4 Apps That Make Entrepreneurs More Efficient

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The 21^st century entrepreneur has the freedom to work from everywhere and still remain productive thanks to various supporting technologies. One of the technologies that is making entrepreneurs more productive and efficient is mobile apps.

According to Scot Gerber, the found of the Young Entrepreneurs Council, most entrepreneurs under 35 years use apps to run different aspects of their businesses. From project management to weather, payment gateways to to-do lists, apps have been developed to solve nearly every type of problem that entrepreneurs face.

BaseCamp
For project management, BaseCamp is a must-have app that will make you more efficient without the need to be in the office. You can track important individual or team projects, ensuring things are done on schedule and by the right teams. If you are looking for legal information, hiring a lawyer can cost you thousands of dollars.

RocketLawyer
Moreover, you may not access the lawyer anytime you want. For vintage collectors, the need to have legal advice when you want to make a purchase is crucial. This is where RocketLawyer comes in, Simply install the app on your phone and get legal information anytime you wish.

FlipBoard
When you need to keep up with content in your industry or from though leaders on your phone, FlipBoard is the app you need. The app enables you to organize different types of content for easy access later. If you are working with a virtual team and need to collaborate or share files, Dropbox and Google Drive apps will be great. To access financial information or other office files from a different location, simply put them in Dropbox or Google Drive and access them from your phone wherever you are.

DocuSign
For entrepreneurs that have to sign contracts with suppliers or customers, DocuSign is a must-have app especially if the parties you are dealing with are in different areas or time zones. You no longer have to rely on the manual process of signing and faxing contracts for business to start. Payments can also be done through smartphones in a flash. Apps like PayPal Mobile and Square can be used to accept checks and swipe credit cards respectively.

Today’s tech savvy entrepreneurs can run their businesses more efficiently thanks to apps. If you are looking to work away from the office, identify the common activities you have to accomplish and find apps that will enable you to do them.

About Copi Valdivieiz

Copi Valdivieiz is the managing director of Corporate Image Builders which assists its clients to create greater impact through effective and creative brand promotions. It carries a large collection of corporate promotional products for our clients to leave that lasting impression on prospective customers.

Remote Answering Services Are Key for Client Satisfaction

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In today’s competitive business environment, companies have to do more to emerge leaders in their industries. One of the crucial things that businesses have to care about is customer satisfaction. Today’s consumers are keen on how they are treated and will not hesitate to take their business elsewhere if you are not responsive to their needs. Moreover, technological advances have made customers expect to get answers immediately. You therefore need to be always available to answer customers’ questions when they call your office. How can you do this without fail? Use a virtual assistant.

A remote answering service will make your business available 24/7, which can be crucial to generating new leads and improving customer satisfaction. Customers do not want to be taken to voicemail when they call your offices, even if it is after hours. With a remote answering service, you can offer clients direction on how to solve common problems or provide answers to common questions they may have. For clients with questions that cannot be answered by the virtual assistant, you can get their details and call them back when you resume office. This follow up will make your company more professional and clients will feel that you care for them.

Remote answering services can also improve your company’s efficiency and lower your cost of doing business. Instead of hiring hundreds of customer care agents, the machines can simplify your work by providing general knowledge and answers to frequently asked questions, leaving you to deal or follow up on clients with more personalized needs. The cost of a virtual assistant is just a fraction of what you would pay to have human agents to interact with customers round the clock. Apart from this, you do not need large cubicles for the virtual assistant like would be the case with human agents.

Li Ka Shing says, “Information and communication technology unlocks the value of time, allowing and enabling multi-tasking, multi-channels, multi-this and multi-that.” Remote answering services may be what you need to do more within a short time.

Client satisfaction is crucial to the success of any business. Regardless of which industry you are in, remote answering services can help to improve your business by ensuring crucial leads do not varnish when you are not in the office, or when your customer care lines are busy. Improve efficiency, save on costs and close more deals with virtual assistants.

About Copi Valdivieiz

Copi Valdivieiz is the managing director of Corporate Image Builders which assists its clients to create greater impact through effective and creative brand promotions. Corporate Image Builders is also a one-stop-shop for company promotional gifts including corporate logo gifts for every business.

