You didn’t think that I only have two resolutions for the New Year, did you? As a matter of fact, I was a bit surprised at how easy it was to think of things that I can work on in 2009. I thought for sure that I would have a hard time coming up with my business resolutions but here are a couple more.

Schedule more ME time
This is in line with learning to delegate and to let go of work. Though I put so much weight on work and its importance in my life, I also have come to realize that work is not everything. There are some times in my life when I have to sit back and put my feet up – even for just an hour or so. This is necessary to maintain a balanced life and to be even more successful in various respects. This year, I will make it a point to set aside time for myself, for something I enjoy outside of work.

Revamp promotions and marketing
Marketing is something that is essential to any business – I have long come to that realization a long time ago. However, I would have to admit that I have not been really paying that much attention to this aspect of the business. Perhaps an infusion of fresh ideas and activities would be beneficial to the business. This is something that needs to be looked at in 2009.

So there you have some of my most urgent business New Year’s resolutions. What do you have on your list?

Just to recap the tips that I gave in the last post…when choosing Christmas cards to send for your business, remember to bear in mind these three things:

1. Do not be a scrooge.
2. Be careful with your sense of humor.
3. Be sensitive to your customers’ religious beliefs.

Here are some more things you can bear in mind for your business Christmas cards.

Do write a personal note inside the card.
If you decide to get store bought Christmas cards, there will be messages written on the inside already. However, what you want is to make your customers feel your personal touch and that is why you have to add at least a short note of your own. If you have time to write it yourself, that would even be better.

Do use a company stamp.
Remember that one of the reasons that you are sending out Christmas cards is to help promote your business. As such, it would be good to include information about the company in your Christmas cards. To make it look professional, have a company stamp made which contains all the pertinent info – business name, address, contact number, web site, and email. Alternatively, you can print out small labels which contain the same information. Just make sure you use high quality paper and ink when printing out these labels as the last thing that you would want is to make your card look tacky.

I hope that I convinced you to send Christmas cards to your clients with my last post. I really think that it is one way of keeping in touch with them in a genuine manner. Here are some things that I believe you should bear in mind when choosing Christmas cards and sending them out.

Don’t be a scrooge.
There are Christmas cards and there are Christmas cards. What I am saying is that you can probably buy Christmas cards for dirt cheap but the quality might suffer. How would you feel if you received a card that is obviously of poor quality? I need not explain further, do I?

My point is that you should go for the best quality cards you can find. If needed, you can have your own printed out. The impression that this will impart to your clients is worth the extra that you might have to pay.

Be careful with “humorous” Christmas cards.
Between friends, naughty and humorous cards will probably not be a problem. However, if you are sending out cards in the name of your business, I suggest playing it safe. It is not really business-like to be sending out cards with a naked Santa on them, right? Well, unless your business leans towards that nature, that is.

Be sensitive about beliefs.
There are two things that you should be careful with on most occasions – religion and politics. When sending out Christmas cards, do realize that not everyone shares the same beliefs. If you are unsure as to what faith your clients may have, stick with the generic themes – Happy Holidays and the like.

(more in the next post)

When I was a child, one thing that I looked forward to each Christmas was the chance to send out Christmas cards. There was no email back then. We had to go to the bookstore to pick out the cards, write on them, and send them through postal mail. I would almost clap my hands in glee as I picked out special card for each person I wanted to send one too. It was like a ritual for me.

In these days where email and other electronic means of communication are the rave, it is quite rare to see people going gaga over Christmas cards. However, I would like to challenge you to think of ways that sending out Christmas cards would benefit your company. In one way, it could be a marketing technique. Having Christmas cards – “real” ones and not the electronic kind – made and sending them out to your customers is a great way to personalize your business!

If you are thinking about the cost, why don’t you just add it to the total cost of your marketing plan? After all, you are already probably setting aside a certain sum for marketing activities. Just add Christmas cards to that. The time, money, and effort that you spend on Christmas cards will definitely be worth the results. This is especially true if you place high value on building relationships with your clients – which is always advisable. If I were you, I would get those cards printed now and send them out asap.

Just because you run a relatively small business does not mean that you cannot have relatively big clients. After all, size can be a matter of perspective. Then again, what if you really operate on a small scale and yet you believe that you can provide a beneficial service to an establishment that operates on a much larger scale, say a government agency or some other private institution? Will this partnership even be possible?

The good news is that yes, it is indeed possible for a small business to cater to the needs of much larger entities. The trick lies in finding the right channel of communication in order to get your message across to the larger entities. If you have not heard of the Small Business Administration’s Business Matchmaking, then it is about time that you did. This program is intended to give a lending hand to small business owners so that they can build contacts that can open wide doors for them.

InYork carries this story:

Presented by SCORE, Hewlett Packard, and other private companies, Business Matchmaking is a series of regional events that bring corporate and government buyers to small-business owners. Since the program began in 2003, business owners have landed more than 20,000 appointments with key government and corporate officials from hundreds of major corporations and agencies.

The best thing about the activities under this program is that they are free! You only have to make sure that you have your killer pitch ready. You never know, you just might land yourself a big fish soon.

In these days of economic turmoil (no, the problems are not over yet), it is not surprising to hear of businesses, big and small, cutting back on their expenses. I was just talking to a friend who runs a big BPO operation based in Europe. Majority of his producing entities can be found in Asian countries. Despite the fact that he has already saved a considerable amount in moving his operations offshore, he is still very much worried by the economic situation.

