Franchises are known to do well because they are very often an established known brand and use a known and proven method of operating designed to produce profits. Even in up and down financial times franchising proves itself  to be successful, and as we now face a downswing, considering business options that have a protection valve built in is essential for many of us.

            There people who will prefer to lie low in times of financial uncertainty, but some others, mindful that the world can’t come to a standstill, are in pursuit of recession-proof businesses, safe investment and guaranteed success.

Apropos of investment; banks and other lending institutions have supported up funding for franchise businesses for years and actually prefer franchises to independent concerns because of their impressive provenance.

            Not all franchises survive, however, so when you’re considering one it’s sensible, obviously, to look at those with a track record for steady growth and profit.

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Choose Wisely For A Safe Investment

Now’s the time to look a consumer behaviour. Anyone considering buying a franchise is well-advised to analyse predicted trends. Okay, we all know that that well-known brand of fast food restaurant has been in business years, but is now really the time to buy in with them? It may not be. Think about it – the fact is that when people feel the pressure and recognise the need to cut their expenditure unnecessary things like pre-prepared meals or take-out are amongst the first things they are willing to forego.

Essentials Represent Sure Investments

While franchises are considered safer investments than other business formats now really is a time act with extreme caution. Considering low cost franchises is suggested, take into account only those with an affordable set up fee. And mull over too what the ongoing management costs and overheads might be of a particular concern. The steeper your monthly overhead, the higher your profits will need to be – that means working harder, often simply to stand still.

            But needs must, so what is a safe and recession-proof franchise? The simple answer is: A franchise brand that provides a necessary service or product, something people will always need, despite international finances being in a state of flux.

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WSI consultancy franchises answer the call perfectly. This company is a Canada-based Internet and Technology Solutions provider – they’ve been assisting small and medium sized businesses achieve success on the Internet more than then years now. They provide an indispensable service; with so people looking to the World Wide Web as the environment in which they conduct business, professional help of the kind WSI offers is a need rather than a luxury if the said businesses are do well and gain full benefit from being online.

            As for recession friendly costs – a WSI consultancy franchise is priced at just below $50,000. The fee is all-inclusive and management costs are low. Operatives can run their consultancy businesses from their homes if they wish to, another plus which brings notable taxation relief.

There are many reasons why franchising is a successful business model, the above highlights just a handful of them. WSI’s consultancy businesses are winning and secure investments.

Elizabeth Miranda
http://www.articlesbase.com/franchise-articles/why-the-safest-investment-is-a-franchise-730621.html

1. Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for new businesses or businesses in need of replacing their existing phone system. With a Hosted VoIP PBX companies get full use of a PBX without the costly expense of equipment, upgrades and maintenance. Small businesses can have the appearance of a large centralized business with a Hosted PBX by utilizing the span of features available.

2. No need to purchase new equipment or lose your investment in your current legacy system. VoIP providers over the course of time have spent so much in product development of their Hosted VoIP Solution that many of them are not offering SIP Trunking and many businesses do not realize the benefits of SIP trunking. SIP trunking allows businesses to keep their existing analog PBX and telephones.

3. Lower Monthly Recurring Charges. Bundling voice and data on to one network provides one solution, one bill and one provider. Most VoIP providers offer unlimited local and long distance calling and a good bundled solution should also provide a fast business class internet connection. The benefits to bundled services are that it maximizes the dollars a small to medium size business is spending on telecommunication services.

4. Over 70% of traditional phone bills are wrong. VoIP customers know ahead of time every month exactly how much their bill is going to be for all services except international calling. There is very little room for billing errors and crammed bills full of services not requested or required.

5. Cuts Operating Costs. VoIP solutions are software based and is easily updated, changed and expanded without further capital expense. The hosted PBX is completely maintenance free because there is no hardware. It is a virtual system. Unlike conventional legacy phone system that is hardware based and are expensive to make changes and require costly equipment purchases to expand calling capacity.

6. Streamline Communications. With VoIP companies can take advantage of simple 3 digit transfer to any supported property or office. No matter if one office is in Boca Raton and the other office is in New York the call is transferred as if they were in the same building. Furthermore businesses can consolidate call answering from a central location too. Eliminate the need and responsibility of every office location having to manage their incoming calls with centralized call answering.

7. Disaster Proof a hosted PBX phone system coupled with an IP telephone is disaster proof. Companies lost several thousand dollars because of the loss of communication during and after the hurricanes. The PBX is hosted off site in a secured facility with multiple back up systems and reroutes.