Keeping It Simple for Brands and Consumers

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Target: Apple, Google, and American International Group. Which of these is not like the others?

That’s right. The company with a name that’s three pretty uninspired words long is the company that, not surprisingly, has the weakest brand recognition, according to Ranker.com. When it comes to brand promotion, simplicity is king.

This fact was true 25 years ago, when long-form journalism was the norm and people spent hours reading magazines and newspapers. But it’s even more true today, when the average attention span is eight seconds (according to a report published by the Associated Press), people have a world’s worth of information at the their fingertips thanks to tablets and Smartphones, and every company has the same opportunity to reach consumers via websites, blogs and social media.

There’s a lot of information in that paragraph above, isn’t there? Well, here’s the short version: When it comes to brand promotion, keep it simple.

Today’s consumers don’t want to fight through complicated clutter to figure out what your company is all about. They want to see it, understand it and decide in a flash whether or not they want to know it. This means that everything you do needs to be trimmed down, shaped with precision and made to reflect your brand—what your company truly is.

Your logo? Keep it clean.
- Have a tagline? Keep it short.
- Your promotional signage? Shorter, please.
- Even the directional signage in your shop needs to be clear and concise.

Brand promotion is all about simplicity. But don’t get the wrong idea; it’s not easy keeping things simple. This is what Steve Jobs, the Apple icon said about it: “Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

And moving mountains is what brand managers and marketing pros do every day. The best of them—those who lead the brand promotion efforts at Google, Amazon, IKEA and Apple—put in the hard, hard work to make sure their messaging is, well, simple.

The others? They have complicated branding that involves entirely too many words that their customers and potential customers will never understand in an instant.

See, that last sentence has too many words. Keep it simple.

About Copi Valdivieiz

Do Sales and Promotions Run Parallel?

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“The secret of man’s success resides in his insight into the moods of people, and his tact in dealing with them.” J.G. Holland. This is exactly what sales and promotion is all about. Get into the moods of the people and make them change their mind and buy your product.

Sales refer to selling a product while promotions refer to efforts tailored to making a product sell. Sales and promotion are often used together since they go hand in hand. Promotion is not expenditure rather an investment that can lead to high returns.

Sales promotion aims to achieve the following objectives:

Increase product’s market share. Any type of promotion can significantly communicate to the market and get people to like and buy the product.

Create a strong brand image.

Increase market share and make sales.

Sales promotions are sometimes used to clear out old inventory before new products are brought into the business. Some businesses also use this strategy as a competitive tact through slashing prices. While sales and promotion may not necessarily develop brand identity and loyalty, it leads to an increased sales most of the time. Business analysts say, “1% of repeat purchases are made out of indifference and not out of loyalty” (via Small Biz CRM). This means that you have to put more effort in utilizing your brand ambassadors as a promotional tool.

Promotional campaigns need extra effort to attract the people’s attention. Some of the activities involved in promotional campaigns include tasting sessions, offering free samples, rebates redeemable after purchase, money back offers, distributing leaflets, car shows, discounts, organizing corporate events, tradeshows, etc. When you want to launch a product, it is advisable to work with a promotion agency with skilled staff to ensure the event is successful.

Effect of Sales and Promotion

Measuring sales promotion effect requires a thorough analysis of sales data before and after the campaigns. You should also consider other marketing techniques that your business uses. Tangible things like rebates and coupons can be counted physically and the figures compared against those before the campaign. To get a clear picture of campaign performance, work only with a single type of promotion at a time.

According to Blue Water Promotions, the figures of the 2010 sales volume reflect an increase of 5.89% in distributor revenues compared to 2009. This increase puts promotional product industry’s revenues at $16,560,162,075 rising from $15,638,571,468 in 2009. Large companies increased with a smaller percentage of 2.95 while SMBs had highs of 8.86%.

A sales and promotion campaign is effective, only if it has achieved the goal it was set to. For example, if a program was set to increase the market share by three percentage points but the result was five, the campaign was successful.

Sales largely depend on promotion and promotion aims at increasing sales. Therefore, sales and promotion go parallel. “Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman, not the attitude of the prospect” William Clement Stone.

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Don’t Dress Down Your Brand’s Promotion

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The phrase ‘never judge a book by its cover’ cannot be applied to the average consumer, which is what your target market consists of. Similarly, when it comes to promotion, the package in which the product is delivered is just as important as the product itself.

