Is the current tough market the right time to be slashing your advertising budget? Not if you want your business to survive the economic downturn and lay the groundwork to thrive when the economy improves! Tough times may actually provide us our best opportunity to reach out to our customers with little or no competition because so many of our competitors are doing just the opposite of that in an attempt to save money.

During good times everyone has the money (and bravery) to seek out clients, creating an atmosphere of extreme competition where reaching the consumer with your message proves to be exceedingly difficult. NOW is the time to have faith in your product or service, to reach out to your customers and to secure your success now and into the future. And there are easy and cost effective ways of doing so.

There are some simple things that you can do. Everyone knows about the internet, but not everyone knows the free ways to get exposure on the internet. You can write an article about your industry, or a product, and submit it to one of the many sites that accept them. At the end of your article, you mention your business and have a link to your website. Each site has it’s guidelines on how the articles are to be written, so make sure to follow them. This will help establish you as a leader in your industry as long as the information you share is helpful and not self-promoting.

Guerilla marketing is great in slow time. Have some flyers or postcards made. One of your employees or friends can design it or you can find an affordable place to do it for you. During your slow time, have your employees go to a busy area and hand them out. Now you are putting your message directly into the hands of prospective customers. Make sure you have an attractive offer that will entice people to visit your business. Obviously, this is mainly for businesses with a store front, but you can do guerilla marketing online as well.

Guerilla marketing is done differently online. With blogs and social networking sites, there are opportunities to market your business in a different setting. You can create blogs and check the response you get from each entry which can help you check what the market is interested in at any given time. Or you can find blogs that have an issue that your company can help with. Respond to the blog with your company information. You can set up an account with a social networking site, giving more information about your business and connecting to other businesses to network and exchanges leads.

Cross promote with other businesses, in other ways. If you’re feeling the pinch of the economy, most likely other businesses in your area/industry are feeling it as well. Find other businesses that don’t compete with yours and see about exchanging some flyers or a banner promoting each other’s business. Or if your business is online, do a link exchange with other businesses. Do not over due the link exchange or Google may lower your organic search results. Be selective in who you work with both online and in the brick and mortar world.

Press Releases can be a very effective way to bring attention to your business. If you have something that impacts the community, then you can have someone write a press release for you. If you hire someone to do it for you, make sure they know how to write and distribute it. Again, remember the topic must be something that impacts the community and not just a self-serving piece promoting your business.

These are just some of the ideas that will help your business grow in any economy. There are plenty of marketing options out there. You just need to find the ones that work for you.

About the Author: Rob Bedell is an expert in the media industry and has worked in the industry for over 15 years. He has worked with some of the largest media companies in the world, Tribune and Knight-Ridder, as well as helping restructure and rebuild other companies in the Los Angeles, CA Metropolitan area. He now owns a marketing company that helps small to medium sized business, making sure that their marketing pays them back. www.bedellmediaconsulting.com.

No related posts.

However, the internet came second only after referrals as the top choice among job seekers, said XMG Inc., the ICT research company which conducted the survey.

Other sources of job openings (job fairs, walk in applications, internships) came in at third, while newspapers was at fourth and followed by headhunters in fifth place. None of the survey respondents indicated any job openings learned either through the radio or billboard.

XMG, founded by Filipino Lauro Vives, is an analyst firm that has offices in Canada and the Philippines.

The company said it conducted the study to identify effective recruitment channels as a way of guiding companies in hiring employees.

The survey showed that referral is the most effective recruitment channel, cornering 37.57% of the respondents (i.e. word of mouth).

“This can be attributed to the reliability of the information given by the referees. Additionally, there is a greater likelihood that people will be enthused to join a company if they know someone (acquaintances, friends or family relatives) employed in the organization,” XMG said.

Job openings known through the Internet closely followed, corresponding to 27.75% of the total respondents, the survey noted.

“It only shows that ICT talents can access the Internet, hence providing ICT companies a wider reach in targeting the labor force,” the research firm said.

