Archive for the 'Commerce Compass' Category

The History of the USB Stick

Auto Date Thursday, August 26th, 2010

In former times there were only floppy drives for information transfer. After that CD-ROMs began to float the market. Nowadays you are spoilt for choice. Beside CD-ROMs there are SD Cards, extern hard disks and USB Sticks, too. Principally the latteris in use. So, ho it comes? Which advantages do USB Sticks have? And what are the disadvantage? There are several reasons for using the USB Flash Drive. On the one hand its because of its size. USB-sticks . Now there are USB Memory Sticks with up to 64GB memory. Another point is, that nearly every PC has got his own USB slot. On top of that theres the price. An USB Memory Stick still costs between 65 and 75 euros, but you can also get a Memory Sticks with 16 GB for as little as 18 euros. Furthermore USB Sticks are ably combined with other twists and widgets now. Following some examples for that are the funny animals, small snowboards, bottleopener or plastic food with integrated USB Sticks.

Advertising with USB Flash Drives

USB Memory Sticks are fond of being used as promotional gift because of their popularity and small purchase price. There are different ways to fix your advertisement on the USB Flash Drive or print on it. Ist even possible to now allow the deleting of your information. Its important that not the whole stick is full with your advertisement, to use the stick as a normal storage. But so everyone plugging the stick can read the promotion material.

Critical Factors of Mobile CRM

Auto Date Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

How do you want it if you could actually improve your business while on the go? Of course, this would have been quite impossible before. But now, with the coming of the mobile phone, a lot of businesses have also become mobile. The same applies to CRM or Customer Relation Management. You can already manage your CRM through the use of your mobile phone with the same efficiency as you get when you use ERP software to support your CRM techniques. To top this advancement, you do not have to think about a lot of renovation ideas to make your CRM technique compatible with mobile CRM. In fact, all you need to master is some getting used to its efficiency.

How does mobile CRM function?

One of the problems that growing businesses encounter is the means to make information and communication available to everybody especially if the business has branches all over the world. What a company knows about their consumers in the United States may not be applicable to the customers they have in China, or vice-versa. Thus, companies should be able to have a background check on whatever information they could use to have a general idea of what taste and needs a group of customers have in a certain area. These kinds of information should be given to all branch offices and should be constantly updated as trends in taste and needs vary constantly. All of these are done in order to maintain competency in the kind of business a company is doing. Every aspect of this background information should be treated as important so that the company can generate a holistic understanding of a particular group of customers in a certain region. Now, where does Mobile CRM come in? To make such information readily available, anytime and anywhere, companies can readily use Mobile CRM. In doing so, the company can assure that all branches of businesses anywhere in the globe are constantly updated of customer trends.

How does it help in increasing your sales?

The business can now easily make changes and improvement with the way they package their business considering that they already have an idea what is the hype in terms of customer needs and wants. In this way, businesses become more efficient in serving their customers as they always know what is happening in the market. The idea is to always open lines to make information easy to access to make businesses more attuned to creating adjustments whenever they need to in order to better serve their customers.

Markinson is a privately owned Australian software company, dedicated to the creation and provision of innovative business solutions to businesses across Australia, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region. Our range of solutions are as diverse as our clientele, and include POS software, ERP software, CRM software and other flexible business software solutions of your choice.

A Rant Covering Adwords Miracle Review

Auto Date Friday, October 16th, 2009

In essence affliliate marketing resembles an auction. Your site promotes merchandise and for all your work, every last lead pulls in commission. There’s much less work, few overheads, it sells 24/7, and even better, it’s comparatively simple to master. To get started, you need to decide what products or area you want to specialize in. To accomplish this, find out solutions to problems a particular market segment is suffering from, and determine how you can help them. One of the best ways to find this easily is finding specific sets of highly specific words or phrases; generally people look for these less, but greater proportion of these result in a sale. To get hold of these crucial words and phrases, it’s recommended that you use Micro Niche Finder or a program like it. Data compiled from Micro Niche Finder or analogous programs or services compiles related terminology in an extensive list allowing you to gain an advantage in the rankings on an internet search engine. Micro Niche Finder will in addition tell you how many searches each one gets, the number of competing websites, and inforamtion on your rivals as well. Last but not least, the data generated should help in getting associated domains, help you put together your website, and also find the best sales opportunities. Construction of a internet site is the next step; but you still have some crucial tasks to complete. It is important to fine tune your site for the search engines. Applications such as SEO Elite can make this easy. This application analyzes the internet sites of your rivals and helps you by telling you exactly what you must do to achieve a good placing in the search engine listings.