In order for a product to be successful, it needs to be well-placed. In most cases, the timing with which the product is released lends more credit to sound placement than the thought behind it, though timing is but one of many things that need to be aligned in order for an advertising campaign to work.
As circumstances vary, your packaging media should vary. Here are some tips on how to swing a promotional campaign from a consumer point of you.

Get Creative
As you put the effort into packaging your promotional products the right way, bear in mind that consumers think like consumers. Even if their eyes pass over your product, they may not see it. The odds of engaging your target audience are not in your favor, but there are certain things that you can do to amp it up.

Don’t be Afraid to Let Loose a Bit
Your objective is to teach your target audience as much as you can about your product before they even open the box. This means keeping the tone and excitement level even keel with your marketing campaign. As amazing as the product might be on the inside, consumers will never see it if the package it comes in fails to engage their interest by the time their eyes fall upon it.

Additionally, studies have shown that consumers can create a mental block against promotional items that appear to be ad-like in nature, rendering such products invisible. Play around with the design, as the last thing you want to do is disappear into commonly executed visual representations, but keep it honest.

Personality
Think about your product before you begin to package it. It has a personality, as does your target audience. To this extent, the packaging that your product comes in should be representative of the personality of the product. This ensures continuity. High-end items, like electronics, are almost always packaged with a professional feel.

Continuity
Branding is important, but it cannot be executed without continuity. If you’ve targeted the right audience, branding will only be successful if your company logo appears on the packaging as well as the product itself. Consider athletic sneakers. Nike is one of the leading brand name companies in the world, and they turned their first sale because of the check-mark. Now, everybody knows the Nike symbol. Ensure that repeat customers can identify your brand against someone else’s.

About Copi Valdivieiz

Why Mugs Are a Clever Form of Publicity

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For any business to succeed, one of the biggest investments that one should make should be on advertising. This is because even though a company may have great services or products, but without the medium to give them exposure to potential consumers the products will be as good as nothing. The introduction of promotional products has slowly solved this problem. Although, there are numerous promotional products you can use, mugs are great and successful for making the business visible.

Promotional mugs can be in form of coffee mugs, travel mugs, or just general home mugs. One of the biggest reasons that make promotional mugs effective is that they have a low cost of production. The main objective behind any form of publicity is to generate revenue, thus the best form of advertising is one, where you will be able to save up on the costs. Promotional travel mugs are also long lasting, practical and flashy, as they are noticeable not only to the person using them, but also to the general public.

However, you also have to give thought to what you actually want to put on the mug; it may be a special color, a personal message or the logo of the company. Anyone of this, that you choose should assure that it relates well with your company’s products and services. When this is done well, with just a quick look at the mug, a potential client will be able to tell what the company is all about which is the core of good adverting. Coca Cola is one of the most successful companies on mugs publicity, with an eye-catching red color and a well known logo one can easily notice a coca cola coffee or travel mug from a far.

Just like any other promotional products, mugs will have a special appeal to the clients because they come as gift that can be given to anyone. However, one also has to look at the market where the promotional mugs will be issued, the most effective one will be where they are functional. This means that if a client is able to carry their mug to work or use in public, it will be more visible. Thus generating revenue and achieving its intended purpose.

Lastly, promotional mugs are very convenient to carry around and easy to wash. However, when choosing ones to go with for your company, you should assure that they are compatible with the traditional washing machines. And, to also assure that your mug reaches its maximum potential, you should have your promotional mugs custom made to have a small bottom. This makes them ideal to use in cars, as they can fit well in the cup holders. One of the best places to issue out the mugs is on trade shows; where they should be well packaged as giveaways. As promotional mugs are an excellent and a clever way to increase the company’s brand awareness.

About Copi Valdivieiz

Copi Valdivieiz is the managing director of Corporate Image Builders which is a brand marketing agency that helps businesses successfully use the well-established tools to implement marketing strategies that effectively create positive awareness about their brand amongst prospective and potential clients.

