Importent Financial Tips

1. Get Paid What You’re Worth and Spend Less Than You Earn

It sounds simplistic, but many people struggle with this first basic rule. Make sure you know what your job is worth in the marketplace, by conducting an evaluation of your skills, productivity, job tasks, contribution to the company, and the going rate, both inside and outside the company, for what you do. Being underpaid even a thousand dollars a year can have a significant cumulative effect over the course of your working life.

2. Stick to a Budget

One of my favorite subjects: budgeting. It’s not a four-letter word. How can you know where your money is going if you don’t budget? How can you set spending and saving goals if you don’t know where your money is going? You need a budget whether you make thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Marketing Communications

* Publish a newsletter for customers and prospects (it doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive). Develop a brochure of services.
* Include a postage-paid survey card with your brochures and other company literature. Include check-off boxes or other items that will involve the reader and provide valuable feedback to you.
* Remember, business cards aren’t working for you if they’re in the box. Pass them out! Give prospects two business cards and brochures – one to keep and one to pass along.
* Produce separate business cards/sales literature for each of your target market segments (e.g. government and commercial and/or business and consumer).
* Create a poster or calendar to give away to customers and prospects.
* Print a slogan and/or one-sentence description of your business on letterhead, fax cover sheets, and invoices. Develop a site on the World Wide Web.
* Create a signature file to be used for all your e-mail messages. It should contain contact details, including your Web site address and key information about your company that will make the reader want to contact you.
* Include testimonials from customers in your literature.
* Test a new mailing list. If it produces results, add it to your current direct mail lists or consider replacing a list that’s not performing up to expectations.
* Rather than sending direct mail in plain white envelopes, use colored or oversized envelopes to pique recipients’ curiosity.
* Announce free or special offers in your direct response pieces. (Direct responses may be direct mail, broadcast faxes, or e-mail messages.) Include the offer in the beginning of the message as well as on the outside of the envelope for direct mail.

Advertising for improving marketing sales

* Advertise during peak seasons for your business.
* Get a memorable phone number, such as 1-800-WIDGETS.
* Obtain a memorable URL and email address and include them on all marketing materials.
* Provide Rolodex® cards or phone stickers preprinted with your business contact information.
* Promote your business jointly with other professionals via cooperative direct mail.
* Advertise in a specialty directory or in the Yellow Pages.
* Write an ad in another language to reach the non-English-speaking market. Place the ad in a publication that market reads, such as a Hispanic newspaper.
* Distribute advertising specialty products such as pens, mouse pads, or mugs.
* Mail bumps – photos, samples, and other innovative items to your prospect list. (A bump is simply anything that makes the mailing envelope bulge and makes the recipient curious about what’s in the envelope!)
* Create a direct mail list of hot prospects.
* Consider non-traditional tactics such as bus backs, billboards, and popular Web sites.
* Project a message on the sidewalk in front of your place of business using a light directed through words etched in a glass window.
* Consider placing ads in your newspaper’s classified section.
* Consider a vanity automobile tag with your company name.
* Create a friendly bumper sticker for your car.
* Code your ads and keep records of results.
* Improve your building signage and directional signs inside and out.
* Invest in a neon sign to make your office or storefront window visible at night.
* Create a new or improved company logo or recolor the traditional logo.
* Sponsor and promote a contest or sweepstakes.