DETROIT - General Motors has approved production of the stunning Cadillac Converj, its extended-range electric-powered coupe based on the Chevrolet Volt’s Voltec architecture, a well-placed source says. GM brass wants the car on the road by 2011, making it a 2012 model. This is all contingent on improved finances for GM, of course, which means it’s contingent on the government’s reaction to the next version of the automaker’s viability plan due June 1. It doesn’t hurt that the Obama administration has called for automakers to bring more fuel-efficient cars and trucks to market. A production Converj is potentially profitable and would improve Cadillac’s green image at the same time.

Our source says GM will follow up the Cadillac with a people-mover/crossover utility vehicle based on the Voltec architecture.

A GM spokesperson contacted for this report denies the Converj’s green-light status and says that nothing has changed regarding the production prospects for the car. However, our source offers a number of details that lend credence to the probability of its approval.

First, of course, a 2011 on-sale date for the Converj is a target date, and it’s an ambitious one at that. While the Voltec architecture is exclusive, there’s a lot of GM’s compact Delta architecture in it. A ‘12 Converj would need all-new sheetmetal and interior, and that’s possible given the advanced status of Voltec development. The drivetrain would be similar to the lithium-ion battery pack and 1.4L four-cylinder engine to be used in the Chevy Volt, although GM is likely to add battery mass to make the Cadillac a more powerful car.

Our source says GM brass plans to build the car as a two-door coupe, like the concept, not a four-door with hidden rear door handles, an alternative product chief Bob Lutz floated in Motor Trend’s April 2009 feature on the concept. While the concept is a tallish 55 inches, a production Converj would have to use the Volt’s taller firewall, which means the car will have to grow upward in more than ground clearance to make production financially feasible while retaining general proportions.

Whether you believe our source, or the spokesperson, a production Converj seems an easier bet with half of the automaker’s brands — Saturn, Saab and Hummer — on the way out. GM can better concentrate on core new models for Chevy and Cadillac. Having such advanced green technology available for GM’s low-priced and premium “core” brands would resonate with the Obama administration and the public.

As for the Voltec people-mover/CUV, our source believes a Buick badge is most likely, though it also could delineate GMC from Chevy truck models and still please Buick-Pontiac-GMC dealers. The Voltec CUV could have two or three rows of seats - the compact Delta platform is related to the midsize Epsilon II platform, so this model could be larger than the Chevy and Cadillac, with more battery mass to handle the extra weight.

From: http://www.motortrend.com/features/auto_news/2009/112_0904_cadillac_converj_gets_green_light/index.html

A Hedge to good news.

By LIZ SIDOTI

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama is trying to strike a careful balance between highlighting economic progress and underscoring continued challenges as he seeks to reverse the recession he inherited but now owns.

The president was slated to give an economic speech Tuesday at Georgetown University as his administration nears its symbolic 100-day mark. Aides billed the address as major but acknowledged that it was expected to contain no significant policy announcements.

Rather, they said, the speech would outline the state of the economy when Obama took office in January, steps his administration has taken in its first three months, and what still needs to be done to right troubled sectors, including the housing, banking and financial industries.

“The president wants the opportunity to update the American people on where we are, what we have to do going forward, and lay out the steps that are being taken to help our economy recover,” said presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs.

While Obama will enthusiastically recognize progress, Gibbs said, “I think the president also understands that even as there are some promising statistics, whether it’s housing or something like that, we still are likely to see many, many months of unemployment, where hundreds of thousands of people are losing their jobs.”

Unemployment hit a 25-year high of 8.5 percent in March, and many people are still losing their homes or jobs, or fear losing them. Still, there’s been a drop in unemployment benefit filings and predictions of solid April sales from several retailers. Stock investors, shoppers and home buyers also seem less jittery, while once-frozen credit markets are slowly thawing and deeply worrisome economic indicators appear to be stabilizing.

As the backsliding economy appears to be leveling off, the president and his White House have tried to recognize progress with optimistic language while also emphasizing tough tasks ahead in realistic tones.

Late last week, Obama said “we’re starting to see glimmers of hope across the economy,” but cautioned that it remains severely stressed and will require lots more work to turn it around.

Advisers are mindful that Obama must show the public that his policies are actually working - and establish credibility - in order for him to guarantee the public’s support for his future agenda.

