Advertising agencies are independent companies that help in marketing and advertising the products/services of other businesses. Advertising agencies address a client’s promotional needs based on objective market studies, trends, and advanced sales techniques. They first study the client’s product or service and then determine the best way to promote it. The look and tone of an ad campaign is dependent on the demographics and the target audience.

Tips for advertising agencies:

1. Advertiser-advertising agency relationship. It is very crucial for an effective and successful operation. It pervades the entire task of marketing communication and full knowledge of the product. The mechanics of developing the ad campaign is very complex. It depends a lot on the mutual trust and faith between the ad agency and the client.

2. Marketing objective of advertiser. An advertising agency should have a correct idea of the client firm’s marketing and communication objective: how the client company proposes to position its brand, how it structures its distribution and pricing, which niche market it wants to capture, and the audience it wishes to target. This paves the way for an effective ad campaign.

3. Information on the advertiser. It is essential for the advertising agency to have relevant information about the client firm, insider knowledge of its product, market, target consumer, competition and channels of production. Full collaboration between the two helps in media selection, theme development, message construction, and copy development for a final ad campaign. This makes for an effective campaign development.

A positive article about your business in the media is a big pay-off. A published article or broadcast news item is accepted as a media endorsement of your company. The story makes your business more credible than any other advertisement.

Cultivating the Media:
A small business on a limited budget cannot afford to hire a media relations expert. A one-page document release with a summary of the company news in an interesting and creative manner can catch a reporter’s attention and pave the way for your advertisement in media at zero cost. Some other suggestions:
• Offer the media a relevant, valuable and fascinating story about your business. This will give an interesting insight about your company to the media along with a good story idea.
• Interest the media with some unique experience or story that targets their audience. It can be a story of your success that can educate or inspire others.
• Speak honestly and persuasively to the media. Make notes, practice what you want to say, and catch a reporter’s interest in the first 15 seconds.

Using the Media to Market Your Business:
Promotion generated by media coverage is more credible than advertising. Use the marketing power of the media by the following:
• Position yourself as the expert in your specialized area. Build your credibility as a dependable business, person, or organization.
• Clarify your communication objectives and what goals you need to achieve with your business.
• Define the age, gender, beliefs, values, and geographical location of the target audience.
• Cultivate the concerned media reporter of radio, TV, Internet, newspaper, community newsletter, etc.
• Deliver your key message in minimum words for maximum impact to relevant customers.
• Build on the advantages and benefits of your message with evidence and proof to build authenticity of your business.
• Use a creative method for your message or news release to make it unique and informative to draw attention.
• Develop long-term relationships with the media, meet them face-to-face, visit them and know them on a personal basis.
• Seek professional help for maximum impact of your product and its effectiveness.

The history of the U.S. Committee on Small Business dates back to October 8, 1940, when the U.S. Senate established the special committee to study and survey the problems of small business enterprises. This committee was terminated in 1949 and in 1950; a select committee on small businesses was formed. This select committee was terminated in 1981, when the Committee on Small Business was established. In 2001, Sen. John F. Kerry, the committee chairman, changed the name of the committee to the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

The Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship is directed under the standing rules of the United States Senate to be referred all proposed legislation, messages, petitions, memorials, and other matters relating to the Small Business Administration (SBA).

This committee was formed to study and address the problems faced by small businesses and to aid the growth and development of small business, which are the backbone of the American economy. Their aim is to protect and promote small businesses in the United States. The committee aims to conduct periodical research and investigations to study and record the problems and hurdles faced by small businesses in America and report them in order to solve them.

The committee holds discussions on how to solve problems faced by small businesses such as compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and if there was any way to solve these problems. For example the committee took steps to solve problems of small businesses affected by natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.

Financial applications are the basis on which a company’s financial inflow and outflow are tracked. Financial applications have a huge role to play in billing, purchasing, forecasting etc. Let us discuss about the advantages of using financial applications.