8. QOS stands for “Quality of Service” gone are the days of dropped unclear calls. Business class VoIP maintains a high QOS and technological advances in IP telephony transportation have made Internet calling as good as or better than normal PSTN connections. This is true for high speed Broadband connections and dedicated internet connections, whereas dial up services have some way to go before delivering the quality of PSTN calling.

9. Hybrid VoIP Solution. There are a few VoIP providers that deploy a hybrid VoIP solution that automatically reserves or routes resources for optimal bandwidth allocation. The system automatically ensures that the VoIP call has the bandwidth needed allocated from point to point before the conversation takes place. The second is prioritization: Here, the end point suggests a priority on the packets and each router decides if it will honor this request or not. Voice will always take a priority over data. A hybrid solution furthermore distributes the bandwidth that on a traditional system is not dynamic or flexible.

10. Multi Layered Security Unlike traditional service VoIP attacks are prevented because of the multitude of layers and encryptions placed within the provider’s networks. The layered security approach not only prevents attacks, but the probability that if broached it will meaningfully reduce the probability that the attack succeeds.

Lisa A. Kaye
http://www.articlesbase.com/voip-articles/the-real-top-ten-reasons-companies-are-switching-to-voip-118488.html

Statistics show that more than 40% of businesses fail in the first year and a further 80% of those remaining are out of business within the first 5 years of operation. How are you going to stop this from happening to your business? You need to be equipped with the latest weapons, tactics and strategies that will help you to not only succeed but to dominate your prospective market.

Part One: Have the Right Mission

Most small to medium size businesses enter the battlefield with the wrong mission in mind. They go in targeting too much of the market at once and they get destroyed before they have a chance to establish equitable trade. Strategic marketing is NOT trying to dominate the whole market but rather target narrow niche markets. Do you have a multi-million dollar advertising budget? If you don’t, you will not succeed in reaching and appealing to your whole market at once. This is what the large corporations do. They spend millions of dollars on branding to get their identity well know in the market place. You need a targeted marketing strategy so you can better reach and engage your niche markets. A niche market is a small slice of the market which has a specific need that your products and services can provide for. For example, if you’re a home loan brokerage, your niche market or audience would be people looking at reducing their debt or people looking to move into their first home. If you were an Appliance store, your optimal audience would be people looking for certain brands. By conducting targeted marketing campaigns you will generate more business for every dollar you spend on advertising. One crucial thing about target marketing is you should never enter the battlefield of business without knowing what niche markets you are going to target. You need to do the necessary research, as a standard due diligence practice, to define what niche markets you can target and how you are going to appeal to them. Your previous clients hold the key to unlocking extremely useful information. One way of getting this information is by conducting incentive driven surveys. If you conduct a survey with the right questions you will be able to discover the character and motivations of your ideal audience.

Part Two: Use The Best Weapons

There are many businesses trying to win this war by using old and ineffective weapons or marketing tools. A strategic marketer knows he always needs to keep using the most appropriate weapons to target the market. If he doesn’t do this the enemy will capture that market before he does. Statistics show over 15 million Australians are now using the internet. When you are researching, what do you normally do? Go to Google.com or Yahoo.com? A large number of these 15 million Australians will always do their research before they buy and normally the first place they go to is a search engine. If you have an effective marketing web site you should be trying to channel as much traffic into your web site as possible from search engines. In the past it has been very difficult to get to the front page of a search engine. Now, you can get to the number one page of Google and Yahoo within 5 minutes. There is an advertising concept that has been developed by Google and Yahoo called ‘Pay Per Click’ advertising. By setting up a Pay-Per-Click advertising account you will be able to channel highly targeted traffic into your web site. The best thing about this form of advertising is that you only pay for each click into your web site which is helpful for businesses that have strict advertising budgets. The way to get the best results from this form of advertising is by setting up highly targeted ads that are only displayed when your market audience types in specific keywords in the key search engines. If you do this you will know that the people visiting your web site are interested and proactively searching for what you offer.