He put his fledgling presidency on the line when he advocated sweeping new government intervention and spending to right the troubled economic conditions. Shortly after taking office he signed a $787 billion package intended to boost the economy.

With that money trickling down to state and local communities, the president frequently promotes areas of good economic news to ensure that the public continues to support his policies and that he eventually gets credit for any turnaround.

With Tuesday’s speech to students and faculty as well as labor, grassroots and political leaders, Obama essentially is trying to refocus the country on his economic agenda and domestic issues after two weeks that, both by design and circumstance, have been dominated by foreign affairs.

Obama spent eight days on his first overseas trip, talking global economics and national security. He returned to Washington last week just as Somali pirates took an American cargo ship captain hostage after failing to hijack his vessel off the Horn of Africa.

Amid that international crisis, Obama held a couple of little-noticed economic events.

At one, he urged families to take advantage of near-record low mortgage rates by refinancing their home loans. On Friday, he met with his economic team. On Monday, he traveled to the Transportation Department, where he said the economic stimulus plan is beginning to take hold and that work is coming in “ahead of schedule and under budget.”

Lost in the social networking jungle? These programs can help guide you through.
By Francine Kizner

Listening to your customers on social sites isn’t just a trend; it’s crucial to establishing your brand as connected, helpful and hip. But with accounts on multiple social sites connecting you to disparate groups of friends, colleagues and contacts, keeping an eye on their updates and managing your own can become an unwieldy and time-consuming process. Thankfully for the time-strapped entrepreneur, there has been a surge in apps that can help manage your contacts and updates, and keep you abreast of new activity.

An aggregation tool that will let you manage all your sites seamlessly is still a ways away. Developers are still defining what a social media aggregator should do because people use social sites in different ways. As a business owner, your typical day may consist of reading your contacts’ updates, retrieving your messages and comments, and listening in on others talking about your brand. You’ll also want to reply to your messages, update your status or profile, and share links and photos. And don’t forget about friend requests and event invites in addition to each site’s unique forums, such as MySpace’s Bulletins and LinkedIn’s Answers.

Minggl, a browser plug-in that streams updates from multiple social sites, lets you update one or many site statuses and lets you send group e-mails to contacts across multiple networks. It can help you maintain a presence across multiple social sites by letting you monitor your networks in a browser sidebar so you can be where your customers need you at a moment’s notice.”I don’t like the term aggregation,” says Dewey Gaedcke, CEO and founder of Minggl. “What I care about is socializing. I have friends spread across multiple sites and having to pool them together is going to turn out to be an artifact of social web architecture.”

Though Minggl lets you choose how frequently to get updates, other apps that blast them as they come in can be overwhelming for the busy business owner. “For marketing professionals, it’s fantastic to have a live stream. But for entrepreneurs it’s more distracting than anything else,” says Michael Durwin, a social media strategist who has run campaigns for NBC and KaBloom.

Flock is a social media web browser that will help you keep tabs on the buzz around your brand, with an RSS reader to subscribe to search results for your business that adds a broader context to the updates you receive from contacts on multiple social networks.
Still, instant access is important when you have questions that need immediate answers. And knowing when and how your brand is being mentioned is key for reacting to problems quickly and providing proactive customer service.

“The notion of customer outreach is changing,” says Dan Burkhart, vice president of marketing at Flock. “It’s not about managing a forum on your site anymore. It’s about finding where your community exists instead of waiting for your community to come to you.”

Though RSS and social networks are relatively new ways to tap into your community, more traditional and personal social media such as e-mail and instant messaging still play large roles in how we communicate. Digsby, a desktop IM, e-mail and social media aggregator, is one way for those who don’t spend much time in their browser to keep connected. “Because it’s an IM client, something people have running all day, it saves the time of constantly having to check up on your networks,” Digsby founder Steve Shapiro says.

Whether they’re in your browser or on your desktop, you’ll notice that these programs act primarily as notification providers rather than social networking site replacements. Many notifications and actions you try to take from an aggregation app will still bring you back to a social site to leave a comment or add a friend.

This is in part because of the walled-in nature of many social sites, whose revenue streams rely heavily on display ads that require high traffic numbers. And though there have been steps toward more open and standardized platforms, such as OpenID, they haven’t gained wide reach yet. “Social networks need to realize they can’t keep everybody just on their network,” Durwin says. “The average person on the internet has at least three social networks.”