With SEO Elite the information supplied by the software suggests where to look for links, the best keywords, and information on where to submit articles. Succinctly, Seo Elite information is the same sort of suggestions that a specialist in search engine optimization would provide.

When you have decided what niche you want to sell in, plan your product advertisements, and your internet site has been designed, it’s time to get your site up in the search results. Your profits will roll in without much effort and you’ll question why you didn’t try this method of marketing before!

Profile: Intelius, Inc

Auto Date Friday, September 25th, 2009

Based in Bellevue, Washington, Intelius is one of the fastest growing companies in the Puget Sound area. The intelligence services company ranks as the state’s 8th fastest growing in a 2008 list by Deloitte & Touche. It was established in 2003 by Naveen Jain, founder of InfoSpace and former manager of The Microsoft Network (MSN).

Counting over eight million customers since its establishment, it has become one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the entire United States. Intelius is a certified member of Inc. 500, a yearly ranking of private American companies with the highest revenues. Deloitte & Touche even ranked it the 127th fastest-rising private firm in all of North America.

Winner of the 2006 Stevie (American Business Award) for Best New Company, Intelius has a massive database of public records, on which its services are mostly based. As it stands, the company largely sells personal intelligences, with information culled from dockets, tax filings, death certificates, real estate deeds, telephone listings, and all manner of public data. Consumers may use them to make informed decisions regarding the people around them, be it a new nanny, a relative, a business partner, a friend, a stranger, or a family member.

Apart from individual consumers, Intelius also caters to corporate clients, although the services themselves do not include intelligences about companies just yet. In the meantime, human resources managers can zero in on Intelius’ world-famous employment screening solutions. The company was hailed the Number 2 employment screening provider in the US by HRO Today in December 2008. It has a comprehensive array of employee screening solutions, including drug tests and tenancy screens.

Besides employments screens, Intelius also offers people searches, background checks, criminal checks, date checks, reverse phone lookups, identity theft protection, property reports, neighborhood reviews, email lookups, cell phone caller IDs, and many other similarly valuable services.

Making Business in Scandinavia

Auto Date Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Setting up a new commercial enterprise in Scandinavia

To make business easily, there are some events to deal with before you engage in your endeavour. Among the most key issues are financials, logistics and marketing. In this article we’ll direct you in your upstart.

Financial

The start thing to do is to discover the proper bank to engage with. It’ll be smart to select a large bank, desirable with representation in your country too. Among the large banks in Denmark you’ll find Danske Bank and one of these banking companies will be a good choice to begin with. When you have your business organisation established and have experience on how the Danish VAT scheme works, you can look for improved conditions in lesser and most often localized banking companies. Be sure to investigate about tax consultation for business, insurance issues and perhaps real estate too. The larger banks in Denmark run ownership dealings to connected financial establishments for consulting, insurance and real estate.

Logistics

Denmark is a little land, but logistics is essential anyway, especially if you trade with retail or need engagement with other companies in Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia. There are 2 important connections in the region to be mindful of, these are the Oeresund and the Great Belt. One way of handling logistics matters is to engage with the Great Belt syndicate and have your self a BroPas which makes it simple and easy to pass the connections of Oeresund and the Great Belt.

