is similar to host and IP backlinks checkers, but it might be a bit faster and doesn’t do IP address analysis of backlinks.

Another site, www.backlinkwatch.com, finds backlinks as well as “anchor” text, pagerank, total outbound links on that page, and nofollow flags for each of  your available inbound links.

It is a good idea to check your link visibility frequently, or at least once a month. But don’t get impatient if you’re not seeing as many links as you think you should. Some get picked up by Google faster than others.

Once you start acquiring backlinks, you should notice an uptick in traffic to your site, as your rank improves. It’s then up to your website’s content to convince those new visitors to do business with your company.

tags: backlink tool, backlinks, Facebook, Google, link visability, page ranking, search engine optimization, SEO, Twitter, website

It’s a simple formula.  Take the sales volume from a few years ago and run it through a business operating much more efficiently and more cost effective, and you yield more profit.  Then build that profit to reinvest and grow.   The habits developed to survive, should continue to be used to grow.  Let’s look at some common examples.

People:  usually the first to go and often the first to grow.  As sales grow, business tends to hire again as cash is available, not necessarily because they are actually needed, but because it is perceived they will be needed to handle the increase in sales.  The recession forced business to do more with less people.  Maintain these productivity standards and metrics, and as sales grow, hire only as the metrics dictate the need, not because cash is available to hire.  In other words, the business may have the cash, from sales, to hire two new people, but the metrics show only one is needed.   Don’t give in to old pre-recession metrics, stick to the ones that got you to post-recession.

Business costs:  Success often breeds laziness.  When times were good, how often did every line of the phone bill get looked at, or was it simply paid month after month.  Many companies paid for extra lines and services they no longer used.  To survive, business looked at every penny spent to justify its benefit to the operation of the business.  Why should that change as business gets better?  It shouldn’t.   The strategies to find cost savings should now become habits integrated into the everyday procedures used to move from survival into growth.

In order for business to move forward, it cannot revert back to business as usual.   The strategies adopted to survive the recession cannot be viewed as simply a stop gap measure until business returns to normal, but must be embraced as a fundamental long term change in operational strategy to adapt to a fundamental change in the economy.

Democrats canceled hearings after learning companies’ plans would make health insurance bill look bad.

Several documents obtained by Fortune and published on CNN show that AT&T and other major companies — including Verizon, Deere and Caterpillar are considering eliminating their employee benefits program. Instead they are more willing to pay a fine to the government for those they employed without insurance. The fine for AT&T would amount to $2,000 per employee, costing the company a grand total of $600 million a year. Maintaining benefits, on the other hand, will cost the company approximately $4.6 billion.

In light of this revelation, Democrats apparently canceled hearings into the companies practices when they received the documents and learned that such hearings might expose a major flaw in their health insurance overhaul.

Instead, Democrats requested documents from the four companies after they announced they were taking massive write-downs to earnings as a result of costs incurred by the bill. Up until the documents were reviewed, Liberals had made accusations that huge firms were overstating costs as a result of the bill, presumably to make it look bad. However, after receiving documents from the companies and reviewing them, Democrats issued a brief memo that the write-downs were “proper and in accordance with SEC rules.”

The memo didn’t mention they’d received proof that their bill might result in the loss of coverage for millions of Americans.

Verizon commissioned a study examining the effects of various healthcare bills under consideration on their bottom line. The study, prepared by a consulting firm, asserted, “Even though the proposed assessments [on companies that do not provide health care] are material, they are modest when compared to the average cost of health care.”

To avoid added costs, the study said, “employers may consider exiting the health care market and send employees to the Exchanges.”

Caterpillar and AT&T examined what they believed would be an increase in insurance costs as major drug manufacturers, insurers and medical device makers shifted costs from new taxes they were going to pay onto health insurance clients.

“Caterpillar and AT&T actually spell out the cost differences: Caterpillar did its estimate in November, when the most likely legislation would have imposed an 8% payroll tax on companies that do not provide coverage,” CNN’s Shawn Tully wrote late Wednesday. “Even with that immense penalty, Caterpillar stated that it could shave $25 million a year, or almost 10% from its bill. Now, because the $2,000 is far lower than 8%, it could reduce its bill by over 70%, by Fortune’s estimate.”

On the flip side, health insurance companies have argued the penalties for not carrying insurance are too small. They claim that Americans will also decide to pay a fine rather than carry insurance because the fine is cheaper, and they figure they can buy insurance when they get sick (since insurers will be banned from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions).

None of the companies have confirmed they are actively considering dropping benefits for employees. Many businesses see health and other benefits as important factors in helping them hire and retain talented workers.

“By Fortune’s reckoning, each person who’s dropped would cost the government an average of around $2,100 after deducting the extra taxes collected on their additional pay,” Tully wrote. “So if 50% of people covered by company plans get dumped, federal health care costs will rise by $160 billion a year in 2016, in addition to the $93 billion in subsidies already forecast by the” Congressional Budget Office.

If you appreciate professional service, and have friends, family, work colleagues, or know anyone looking for very comprehensive and affordable insurance, from the best companies, please feel free to pass along my website information, http://www.GraceFSA.com or give me a call with their name and number. I would be happy to work up a free quote, and help them with all their insurance needs.