I can just imagine the plight of small business owners. With the prices of most everything going up, they are also being forced to increase their prices and at the same time, cut back on costs. I read something about a lean business – that is, one that spends on only what is necessary to improve profitability.

However, the author notes that cutting back on costs should be examined thoroughly as there are some cut backs that may actually do more harm than good to your business. Rieva Lesonsky highlights some of these areas in her article.

Of the areas she took note of, I particularly liked two. These are little perks and marketing. This is what she has to say:

Don’t be a penny-wise and pound-foolish business owner. You may think you can trim the fat by eliminating the morning donuts or the company parties, but the money you save will quickly be replaced by lowered employee morale.

I think that nothing can match a good morale and work attitude. These things should be nurtured – the rewards are worth more.

With regard to marketing, this is what Lesonsky thinks:

I’m a big believer that recessions (or near-recessions) are actually a good time to increase your marketing budgets. While that might sound counterintuitive, it’s not. While most businesses are hunkering down, waiting for the good times to start rolling again, your marketing message will be heard more loudly in the vacuum. Trimming your marketing budget (whether that means creative or staff or both) will likely hurt, not help, your business.

I tend to agree with her. Take advantage of the times. Be more aggressive and gain the attention while your competitors are quiet.

In the last post, we took a look at the 4 P’s of marketing. In this post, we are going to take a deeper look at the last P – promotion. Actually, I just realized that for some people, marketing is all about the promotion. While this may be true to a certain degree, we cannot overlook the planning that goes before promotion. That was discussed in the previous posts. Now what are some of the strategies that you can employ when it comes to promotion?

There are actually a lot of strategies to choose from. Here are some of the most common ones, which have been tried and tested:

• advertising media
• print media (newspaper, magazine, classified ads, Yellow Pages advertising, brochure)
• radio
• television
• networking
• business cards
• tee shirts, hats, buttons, pens

The question now is which strategies to employ. One thing that I should emphasize from the beginning is that you should not limit yourself to one option. These strategies could actually work together and indeed, the results may be better if they are combined. The idea is to be able to identify clearly which strategies will be able to effectively reach out to your target market. This means that it has to be clear in your mind who your target clientele is. Once you have this down pat, then you can pick out the strategies that will most likely cater to these people. The next step is to focus on these strategies and to develop materials and other necessary resources in order to implement your plan.

Marketing is an oft-used term in the business world. Though most everyone knows what it means, not everyone fully understands what marketing entails. More so, not everyone is convinced that marketing is important – especially when it comes to small businesses. The way that some people think is that since it’s just a small endeavor, it would not really need marketing anyway.

If you think that way, you couldn’t be more wrong! Marketing is an essential part of any business, whatever the size! Marketing should be at the top of your list of priorities when starting up a business. Now, what if you are the only person working for your business? Where will you find time to engage in marketing activities?

That is a very good question. It is understandable that as you are still starting up, you might not have the time and resources to launch a full fledged marketing campaign. As such, you can think of incorporating some marketing practices into your already existent activities.

For example, take advantage of the social and business functions that you attend. Whether you go to a charity dinner or a party at your club, you should be ready to market your business. Looking at it in another way, you can even build stronger relationships with existing and potential clients by extending invitations to such functions to them.

Another way of marketing would be to share pertinent information with other people. For example, while reading the news or other relevant publication, you can choose to send an article to people with a note that reads something like “I though you would be interested.” Take note, however, that you shouldn’t spam. Make sure that what you send is really relevant to the recipient.

More on marketing next time.

One of the most time consuming activities that you have to engage in when it comes to business blogging is promoting your business blog. I suppose that it does not really differ much from the more conventional ways of marketing. You have to take certain steps to ensure that people will know that your business exists and you have to exert effort and set aside time for these things. The same goes with blogging.

Creating a blog is easy. Whether you want to use a free blog platform or you want to use your own domain, the idea is the same and the execution very simple. Coming up with content for your blog is relatively easy as well – perhaps writing might prove to be a task for some but it can be handled quickly.

Marketing your business blog, on the other hand, I find to be more tedious. With the millions of blogs on the Internet today, how will other people find yours? More so, how do you get people you are targeting to discover you online? That is where marketing comes in.

One effective way is to submit your blog or web site to search engines. I have been working on a blog of mine in the past month or so and I have only recently been reminded of the importance of submitting to search engines. Before I did this, I barely had traffic to my blog. After spending several days on focusing on blog search engines, I began to see my traffic going up in the next few weeks. It does not happen overnight, mind you, but you do get results.

You’ve probably heard about social networking. After all, it is all over the web, TV, and print. Still not sure as to what social networking is? Think Facebook. Think MySpace. Digg. Technorati. All these are example of social networking sites. Now you may be thinking – what does these things have to do with my business? These sites are not for business!

Well, think again. The truth is that these social networking sites can help you improve your online presence. How so?

Let’s take a look at Facebook. Becoming a member is free. All you need to do is sign up, fill out their registration form, follow the steps, and you are good to go. You need to build up your friends. You look for people whom you may know or people whom you may want to be friends with online. It is actually a great way to make new contacts, even new customers.

Better yet, you can place your web site’s URL or your blog’s URL in a prominent location on your page. People will then only have to click on the link to visit your blog. There are many ways by which you can promote your blog or web site on Facebook (as well as other social networking sites). You can comment on photos, links, profiles, etc. and place your link in your comment. This would not only create links to your site or blog, it would also make it easier for the people to click the link and visit your site or blog.

Of course, it is very important that you conduct yourself in a professional manner. Spamming other people’s accounts or shamelessly and tactlessly promoting your link will not do your business any good.