Image by 2sketchy via Flickr

Growing up in NY the highest compliment you could pay someone, was to say they were “Street Smart”. This indicated the individual knew how to get things done, with a commons sense no nonsense approach to life. This same common sense approach is what makes Street Marketing, ideal for the small business owner looking to create a big impression on a limited budget.

Street Marketing is built on the same foundation as traditional marketing; clear goals, concise description of a target customer, and a well thought out plan.

The difference is a matter of focus!

Unless you have the marketing budget of Coca Cola or McDonalds, you don’t really have sufficient funds to support a true mass market campaign, one that reaches all consumers. Savvy Street Marketers narrow down their audience to people who are most likely to buy. They spend marketing dollars reaching a concentrated group several times, rather than trying to touch everyone once. This does not mean they limit to whom they sell, but simply to whom they actively try to reach with marketing materials.

Street Marketing takes leg work

How do you decide where do you invest your money? Take time to do some analysis and planning on the front end. Study your past sales, where does most of your business come from?

Also take time to look hit the streets. Look at census data, and local real estate and business publications to find uncover neighborhood trends. The local chamber of commerce may have some additional insight into where the “action” is.

And finally, are some sub-groups or communities ignored by your competitors? Each of these groups may make attractive targets. Be sure the community you select is large enough to support your business objectives. Then plan your attack.

Your goal is to get their attention. It is about reaching the right customers, with the right message, at the right time. Instead of running a 1/8 of a page advertisement in the Sunday paper, alongside five of your competitors, consider buying a larger advertisement in a smaller newspaper, or neighborhood directory. You are more likely to be noticed and remembered for supporting their community. And if you advertise on a regular basis, these smaller newspapers are more likely to make room for your press releases and informational articles.

Be on the Street on a Regular Basis - Be Consistent!

If you join an association, show up for meetings on a regular basis. You won’t necessarily get referrals the first time you attend a networking meeting. But hang in there, as you become part of the “regular” crowd opportunities will drift your way.

Consistency makes your message more noticeable in other ways as well. Be sure that all your marketing material; ads, brochures, door hangers, postcards, web site, trucks, invoices, and yard signs all look as if they are part of the same company. Use the same fonts and same colors in everything you do. Always place you logo and phone number in the same position in all your advertising material. This will train your customers over time where to look for the information they need.

Work Smarter Not Harder

Effective marketing does not require that you spend a lot of money, it simply demands that what you spend, you spend wisely. You don’t have to outspend the biggest competitor in town to be successful; you just have to outrun him on the street.

Article Source:
http://www.bestmanagementarticles.com
http://marketing.bestmanagementarticles.com

Nero is one of the best piece of softwares available in the market for CD/DVD Burning Purposes, but it’s quite expensive. It’s bulky and comes with a lot of programs that you’ll never really use.

Why not try some freeware CD DVD Burning Apps applications that can serve as an alternative to Nero Burning ROM for your Windows PC?

1. CDBurnerXP

This is by far the most popular free alternative to the expensive Nero Software. Works on Vista as well, and here’s a features-highlight from CDBurnerXP:

• Multi Language Interface
• Support for Blu Ray/HD DVD
• BIN > ISO converter included
  Yazının devamını okumak için tıklayın ‘The Best, Free Alternatives to Nero CD/DVD Burner’

Image by “T” altered art via Flickr

Bir İngiliz gazetesinin açmış olduğu yarışmada okuyuculara şu soru soruldu: “Yeryüzündeki en mutlu insan kimdir?”

Gelen cevaplardan dört tanesi ödül aldı.

* İyi yapılmış bir işten sonra ıslık çalan sanatkar,

* Kumda şatolar yapan küçük bir çocuk,

* Yoğun bir iş gününden sonra bebeğe banyo yaptıran anne,

* Güç ve tehlikeli bir ameliyattan sonra bir insan hayatı kurtaran doktor,

Ödül alan cevaplar arasında ne mevki, ne para, ne de mal mülk bulunuyordu. (Küçük çocuğun yaptığı kum şato hariç) Bu cevaplar aslında mutluluğun yanı başımızda ve herkes için geçerli olduğunu anlatıyordu.

“Başlıca hayal kırıklıklarımız, mutluluğa ulaşmak için bütün gücümüzle verdiğimiz mücadeleden sonra onu elde edemeyişimizden doğar En büyük sevinçleri hiç beklemediğimiz anda karşımıza çıkan güzel şeyler bize yaşatır. Biz çoğu zaman bu sevinçleri, mutlu düşüncelerimizi, bir tesadüf ve şansa bağlarız. Fakat olanların, daima, daha iyi bir izah şekli vardır.

Ummadığımız bir mutluluk bizi kapladığı anda duymakta olduğumuz sevincin, geçmişimizde olmuş fakat unutulmuş veya şuur altına atılmış bir olayla ilgili olduğunu fark etmişizdir. Yeterli derecede açık kapı bırakın, mutluluk siz farkında olmadan içeri girecektir.

