April 2011 Features

• Marketing at Work: Tools and Techniques

  April 29, 2011

  The job of reaching customers and prospects in a cross-media multi-channel world keeps getting tougher. Marketers are faced with an excess of options that, quite frankly, can be overwhelming. Years ago, there were only a few primary media choices—outdoor signage, newspaper, radio, and television. The limited number of options made it easier to distribute an advertising budget.

• Professional Approach Pays Off For With Perfection, Inc.

  April 28, 2011

  Few businesses recorded their best year ever in 2009, stable revenues in 2010 and significant growth in first quarter of 2011. With Perfection Landscape Management, a landscape maintenance contractor for primarily commercial properties, recorded these positive results during a severe recession and weak economic recovery.

• Size doesn’t matter

  April 27, 2011

  A decade ago, a business bestseller with the title “It's Not the Big That Eat the Small...It's the Fast That Eat the Slow: How to Use Speed as a Competitive Tool,” came out with a brief flurry of hype, then disappeared. Pity. The book’s premise – that speed was the defining factor in business success – was forward-thinking at the time. Now, it’s become an essential survival tool.

• Shocking News! We Had $200 Oil in 1980: Here's Why

  April 25, 2011

  Things are never what they seem in economics. Dr. Joe explains the strange math that reminds us about the distortions of inflation and the wonder of ingenuity, and how news reporters seem to be unaware of them.

• How To Give An Awesome Speech

  April 25, 2011

  You don’t have to pull off a crazy stunt to be a successful marketer. Sometimes you just need to say the right thing. Public relations whiz Bill McGowan, who heads Clarity Media Group, teaches clients how to promote themselves through public speaking.

• Short Insurance Group Sees Economic Uptick

  April 21, 2011

  The commercial insurance business offers a firsthand indicator of economic health. Sales and payrolls of commercial clients largely drive insurance premiums. According to David Short of Short Insurance Group, payrolls and sales have increased in the last four to five months.

• Elite Fitness Management Makes Fitness Attainable

  April 20, 2011

  Thanks to rising health care costs in the U.S. and a growing population of obese and overweight individuals, the fitness industry grew through the recession, according to Matt Thompson of Elite Fitness Management, a personal-training management firm.

• Optimizing Your Team’s Performance

  April 20, 2011

  As your business progresses and matures the challenges you’ll face and the opportunities you will encounter require a planned approach to building highly successful teams. Each of our organizations consists of multiple teams (i.e. manufacturing, operations, senior management and sales and marketing) and our overall success is contingent upon their effectiveness.

• Economic Casablanca: I am Shocked! Shocked!

  April 20, 2011

  On Monday the stocks and bonds markets where rattled by the announcement by Standard & Poors that US debt still had a AAA rating, but they had lowered their outlook for those obligations to “negative.” The markets took the supposed news badly at first and then found ways to digest it through the trading day with little change to its trading range for the last few weeks.

• Use Social Media to Market Your Business

  April 19, 2011

  The Internet is becoming the preferable news source for people around the world, which is why businesses need to take advantage of social media marketing. An entirely new marketing strategy may seem very overwhelming to businesses though, perhaps because they may not know much about it or because they may not have room in their budget to take a chance on it. But with social media, it is a very affordable opportunity to promote your business online because most of the sites are free to join!

• Marketing Trends for 2011

  April 18, 2011

  A new year means new goals, new successes and new opportunities. How will you embrace the evolving trends and execute them to bring the greatest achievements for your marketing? Recently, we looked at the trends for 2011, including mobile computing and mobile devices. Now let’s look at what social media and integrated campaigns mean for marketers in 2011!

• 8 Easy Ways To Make Your Customers Love You

  April 14, 2011

  Everyone knows you can’t have a business without customers. However, one of the worst mistakes any business can make is focusing its marketing efforts on attracting new clients while neglecting past and current customers. Here’s what you can do to show your clients how grateful you are for their business.

• Albany Mall Bucks National Trend

  April 13, 2011

  Average mall vacancy rates in the top 80 U.S. markets reached 9.1 percent in the first quarter, the highest level in 11 years according to real-estate research company Reis Inc. Communities across the U.S. are grappling with an associated decrease in sales tax revenues and more importantly the loss of an important gathering place. Not so in Albany where the Albany Mall continues to thrive.

• Lead Generation & Social Media

  April 13, 2011

  Social media certainly has had an impact on the way people communicate. Rather than soliciting a list of companies by the phone, social media has given sales teams a new approach. This new process involves capturing a prospect's attention by engaging them with useful information and providing compelling content as to why that prospect would benefit from the sales representative's business.

• 10 Personality Traits That Kill Entrepreneurship

  April 12, 2011

  Having a great business idea is only half the battle. You also need to be an effective leader. Even some of the most innovative entrepreneurs can be hindered by insecurity or impatience. Here are some red flags to look out for.

• Still Trudging Through and Trudging Some More

  April 11, 2011

  Today's economic conditions make economists wish they had more hands and while making the common people more frustrated in their attempts to figure it out. Oil and food are rising in price, but the economy seems better in some ways with some reports of improving employment. GDP is still rising, but some industries are still suffering. Dr. Joe explains why just staying busy is not enough and that it's what you're doing that really matters.

• Talk to Me! How to Use Voice Software to Create Incredible Customer Experiences

  April 06, 2011

  As a business owner today, you have multiple communications tools at your fingers. Contact forms, your website, Facebook, Twitter, text… and did I mention email? But there will always be a time when you need to talk to your customer. Pick up the phone. Chat. Follow up, Or even to resolve an issue.

• All Six Recovery Indicators are Now Positive

  April 05, 2011

  All six of our recovery indicators are in positive territory for the first time since the start of the recession. There were some movements in the indicators from the Institute for Supply Management non-manufacturing indices, the biggest being non-manufacturing imports, which is now at 50, or neutral.

• Have We Lost a Generation of Small Business Owners?

  April 04, 2011

  We’re down more than 1.1 million. That’s how many fewer self-employed Americans there are today than when the Great Recession began. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, there were 589,000 fewer incorporated self-employed people and 569,000 fewer unincorporated self employed people in December 2007 than in February 2011. Perhaps most remarkably, on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, we have 753,000 fewer self-employed people.

• 4 Trends to Take Advantage of Now

  April 01, 2011