As social sites and aggregation tools mature, there is hope for more fully integrated social media dashboards where we can connect openly across platforms, measure impact and ROI more easily, and truly consolidate our social media efforts to focus on relationships and customer outreach, not platforms.

“Our sense right now is that social sites are like venues, but those aren’t fundamental to the relationship equation,” says Minggl’s Gaedcke. And by using any tools that can help you better focus on connecting with your customers, no matter where they are online, you’ll be able to better establish relationships, create rapport and build your brand.

U.S. trade policy is changing. Are you ready?

By: Tom Travis

After the historic presidential and congressional elections last fall it was obvious that U.S. trade policy would change. The question then was how it would change, and while we still don’t have all the answers, some things are becoming clear. One is that despite the rhetoric on the campaign trail, the Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress have recognized that remaining open to international trade is vital part to the effort to restore the health of the U.S. economy. But another thing that has become evident is that this openness has a price, and that price is enforcement.

It should be noted that enforcement–ensuring that U.S. rights under bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, as well as U.S. trade laws and regulations, are upheld–is not a partisan issue. It had become associated with Democrats as they railed against a Bush administration trade policy that they believed focused more on negotiating new trade pacts than policing existing ones. In fact a number of Republicans are also of the view that the U.S. has not sufficiently stood up to its competitors. The ongoing economic recession, which–rightfully or not–is seen in some quarters as having been exacerbated by open market and free trade policies, has only magnified these concerns.

Administration and congressional officials have also been careful to emphasize that enforcement is not the same as protectionism; it is not a tool for erecting more barriers. Instead, it is aimed at helping restore the support for open trade that has waned in recent years. While according to one senior law maker the “consensus to advance international trade is frayed” and “our faith in the international trading system is badly shaken,” it is critical to ensure that rules are being respected. Countries should be able to do so without being accused of “protectionism,” which one member of the House who oversees trade issues argued is associated with measures like tariffs, quotas and non-tariff barriers to imports and exports. Ensuring that the rights of threatened industries are upheld, on the other hand, can help speed an economic recovery and thus help reestablish popular support for global commerce.

Because U.S. trade agreements, laws and regulations are so broad in scope, efforts to enforce them will be as well. Businesses are therefore finding themselves in an environment where their global supply chains are being scrutinized like never before on everything from product safety to cargo container security to environmental practices.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at some of the issues where enforcement efforts are likely to be especially targeted in the months ahead.

China - Intellectual property rights, industrial policies and market access for agriculture and services will continue to be major issues and the threat of action at the World Trade Organization will never be far from the surface. The alleged undervaluation of China’s currency, however, is not the focal point it has been in recent years.

Trade Data - Ensuring the quality and timeliness of the import and export data submitted to U.S. Customs and Border Protection to aid supply chain security and revenue collection efforts will be a top priority. CBP will look to ensure compliance with its new 10+2 rule requiring additional shipment information, while lawmakers have indicated concern with product misclassification.

Intellectual Property Rights - IPR enforcement is high on the to-do list for both the administration and Congress, not only because infringement can cost businesses hundreds of millions of dollars a year in direct losses and significantly hamstring their competitiveness but also because the widespread counterfeiting of consumer and industrial goods is a major public health and safety concern. Policymakers are examining a number of additional ways to improve prevention, detection and interdiction efforts.

Remedies for Unfair Trade - Expect to see an increase in complaints that foreign manufacturers are dumping below-cost and unfairly subsidized goods in the U.S. market. New limits on governmental actions that could be seen as weakening trade remedy laws are on the horizon.

Trade Agreements - Much more attention will be given to ensuring U.S. rights as a member of the World Trade Organization and as a party to various bilateral and regional free trade agreements are respected. Although administration officials have said they should not be judged by the number of new cases filed, an increase is well within the realm of possibility. Compliance with established criteria by countries that receive duty-free benefits when exporting to the U.S. market will also be closely scrutinized.

Import Safety - Implementation of the many provisions of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 will be a primary focus, but Congress is already moving ahead with similar legislation addressing food, drugs, cosmetics and medical devices. Additional initiatives to improve the targeting and identification of violative goods and the foreign firms that supply and transport them are under consideration.