Meanwhile, 19.08% of the respondents used other sources of job openings, while vacant positions discovered through newspaper ads accounted for 10.98% of the respondents.

Employment opportunities coursed through head hunters were at 4.62%.

XMG also said it picked a particular recruitment channel for employment to further examine the different sourcing strategies for hiring.

The respondents, who indicated that they purchase newspapers when looking for employment, were probed about their preferred brand of newspaper.

Based on the responses, a large majority of the respondents (65.32%) indicated that they prefer Manila Bulletin. This was followed by the Philippine Daily Inquirer (25.43%), Philippine Star (6.94%) and Manila Standard (1.16%). Other newspapers not mentioned among the choices are around 3.47%.

“The results show that Manila Bulletin is indeed the primary choice of newspaper for employment purposes. Furthermore, this validates XMG’s Media Channel Index for the preferred broadsheet, particularly, the top three newspaper preferences,” the research firm said.

Sunday was noted to have the highest percentage when it comes to preference for buying newspapers, accounting for 91.85% of the respondents. Most broadsheets allocate majority of their pages to classified ads on Sundays.

Saturday was the next preferred day of the respondents when buying a newspaper at 11.11%. Weekdays (Mondays to Fridays) had very small percentages, especially for Wednesdays, which accounts for 0.74% of the total respondents. A small fraction (2.96%) did not indicate any specific day when buying a newspaper.

“Figures derived from the survey only imply that to attract a large number of applicants, job postings should be made on weekends, especially on Sundays, where the labor force has ample time to browse through the job postings,” it said. – GMANews.TV

Definitions

1. to determine and delineate the form, extent, and position of (as a tract of land) by taking linear and angular measurements and by applying the principles of geometry and trigonometry
2. to view or consider comprehensively

No related posts.

In a GMANews.TV interview, Dr. William T. Torres, president of Mosaic Communications (Mozcom), said that since there is now a critical number of companies with their own online payment methods, “there’s reason to say let’s do this thing together so that we can complement each other.”

“We need to find out who is doing what and integrate our efforts to lower the cost and speed up the process,” Torres said during a break at the one-day Philippine E-Commerce Forum held on Thursday in Makati.

Besides emphasizing that establishing an e-commerce system is a very costly undertaking, Torres said at least six online payment methods are currently being used by Philippine companies that sell their goods and/or services through the Internet.

Auction.PH, which allows users to buy and/or sell goods through auctions or outright purchases, offers Escrow. The arrangement temporary holds payment to a seller until the buyer receives the item he or she purchased through the site.

For its part, the Philippine Cut Flower Corporation offers a separate facility for US dollar and Philippine peso transactions from users who order flowers and similar items from its website, according to a company official who spoke during the same forum.

Although other payment systems permit transactions to be undertaken through credit and debit cards, other methods also allow settlements through the short message service of mobile phones.

Torres said five years ago the primary concern of local companies selling their goods through the Internet was where to host their e-commerce systems, which require proprietary software applications.

Now, not only are there a number of data centers in the Philippines, companies even share facilities, which help process electronic transactions.

He said there is a tendency among Philippine businesses on the Internet to build information infrastructure solely for e-commerce, a notion industry players should disabuse themselves of.

“When you speak of infrastructure, you don’t create infrastructure industry by industry. You create infrastructure to be used by all of them,” he said.

He compared the telecommunications infrastructure to a transportation system. “We don’t create a transportation system to only convey people, but to transport cargo as well,” he said. – GMANews.TV

No related posts.

They are bidding furiously at this auction of Internet domain names, with hopes of snagging megayachts.com. The duo won’t be deterred. They want this name.

”$110,000 (€79,693), yes or no? Quick,” Fischer barks at Eli, the investor at the end of the phone.

Someone else makes a bid for $120,000 (€86,938). Fischer and Goldberger up the ante, and then again.

Going once, going twice … sold to Fischer and Goldberger for $150,000 (€108,672).

”You got it,” a smiling Fischer tells Eli.

