Million Signatures

Archive for March 2nd, 2010

A good Ad agency can take a business and propel its success forward in ways that few other business partners can do.  If the business is one that will benefit from promotion or advertising, the right AD agency bring to the table the talent, the creativity and the resources to put together just the right advertising campaign and then to deploy it in a way that is a perfect fit for the business’s marketing objectives and for the market that the business serves.

But for every success story of how an AD agency took a business to the next level of success, there are plenty of horror stories of terrible advertising campaigns.  A bad advertising strategy not only fail to escalate the sales and success of the business, it may damage the business in the eyes of the consumer and cause damage that could take years to fix.

There comes a time in the life of any business when the decision is made to either employ the business’s first AD agency or to change agencies to find one that can fit the marketing objectives of the company.  To be sure that this process results in one of those success stories and not one of those horror tales, some precautions are in order such as…

• Nail down the company’s marketing objectives before you meet with candidate agencies.  Don’t allow the AD agency to dictate what your marketing goals are.  By taking charge of what you want before you begin the process, the chances of finding just the right agency are vastly improved.

• Put together a review committee for the search process of finding the right agency.  This team is well informed about the company objectives and the marketing goals that lead to the decision to bring an AD agency on.  They can be kept together throughout the selection process so you have wisdom from many different parts of the company management structure to guide the process.

• Nail down the budget for the project before you put the invitations out to AD agencies to bid on your business.  If you know exactly how much you can spend, that will help in the selection of the right agency and in setting their limitations early in the relationship.

• Establish the schedule of how long you have find an AD agency and then the time frame they have to put a campaign together, get it approved, produced and activated so the outcome is in sync with the company objectives.  If you have a major product announcement coming along, the time to start finding an AD agency is months before the week when the product goes public.  By timing the project so adequate time is allowed for each step, you don’t rush the process and end up with an inferior promotion which will result in unsatisfactory results.

• Make sure the AD agencies you invite to bid on the business understand your business, what you do, the product to be promoted, your market and your business image.   They should also be aware of previous marketing efforts that were done by the business.   If the previous efforts were successful, there may be a strong tie in to the next promotion that would work well.  If that last promotion was bad or needs major improvement, the AD agency should know that so they can steer clear of the same mistakes.

By doing some planning up front and being ready when you begin to bring AD agencies in to discuss your goals, you will vastly improve your chances of selecting the right firm.  And by finding the right AD agency, you vastly improve the success your advertising will bring to the company which can be a tremendous boost to the corporate profitability.

What is consumer financing? Basically, this enables the customer to buy certain items either through their credit card or a loan. Some examples of these include purchasing a house, a car, college tuition or home improvement and given that these are necessities, you may have a career in consumer financing.

Your career will start by being a sales agent and offering credit cards to customers. Unlike debit cards that are provided by banks, the consumer can only spend a certain limit monthly and then pay these back when the bill comes.

Some of the people that are interested have never had a credit card before while others are getting another one.

If you know the features and benefits of the card you are selling very well, you may even persuade others to transfer their existing balance thus increasing the number of clients that your company is serving. This is better known as debt consolidation.

Other products that companies are offering these days include financing campaigns, interest free loans, installment loans and revolving credit.

Those who do well selling credit cards, your boss might let you handle something else like approve loans to card holders. This is financial institutions allow you to do more than just buy items from the store. You can use your credit card to pay for home improvement, tuition or buy a car.

The terms for these purchases vary and it is the responsibility of the person to pay the amount otherwise these will be repossessed when it is impossible to pay these back with the amount of interest that has been incurred.

But not everyone will be out in the field selling credit cards. There are those who work in the head office who analyze the behavior of the customer. If there was a sudden large purchase, that person is tasked to call the card holder and ask if a transaction was made or not given that identify theft is on the rise.

Some will be tasked to approve or disapprove the application of the customer for a credit card or a loan. The basis will be that person’s credit history. If it is good, then there won’t be any problems but if there is red flag, chances are this will not disapproved as the individual is a high risk individual.

For those who have been in the consumer financing industry long and want a new change of atmosphere, they can join organizations that help people get a good rating once again. They are tasked in counseling individuals who have spent beyond their means by helping them pay back the debt. This is better known as consumer credit counseling so that person will always have financial stability.

In fact, the information provided by such companies also used as basis whether or not to approve a customer’s loan. If everything is in good order, then there shouldn’t be any problems.

Consumer financing is expected to grow given that people don’t always have the cash on hand to buy whatever they want. Some of the companies that you can apply to if you want to start a career in consumer financing include American General Finance Inc, CitiFinancial, General Electric Finance, HSBC and Wells Fargo Financial.

You just have to apply for the position and hopefully be hired.

When we say something is “virtual” in modern terminology, we are almost always talking about something related to the internet.  So Virtual Dating is dating using the internet.  “Virtual” does not mean something that does not exist.  But it implies you are replacing a normal physical entity with a real but for the most part unseen entity that lives online.

The trend in strategic business planning is to incorporate an aggressive “virtual marketing” plan with your traditional plans.  So it makes sense that eventually the move to virtual resources would reach human resources with the availability of virtual employees.

In the last two or three years, virtual employment has taken off and become a very real resource for businesses wishing to tap into valuable experience and subject matter expertise that cannot be found locally.  Agencies such as Team Double Click and Rent-A-Coder provide an army of ready to work professionals that can step in and get a job done quickly and efficiently for an employer.

The obvious first application of virtual workers is to subcontract to an online employment agency certain task specific projects that have a short beginning, middle and end.  Building a new function into a web page is a good example of a project that can be packaged into an understandable project and signed over to a virtual consultant to perform the work and return to the online employer.  The handling agencies collect funds via escrow so neither the employer or the consultant are at risk and the handling company claims a percentage of the fee as part of their pay for facilitating the partnership.  Everybody wins.

But the concept of virtual employment is going beyond providing another variation on outsourcing to a consultant.  Many virtual employment agencies provide administrative assistants, sales support and many other functions normally associated with a full time employee but those services are done “virtually”.   A virtual office manager can have calls routed to his or her remote phone, emails redirected and conduct office meetings and negotiations with vendors via email or instant messaging.  Using these modern tools, a virtual assistant can provide almost every function an on site assistant might be able to do but do so at a lower cost to the employer.

The virtual employment trend in business has obvious benefits for businesses that are in need of qualified help.  It opens the door to recruitment sources that can supplement the local talent pool.  Many times virtual staffing agencies may have on their “employee roles” people with a specialized background or skill.  The agency is skilled at defining exactly what their client businesses need and matching up the right virtual employee to the job so the business has the right skill sets where they need them, when they need them and only for as long as they need them. Read the rest of this entry »