Part Three: Keeping the Enemy at Bay

There are a lot of people on the battlefield so this is why you need to fight off the enemy from taking your customer base. Competition is good, it forces you to be innovative and efficient about how you approach your market. If you don’t give your customers good reason to stay with you, your competitors will give them a reason to leave. So this is why it’s critical for you to keep closely connected with your previous clients. Have you heard of the 80/20 principle? 20% of your clients will produce 80% of your revenue. This is why you shouldn’t spend your entire marketing budget on generating new clients but making old ones happy so they keep coming back to you for more.
The big battle in business is getting the customers mind share. When you think hamburgers, what is the first business that comes to mind? McDonalds, Hungry Jacks? These businesses are always battling for mind share. If you can get mind share you will know your previous clients will always go back to your business when they are in need. One thing you have that will help you to gain more mind share from your customers is your intellectual property. If you are an industry expert you should have a lot of useful information that is relevant and desired by your market. By constantly giving this useful information to customers, they will know you are the leading authority in your industry. There are many different ways of doing this; one is by sending out a newsletter to your client database on a regular basis. Lots of businesses do this but they send out promotional information rather than useful information. People don’t like promotional material because they class it as junk mail. What businesses should be doing is not selling but giving. By frequently sending out a newsletter that shares useful tips, ideas and articles you will help clients realise you are valuable to them. Think about this – where will people go next when they need what you sell? A business they don’t know or trust? Or a business that regularly keeps in contact with them and is always giving out valuable and useful information?

Part Four: Raise Up An Army

The more man power you have the more chances you are going to have of staying ahead of the competitors in the battle for mind share and market dominance in your niche. You need to raise up an army of soldiers who are willing to go into battle with you. We have all heard it said that the most powerful way of generating business is through referrals and word of mouth. But did you know that there are strategies you can use to fuel word of mouth business like a fire. Within your customer base there is a group of clients that are constantly talking about you and indirectly continue to generate more business and profit for you. Who are they? Have you singled them out? Do you have incentives that will motivate them? Are you training them on how they can do this job better? In the world of marketing this group of people is known as your affiliates. The more focused attention you spend on them the more money they will put in your pocket. One way of getting your army of affiliates motivated is by offering them a decent incentive for sales they get you. If they are generating business for you, imagine how much business they will create if you motivate them with incentives. There are many different incentives you can offer, but the number one incentive that motivates best is money. And the more money you offer, the more motivated they will be. You also need to consider training this army so they can be more effective in bringing you more leads and referrals. Imagine sending an army out to battle without the necessary training required, they will not succeed. It is in your best interest to train your affiliates to be more effeopy of the report ’7 Marketing Secrets’ ($129 Value) at www.responsedriven.com.au

The Right Way To Conducting Direct Mail Marketing

Many marketing campaigns conducted by businesses today are often a very ‘hit and miss’ affair. The fundamental reason why marketing campaigns fail or prove ineffective is because most businesses try and say everything to everyone instead of something to someone. If you want to get the best possible response from your advertising budget you need to target a niche market. A niche market is a group of people for whom a business develops and delivers a service that specifically fits the needs and problems of that group. People don’t buy products and services, they buy solutions to the problems and frustrations they are experiencing. For example, people pay for a gym membership so they lose weight or someone will buy a security alarm system because they want to eliminate the fear of their possessions being stolen. If a business can formulate a message that provides solutions to target peoples specific problems and then present it to a group of people who are most likely to respond, you will generate far more results as the message is designed specifically for the problem.

How to get the right message to the right market

One way to get the right message to the right market is by using a direct marketing list. You can acquire a direct marketing list based on the demographic profile of the customers who normally buy from you. By doing this you can get your message to people who are more likely to respond to the solutions you offer. Whether they are young married couples who live north Sydney or business directors who have 40+ employees in the building industry – there are ways to get the appropriate list of the people needing your business.

How to write the right message for the right market

A quality direct marketing list is an important tool but presenting the right message is also necessary. The old way of doing this was the long copy model – long sales letters, A4 brochures and media packs. Unless you have a big advertising budget, this can be an extremely expensive exercise where you rarely get a return on your advertising outlay. The new the way of doing direct marketing is by presenting a short message that defines and appeals to the intended market and then directs potential clients to the web site for more detailed information. The most cost-effective way of communicating a short message to your market is by sending people a postcard. Direct mail postcards are perfect for short copy messages because there is enough space on the card to convey the solution your business offers. The postcard is also an appealing way of directing people to the relevant business line or web site.

Discover how our Direct Marketing Consultants can help to IMPROVE the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns and INCREASE your sales lead generation. Response Driven Marketing is group of direct response marketing consultants who advise and develop highly effective marketing systems for Small-Medium enterprises. Claim your FREE copy of the report ’7 Marketing Secrets’ ($129 Value) at www.responsedriven.com.au

Jordan R. MUllen

Television and radio advertising is powerful, but the cost of it can be prohibitive. In addition it needs to be strategically slotted in order to reach its intended target. Print ads can also work effectively if well-aimed. Again the costs are high – even purchasing space in newspapers and magazines can eat into a large chunk of a business’s ad allocation. And the exposure a company generates from this kind of promotion sometimes only applies in a limited time frame. The best feedback from this kind of advertising is only gained after repeated showings or print runs.