Online Marketing, SEM and Local knowledge

Entering a new market nearly always involves localized knowledge. You can do your online marketing and SEO by employing with a local advertizing representation, a local branch of an Multinational ad office or you can chose to employ with more than one bureau, specialised in off-line advertizing and online SEO and marketing. For virtually all businesses the last mentioned answer is the optimal, most targeted and often the cheapest means to do advertizing in a localized market. SEO and PPC is best handled by local agencies, with profound knowledge of the spoken language and culture of the local marketplace.

Thank Goodness for Customer Complaints

Auto Date Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

Feedback

If I was thinking of buying stocks and shares in a company - or more importantly buying products from them - I would try to find out how good they are at dealing with customer complaints. Many companies groan at the thought of complaining customers. More enlightened companies welcome, even encourage, complaints. Why? Because a complaining customer is providing a company with an invaluable service. At a stroke they are giving valuable feedback, quality control information and are more often than not, giving you a chance to put a problem right.

Of course, the best customer is one that is completely satisfied. The next best customer is dissatisfied and complains. The worst customer is one that is dissatisfied and doesn’t complain. This last example represents a lost
customer. They will not give any feedback and not allow you to put the problem right. They will simply walk away and look for a better supplier of their product.

Respect

So, how do you deal with customer complaints? It does not hurt to thank them for taking the trouble to contact you. Before you decide to investigate further, just think on this: the vast majority of customer complaints are genuine. Very few are made in order to get something for nothing. So, treat the customer with due respect from the start. We all know that many genuine complaints turn out to be errors at the customer end, especially with mechanical or electrical devices. The product may be fine but the customer doesn’t know how to operate it. Before you file this away under customer error classification, ask if the customer if they found the instructions hard to follow or found the product hard to operate. Not only may you find the feedback valuable, you will also be giving some respect to the customer. If the complaint is not a customer error then, as I said, it is probably genuine. Why not assume that the customer is right and
swap it or offer a refund or, at least, offer to repair it. When you or your staff get to see the product you will then know what the problem is (or isn’t) and be able to adapt the product - or your approach to customers - as a result.

Investigate

Thoroughly investigate their complaint. Try to do this quickly. If the investigation is dragging, keep them informed. DON’T expect them to chase you! If your investigation has upheld the customer’s grievance then apologise as soon as possible. Not only that, tell the customer what you are doing to prevent the
problem from being repeated. Assure them that this will not happen again and assure them that you care about the service and the products you provide.

Put it Right - Permanently

For many companies, even if they do everything right up to this point, the issue is closed as soon as the refund or replacement is processed. The promised action to prevent recurrence is not followed through. As sure as eggs is eggs, one day, the same problem will be repeated. Next time, however, you may not be
so lucky: you may end up with a non-complaining customer - the worse type - and lost future sales.

Trust

The thing about the customer who complains, is that you have a chance to build a relationship with them that is beyond the normal buy and sell transaction. You can demonstrate the exceptional nature of the problem and show the customer how seriously you take such issues. The complaining customer may
well buy more goods from you in future as they know you will “look after them” should a problem arise. Put simply, they will trust you.

Example

Arkay Hygiene sells Insectocutor Fly Killers. Now this happened just ONCE: a few years ago a customer had a machine with a faulty lampholder (it holds the uv bulb in place, dummy!). No investigation was necessary: the customer said she had a faulty lampholder and that was that. No arguments. We offered to swap the product for a new one. The problem, as the customer explained, was that the fly killer unit had already been unpacked and fixed into position. We decided to despatch an engineer with a new lamp holder and he quickly got the unit back in action. This customer has since purchased many other goods from us over many years. The bond of trust between us and this customer was born from this complaint.

Vernon Stent is the marketing consultant to Arkay Hygiene which sells a range of spare parts for fly killers such as the lampholder for circline lamps.

Affiliate Programs - Great Way To Put Extra Dollars In Your Pocket

Auto Date Friday, June 27th, 2008

A banner or a text link on your website can generate hundred to million dollars for you! You don’t believe. You have to. Get an affiliate program signup for free and experience how your income double! Internet marketing is now affiliate marketing. It is the affiliate programs through which merchants are minting money. Become an affiliate marketer and start receiving hundreds of dollars monthly!