Just as there are a wide range of issues to be included in enforcement efforts, those efforts will take a variety of forms. Staff within agencies like CBP, the Department of Commerce, the International Trade Commission and the U.S. Trade Representative’s office will be devoting more time to ensuring compliance with applicable rules and regulations. New financial and personnel resources are flowing to these agencies to make sure they can sufficiently perform these functions. And comprehensive trade enforcement legislation is likely to pass in Congress. Already a bill has been introduced in the House that supporters are hoping to move sooner rather than later, which includes provisions to accelerate actions against foreign trade barriers, create or strengthen enforcement-related posts within the executive and legislative branches and bolster unfair trade remedies. In the Senate, key Democratic and Republican leaders are working together on what is expected to be a similarly broad measure.

This is what I found on Google Business Card Design Catalogue, I believe they choose these name cards because I does stand up for some highly distinguished design.

May this be an inspiration for us to make a better and imppresable business card.

There are no original ideas left.

Sure, it’s kind of a cynical thought, but try and brainstorm a completely new concept, whether for a business, an advertising campaign or even a limerick, and you’ll start to think it’s true. It can sometimes be a stretch to come up with anything that hasn’t already been thought of.

It’s the reason someone once famously said there are only three original jokes and all the others have been derived from them. It’s why Hollywood remakes old movies. And the dearth of original ideas is why businesspeople sometimes pay other businesspeople to come up with a new concept for their own products or services.

Fortunately, if you’re an entrepreneur trying to come up with a new business model, you don’t have to be completely unique. For instance, you probably wouldn’t attempt to sell fingernail clippings in a bag, no matter how groundbreaking and unique the idea is. In fact, if you’re starting a business, you probably shouldn’t do something that’s never been done–after all, think of the learning curve your target market will have to tackle. But you would be well advised to take an old idea and make it new.

That’s exactly what David Friedberg did. It was around 2001, Friedberg figures, when he was 20 years old and living across the road from a bicycle rental shop. Every day that it rained, the bike shop was closed. “It became pretty noticeable,” recalls Friedberg, now 26 and already an ex-Google executive and the CEO of his own company, WeatherBill, in San Francisco. After watching the bicycle rental store owner get rained out day after day, Friedberg started noticing how many other companies–think golf courses and car washes–were taking a financial bath whenever it was wet outside.

“You don’t really think about it, but 70 percent of businesses are affected by the weather every year, across regions and industries,” says Friedman. “The weather affects so many different types of businesses, whether in negative or in positive ways, like taxi cabs in New York, which are often full in the cold.”

Friedman was a business product manager at Google when he had his “a-ha moment.” It occurred to him that he should start an insurance company–a very old idea–but gear it specifically toward companies that want to protect themselves from losing money on a rainy day–a new idea.

It may not sound new. After all, insurance companies generally protect you if you’re hammered by a hurricane, slaughtered by a sandstorm or frozen under the tundra. But we’re talking about the car wash that doesn’t want to lose an entire day of income when there are five inches of rain. That’s why Friedberg developed, with his “computer science friends,” an elaborate website where anyone can log on and buy a contract to protect themselves from unseasonable weather. The site is completely customizable and automated. A farmer, for instance, could receive money every time the temperature dips below 67 degrees in a particular month. Or if a ski resort has a week and a half of beautiful, balmy weather in January, the owner could automatically receive a check without having to report the weather.

“There is no claims process,” Friedberg says proudly. Instead his company uses a third-party weather station, EarthStat, that independently confirms data and sends daily reports to WeatherBill, which then processes the checks and sends them out.

Narrowing Your Focus
Despite such success stories, there are risks to developing a new business within an old framework, says Lenann Gardner, an internationally known sales consultant and author of the new book, Got Sales? The Complete Guide to Today’s Proven Methods for Selling Services. “You have to get people to change their behavior to support this new corporate strategy, and that’s a difficult thing to do. In fact, it’s one of the hardest things to do, to change human behavior,” says Gardner.

Narrowing your business’s focus is one way to attract customers to your new take on an old concept. “Nobody wants to do business with a business that tries to be something for everybody,” asserts Gardner. Granted, tell Wal-Mart that, but she’s right. Stores known for having a little bit of everything thrive because the stakes aren’t too high for customers shopping for soap, cat food or a lawn chair. But as a general rule, the more someone is spending on an item, the more likely they are to seek out a specialized business.

Take buying a house, for example. Garry Aloia is an owner and managing partner of My First Home, a business that caters specifically to first-time homebuyers. Aloia, who also co-owns parent company New State Mortgage, came up with the idea when he realized that because agents are driven by commissions, “human nature takes over. If there’s a bigger commission involved, that customer gets more attention,” he says.