            Businesses the world over have long awaited an accessible and affordable alternative.

In the past businesses’ advertising budgets have often been extortionate as the need to pay for good media coverage was important if those businesses were to thrive. These days the Internet offers a wide range of promotional opportunities for businesses of all sizes, and ad options to suit even the most modest of budgets. This puts smaller businesses in the previously unknown position of being able to compete with their larger competitors.

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Finding Answers Online

Using Internet ‘Pay Per Click’ ads is becoming more and more popular. The ads work in the following way: The advertiser only pays for the online space when the ad is clicked and the link followed. This works out as a very economical way to promote products and services on the web, and while a closed sale isn’t guaranteed every single time the ad is clicked, closure figures from Pay Per Clicks is high.

            Pay Per Click ads are linked to consumer queries on search engines like Google and Yahoo. This means that a given ad is seen by a specifically targeted audience and potential client base – that represents very pinpointed promotion in a way that print or even TV and radio coverage cannot.

            In addition, the Internet is ‘live’ 24 hours a day, 7 days a week globally, so ‘Pay Per Click’ ads are capable of reaching a vast worldwide audience, unlike print, TV or radio exposure which usually applies at best to local or national exposure.

Big Impact for a Minimal Cost

This form of advertising is economically structured: The cost of Pay Per Click advertising is variable and depends on which search engine is being used and also the popularity and therefore ‘value’ of a keyword phrase. Observably the more popular keywords come in a higher price – although the cost overall is very competitive and fits in with most financial plans.

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The Benefits of the World Wide Web

Pay Per Click ads represent just one of the ways businesses can benefit from the potential of the World Wide Web. But it’s not limited to these and there are a great many other ways in which to reap the rewards offered by the net. Using the skills of professionals can make all the difference to how successful any online crusade is. WSI (the award winning corporation that specialises in Internet Solutions for small and medium sized businesses) will advise about strategies for promotion on the Internet. For over a decade WSI has been aiding businesses in this way. An added extra with this Canada-based company is that they have franchise opportunities for sale, offering others just like you the chance to become consultants and help more businesses thrive in the new and potentially rich world that the net has rapidly become.

Elizabeth Miranda
http://www.articlesbase.com/networking-articles/pay-per-click-advertising-a-new-success-731228.html

Have you sent out newsletters to your clients and potential ones? As a business owner, it is a must that you keep those interested people up to date with whatever’s happening on your marketing endeavors. One good service that you must avail alongside this project is letterhead printing. So keep those creative juices flowing and compose one that will help you strengthen your hold on the interests of people.

Here are the basic rules in creating a top notch newsletter.

1.    As you think about the contents that you’d like to be part of your newsletter, you must also be thinking about letterhead printing. You just have to keep in mind the elements that you don’t want to miss to be included on this part such as the following:

• Business logo
• Tagline
• Business name
• Pertinent contact details
• Web address

2.    It is understandable that you have many things to say to your target audience. But you must also not forget that they don’t have much time to spare in reading your long letter. So fight that urge. Hire a professional who can create a letter that contains a lot of information in a clear, concise and short way.

You don’t want people to miss out on the important messages that you want to share with them. But this will happen eventually if you are not going to adjust on your part to make the letters more readable.

3.    You must know who are going to read your letters. Different types of people require different kinds and formats of newsletters as well. You cannot send the ones you have created for an older audience to teens or younger people.

So from the start, you must determine who your target market really is. You must address them accordingly. If you have to create various types of letters to accommodate all the preferences of the people on your list, then do so.

4.    Your letter must sound lively and fun as much as possible. You don’t want your audience to get bored easily and drop the material altogether. You want to glue their attention to your material. You want them to finish the whole thing. So you must help them do that. They will only be able to do so if the material sounds right and something about it got them hooked to continue reading.

5.    Make sure that you publish your newsletter periodically. You must decide on this from the very beginning. Study the results from your previous attempts with newsletters. Take down notes as to what bring in more sales and the trends that got lower response rates. From that, you can decide about how often you would like the letters to be furnished to your target market. You can also pinpoint easily the factors that affect the effectiveness of the medium.

In creating your newsletters, letterhead printing will contribute a lot to its success. So you must plan early on as to all the elements that you want to include on the project. You can consider the abovementioned tips to make sure that you will likely achieve your goals on this venture.

Maureen Pelayo