An affiliate program is a marketing strategy that a trading site uses to promote its services and products. Trading site makes marketing agreements with other sites about which it feels that its target audience visits these sites. These affiliate sites then post banners and links of the merchant site. When the visitor of an affiliate site clicks a banner or link, it takes it to the original merchant site and the affiliate sites in returns get a fixed commission for it. Affiliates are paid either on per click, per impression, per lead, or per sale basis. However, pay per lead is most useful among all. In pay per lead, affiliate is paid if the visitor sent by him signs up for a free trial, e-mail list, or sales call.

Affiliate programs are a great way to make your website profitable and to earn hundreds of dollars. It is a great business that does not involve product development and maintenance cost, client support cost, and order processing cost. So quite cost-effective business. The superb advantage of using affiliate programs is that they are free to join. You can run this business both as part-time or full-time.

Affiliate program undoubtedly is a great money making technique. Choose an appropriate affiliate program, promote it properly and tactically, and get a handsome amount check monthly.

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Never Too Old

Auto Date Friday, May 23rd, 2008

NEVER TO OLD

My great granddaughter said I was too old to learn to use a computer.

The trouble with the younger generation is that, they think that just because you are getting old, you are also becoming stupid.

At seventy three I suppose I do seem ancient to a twelve year old.

Never mind. I decided to show them by example.

A second hand computer and an old Epson printer cost me £200.00. Evening classes on how to use the internet were free to oldies like me.

I soon had myself set up with ‘Freeserve’ with my very own email address. They call themselves Wannadoo now.

It was not long before I was getting e-mails from hundreds of people and companies that I had never heard of before.

I learned my lesson regarding junk mail. I changed my email account and started all over again.

There was an affiliate program that looked interesting. I kept on getting references to it from various sources. The idea of earning a little extra money to boost my pension was very appealing.

I took the plunge and signed up. They gave me a ready set up web page with everything controlled from the home base. All that I had to do was to advertise the program and the money would come pouring in. (What a hope.)

Two months went by with no income. Just outgoings.

It was then that I discovered a book called ‘30 Days to success.’ By Stone Evans. (You can get it for free.) This is one man who knows what he is talking about. It showed me exactly where I was going wrong.

Ten days later I received an e-mail from PayPal to say that two payments had been made into my account, A total of eighty six dollars. Not a great amount but the first of many.

It was not long before I had a steady couple of hundred dollars coming in each month.

It was working because I was working to a system. If you work the system, the system will work for you. (I proved it.)

What will work with one affiliate program will work with others.

I expanded the system by signing up to a new affiliate program every two weeks. I set up my own website with links to each of them. It is easier to advertise one website with links to several affiliate programs, than to advertise each one individually. Besides, using your own website it is easy to capture the email addresses of your prospects and customers so that you have the opportunity to mail them with other offers.

I am affiliated to nine companies at present. I was going to aim for a dozen, but I would rather have more time with my grandchildren and their children than have to work that extra hour each week. After all, I am supposed to be retired.

I can now afford to send the whole family to Disney-land without having to count the cost.

I work about fifteen hours a week and leave the rest to the autoresponder, clickbank and PayPal.

As long as I can find time to reply to my e-mails and make a few other checks I can do whatever I like, when I like.

I can even do it on holiday using my brand new laptop.

If my great granddaughter had not told me that I was too old to learn new tricks in the first place, I would still be counting the pennies and watching television for the rest of my days.

Hurrah! for the younger generation.

You are never too old. I proved it.

.…..Robjfar……..

About The Author

Robert J Farey

Bob has been on line for over five years. He loves affiliate programs because all of the technical stuff is done by the owners of the programs. Leaving him free to concentrate on the promotion side of the business. If this article has set you thinking. Please take a look at: http://www.33daystoonlineprofits.com/video/?robertjay

Someone Please Help Me… Where Do I Start?

Auto Date Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Have you recently joined a new program, bought a new product, know of a great service to offer to others?

Are you also sitting there wondering, “Where do I start?”