These are boom times in an estimated $2 billion (€1.45 billion) industry that involves the buying and selling of domain names. When people type the generic names into their Web browser’s address field, sites that generate pay-per-click advertising revenue appear. Such ”direct navigation” bypasses search engines.

”This industry is like the wild, wild West right now and people have no idea how fast it’s growing,” said Jerry Nolte, managing partner of Domainer’s Magazine, a new trade publication devoted to this little-known world.

Some believe the industry’s market value could reach $4 billion (€2.9 billion) by 2010 as people continue to purchase approximately 90,000 names a day and the number of domain registrars swells.

At the end of first quarter 2007, at least 128 million domain names had been registered worldwide, a 31 percent increase over the previous year, according to VeriSign Inc., which runs some of the core domain name directories for the Internet.

”It’s not about words,” said Monte Cahn, founder and CEO of Moniker.com, a company that specializes in domain asset management and held the Manhattan auction. ”It’s like real estate. This industry is only about a decade old. People looked at domain names as a commodity. It’s a piece of real estate on the Web that can’t be replaced. It’s your stake in the ground, your stake in the Internet.”

At the Manhattan auction, Fischer and Goldberger snatched up four names for more than $1.2 million (€870,000) and a fifth for a client, representing only a handful of the names sold for a total of $12.4 million (€9 million) during both the live and silent auction.

The auctions were held during a domain conference in June that attracts some of the biggest players in this niche business.

One name – creditcheck.com – went for $3 million (€2.2 million) but paled in comparison to the sale of sex.com, which sold for $12 million (€8.7 million) last year, according to Cahn, who knew the site’s buyer and seller.

Fischer, 44, and Goldberger, 46, figured there was money to be made early.

Goldberger’s entry into the business was unorthodox to say the least. In 1996, the Hearst Corp. sued him, alleging trademark infringement after Goldberger registered esqwire.com, which resembles one of the company’s magazines.

The two sides eventually settled and Goldberger, a lawyer, was allowed to keep the name. Word got out that Goldberger knew something about the thorny legal issues involving Internet domain names and people began approaching him for advice.

Goldberger’s fascination with the burgeoning industry was sealed.

”I was an entrepreneur strapped into this suit-and-tie job,” Goldberger said. ”Kind of a square peg in a round whole and this lawsuit just kind of changed everything for me.”

He eventually left the respected Philadelphia law firm where he worked in 1997 and joined a small startup in Manhattan called mail.com, which was buying up domain names.

Goldberger began collaborating with Fischer in 2001, building their portfolio of domain names. Together, they became a formidable yet quirky team.

Two years later, they created a company called smartname.com, which they sold earlier this year. The company took names and provided content and links for owners, getting a cut of the advertising revenue. At one point, smartname.com represented 150 owners with about 150,000 domain names, generating 50 million unique visitors a month.

Most of the sites are lucrative for their advertising dollars. For example, megayachts.com isn’t an actual yachting site, but it contains numerous ads and links for real yacht companies, boats and cruises. The owners of the site get paid each time a viewer clicks on one of those links.

Goldberger and Fischer declined to say how much money they make from pay-per-click advertising.

Bob Parsons, CEO and founder of domain registration company GoDaddy.com, says this type of business is fairly straightforward.

”They make their money in two ways,” Parsons said. ”One way is through the traffic they get and the other is the appreciation of the name.”

Parson didn’t think there was anything wrong with the practice as long as those involved weren’t using names trademarked by others.

”Domain names are becoming 21st century real estate,” Parsons said. ”Just owning a domain name as an investment, I don’t see a problem with that.”

Anthony Malutta, a lawyer who specializes in trademark law at a San Francisco law firm, sees fewer trademark infringement cases thanks to improved laws.

”Trademark law involving domain laws is much clearer and much easier to understand,” he said. ”It’s pretty clear that registering a domain name that corresponds to somebody’s trademark is actionable. As to generics, they’re just hoping to capture traffic. You’re just counting on people typing in generic names instead of using a search engine like Google.”