First-time home buyers–who make up about 40 percent of the home buying market–are often purchasing smaller residences and are likely getting less attention, reasons Aloia. To remedy the situation, Aloia’s My First Home, based in Merrilville, Indiana, near Indianapolis, employs real estate agents who are paid higher salaries–25 percent more than the average agent–but who don’t receive commissions. Aloia doesn’t see his business as a traditional real estate office, but rather as a home-buying educational and assistance center. The office is even set up to look like a home, complete with a fireplace and coffee. The company offers seminars to first-home buyers, as well as advice and tools to help them figure out what their monthly budget should be after they move in.

What Aloia’s business is doing is what all entrepreneurs, whether veteran or novice, ultimately should be doing. “I try to put my feet in the shoes of the customer,” says Aloia. “I ask myself, ‘How can I make their life better and simpler?’”

Modernizing the Wheel
Some business models only need to be slightly tweaked to appeal to the modern consumer. Want to update the traditional dentist office? Put it on wheels. While cleaning teeth is an industry almost as old as, well, teeth, putting an office in a van that can travel anywhere from giant corporate campuses to nursing homes is a much more recent concept. The rise of mobile dentist offices in the last few years shows that catering to people’s busy and complicated lives is a nearly surefire way to improve upon an old concept.

Then there’s the Pearson Ford Fuel Depot in San Diego, which has received a lot of attention for its one-of-a-kind gas station that offers a full range of clean-burning alternative fuels from ethanol to BioWillie, a type of biodiesel made from soybeans and promoted by singer Willie Nelson. Gas stations may be becoming synonymous with global warming, but by offering an alternative, this fueling station has managed to drum up publicity while serving an emerging niche market.

Capitalizing on consumers’ nostalgia is yet another potential approach. In true throwback fashion, State Street Barbers, located in Chicago and Boston, gives modern hair cuts to men in an environment decked out to look like a ritzy salon in the 1920s. Patrons are given a cold beverage when they walk in and can get a hot lather shave with a classic straight razor and hot towels.

In the end, it’s easier to be original and unique in an established industry like home selling or insurance when you have plenty of capital funding behind you; it’s another story if you’re running a fledgling startup in your parents’ basement, and you feel you have to take any client with a pulse and a wallet. But whether you’re a big fish in the ocean or a small one in the pond, the principles are always the same. If you’re going to tweak a formula, “throw out the way things have been done before,” advises Friedberg. “Figure out your end goal, and then forget about what all of the other people have done, and come up with a new way to do it.”

Don’t get stumped by geek speak - get educated on these friendly Web sites

By: Jennifer Baljko

While an assortment of consumer electronics gizmos, hardware devices and software applications have supposedly made life easier, they’ve also brought with them a whole new language. Here are some tips that will help you keep up:

1. Learn a few key phrases every week, especially ones that are relevant to your business.
2. Read technology sections in mainstream magazines and newspapers as they are usually easy to follow.
3. Talk to IT folks; they work with this stuff everyday and could give you a high-level overview.

Ensure that your “literature” grows alongside your company with these insider tips.

Every company needs “literature,” printed pieces that do a careful and well-thought-out job of presenting its products and services: catalogs, newsletters, product sheets and brochures, letterhead, presentation folders, specification sheets, case histories or application sheets, special event brochures, annual reports, manuals, technical bulletins, posters, product insert sheets, labeling, recruitment materials and so on.

With the increased availability of powerful desktop publishing systems and software, many companies decide to meet these needs internally.

Resist this impulse. Your homegrown materials will betray their off-the-cuff origin to most of the people who read them. Appearance is reality in marketing, and you have to look as professional as you are.

