ADUTAINMENT: Advertising as Entertainment
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What Does Your Business Card Say?
Business cards are the most underutilized and misunderstood marketing tool in business. Many people spend the bucks for cards and don't make an effort to get them into the hands of those who can hire them or buy from them.

VISTA to Open San Antonio, TX Office -- Company is Recruiting Management Director to Build and Run Regional Business
VISTA, the leader in decision support analytics for government and business, will be opening a second office in San Antonio, TX, to allow for better proximity to regional military business west of the Mississippi. The second office is slated to open September 1, 2007.

Next Safety, Inc. Offers the Only Solution for UK Smoking Ban: Company offers Clubs, Pubs, Casinos, and Business People Nicotine
Next Safety, Inc.'s responds to the no-smoking ban in the United Kingdom with its revolutionary pulmonary drug delivery device. The handheld device delivers nicotine more effectively than a cigarette, without the smoke. It has enormous potential in the United Kingdom, and other areas of the world, where no-smoking bans have gone into effect.

Internet Marketing Success: It's Best Done Without All That Ridiculous Internet Stuff
My brother Dennis and I were talking about internet marketing success last night and I have never seen a person roll their eyes more then he did during that one conversation. I mean his eyes probably HURT the next day from all of that eye-rolling.

Small Cards, Big Ideas: Alternative Uses for Business Cards
Aggressive business card marketing isn't about handing your business cards out to everyone you see.The card itself must have a new use, an innovative design, or something other than the usual contact information printed on it.

DCP-Print Introducing a New Online Design Tool for Business Cards
DCP-Print has uploaded a new version of their online business card design tool which contains a unique drag-and-drop feature to make the design process easier.

Pro Step Marketing Partners With Top RE/MAX REALTOR® in Lake Norman, NC
Ariel Andrews, of Lake Norman, N.C., partnered with Pro Step Marketing to develop a new website as part of an extensive marketing strategy to increase her online presence and the number of qualified leads.

Promotional Merchandise-The Affordable Way To Advertise Your Business
Achieving success and enviable profit margins are the objectives for most corporate professionals. The objectives may be clear cut. However the path to reaching these objectives may not always be as clear. You are an astute business person and therefore you are quite aware that advertising your business is a necessity, albeit it is often a difficult and expensive requirement of business.

Government Technology Conference 2007 Best Solution Award presented to LenSec for the third consecutive year for their IP-based video surveillance sol
LenSec, (http://www.lensec.com) the leading provider of Enterprise-Wide IP-based Video Surveillance, announces that it has received the Best Solution award at the Government Technology Conference (GTC) to be held January 31 - February 1, 2007 in Austin, Texas. In response to the growing need for video cameras at various levels of government, LenSec continues to support local officials in their efforts to promote public safety, specifically school safety (http://www.lensec.com/digital-video-systems-schools.htm).

Search Engine Marketing - Automotive Miracle Or Myth
In the early days when computers were just coming of age and the internet as we know it today had yet to be born, it was difficult to see what lie ahead. Information was not as plentiful and moving from paper and pen to keyboard and mouse just did not seem to be what people were pushing for. But as time went on and more and more people began to see the growth of what has now become the world?s biggest repository of electronic information, people and businesses alike have looked far and wide for how they can take advantage of this new age miracle to get their products and services seen by people everywhere.

4 Steps To Increase Your Job Sign Marketing
It's no secret that using a job site sign can be an effective way to market your company's services to neighborhood homeowners. But most job sign marketing isn't done as effectively as it could be.

Small Business Mistakes: Are You Making Enough of Them?
That's right are you making enough mistakes in your business? Some of you are probably annoyed at my question; others are thinking "Geez, Rose! If I made any more mistakes I'd have to run screaming back to a day job!"If you went to school in the public school system in America, you were culturally trained to avoid and hide mistakes, after all; your teachers and professors didn't give you a great grade for your efforts unless those efforts produced great results. So, too, if you were an employee in corporate America you were rewarded for chasing perfection and penalized for making mistakes.

Internet Marketing Requires Persistence
Marketing your company online requires patience and persistence. Like every worthwhile investment, you need to plan on a long-term commitment to reap a good return.