Malutta said domainers like Goldberger and Fischer are not ”gaming the system” which in his opinion would mean registering domain names and then cybersquatting – driving revenue off somebody else’s trademarked name like Coca-Cola.

Over the years, Goldberger and Fischer have sharpened their formula for acquiring domain names and developing the sites using a fairly simple template, relying on research, savvy and plenty of instinct.

”You either know it or don’t by hearing the name,” Fischer says.

They look for names that hit the ‘’sweet spot” – short words that describe a high-value product or services related to it. Words that allow them to own a category such as bald.com and cardiology.com, two of the domain names they bought at the auction.

To help figure out a word’s potential value, they see how many hits it will produce using Google. They also troll lists of names with domain registrations set to expire, enabling them to get a jump on buying it.

They don’t bother with dot-nets or the others.

”Dot-com is king,” Goldberger said. ”Dot-net is worthless.”

But there’s a big divide between thinking of a good name and getting it. There’s usually a chase, with Fischer trying to persuade owners to sell the names after he locates the owners unless it’s up for auction.

”He’s kind of like a rhinoceros,” Goldberger says about Fischer. ”He chases them up a tree and waits them out. He has patience and determination. You got to be aggressive. It’s a tough game now. It’s like the gold rush. The first guys did really well then it became more difficult.”

And expensive. Five years ago, the duo could get a good name for $10,000 (€7,245). Now the minimum is more like $100,000 (€72,448) – as the auction proved. The cheapest name they bought at the auction was blogging.com for $135,000 (€97,805). Other names sold for considerably less like irishwhiskey.com ($8,000, €5,796) and Jewishdeli.com ($9,000, €6,520).

At the moment, Fischer, Goldberger and Eli are sitting on their names. They’ve recently turned down million-dollar offers for stocks.com and home.com.

But as white-hot as this business has been, it might not continue to mint millionaires.

”How long will this model last?” Malutta asked. ”It’s definitely a temporal piece of real estate. As technology evolves, maybe direct navigation will fall off the charts and there goes your property.”

No related posts.

Symantec Corp warns that free Wi-Fi in public hotspots also means that connections are not encrypted, making users and their sensitive and confidential communication and data susceptible to online threats such as fraud, theft, data loss, and hacking.

The company urges uses to protect themselves through cautious computing habits and using software tools when connecting in public hotspots. Symantec gives the following tips:

Easy access, little protection

It can be difficult for hotspot hosts to maintain wireless security. Besides, registration and login requirements tend to defeat the purpose of an “open” Wi-Fi network. So, most hotspot hosts employ little or no security measures-which means the trade-off for quick access and easy administration is high exposure to potential threats.

To compound the problem, any wireless connection is inherently less secure than an ordinary network hookup. Unlike data traveling over a physical cable, wireless transmissions pass through the air as radio signals. Those signals can be intercepted by anyone with a receiver and some basic, widely available tools. When the hotspot you’re on doesn’t use encryption, someone who intercepts your data can read whatever you’ve sent-whether it’s a private email or a user name and password combination.

Because hotspots are in public places, people can simply look over your shoulder to engage in old-fashioned eavesdropping or even target your laptop for theft.

Criminal means and motives

While curiosity seekers put your privacy at risk, the most serious hotspot dangers are cybercriminals with much more sophisticated means and motives.

Even when a hotspot uses security measures, technically savvy hackers have the tools, skills, and patience to work around those protections.

Cybercriminals have learned to use social engineering methods to con hotspot users into divulging sensitive information. Taking a page out of the phishing and pharming book, they set up a wireless network of their own in the vicinity of a legitimate hotspot. By dressing up their network’s name and home page to look like the actual hotspot, they trick you into joining their network. Once you’re on their fake hotspot, they either ask for “new account” information (like credit card numbers or other sensitive information) or redirect you to other fraudulent or virus-laden Web sites.