Here are some tips in dealing with the literature needs you’ll face as your company expands and grows:

• Get a logo and stationery package designed professionally. Do this, and don’t change it for at least 10 years. Either hire an advertising agency to create it or a design studio/graphic artist. Don’t try this yourself, no matter how artistic you consider yourself. A professional artist will make sure your stationery materials reflect your corporate personality, while maintaining a clean and professional look. They will look good in color and in black and white; they’ll reproduce well in smaller sizes; they’ll fax clearly; and they’ll simply be more attractive than what you can expect to do yourself.
• Learn the principles of solid graphic design. Understanding graphic design is a lifetime’s work, of course, but some reading and a sensitive eye can teach you a lot. Get hold of some graphic design books at a local bookstore and educate yourself. All your printed materials should follow fundamental design principles:

1. Keep the look clean and simple. Don’t overload the reader visually. Use a graphic grid to align the different elements in an orderly fashion.
2. Use heads and subheads to lead the reader. When the reader turns the page, where will he or she look? Use heads and subheads to provide scanning points to keep the reader moving along.
3. Avoid too much type. Pages filled with writing are not appealing to the reader. Break up the copy with photos, illustrations, cartoons, charts and so on.
4. Use white space. Avoid a crowded look, despite the temptation to make use of every inch of paper you are paying for. White space serves as a visual frame for the rest of the content on the page.
5. Stay with standard formats unless you have a good reason not to. All of us have grown accustomed to the standard 8-1/2″ x 11″ format for print materials. Even our filing systems are made for things that size. If you go with an unusual size, your pieces may not lend themselves to being filed easily for reference.
6. Put a caption with each photo. We all want to know what we are looking at. And a caption gives you the chance not just to identify your product but to remind the reader of the benefit.
7. Use charts and graphs rather than tables. A brochure is a visual document. Use graphics to boost visual interest and make numbers meaningful.

• Be sure your materials have a “family look.” Every piece of literature doesn’t have to look identical, but they should all look planned as a compatible unit. Imagine your literature laid out in front of you on a conference table. Does it all look like it comes from the same company? It should.
• Invest in good photography. Small companies sometimes scrimp on getting good photos of their equipment, their job sites, their equipment in use or their accessories and supplies. Strong, professionally done photography will set you apart from other small companies. Your customers want to be reassured of the quality of your product. Amateur snapshots give a very damaging impression of your professionalism. Good photography is an investment in your future.
• Appoint one person as lit boss. Your literature needs will be ever-changing, with trade shows, with new products and markets and with normal growth. You must have one person responsible for anticipating future needs, handling literature production and maintaining inventory. Untended literature grows increasingly less useful and more frustrating. Every new piece should have a written rationale, audience description and content outline, not unlike the rationale you develop for a piece of advertising copy.

From: http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/marketingbasics/marketingmaterials/article80978.html

Creating a Great Business Card

Success is in the cards when you’ve got business cards that convey the right message.

A business card is an integral part of any good marketing plan. For its size and cost, it’s probably the most powerful part. Of course, you can’t expect your business card to tell the whole story about your company. What you should expect it to do is present a professional image people will remember. A business card can make or break a client’s first impression of your company. In fact, this little card makes as much of an impression as your personal appearance-the suit you wear or the briefcase you carry.

Choose a card style that’s appropriate for your business, industry and personal style. If you’re a funeral director, for example, you don’t want to be caught handing out day-glow cards with cartoon figures on them. If you’re a mechanic whose specialty is converting old Beetles into dune buggies, a formal, black-on-white engraved card will probably be dropped into the nearest circular file. When crafting a design, start with the style that best supports the business image you wish to project. To help you get started, here are five different card styles for you to consider:

• Basic cards. A basic card is usually printed in black ink on plain white or cream stock. This is a good style to choose when utility is all you need. It’s a no-nonsense approach that can appeal to clients and prospects who would not be impressed by fancy design features-the people who want “just the facts, ma’am.” The design is simple, and the information is clear and concise.
• Picture cards. Having your face on your card-whether it’s a photograph, a drawing or a caricature-helps a contact remember you the next time he or she sees you. Images representing a product or service, or a benefit your business provides, can help you communicate your business better than dozens of words. A splash of color (rather than just black and white) is often helpful on a picture card, too.
• Tactile cards. Some cards are distinguished not so much by how they look as by how they feel. They may use nonstandard materials, such as metal or wood, or have unusual shapes, edges, folds or embossing. Tactile cards tend to be considerably more expensive than regular cards because they use nonstandard production processes such as die cuts. But for some businesses, this more unusual card may be worth the price.
• Multipurpose cards. A card can do more than promote your name and business-it can also serve as a discount coupon, an appointment reminder or some other function. It may also provide valuable information that the average person may need. For example, a hotel may include a map on the back of its card for any guests who are walking around the local area. A card of any type can be made multipurpose by adding any of these types of features.
• Outside-the-box cards. A wildly original, fanciful or extravagant presentation can draw extra attention. Creativity knows no bounds-except the amount of money you wish to spend. Some examples are cards made of chocolate or that folded out into a miniature box to keep small items in.

