Bee Marketing Ideas - Fresh & tasty every BeeDay!

• Give up TV. Tape all your favorite shows and save them until the end of the trial. My whole family did this once, and it was very enlightening.
• Give up online forums, especially if you feel you’re becoming forum addicted. This will help break the addiction and give you a clearer sense of how participation actually benefits you (if at all). You can always catch up at the end of 30 days.
• Shower/bathe/shave every day. I know YOU don’t need this one, so please pass it along to someone who does.
• Meet someone new every day. Start up a conversation with a stranger.
• Go out every evening. Go somewhere different each time, and do something fun — this will be a memorable month.
• Spend 30 minutes cleaning up and organizing your home or office every day. That’s 15 hours total
• Ask someone new out on a date every day. Unless your success rate is below 3%, you’ll get at least one new date, maybe even meet your future spouse.

Try them and you will see the progress - you won`t even believe the results!!! You`ll be astonished!

Tags: BeeMFacts, Business Ideas by admin
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Growing companies trying to figure out how to make a splash in the marketplace sometimes pay consultants thousands of dollars for advice on the subject. And they get suggestions that will cost them even more.But if you’re clever and ambitious, there are plenty of ways to get noticed without spending a bundle. If you haven’t tried these seven “guerrilla marketing” ideas, you’re not really trying:

1. Press Releases. Write and distribute press releases that are newsworthy, and send them to newspapers, magazines, and television and radio stations. If only one media outlet airs the story, you’ll have free access to thousands of people. Design the headline to grab readers’ attention in as few words as possible. Use active verbs. Get to the point quickly, with a lead sentence that will draw the reader into a convincing piece.
2. Trade Shows. Renting space at a trade show can be expensive, but the best shows are a great way to build your business. Have plenty of promotional materials ready to hand out to interested people. When the show’s over, follow up. Call your leads in order of importance, but get in touch with all of them within seven days. Above all, keep every promise made at the booth.
3. The Internet. Establishing a home page for your business is relatively inexpensive and can reach many people. Use newsgroups that focus on areas similar to your line of business to draw attention to the site. Always include a phone number or email address so that interested visitors can contact you. If you are a retailer, consider putting photographs of your products online, even if you’re not ready to let people to order your wares over the Internet.

Advertising on Google and other search engines can be an easy and surprisingly inexpensive way to drive a lot of potential buyers to your ecommerce Web site. Read the AllBusiness.com Buyer’s Guide The Scoop on Search Engine Marketing to learn how it works and follow a step-by-step guide to getting started.

4. Direct Mail. Direct mail results depend largely upon how much you’re willing to spend on finding your target market and delivering quality materials to them. The per-customer cost is much higher than you’ll pay for print ads, but if you create a finely tuned list of recipients, you will reach more highly qualified prospects. Few small firms are qualified to do their own direct mailings, so find a reliable specialist to do the work for you. Interview at least three or four mailing list vendors before you commit your money to a direct mail campaign.
5. Yellow Pages. Most ads get turned into fishwrap within days, but consumers hang onto the yellow pages all year. Remember to cross-reference your listing. If you do yard work, for instance, list your business under landscaping, maintenance, and home improvements. You want your ad to stand out, so consider springing for a larger ad or perhaps even hiring someone to design it.
6. Public Service. This is a great chance to do well by doing good. Sponsor the Special Olympics or participate in the annual Rotary Club Christmas Tree sale in your area. Donate your product to local charities or speak to students at area schools about your business. All of these are terrific ways to position your company in a positive light in your community.
7. Games and Premiums. Periodic prize drawings can help create interest in a retail store or other business. Promotional materials like T-shirts, coffee mugs, or pens emblazoned with your logo also help spread the word.

Tags: Business Ideas by admin
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“Validating the idea and understanding the business model are pretty important steps that should come before writing a business plan. That’s hardly a novel idea.

Still, novel idea or not, successful entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa spells out the early stages very well in a BusinessWeek special report published yesterday, “Before You Write a Business Plan.”

He starts with a short list for validating the idea:

1. Write down your thoughts on the product you want to build and the needs you want to solve. You’ll be detailing your hypotheses.

2. Validate these hypotheses with as many potential customers as you can. Ask them if they will buy your product or service if you build it. Learn about what features they need and what they will pay for, ask them for more ideas, and be sure that there is a large enough market.

3. Build a prototype of your product or offer a test run of your service and again ask potential customers what they think about it. You’ll find that customers usually provide much better input when they can actually try out a product.”

* upandrunning.entrepreneur.com

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What I want is a service (€10 a month seems OK) that hooks up to a small box in my bedroom. It would have a wi-fi hookup to the Net, a speaker and a clock display.