6 Ways to Maintain Your Online Brand Reputation

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It is imperative, after building, growing, and maintaining a business of any sort, to take the necessary steps in order to build on it’s reputation, both in person and online. Whether you have a start-up selling portrait frames, or are the owner of a four-star restaurant, reputation management is an ongoing necessity. There are a series of steps necessary to make sure that you are constantly ahead of the game, and the quality of your reviews are as positive and accurate as possible. However, since you are likely busy running your business, this task is best left to Online Reputation Management (ORM) agencies.

If your brand is important to you, hiring an ORM agency is a wise investment. The agencies do a number of things to check the quality of, and maintain your brand. Here is a quick rundown of the most effective tactics you and/or an agency can employ:

Managing Feedback - After gathering information about your company or product, agencies will weed out the negative feedback you have received, as well as show you any malicious or fraudulent reviews. This information is gathered from anyone who interacted with your business, including customers, other businesses, or review sites.
Maintaining a Blog – Using this technique, ORM agencies have the ability to effectively publish the best qualities of your business in a format that is easily accessible and readable by many people. Blogging is a very trustworthy format, and a significant portion of your reputation lies on a positive image reflected by blogs.
Article Marketing – There are a number of websites designed to display articles, and taking advantage of them by featuring positive articles about your company is a heady investment. These article websites range from Hubpages, Examiner, Suite101, and Squidoo, among others. Having an article displayed here will not only inform potential customers, but maintain a consistent presence in a reliable source.

Now that you understand the inner workings of an ORM, you can get to choose which service works best for you. Here are a few of the top-branded Online Reputation Management companies.

Corporate Image Builders – If you want a quick and easy, streamlined approach to ORM, CIB is the right service for you. No gimmicks, just upfront and honest brand marketing. Using this service will ensure your product is given the proper exposure necessary for it to succeed.
Naymz – This is a multi-purpose ORM that covers most social media networks (twitter, facebook, etc) and provides a complete and accurate assessment of your reputation. Plus it’s free!
MetalRabbitMedia – Utilizing an advanced search engine, MRM has an aggressive reputation tracking and boosting technique, including a promotion/campaign building service. If you want to be fully engaged in the stake of your online reputation, this company is extremely helpful.

Your online brand is extremely important, and whatever your company, product, or service may be, it will greatly benefit from the consistent and reliable upkeep of online brand management.

About Copi Valdivieiz

Copi Valdivieiz is the managing director of Corporate Image Builders which is a branding advertising agency involved in helping business owners and managers effectively face the challenge of brand marketing faced by them in the unpredictable business conditions prevalent today.

Taking Branding Too Far

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Imagine a couple going out on the town, splurging to go to a fancy and authentic Italian restaurant with all of the works: three course dinner, fine wine, candle-lit table side service and a quiet atmosphere for some extra added romance. The couple is celebrating and wants to really remember this night! The boyfriend even brought along a memorable gift for his girlfriend, but she doesn’t know it yet and he wants it to be a big surprise.

As the night progresses, the gentleman finally admits to having a gift for his lady and presents a box that could only be one thing, jewelry. The girlfriend’s eyes light up–could he finally be proposing?–and she excitedly opens it, only to immediately slam it back shut and glare at her significant other. Uh oh! What went wrong during this perfect evening?

When it comes to being a business owner, it’s good to have branded promotional items that can be given out to potential customers–but what about when it comes to the girlfriend? That’s right, the man gave his girlfriend jewelry with the logo and branding of his business as a gift. Is this going too far with promotional marketing? Perhaps not to the man in question, but most would agree that this is a serious relationship faux pas (and business one to boot).

Instead, remember to keep it with the essentials:

Branding promotional items such as t-shirts, pens, caps, and other things is perfectly fine when it comes to attending conferences, trade shows, or just giving them out for free.
Custom orders on branded items can include jewelry and other higher end products, but it is strongly advised to keep them as business related gifts and not fancy gifts for the significant other. It’s going to send the wrong kind of message.
Build an image with business networks, not with highly personal networks–especially when it comes to a fancy, candle-lit dinner with nice wine and Italian cuisine. Keep the elevator pitch at the door, along with the jewelry covered with the company logo, and enjoy that night off!

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Getting an Edge Over Your Competitors

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What are your goals for 2013? As a business owner is one of your goals to get an edge over your competition? Right now we will consider seven simple tips that will help you to overtake your competitors.