Security is up to you

With these dangers lurking and very few security measures in place protecting yourself at public hotspots is your own responsibility. Here are some things you can do to keep yourself safe:

• Make sure no one is peering over your shoulder when you log into your operating system, email, IM, or other accounts.
• Be on the watch for suspicious behavior; never leave your laptop or handheld device unattended.
• Turn off file sharing when you’re using a hotspot, and try to minimize the amount of sensitive, personal data you store on your laptops and mobile devices. You can usually turn off file sharing from your operating system’s network settings menu.
• Turn off your wireless card when you’re not using it.
• Don’t do your online banking or trading at a public hotspot. Save it for a more safe and controlled environment.
• Make sure you’re on a legitimate hotspot by checking with the host to confirm the network name and connection process.
• Rather than letting your wireless card automatically join the nearest network, manually select the hotspot when you connect.
• When you’re on a public hotspot, you have no idea what infections other connected computers might have, or whether there may be a hacker prowling the network. Norton AntiVirus and Norton Internet Security – both from Symantec – protect you from viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and dangerous intruders.
• Make wise computing decisions. Always avoid using hotspots for important communications or transactions.

No related posts.

He wishes his 8-year-old son had been wearing them when he got a call from his school in 2002 saying the boy was missing. The worried father hopped a flight to Atlanta from New York where he had been on business to find the incident had been a miscommunication and his son was safe.

Days later, the engineer started working on a prototype of Quantum Satellite Technology, a line of $325 to $350 adult sneakers that hit shelves next month. It promises to locate the wearer anywhere in the world with the press of a button. A children’s line will be out this summer.

“We call it a second eye watching over you,” Daniel said.

It’s the latest implementation of satellite-based navigation into everyday life — technology that can be found in everything from cell phones that help keep kids away from sexual predators to fitness watches that track heart rate and distance. Shoes aren’t as easy to lose, unlike phones, watches and bracelets.

The sneakers work when the wearer presses a button on the shoe to activate the GPS. A wireless alert detailing the location is sent to a 24-hour monitoring service that costs an additional $19.95 a month.

In some emergencies — such as lost child or Alzheimer’s patient — a parent, spouse or guardian can call the monitoring service, and operators can activate the GPS remotely and alert authorities if the caller can provide the correct password.

But the shoe is not meant for non-emergencies — like to find out if a teen is really at the library or a spouse is really on a business trip. If authorities are called and it is not an emergency, the wearer will incur all law enforcement costs, Daniel said.

Once the button is pressed, the shoe will transmit information until the battery runs out.

While other GPS gadgets often yield spotty results, Daniel says his company has spent millions of dollars and nearly two years of research to guarantee accuracy. The shoe’s 2-inch-by-3-inch chip is tucked into the bottom of the shoe.

Experts say GPS accuracy often depends on how many satellites the system can tap into. Daniel’s shoe and most GPS devices on the market rely on four.

“The technology is improving regularly. It’s to the point where you can get fairly good reflection even in areas with a lot of tree coverage and skyscrapers,” said Jessica Myers, a spokeswoman for Garmin International Inc., a leader in GPS technology based in Kansas. “You still need a pretty clear view of the sky to work effectively.”

Daniel, who wears the shoes when he runs every morning, says he tested the shoes on a recent trip to New Jersey. It tracked him down the Atlantic Coast to the Miami airport and through the city to a specific building.

The company also has put the technology into military boots and is in talks with Colombia and Ecuador, he said.

But retail experts say the shoe might be a tough sale to brand-conscious kids.

“If (parents) can get their kids to wear them, then certainly there is a marketplace. But I think the biggest challenge is overcoming … the cool marketplace,” said Lee Diercks, managing director of New Jersey-based Clear Thinking Group, an advisory firm for retailers.

The GPS sneakers, available in six designs, resemble most other running shoes. The two silver buttons — one to activate and one to cancel — are inconspicuous near the shoelaces.

The company is selling 1,000 limited-edition shoes online and already has orders for 750, Daniel said.

Parents who buy the pricey kicks don’t have to worry about their kids outgrowing them fast. This fall, the company is unveiling a plug-and-wear version that allows wearers to remove the electronics module from their old shoes and plug it into another pair of Daniel’s sneaks.

No related posts.