Promoting that is…

This situation has recently been brought literally to my doorstep (by the neighbor next door), and recently via a phone call from a brand new online marketer.

Both bought into fairly expensive programs, and neither had a clue where to start.

It sounded easy to both of them - or should I say the person who talked them into it made it sound easy as pie.

Then, after parting with the cash, both were left stranded. No advice, no help, no contact.

How typical and how sad, since the initial “what should I do and where” is fairly easy to get going.

The very first thing you need to do is submit your website/affiliate url to the search engines.

http://www.submitplus.com has a free program that hits many of the not-so-well-known (and a few well known) engines for you for absolutely no charge. Cli’ck on their Free Programs tab, put your url into the box, and submit. It’s that easy.

Then, head over to http://www.google.com/addurl.html and put your website/affiliate url into Google. Google, and a few others out there, will only accept manually input urls. You don’t need to add comments, but a few keywords in the Comments field can’t hurt :)

Now… Mark this day on your calendar, and 30 days from now (for Google) and maybe sooner for the others, submit it again. Do this for several months on a regular basis. It works.

[Note: Google states you only have to submit once and they will find you. I’d still suggest submitting it for a few months in a row though since they change their minds so frequently… and their algorithms!]

Next, search out free startpage programs/services. Be creative in your search terms and don’t get sidetracked *smile!* You’re looking for the services that will allow you to join for fr’ee, insert your url into their system, and in exchange they give you a link to 1) surf with and 2) promote the program [you can usually build downlines in these types of programs which gives you more hits/views of your url when your downline surfs].

Follow their directions - read - and they are fairly easy to get rolling. Create a folder in your inbox and keep all the links in one place (or use any other method that will be handy for you, a favorites folder, etc.). Remember to surf! Once your f’ree credits are used up, you need to either surf the exchanges or purchase additional credits.

Okay, that’s two major and totally fre’e ways to get the ball rolling on your newly-joined program.

What’s next?

Well, right now you’re reading someone’s ezine and no doubt they allow you to submit text ads as a benefit for being a subscriber. Do it! Your first ad is usually the hardest, but I do suggest you write your own (assuming you’re allowed to by the owners of the program you’re promoting).

Personally-thought-up ads are always the best, though many programs out there do have an affiliate area with ready-made ones for you to use.

My suggestion is to read them all, then compose one of your own either using bits and pieces of some - or by writing your ad strictly from your own viewpoint of the program. The personal touch is always best :)

Next…? Decide if you want to keep finding free methods - which do work to a point - or if you’re going to allot some sort of advertising budget toward promoting your program.

Make use of words (text ads) and page views.

Start small. For $10 or less you can keep a text ad out on the net for 30 days or more (in most cases).

Text ads circulating for a longer period of time are always best. This is an excellent, and inexpensive, way to brand your program and/or yourself! Ads seen more often, for longer periods of time work light-years ahead of the “one shot, I’m done!” advertisements. Use longevity to your advantage.

For about the same cost you can also use other methods to really hone in on your market. Target marketing may be a bit slower but the return on investment works well since those arriving at your chosen destination were, no doubt, looking for your program or one close enough to it that the traffic benefits you.

You can target your market with both text ads and website visits. Choose one or both!

And… a very basic first step is to… educate yourself!

What neither of these people realized was their own affiliate websites were loaded with marketing material and, yes, even teleconferences, etc., to get started, keep them motivated, and help them market.

Read. Then read again. Then read again.

However you choose to start - free or paid - is totally up to you. But do begin. And again, your best starting points (after your own website training that is) are search engine submittals, startpage programs, and ezine advertising.

Marketing takes time, knowledge, and motivation.

Remember, the person holding you back just might be… yourself.

© Theresa Cahill - All Rights Reserved. Feel free to distribute this article. Please keep it intact and with the resource box included below.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Theresa Cahill, a two decade veteran of marketing, is the owner of http://www.mywizardads.com and invites you to take a look at the services of MWA and download fr.ee helpful information and more at http://www.mywizardads.com/sitemap.html