1) Ring-fence your existing accounts. Ring-fencing can provide your business with needed protection. One of the most high profile examples of ring-fencing was when Enron purchased Portland General Electric in 1997. When Enron collapsed in 2001, Portland General Electric was protected because they were ring-fenced by the state of Oregon.

2) Focus your prospecting. The key to successful prospecting is the ability to be able to identify quality leads. You also want to have a clear objective in mind when it comes time to close the deal.

3) Become a valued “resource”. Business success is determined by becoming a market leader. You want to be the first person people turn to when they need help in your field of expertise. One way we can become a valued resource is summed up by sales expert Tom Hopkins “when appropriate, be a walking reference guide for all of your clients. Not only will they thank you verbally for the input, they’ll thank you with their continued business.”

4) Have a plan for your attack. According to one study conducted by Troy University’s Small Business Development Center, 9 out of 10 businesses fail in the US because of poor planning. It is like the old adage, “fail to plan, plan to fail”.

5) Increase Your Activity. If you slow down and become complacent, your competitors will quickly pass you by. Renowned physicist William Pollard sums it up well, “the arrogance of success is to think that what we did yesterday is good enough for tomorrow.”

6) Keep motivated. Successful business man and self-help expert, William Clement Stone made the following statement, “sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman, not the attitude of the prospect.” This quote well sums up the importance of being motivated. If we are not motivated, no one else will be.

7) Sharpened your sales skills. The importance of continuing to improve our sales skills is summed up by the Confucian proverb “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. In order to succeed you have to move forward, and you cannot move forward if you do not continue to improve.

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Branding on a Shoestring Budget

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Small businesses operate a little differently than big businesses when it comes to branding, but certain issues such as logo design and slogans are universal. A common mistake that failed small businesses make is to assume media exposure will manifest a brand into an empire. They end up draining their budgets on expensive media advertising when they should have been concentrating on building customer loyalty by offering unique quality solutions. Once a product or service passes the test of customer satisfaction, then branding can be associated with reputation, which is when mass marketing can help.

As Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has said, “a brand for a company is like a reputation for a person.” Living up to the message that a brand promotes is extremely important since it will be a deciding factor for consumers. If a brand is associated with a useful niche that cannot be delivered by anyone else, it can gain notoriety by word of mouth, which has always been the best form of advertising. In fact, part of the secret to Amazon’s success as the world’s most successful online store is that much of the content it offers is customer reviews of products, which greatly influences sales.

The top brands in the world have recognizable logos, partly due to mass marketing, but also due to associating company reputation with simple unique images. Interbrand, which publishes a list that ranks companies based on brand value, listed the top brands of 2012 as Coca-Cola, Apple, IBM, Google and Microsoft. What do each of these brands have in common? They have easy to remember logos that did not require the world’s greatest graphic artists to create. This concept applies to small business as much as big business.

Billionaire Warren Buffett’s helpful tip on branding is “your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.” In other words, a business should not just mimic competitors. By offering something different, a brand will be much more memorable and not get lost in the shuffle. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs made this point very clear with his timeless quote that “innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Part of the reason Apple became the leading tech company in the world is that its products were industry game changers, empowering consumers with efficient tech solutions for music and digital communication.

Once a product or service has been tested to show that it makes life easier for consumers better than any competitor can provide, then it will reap the benefits of mass marketing. For small business, the logo and its tagline that summarizes the business simply needs to be distributed on a local level to individual target consumers. Mass media can come later when there is plenty of money in the bank. In the meantime, more affordable marketing with T-shirts, hats, cups, pens and calendars will be sufficient.

Starting with local customers instead of the masses to showcase brands is more organic and helpful to small business. Loyal customers who understand the company will help promote the brand better to friends, especially if hats or shirts have been given to them as gifts. There are many creative ways to get a logo and tagline in the public eye, whether it’s on clothing or office supplies. On a shoestring budget one of the best marketing ideas is to create a calendar displaying the logo, which will be seen every day all year long by loyal supporters.

About Copi Valdivieiz

Copi Valdivieiz is the managing director of Corporate Image Builders which is a promotional product company which carries every possible corporate promotional gift from over 3000 manufactures and helps businesses establish a brand or service to effectively implement marketing strategies.