1) Financial Applications make data regarding the functioning of the organization accessible to required people seamlessly through collaboration tools.
2) The data can be stored in a single place from where it can be accessed and processed in real time.
3) Financial applications generate a huge traffic.
4) Good financial applications allow the company to extend the scalability of their business.
5) Intelligent Layer 7 usage allows organizations to optimize network performance.
6) The latest financial application systems like BIG-IP increase bandwidth efficiency.
7) Financial applications improve network efficiency by reducing the need for clients and the servers of the company to find a lowest common threshold for collaborations.
8) Financial applications bridge the application gap between clients and servers. They also provide a point of convergence for incompatible devices used for communications.
9) The best financial applications solutions ensure data security even when information is transmitted over a network.
10) Some financial applications make internal servers accessible from the corporate LAN.
11) Financial applications can store the most popular content on the site so that it is delivered from outside the servers. This saves bandwidth and eliminates waste of bandwidth.
12) Some of the latest financial applications in the market are highly flexible, and allows the organization to adjust its features according to its needs.
13) Financial applications deliver relevant content to the client with minimum loss of time.
14) Financial Applications have features that allow you to allocate bandwidth to various applications on a priority basis.
15) Online financial applications reduce the overheads associated with offline Financial Applications like SSL systems.
16) Financial applications like BIG_IP are easy to maintain, since they can conduct self-appraisal to find out and rectify applications that are not performing consistently.
17) Since financial applications are highly flexible, you can expand them to match your growing organizational needs.
18) TCP systems ensure that data is transferred at an optimal rate from both the client as well as company servers.

Any new technology is bound to have its share of myths and misconceptions. ERP is no different, and integration of ERP is an especially fuzzy area. Most small business owners think of ERP in terms of old communication principles, and think of ERP as no more than an upgraded version of old systems.

Some of the common myths regarding integration of ERP are discussed below.

1) Information Transfer Is Unidirectional Information can flow in both directions, either from or to the ERP. If the ERP is integrated with the plant, it will have a bi-directional information flow.

2) ERP Integration Is All About Copying Data Since older methods of integration follow a system of copying a tag and its profile, business owners think modern ERP system can be integrated the same way. However, there is more to ERP integration, since the business related-date that the ERP handles is very different from what the plant handles.

3) The ERP Can Come Up With Standardized Answers All the Time Many people think that queries related to a business process follow a set pattern, as do their answers. They cannot be more wrong. Even if the system knows the right question, the right answer may depend on a number of factors.

4) You Must Use Only the Latest ERP Technology Although the latest ERP integration technologies offer many advantages to small business owners, they have their own share of problems. The biggest problem is the integration of new technology to the old. In some systems, you will find that retaining older applications may be more useful than overhauling it completely.

Can I just start off by writing - You can’t!!! You may believe you can, but you can’t! As someone who runs her own home based business, I have to admit that I have been struggling with this for the past few weeks. And by sharing my time management issues with friends and colleagues, it seems I am not the only one to try to do everything all of the time.

The more you try to do everything and be everything to everyone, the bigger the cracks that appear. There are many roles that women have to live up to - from perfect wife and bestest-ever friend, to amazing mum and ‘Business Woman of the Year’. Standards may start to slip and you realise that the pressure build-up is causing headaches, anxiety attacks or, at the very least, an increase in chocolate consumption (an essential top-up for energy, isn’t it?!!).

So, being completely selfish, I felt I needed to remind myself of some simple strategies to keep me on the straight and narrow.

Top Tips on Managing You

Delegate. If you have too much on your plate, it is essential to look around you and pass some of your responsibilities over to someone else. Ask your other half to cook just one meal next week. Share the school run with another mum.

Stop over-booking your diary. Come on, you know who you are. One more night out with friends won’t matter - you feel should make it out to that network meeting in case you meet your dream client. Stop. Why not leave one whole day blank with no plans at all. Have you ever tried to read the name of a station when you are speeding by on a train? If your life is going by too quickly, you might be missing essential signposts to where your life could be going.

Run Away. Now I don’t mean for ever, but shut your PC down, put your phone on silent and take a walk. This can give you some essential breathing space. Come back calm and collected and it will help you prioritise the essentials and take control again.

Time to sub-contract. It may be that your business needs another pair of hands. Do you really need to stuff all those envelopes? Would you be servicing your business better by focusing on developing new clients? This applies to the running of your home as well – if you hate ironing, get someone else to do it. It will obviously cost you money, but what could you do with having those couple of hours a week?

Know when to stop. Sometimes we can try too hard to make things happen. If you feel that it is taking blood, sweat and tears to get something moving ask yourself if this is the right time. Please do not use this as an excuse to give up before you have even tried, but you can try too hard.

Get back to values. What is important to you about what you do? If you have forgotten what your core values are, then it is time to take a break and get back to basics. If you want a values exercise to work through, drop me an email and I will happily send you one.

Finally, stop feeling guilty. If you are saying to yourself “I should be doing this”, take this as a warning signal that the guilt monster is sitting on your shoulder. So what if something doesn’t happen – just ask yourself, “What is the worst thing that could happen by not getting this done?” If it is not life-threatening – is it worth the headache and stress of getting it done?