Lunar Reconnaissance 2008 sonunda silahsız olarak aya gönderilecek bir uydu. Amacı yaşanabilir bölgeleri bulmak.

NASA bu misyonu destekleyenlerin isimlerin topluyor ve bunları bir liste halinde aya götürecek.

Sizde adınızın aya gitmesini istiyorsanız Johns Hopkins sitesini ziyaret edip adınızı bırakın. Son tarih 27 Haziran 2008. Hatta “certificate of participation” sertifikanızıda pdf olarak alabilirsiniz. 

Internette bulduğunuz ve düzenlemek istediğiniz resmin linkini Picnik içine yazıp o resmi otomatik olarak kaynağından kopyalayabilirsiniz.

Süper bir özellik olarak Google’da resim arattığınızda gelen sonuç sayfasının linkini koyduğunuzda küçük resimleri değil büyüklerini kopyalıyor. Aynı özellik Flickr, Yahoo! News Photos dada geçerli. 

Textris is an online sorting tool that lets you quickly sort and alphabetize a list of records without requiring Excel. You may also use Textris to remove duplicate records from a list.

Lists can be sorted in either numeric or alphabetic (natural sort) order. Reverse sort is also possible incase you like to go from “z” to “a” or from higher to lower.

Textris can auto-label your records after sorting using regular number or roman numerals. And if your list contains text records, Textris will help you change the case of strings in a click. Pretty useful overall.

textris.flap.tv

Kaynak: labnol.org

Sosyal ağ siteleri giderek artıyor. Sizde bu konuda potansiyel gördüğünüz yada yapılması gerektiğini düşündüğünüz bir sosyal ağ projesini aşağıdaki açık kaynak kodlu sosyal ağ yazılımları ile gerçekleştirebilirsiniz.

Pligg

It seems that every hour, a new Pligg-based site is born. Pligg is a PHP/MySQL system that allows visitors to submit websites and blogs for voting or ranking. While very similar to Digg, it does offer some additional features, such as trackback support, automatic title discovery, and RSS import functionality. It also has a small community that is actively working on new mods and templates. Some of the more interesting Pligg-based sites are PlugIM, Sk*rt, Sphinn and Simply Fired.

NewsCloud

NewsCloud is another content management system that has a story ranking feature. They have also developed a Facebook app for their service, which is open source as well and available for download. The default layout is slightly more newsy than Digg-like.

Drupal with Vote up/down module

Most know Drupal as one of the more popular open source content management systems available. Thanks to the user community, several modules have been developed that allow voting of submitted stories. Recruiting.com uses this setup.

Dolphin

Dolphin, from Boonex, is a popular free community-building application that is being used for a number of dating sites. Many modifications have been developed, however many of them are only available for a fee. There is also a cost associated with removing the company’s links from your site.

PHPizabi

PHPizabi is another social networking script that charges a fee to remove their branding. They are rapidly approaching 100,000 downloads of their software, and have a few impressive-looking demo sites listed on their website.

Elgg

Elgg was developed with the educational industry in mind, but can be customized for any use. Many universities throughout the world have adapted the social software to fit their needs.

Mugshot

Developed by Red Hat, Mugshot allows you to post what you are reading and listening too, and share it with you friends. Mugshot is a little different, as both the client and server code are open source and available for download.

AroundMe

AroundMe is an open source social networking app that supports OpenID. They are based in Sweden. We haven’t seen many sites running on the platform.

GetBoo

GetBoo allows you to save you favorite sites and share them with your friends. It also supports public and private group creation.

Scuttle

While Scuttle has not been updated in over a year, the code is still available on SourceForge. Scuttle is a PHP/MySQL-based social bookmark system.

Image via Wikipedia

There are many keyword research tools of varying size and complexity, but often only a quick and simple reference is needed. When a large number of pages is being optimized (as they often are in ecommerce situations, such as creating or improving product pages) the subject is obvious, time is of the essence, and only a cursory amount of keyword research is needed. An effective and basic tool for this scenario is actually right at your fingertips: Google Suggest.

Google Suggest began as a separate interface within the Google itself as an experimental page that would offer a dropdown menu of suggestions relevant to a term (or even a few keystrokes) typed into the Google field. Its primary use was to auto-complete searches for users to speed up the process of searching, but the auto-complete suggestions are derived from popular search phrases used in Google, with the more popular terms displayed at the top of the list. According to the Google Suggest FAQ (Labs.google.com/suggest/faq.html), “Google Suggest uses data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers…Google Suggest does not base its suggestions on your personal search history.”

What’s even handier is that Google has added Google Suggest into the Google Toolbar search box, which can be downloaded free for all popular browsers. So, while looking at a given page in your browser, you can use Google Suggest right at the top of the browser to test and compare various keywords.

The tool works great for comparing keywords or terms that start with the same word or keystrokes. It has limitations, though. You can’t, for instance, compare “laptop computers” with “notebook computers.” But for quick and easy keyword research, this Google tool is sweet.