Everyday Marketing Ideas

These days, high density urethane foam is the newest advancement in high quality signage. Businesses are using this petroleum-based foam for their signs instead of traditional high quality woods. HDU is popular, but is it really better than wood?

What Is HDU?

High density urethane (HDU) is a foam product that was designed specifically to make signs. It is flexible, durable, and can be made to look just like wood. The term “foam” may make you think about porous material full of air, but it is much thicker than most types of foam.

Traditionally, sandblasted signs were made of high quality wood. These are attractive, but they can be quite expensive. Wood also shows wear and tear over the years, and the added cost of replacing them every few years makes them even more expensive.

The Effects Of Water

The greatest advantage of HDU over wood is that it is naturally waterproof. Water is the number one destroyer of wood signs. Humidity bends and warps wood, and it can be noticeable in just a few short years, depending on the climate where you live. When a wood sandblasted sign is chipped, this allows water to get inside, and it can begin to deteriorate from the inside out.

HDU doesn’t have this problem. It is naturally waterproof because it is a petroleum based material. This means that HDU lasts longer than wood and doesn’t need to be replaced over time.

The Effects Of Wind

Although HDU is durable, it is lighter and more flexible than wood. This means that it can be effected by wind. If you have a long, thin HDU sign that is stretched between two posts, windy weather can bend it and permanently damage it. This is one thing to keep in mind when deciding whether it is right for you.

The Effect On Your Company’s Budget

In order to have a durable sign made of high quality wood such as redwood or cedar, Read the rest of this post »

Have you ever experienced the feast of having many profitable clients wanting your services at the same time, to entering a period of famine where no one seems to want anything to do with you?

I have a solution to help you even-out your sales cycle. Eat more M&M’s.

If you are experiencing the “feast or famine” rollercoaster ride right now, I want you to take a deep breath, pop a few M&M’s in your mouth to nourish your body, and relax so you can concentrate on what I’m going to tell you…

Business growth happens for one major reason ‘ more clients want your services.

The catch is they have to know you exist before they can be attracted to you, and willingly open their wallets to make a purchase.

So, how do you get more clients? The answer is simple - Marketing.

Most of us start our businesses business because we want to help others, and we have a passion for what we do. We love coaching, massage therapy, or opening a retail boutique to sell one-of-a kind treasures. Often, we don’t think thoroughly about the “other” required arts and sciences of going into business, like developing financial budgets, and Marketing.

Yet, we have to market our businesses if it is to survive. If you neglect marketing your products and services, you won’t have much of an opportunity to grow your business.

Marketing your business in a consistent manner lets potential clients know you exist…and this is right where most people fail in their marketing efforts because they don’t have a marketing system they consistently work at each week.

Following is a simple and tasty 3-step formula you can use to successfully market your business, and at the same time be rewarded for doing so!

1. Choose three marketing activities you can do consistently on a weekly basis. Examples you can use are:

* Attend a networkin Read the rest of this post »

The content, style and tone of voice of your written responses to tender questions say a lot about you and your organisation. Opinions of course vary as to what represents ‘best practice’ but you can develop a defined house style which you find, from experience, is consistently well received by the market. Here are some key style attributes that you should engineer into your responses:

You are writing for the discerning corporate buyer: they want to know clearly and easily who you are, what you do and how you go about it.

• most of your pre-qualification and tender responses should be written in a calm, factual and professional style
• this is not the place for sales hyperbole or the kind of language you might use in a sales brochure

Use a logical topic breakdown structure so that your responses flow in a sensible and easily understood way:

• break down topics into levels of seniority - spend time breaking each topic (or even the entire body of what you do) into this hierarchy before you start writing
• reflect each level of the breakdown in a precise title hierarchy, with section headings and numbering to identify ‘rank’ and seniority
• your hierarchy can then drive the compilation of your document’s table of contents

Make sure that all the elements of your tender response hang together. They should all be written to a consistent:

• format - page width, table layout, font, pitch, bolding, titles, numbering, bullet style
• tone of voice - active, direct speech, concise, short sentences, simple words
• style - factual, unambiguous, appropriate levels of detail, correct punctuation and English

Parts of your PQQ and RfP response will be about you and your organisation. This is where you should be positive and Read the rest of this post »