Short Term Business Loans Starting for a Long Term Business
Starting a new business is not a childs play. You have to take a lot of decisions which obviously do involve potential amount of risk. You obviously do not want to take the burden of paying monthly repayment installment for a long duration time. And if this is case the case with you and you are planning for taking a business loan from market then go for short term business loans.

Mobile Climbing Wall Manufacturer Announces New Business Opportunities
Mobile Climbing Wall manufacturer, Extreme Engineering, announces new and profitable business opportunities for Portable Climbing Wall owner-operators. With a low investment in a Mobile Climbing Wall system, renowned the world over for its safety features, entrepreneurs can set up at fairs, parks, and festivals quickly and easily to provide crowds with one of the most popular attractions and activities of the 21st Century.

Business Development For the Private Labeled Bottled Water Industry

The private labeled bottled water industry is exciting with tremendous growth opportunities and the ability for suppliers to offer their customers and strategic partners creative, effective advertising solutions.

But like any business, care is required to develop the business in a profitable way and the best way to do this is to establish a focused business development effort that utilizes the tools and techniques established by successful business.

The first step is to define the concept ?business development?.

Definition:

Business development ?includes a number of techniques designed to grow an economic enterprise. Such techniques include, but are not limited to, assessments of marketing opportunities and target markets, intelligence gathering on customers and competitors, generating leads for possible sales, follow up sales activity, formal proposal writing and business model design.

Business development involves evaluating a business and then realizing its full potential, using such tools as marketing, sales, information management and customer service. For a sound company able to withstand competitors, business development never stops but is an ongoing process.? (source: Wikipedia)

From this definition it is clear that business development is more than closing the sale and each technique requires detailed planning and follow up.

Using the concepts of business development, our company developed a robust, profitable private label water business but it took considerable initial and continuing effort.

Unique Value Proposition:

Our first challenge was the development of a Unique Value Proposition that answered the question ?Why should I buy from you?.

After a review of the market and the competition it was determined that private labeled bottled water was a powerful, cost effective, advertising vehicle but because a customer?s brand was affected, high product quality and customer service was required. Our Unique Value Proposition was established and stated:

?Element H2O will provide powerful and cost effective advertising and brand promotion for its customers based upon the highest quality consumable private label water, label design and customer service.?

Marketing and Target Markets:

Field and internet research was conducted with the basic question being: What are the characteristics of industries are most likely to use our product at a price that is profitable to us. Key characteristics were developed:

? Prospects that provide a quality product or service. ? Industries operating in a competitive market environment where product/service differentiation was critical. ? Prospects that required drinking water for customers, clients or prospects. ? Prospects that maintained a quality brand image.

Initial research indicated that the following industries were initially high potential targets:

? Hospitality (Hotels and Spas) ? Banking ? Mortgage Brokers ? Real Estate ? Ski Resorts

Sales Channels and Market Access:

It was decided that two channels would be used to go to market ? direct selling and e-commerce. An e-commerce site was developed that allowed customers to design their own label for the bottles or provide an existing design consistent with the customer brand strategy. Search Engine Marketing and Optimization techniques were used to promote this channel.

A direct sales staff was formed to develop and close sales opportunities and these efforts were supported by a direct mail campaign and networking with local chambers of commerce, local trade associations and lead sharing groups.

The sales effort, after a series of initial false starts and disappointments matured successfully as we reviewed and revised the fine points of our effort.

Product Quality and Customer Service:

Our corporate strategy for all products is to stay at the high end of the market and this was particularly true for private label bottled water where the market is characterized by cutthroat competition and many low quality vendors who are slashing prices and selling on price rather than quality.

We focused on three areas of quality:

? Water purity ? we used a steam distillation/ozonation process that guaranteed 99.9% pure water that tasted delicious. ? Label Design Quality ? We used an in house professional designer to guarantee label design quality. ? Label Print Quality ? We used laminated label stock that was extremely durable and water proof and used digital or flexo printing technology to guarantee quality.

Customer service was particularly important as we established a reputation for delivering on time and correctly. If mistakes occurred, and they did, we adopted a no questions asked guarantee. We established a reputation as a reliable vendor for our customers.

The business became a successful mainstay of our business but only because we developed a planned, business development process that we reviewed constantly and made changes that the market required.

Jon M. Stout is Chairman of the Board of Element H2O. For more information about bottled water, private label bottled water and bottled water delivery go to www.elementh2o.com