Author name: Steven Imke

3 Marketing Ideas to Create Brand Awareness For Under $10

3 Marketing Ideas to Create Brand Awareness For Under $10

BUSINESS CARDS – If you have a business to consumer (B2C) business, you can use tools like SimplyAnalytics (often available at public libraries) to identify the ideal market demographic, known as a Groups and Types in SimplyAnalyticsSimplyAnalytics, for your product or service. Within the text of each “Type”, the segment is a description of the […]

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5 Free Marketing Ideas to Create Brand Awareness

5 Free Marketing Ideas to Create Brand Awareness

Brand awareness often is not directly responsible for making sales, but aids in the conversion rates of more direct marketing and sales efforts. The brand’s message has to be constantly repeated to cross the divide from the unconscious mind to the conscious mind before it becomes effective. Therefore, brand awareness is a constant effort. It

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Planting Seeds vs. Harvesting Sales: Understanding Brand Marketing vs. Direct Marketing

Struggling to Turn Your Marketing Efforts Into Actual Sales? The Secret Lies in Balancing Brand Marketing and Direct Marketing Strategies—Planting the Right Seeds Before Expecting a Harvest. Discover How to Build Awareness, Earn Trust, and Drive Immediate Conversions in a Way That Ensures Long-Term Business Success.

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Make The Most Of Outdoor Advertising

Make The Most Of Outdoor Advertising

Some businesses have made their mark using outdoor or billboard advertising. Anyone traveling across the country on I-80 will remember passing billboards promoting Little America’s “50 Cent Cones – 15 Miles”, or billboards promoting Wall Drug on I-90: “Free Ice Water, Wall Drug”. Billboards can be a very effective way to build brand awareness or

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401K

Using a 401k Loan to Fund Your Business

Retirement accounts qualify for special tax treatment by the IRS. A common retirement account is a 401k, where pretax dollars from you, which are often matched by your employer, are deposited into an account and allowed to grow tax-deferred. These funds are designed to create income during retirement and are subject to premature distribution penalties

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Retirement Nest Egg

Retirement Account Funds New Business

Many would-be entrepreneurs have money tied up in retirement plans like IRAs or 401ks that could be used to fund their businesses. Many simply believe they can’t access these funds until they reach the age of 59.5 without being subject to a premature distribution penalty. That being said, there are a few ways that you

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Who Really Benefits Most From Investments?

Who Really Benefits Most From Business Investments?

I think we would all agree that making a profit is the incentive to take risk through investments. Moreover, it takes investments to stimulate innovation. But innovation creates productivity gains, which in turn eat into profit. For example, a tractor that costs as much as the labor cost for 150 workers, but which can do

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How to Leverage China’s Currency Manipulation to Your Advantage

How to Leverage China’s Currency Manipulation to Your Advantage

In the news, you often see that the US accuses China of being a currency manipulator by artificially keeping their currency low. If their currency were allowed to rise, goods produced in China would get more expensive in the US and we would buy less of them. Higher prices would mean that Americans would have

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Is Taxing The Rich Sound Economic Policy?

Is Taxing The Rich Sound Economic Policy?

Taxing the rich reduces the relative incentives and encourages more coasters. In school, smarter people should not get a harder test simply by the virtue that they work harder than the slackers that do not study. We should reward people for risking their personal capital to start a business that creates employment. Rewarding lucky risk

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One Person’s Liability is Another Person's Asset

One Person’s Liability is Another Person’s Asset

Many people, and many businesses for that matter, really do not understand the difference between an asset and a liability. When asked what is your biggest asset most people will say their house. An asset is essentially something that helps put money in your pocket and a liability is something that takes the money out.

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How to Leverage a Turning Tide

How to Leverage a Turning Tide

Three-quarters of all firms in the United States are categorized as “non-employers”. Non-employers are business that provides work for only a single or part-time owner. While small businesses which employ many people are usually started in response to marketplace opportunities, non-employer business is often started as occupational decisions. They can be a way to deal

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Do You Have Access To Capital?

Do You Have Access To Capital?

A wise man once told me: “If you have a successful business, you will need more money.” He also said: “If you have an unsuccessful business, you will need more money.” The undisputed leading cause of business failure is that businesses just run out of money before they become profitable. Access to capital is, therefore, the

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Pricing Strategies – Pricing by Available Options

Pricing Strategies – Pricing by Available Options

Sometimes you have a new product or service category with little or no competition and are free to charge whatever you want for early adopters. When I had an Invisible Fencing franchise the sum of direct costs for a self-install kit was about $100 in parts and another $100 to cover the parent company’s national

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Pricing Strategies – Pricing by Limitation/Availability/Scarcity

Pricing Strategies – Pricing by Limitation/Availability/Scarcity

Limited availability or scarcity is a powerful tool to create the premium pricing. There is only one Super Bowl per year with only a fixed number of seats. Tickets prices rise to meet demand. Furthermore, there are only so many ads spots during the Super Bowl. Here again, prices rise to balance out demand. The

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Pricing Strategies – Pricing For Loyalty (Membership)

Pricing Strategies – Pricing For Loyalty (Membership)

If a customer has to go to some effort and expense to join a club they often develop a sense of loyalty. Sam’s Club and Costco restrict shoppers unless they have a membership, which they get customers to purchase up front. Good Sam’s (a camping membership) allows members to get discounts at participating campgrounds while

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Pricing Strategies – Pricing For Loyalty (Repeat Business)

Pricing Strategies – Pricing For Loyalty (Repeat Business)

Customer acquisition costs represent a significant indirect expense. Once you acquire a new customer you should implement strategies to keep them coming back again and again. When you fly you often have a choice of airlines that fly the same route. To encourage repeat business many carriers offer frequent flier miles that equate to perks,

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How Disruptive Technology Can Affect Your Business

How Disruptive Technology Can Affect Your Business

New disruptive inventions don’t only affect manufacturers like our button manufacturer in yesterday’s post. Sometimes technology affects service businesses as well. Let’s consider the safety razor and the impact it had on the barber industry. While Jean-Jacques Perret invented the safety razor in France during the latter part of the 18th century, the invention reached

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Seven Common Business Formation Errors

Seven Common Business Formation Errors

Many new business owners make several formation errors during and after the registration process that can come back and bite them later. 1, One common formation error is that the registering agent fails to include an entity identifier in the name, such as LLC or Inc. 2, Once registered, many LLCs fail to produce an operating

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Sales Tax Workarounds for Service Oriented Businesses

Sales Tax Workarounds for Service Oriented Businesses

I often encounter businesses that at their core are pure services businesses, but which also sell products as part of their offerings. For example, consider a small part-time mobile oil change business. They are primarily in the service business of changing a person’s oil. However, their service includes the sale of motor oil. I’m often

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Late Boomers Attitudes and Behaviors

Late Boomers Attitudes and Behaviors

Each generation has their own unique attitudes and behaviors that set them apart. Late Boomers –Born 1956-1965 (9 Years)Population size – 49 million (5.4 million births per year). Late Boomers lived their formative years with Watergate, which shaped their general mistrust of government. The oil embargo and other economic struggles squelched their optimism about the

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Early Boomers Attitudes and Behaviors

Early Boomers Attitudes and Behaviors

Each generation has their own unique attitudes and behaviors that set them apart. Early BoomersBorn 1946-1954 (8 Years)Population size – 33 million (4.1 million births per year). Early Boomers lived their formative years with Vietnam and witnessed the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. They lived through the Civil Rights movement and

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