Everyone needs good Life Insurance protection, concrete Health Insurance coverage, and income while they are disabled. I am committed to helping you find it!

Things to test:

1) Coupon style borders simulate eyeballs – that dashed border or straight line border around your ad will increase readership

2) Test having a circular border - keep the text straight but the border to be designed like a circle – in a square and rectangular world like most publications are – yours will definitely stand out

3) Reverse print will kill your response - you see it all the time – copy heavy text with white text on black background. This is proven to decrease readership on text heavy marketing by 50% and more.

4) Colors to use to make certain headlines an subheads standout - blue and then red are the most powerful – and the most profit pulling

5) White background with black text always pulls best response – second choice is yellow background with black text

6) Online fonts to use - Verdana or Arial are most widely received for body copy – Tahoma for headlines and subheads

7) Offline fonts to use – Times new roman and courier new for body copy – I personally like Tahoma for heads and subs offline as well – tests prove buyers do too

Never use all caps in headlines or subheads – use initial caps (first letter of each word in caps). Also test in heads and subs using only a capital on the very first letter – the rest all in lower case
Initial Caps: If A Corporate World Flunkie Can Write A Simple….
Regular: If a corporate world flunkie can write a simple…

9) keep your columns fairly narrow - both online and off. It make for easier reading and lesser chance of getting lost in the text

10) 11 point font receives the most favorable readership and action
Again, everything above needs to be tested with your product or service in your market. It is only your prospects that will say with 100% certainty what they want to see – and what they will respond to.

Let’s start with the basics: The credit bureaus rate your creditworthiness on a scale from 300 to 850, with the average credit score falling somewhere around 670.  When considering a large purchase (a car, home, etc.), it is important to understand the role your credit score will play in the finance transaction.  The higher your score, the more likely creditors will deem you to be a worthy investment and the more likely you are to obtain a better interest rate and more favorable loan terms.

The three major credit reporting bureaus (Experian, TransUnion, Equifax) each have their own unique formula for calculating your score which translates to how risky lenders perceive you to be.  As a general rule of thumb the scores are weighted as follows:

• 35% – Your payment history (Are you paying on time?)
• 30% – Your balance vs. your available credit (Are your credit lines maxed out?)
• 15% – Credit history (How long have your accounts been open?)
• 10% – Type of credit (Do you have a good variety of credit lines?)
• 10% – Recent inquiries (Are you trying to get a lot of new credit lines at once?)

By visiting www.annualcreditreport.com, you can receive a free copy of your credit report once per year to check for errors, fraud, etc.  Be wary of sites that require fees or automatically enroll you in a credit protection program.  Giving some attention to your credit score before making these big purchases can save you in the long run.

Which is why you have such a trustworthy and handsome guy like me to handle all of that for you.

So the Gulf of Mexico is bleeding oil.  Lots and lots of oil.  Enough to get Obama to put a temporary hiatus on his offshore drilling expansion.  I expect this to move oil prices up.  And, since every product in creation needs to be shipped in some form or fashion, expect that added gas cost to trickle down to higher consumer prices.  Because you and I are supposed to pay for all the world’s problems.  Fun.

Greece received it’s much needed bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.  The price tag is 110 billion Euros (approximately $146 billion) with 28% of the cash coming from Germany.   This also means that the IMF and the EU get to start calling the shots as far as the allocation of those funds goes.  And the Greek population is not entirely thrilled with the idea of being told what to do with their resources.

So, of course, a lot of them did the only logical thing they could do: they took to the streets and rioted.  Which reminds us of the wise axiom “When in doubt, grab a sledgehammer and deface some poor shmo’s business.”  Awesome, guys.  Very patriotic.

On the home front, closed home sales soared upwards 26.9% (measured by closed transactions) which represents the biggest percentage increase in that metric since 1963.  To be fair, it was coming off of a very low point, but regardless I’m a big fan of this trend.  It brings hope that the housing turnaround is starting to catch some serious tread which is good news for home prices.

Gross Domestic Product in the 1st quarter of 2010 moved up 3.2% on an annualized basis, softening from the 5.6% growth we saw in 4th quarter 2009.  However, these days a plus is a plus and I’ll take it.

Okay okay okay.  So the numbers that are coming in lately are good.  I don’t think anyone’s arguing that.  Stocks are positive, growth is good, jobs are starting to grow again, etc.  The question we need to be asking ourselves right now is ‘what are these numbers really worth amidst all of this stimulus-fueled noise?’  Our government has taken so many extreme and unconventional actions in stimulating our economy that the statistics we observe to gauge our progress may be massively upwardly biased.

Put another way, just because you’re energetic after 17 Red Bulls doesn’t mean you are a naturally energetic person.

So, I am thinking the next couple of quarters will be particularly indicative of the legitimate healing that has taken place in our economy.  The Fed has closed all but one of the specialty financing programs they rolled out to combat the liquidity crunch of 2008.  Aside from interest rates being held at a low level, America is slowly coming off of financial life-support.

Let’s hope her ticker can keep on tickin’ by itself.