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Showing posts from February, 2017

Spring Cleaning Tips For The Office

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When you think about it, you spend more time at your office than in your own home, not counting sleeping hours of course. Consequently, the atmosphere of your office, whether it be neat or disorganized, will greatly affect you and your employees in a myriad of ways. Therefore, learning how to keep your office clean is important. Before getting to the cleaning tips, though, let's look at why a clean office is imperative. A Disorganized/Dirty Office Is: Unprofessional: If your office is cluttered, dusty, or generally disorganized, you will instantly appear less professional to clients/customers. You might say, "I'm too busy working to clean up after myself." Well, consider the appearance of your office as you would your own. Would you come to work in your bathrobe simply because it took more time to get dressed? Less Productive: Running a successful business is all about productivity. Getting things accomplished is the end goal. If you spend an hour looking

A City Built 900 Years Ago Can Teach Us a Business Lesson Today

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Between the years 800 A.D. and 1130 A.D. something amazing happened in northwestern New Mexico. Without wagons or horses, no metal tools, and before the arrival of Columbus in 1492 or prairie tribes regularly migrated across the plains, a city existed in a place called Chaco Canyon . This small city (and the network of buildings and hubs) created architecture as high as five stories with trade networks stretching down deep into tropical Mexico. It was inhabited year round and included storage, ovens, living quarters, and plenty of protection from the high desert winter (the elevation is above 7,000 feet in most areas). Most amazing, the architecture involved using load-bearing timbers placed with an experienced eye and allowing multiple-level building structures made of three-feet-thick stacked, stone slab. It was not an accident how this ancient city was built and sustained. Pressing On The persistence of the ancient Chaco Canyon residents is an even more surprising fact. Many

What You Need to Know About Facebook's New Mix Modeling Portal

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We've written extensively in the past about how when it comes to digital and print marketing, you're not looking at an either/or proposition. Often, businesses of all sizes are finding great success embracing the best of both worlds - reaching out to the customers who are most receptive to print channels via traditional methods and using digital resources when they're most appropriate. We've even written about how you can take the lessons learned online and use them to make your print strategies even stronger. We're not the only people who share this opinion; it would seem. Facebook has recently launched a mixed marketing portal designed to make it easier than ever for businesses to compare Facebook-based advertisements to television, print, and other types of collateral. While this does mean big things for people using Facebook as an advertising platform, what it means for print marketers is even more interesting. What Facebook is Doing The social netwo

Different By Design: 6 Tips for Adopting The Principles Of Disruption and Improving Your Marketing Strategy

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Less than a decade ago, one of the world's largest transport networks was simply an imaginative flicker in the minds of two men trying to hail a taxi on a cold Paris night. After failing to snag a car, the two men came up with an idea of an on-demand taxi service at the touch of a button. What began on a snowy evening in France quickly turned into an app to request luxury sedans in a tiny handful of the world's most cosmopolitan cities. Soon it spread to include different types of rides, package and even food delivery in nearly any city on earth. That app was Uber. Uber is now one of the world's richest start-ups. Along with other innovative digital companies such as Airbnb, Snapchat, Netflix, and even Buzzfeed, Uber has grasped a powerful disruptive strategy that has brought it financial and scalable success in a short amount of time. Disruptive businesses such as these can pick out and then act on trends before they become a trend, building a niche in a market that ma

How to Combine Your Passion and Profession to Make Your Life Purposeful

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You have likely heard the adage, "Choose a profession you love, and you'll never work a day in your life." Although the thought of this has merit, sometimes, if a person's passion isn't something they can easily transform into a money-making endeavor, it can be a little unrealistic. Thankfully, there is more than one way to combine your passion with your profession to create a purposeful life. Use Your Passion to Generate Income We all seem to know at least one person who bought a professional camera and began making money by becoming a photographer. Their profession, of course, was combined with their passion for photography and is now generating income. Another good example of this is someone whose passion is music. They have many options when it comes to transforming that into a career. They can become a music teacher at a school, play an instrument in their local orchestra, give private lessons, or even play at places of worship, parties or weddings as

How to Develop a Brand Persona

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W hether on posters, in magazine advertisements, or on direct mail pieces, these and other high-identity personas create brand identification. When consumers see them, they associate these characters with more than just products. They associate them (and, consequently, the brand) with humanlike characteristics that they too want to be associated with, such as likability and charm, strength, manhood, safety, and security.  This marketing technique is called anthropomorphization. It is a powerful tool for creating brand recognition. When consumers see Flo the Progressive Girl, they think about being smart and savvy auto insurance shoppers. When they see Allstate’s Mayhem, they think about the destructive forces in the world around them and the need to have trustworthy insurance agents to protect them following disaster.  Anthropomorphization is used successfully to educate customers about the qualities of certain products, as well. When Exxon wanted its customers to understand

How QR Codes Can Add to the Print Experience: Best Practices You Need to Know

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For years, marketers have been looking for better ways to achieve cross-media marketing. In other words, they've been searching for solutions that let them enjoy the benefits of both print and digital channels. Many have turned to QR codes to do precisely that. By including a QR code on a piece of print marketing, you can deliver the same message in the same way, but with a mechanism that varies depending on the preferences of the user. It's important to understand, however, that "using a QR code" and "using a QR code properly" are NOT the same thing. When done correctly, a QR code can add to the print experience in a number of important ways. If you want to unlock the full benefits of cross-media marketing that you desire, you'll need to keep a few key things in mind. It All Comes Down to Purpose QR codes are not a novelty anymore. There was a period just a few short years ago where simply including a QR code on a flyer or even a billboard w

Are You Measuring Marketing Success Based on these Core Metrics?

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The ultimate success of your marketing campaigns comes down to a whole lot more than just how many total sales you've made, or how much revenue you're bringing in each year. Remember, that one small move in one part of your campaign will have a ripple effect that adjusts everything around it. If you want to see how your campaigns are doing, there are a few core metrics you can employ that will tell you exactly that. Qualified Leads If you're only measuring the success of your campaign based on the number of leads you're bringing in, you're missing the target but hitting the tree, so to speak. Leads are one thing - qualified leads are something else entirely. Anyone can bring in a lead, but that doesn't mean the lead will ever make a sale. Generally speaking, the most successful campaigns may not bring in a massive number of leads, but they'll have a higher percentage of qualified leads than you'll get from the old "throw everything at the wa