Now It’s Time to Order
Once you’ve settled on a basic idea for your business card, it’s time to head to the printer. There are four primary considerations when ordering business cards:

• Weight. Most business cards are printed on 80-pound cover stock.
• Finish. Of the three available-smooth, linen and laid-the smooth finish is the most popular.
• Color. Right now, two-color cards predominate. If you’re selecting from a catalog, there are between five and 15 standard colors to choose from. If you have another ink color in mind, your printer can show you a Pantone Matching System book, which includes every shade under the sun.
• Quantity. It generally pays to print more cards rather than fewer, because the printer’s cost is primarily in the setup.

Design Resource
For more detailed descriptions of the different types of business cards, take a look at It’s in the Cards. In it, Ivan Misner, Candace Bailly and Dan Georgevich review more than 2,000 business cards from 10 countries and select more than 200 examples of some of the best, which are shown throughout the book in full-color.

One Final Tip
Though this may sound like obvious advice, it might cost you another trip to the printer if you don’t heed it: Include the essentials. This means your name, title, company name, address, phone number (or numbers, if you want to include your cell), e-mail and Web site. If someone wants to contact you after receiving your card, you sure as heck want them to be able to.

Compiled from articles written by Kim T. Gordon and Ivan Misner previously published on Entrepreneur.com.

From: http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/marketingbasics/marketingmaterials/article71900.html

By using your creativity, you can put your retail biz in the spotlight with these low- and no-cost marketing tactics.

Guerrilla marketing has been in the news lately. Perhaps you’ve heard about Cartoon Network’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force promotion that drew out bomb squads in Boston and made front-page news across the country. Some say the attempt went awry; some say any press is good press. Whatever the case, it was guerrilla marketing.

Just to refresh your memory, guerrilla marketing is about gaining the maximum exposure for a company, event, product, service or person with the minimum amount of cash. Instead of a big budget, marketers rely on time, energy, information and knowledge to draw a crowd. Does low- or no-cost sound like a welcome relief to your budget? Let’s review some easy-to-implement guerrilla marketing tactics for your retail business.

Many retail entrepreneurs are in a great position to use holidays for promoting their businesses. Every month has a holiday except August. And if you don’t find one that fits, make one up: National Haircut Day, Treat-a-Dog Day or Buy Roses for No Reason Day, for instance. These types of themed days can even get you extra media coverage, so be sure to let the media know about your made-up holiday and promotion.

Another way to get press is writing special-interest articles on relevant topics, such as “The History of Valentine’s Day” or “How the Poinsettia Became So Popular.” Feeding the news community with this information positions your business not only as a resource for information related to holidays, but also as the place to shop for holiday-related gifts.

Other guerrilla ideas for retailers are events or contests. The event could be an open house, or a meet the expert, meet the mayor or meet the press. Contests can be simple, such as guessing the number of roses in a car for a florist or predicting the day a certain milestone will be reached–the thousandth guest or millionth sale, for instance. These suggestions may sound corny, but hopefully they’ll get your creativity going.

The most powerful guerrilla suggestion for retailers is to keep track of your customers and prospects. Prospects have already expressed interest in you, so marketing to them should produce sales. Use a guest book in your business or hold a drawing and collect names and contact information from the entries. This pool of prospects will prove more valuable than any mass advertising. And remember, when you get contact information, put it in a database and be sure to get permission from your prospects before e-mailing them.

Guerrilla marketing can–and often will–push boundaries. It’s OK to be on the edge, to test extremes, to get attention and to take calculated risks. Sending seasonal greeting cards falls into this calculated risk category. Imagine getting a greeting card from your favorite retailer wishing you a happy July 17. No special day, really, just an arbitrary greeting–maybe including a promotional offer. People love getting greetings at unexpected times, and you’ll get attention for your gesture.

Another easy way to get noticed is putting candy in with each item you sell, which will also help you gain attention and stand out from others. Brainstorm marketing ideas with co-workers and suppliers. Try a few. Repeat what works. Fix what doesn’t. You may surprise yourself with how well your marketing takes off with your budget still intact.

From: http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/guerillamarketing/article193456.html