I tell it what time I want to wake up in the morning. I use the web to teach it which information I’m interested in.

Then, every morning, it starts my day with a perfectly selected piece of music (picked by a program director, not me, based on my preferences). Maybe it wakes me up with Hannah Barbera sound effects on Tuesdays… Then it follows it up with the information I want to start my day–custom weather, or pollen count, or school closings or the Google news reports on the ten things I’m covering. Hey, if there’s bad traffic or weather, it could even wake me up earlier.

If there’s a power blackout, it reboots and has the right time. It doesn’t worry about Daylight Savings (did you remember?) If I forget to press the “I’m up” button, it calls me on the telephone…

By the time I’m done shaving, I’ve heard what I want to hear, even if it’s just the right music for today.

Wouldn’t that be better than Casey Kasem or some shock jock?

If you build one, let me know. Thanks.

Credits: Seth Godin

Tags: Business Ideas, Permission Marketing, Seth Godin by admin
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Even though he broke his foot dancing at his brother’s wedding one recent weekend, life is still good for Bert Jacobs.Jacobs is the 42-year-old co-founder of Life Is Good, a popular apparel brand based in Boston that is on track to break $100 million in sales this year. This is rarefied air for Jacobs, who a dozen years ago was selling T-shirts out of a battered van on the streets of Boston with his brother John, now 39.

From a single childlike drawing of a character they named Jake and their uplifting three-word slogan, the brothers have developed a fashion brand sold in 4,500 independent retail outlets in the United States and 27 other countries.

Since 1994, they have sold nearly 20 million Life is good T-shirts and now have a product line with more than 900 items, from hats to dog beds, and the company continues to grow 30 to 40 percent annually. There are now 93 independently owned Life is good retail shops selling only their merchandise, and the company plans to have a total of 200 by the end of 2009. With all that, Life is good has just 250 employees.

Read more.

* NyTIMES
* Business-opportunites.biz

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Pop quiz: If you try to raise money from investors, what’s your chance of success?Well, if you’re approaching those individuals known as “angel” investors, the answer is a surprisingly high 12%. That’s the result of a study just released by the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire. During the first half of 2006, one out of every eight businesses that pitched to angel investors received funding.

While you may not think 12% is great odds, compare that with trying to raise money from venture capitalists (who receive hundreds, if not thousands, of proposals for every one they fund) or getting money from your brother-in-law.

The term “angel investor” covers a broad range of funders — all the way from a sophisticated financier who invests hundreds of thousands of dollars in a cutting-edge new technology, to your rich Uncle Bob who invests $25,000 to help you get your mobile dog grooming business off the ground.

What all these angels have in common is that they’re investing their own money in entrepreneurial businesses — usually start-ups. Venture capitalists, on the other hand, invest other people’s money, typically millions of dollars, and, increasingly, invest in later-stage companies.

* Rhonda Abrams in USA Today:

* Business-opportunities.biz & Dane Carlson

Tags: BeeInvestors, Business Ideas by admin
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“In business, I’ve learned that much technology is overhyped and misrepresented. Every day I deal with stuff that doesn’t work as promised. But there’s a bright spot: Even in the vast wasteland of crappy software and unreliable hardware, I have found some penny-pinching technology recommendations that are worth considering for 2008.1. Increase your network bandwith. Faster is better. The faster you can enter an invoice, print a check, or record a customer order, the faster you can get on to the next productive task. Technology gets faster and faster every year. Make your network go faster and you’ll immediately save a few bucks.

2. Set up remote access. Work isn’t done just between the four walls of your office. Get with the program! People like to do work over lattes. They like to access their files while driving down the turnpike. They want to send e-mails while getting a lap dance. Remote access tools are inexpensive and easy to deploy.

3. Create a few key reports. Come up with three to five key reports you want to see every day or week. Hire someone to come in and write up the reports. A couple of grand spent on a few decent reports will save you many times over in better management of your orders, quotes, expenses, etc.

4. Avoid Vista. Delay getting Vista until the hardware really catches up. Just say no to nonfunctioning programs and incompatible devices! Microsoft will be releasing their first service pack to Vista in 2008 and that should make it ready for prime time. But you’ve got better things to do than monkey with an operating system that, for the time being, costs more than it returns.

5. Outsource your phone systems. For about $12 per month per mailbox we get the whole phone system, complete with automated attendant, call forwarding, voicemail, etc. The best thing is that no one calling us knows we’ve outsourced! Even the automated attendant has an American accent! We don’t have to worry about maintaining our own system or paying through the nose for a phone lease. Check out gotvmail.com for price comparisons.

For five more penny-pinching ideas, go here.

Tags: Business Ideas by admin
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