Business & Marketing – Page 24

How to Host a Succesful Web Contest

Everyone loves to be a winner, receive recognition, and get things for free. As such, if you are searching for ways to increase your website’s traffic, consider hosting a web contest to appeal to those basic human desires.

If developed correctly, the contest could even boost the company’s sales for months to come. However, if planned incorrectly, a contest can create the opposite effect and leave you regretting taking on the project. Here are five tips for avoiding the most common web contest pitfalls:

1. Determine Contest Purpose

Every contest your company hosts should have a predetermined purpose. Before starting the contest, establish a few goals. A few common contest goals are increasing website traffic generating public awareness of your company. Then, when the contest is finished, you can measure whether or not it was a success based on the outcome of that goal.

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Focus on your Core Business by Using Digital Document Management

xerox mr clean The current marketing campaign from Xerox is very effective because it’s built on a simple business insight: In any given day how much time do we really spend on our core business?

When business processes are running efficiently, you are free to focus on the critical work that counts most, your core business, your real business. And that’s where digital document management comes in. You need to find a partner who can take care of the back office technology and services so you can focus on real business – the things that you made great in the first place.

Here are some common business challenges that you can tackle through hiring a digital document management expert.

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LivingSocial Offers 50% at Amazon

Mashable reported than more than 230,000 vouchers were purchased two hours after the offer had gone live. As of 16:32 HST, a total of 1,084,998 gift cards have been sold.

That’s almost $11 million in gross sales for the Washington, D.C. based startup. About a month ago Amazon.com invested $175 million into LivingSocial, it appears as it made a smart investment.

Get your Amazon.com gift card today. you still have about 10 hours (as of 16:35 HST).

UPDATE (01/20/11): LivingSocial sold a total of 1,301,296 Amazon gift cards. $13,012,960 in gross sales for one day’s work is not bad at all.

10 Creative Ads on Buses

ads on buses

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Advance Your Business With Credit Card Processing Options

Anyone who a operates a business knows that taking credit cards is important. Not everyone carries a lot of cash around with them, and there are risks with taking checks that might not clear the bank. Credit card processing is a safe way to let people make purchases. It helps protect both the buyer and the seller, and can be used in almost any industry. Whether you have a business in a brick-and-mortar location, online or both, you can definitely benefit from taking credit cards.

Processing Costs

The downside is that processing credit cards is not free, and different cards charge different amounts. Some businesses raise their prices to compensate for this, or tack on a “credit card charge” to the order of anyone who uses a credit card to make a purchase from them. Doing this is accepted practice in many businesses, as long as they make it clear that they’re doing so.

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Everything You Need To Know About Storing Documents Electronically

If you are like most companies, it would be in your best interest to reduce costs, simplify operations and increase efficiency by converting to electronic documents storage. But there are some serious concerns that all companies which move to these systems will need to address.

A concern for any publicly traded company is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a federal law that requires any financial or accounting document to be available for auditors or federal authorities. Corporate executives and accountants that don’t comply with this law can go to federal prison.

Any company that files a report with the SEC must comply with Sarbanes Oxley. This means that records must be accessible and retrievable at any time — or the company can get into serious legal trouble.

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Time Spent Online Matches Time Spent Watching TV

time spent online Small wonder, it turns out, that projections forecast internet advertising will outstrip print advertising for the first time ever in 2011. Borrell Associates is “forecasting a moderate increase in overall ad spending for 2011, but continued strong growth for online advertising, including mobile.”

Overall ad spending, Borrell’s predicts, will increase by somewhat less than 5 percent over 2010 levels and will total $238.6 billion; while online ad spending will increase at slightly less than 14 percent to $45.6 billion.

More interesting, however, is the recently released analysis from Forrester’s, which shows that “Americans are now spending as much time using the Internet as they are watching television.” And this, of course, is before Internet-connected televisions have become the norm – as seems will be the case – in American homes.

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10 Strategies of Push-Pull Marketing for Your Online Business

push-pull marketing If you want your online business to be successful then you need to actively market your business. An introductory marketing class will teach you that there are two basic options for marketing: push and pull. A smart online business marketing strategy is to use both types of marketing at the same time.

Push and Pull Marketing

The two different types of marketing are:

1. Push marketing: This is marketing to push your product to the market. You market it to distributors and wholesalers who in turn push the product out to consumers.

2. Pull marketing: This is marketing where you directly target the consumer, pulling them into purchase your product.

Both types of marketing create a demand for your product. Both are useful for growing your online business. Utilize both at the same time for the most success.

A Good Push-Pull Marketing Strategy

A good marketing strategy that incorporates both push marketing and pull marketing typically includes the following 10 strategies:

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