When used effectively business cards can be a great marketing tool. In this article we will discuss 5 of the most effective ways that you can use your business cards everyday.

1. Be Creative.

Be creative in the design of your business cards. Business cards do not just need to be bits of paper with your contact details on them. Be creative and give your business cards a use and purpose. Make them a powerful marketing tool in the promotion of your business.

Your aim is to make your business card something that the receiver will want to keep and make use of. This is the difference between a well thought out and designed business card and a piece of paper with your contact details on it that will probably be thrown into the trash.

Give the recipient of your business cards a special offer. For example if you are a school/training centre you may offer ‘first lesson for free with this card’ or if you run a shop maybe you will offer ‘10% of any purchase over $50’.

Whatever your business, there is a creative way to give your business card real value to the receiver. If you can think and implement these new creative ways before your business does, you will have an instant advantage in that area of business, and should definitely see a rise in business if you have promoted you cards correctly.

2. The 1 minute rule

The 1 minute rule basically says, if you talk to a person for longer than 1 minute they should already have one of your business cards in their hand.

This means in conversations you need to find a way to talk about what you do, and be in the position to be able to offer one of your business cards to the person you are talking to in the first minute of conversation. This can be likened to a conversation you may have with someone at the bus stop or on the elevator. The conversation will end in a very short time and you only have a very short time to get your message across, or in this case get your business card to the recipient.

The 1 minute rule is basically just practice to get your business card out there as much as you can. Many people go through all the trouble of ordering business cards just to let them sit in a corner of their office. To use business cards effectively you must be giving them out at every opportunity that you have.

3. Make them keepers

Once you have given your business card to someone what is going to keep it from being thrown in the trash or forgotten about. Unless you are selling necessities it is probably fair to say that most likely they do not need the product/services you are offering at the present moment. Hopefully though in the future will come a time when they are looking for that product/service and that is when your business card still needs to be in the hands of the person.

Why does someone want your business card? If you cannot answer that easily, maybe it is time to think about a new business card design.

Does your business card have valuable information on it? By valuable I mean a map, discount, calendar, measurements, charts or anything relevant to your industry? If it doesn’t, you may want to think about adding a value feature to your business card.

4. Leave them everywhere you go

During a number of trips around a number of businesses in my local area I have noticed piles of business cards on the counters of various businesses. For example a recent trip to my accountant I noticed they had a few piles of business cards on the counter for mortgage lenders, home loans, etc.
This can be likened very much to link swapping that goes on with webmasters looking for business referrals from similar businesses.

Every place that you frequent, you should ask if they mind you leaving a stack of you business card there for their customers. You could try this at your doctors office, your dentist, accountant, lawyer, beauty saloon or hairdresser.

For similar businesses (e.g. accountant > lawyer or money lender) maybe you can arrange to have a stack of their business cards displayed at your business when they offer your business cards at theirs. This can be a very effective way to use you business cards and can have great returns.

5. Ask for an opinion

‘Do you mind if I ask you a quick question? I’m looking for opinions on my new business card’. After asking the question and bringing the topic up hand them a business card. Make sure that they keep it, even if they try to hand it back to you tell them that you have thousands printed already.

Thank the person for their time, and if they ever need the product or service that you are offer that your contact information is on the business card. Even if that person may not directly contact your business, there is always a chance that they may pass your card or business name onto another party.

Even in the worse case they may go home and tell their friend how a nut just came and talked at the bus stop and handed them a business card for his lawn mowing service. That friend may say, ‘I’ve been looking for a good lawn mower’. ‘Here’s the business card I got’. And there is a situation where you may still even get business out of handing your business card to a stranger and even a disinterested stranger.

By following just one of the above five ideas each day, you can turn your business card into a great marketing tool, and see an almost instant increases in business.

The power of collecting an email address is amazing. As I mentioned in a prior article, you can expect between 1 and 10 percent of visitors to make a purchase on their initial visit to your website (conversion rate) and between 10 and 33 percent to give you their email address (signup rate). Often visitors weren’t intending to buy any product but were after more information on your subject. Studies show it often takes 7 communications before a customer will buy a product. Believe me, after selling websites, it’s very rare to get a ‘yes’ on the first visit. Websites can be quite complex so maybe it’s not the best example but people just need more information and confidence before they’re ready to buy.

We need to offer the customer an awesome product that they simply can’t say no to for them to give us their email. Often people have no intention of handing out their email address but a careful planned report or mini-course that is instantly delivered to them is often incentive enough for them to build that bridge.

The method of collecting email addresses is called an autoresponder. That is, a database that stores names and email addresses and can send out pre-programmed email addresses to recipients. These can be customised and sent instantly, 1 day, 5 days and anywhere up to 10 years after the initial email was collected. Very powerful and effective. Third party autoresponders that sit on a separate server are the most effective and you can generate your own signup form to place on your website.

You can also send an email to your database at any time. Let’s look at an example of the power of an email database. Let’s say you attract 200 visitors each day (easily possible) and have a signup rate of 15%, so that’s 30 email addresses a day, and after a year you have 10 950. If you mailout a promotion for a course you have created that costs $97 and just 3% of your list signs up (quite reasonable), that’s an income of $31 864.50 just from one mailout. This profit is realised over a few days and a great example of the power of a distribution list and a value-adding product. So make sure you ask for that email address. Our goal is to add value for our customers so we need to work out what information will be useful to them and make it available. The easiest way to do that is via email.

The idea of worldwide sourcing alludes to showcasing items and administrations from a certain area to everywhere throughout the world, crossing geopolitical limits. The motivation behind worldwide sourcing is to enhance item conveyance and administration quality, and to minimize the expenses connected with crude material and talented work.

Notwithstanding cost-viability, two other eminent profits of worldwide sourcing incorporate a speedier business sector arriving at time and a more extensive asset pool. Regardless, not all entrepreneurs know how to utilize this idea within their best investment. Here you will discover a simple to-apply, productive and safe methodology that will help you attain your worldwide sourcing objectives:

1. Concentrate on Affordable Countries

This is an exceptionally imperative viewpoint. Regardless of in the event that you are a start-up ambitious person of you have been running a business for quite some time, you have to discover moderate nations, where choice quality control administrations are couples with low expenses for work. These reasonable nations ought to convey around 30% expense funds.

China was (and still is) viewed as one of the best nations for huge organizations, because of the low evaluating and high caliber. Different nations known for their expense adequacy are India and Korea, as the costs in China have gradually begun to climb.

2. Simple Access

An alternate vital viewpoint is to pick a nation where you can undoubtedly go to, in the event that you need to go a normal checkup. It is exceedingly proposed to pick a nation to which you can travel rapidly and agreeable, one that is cordial not towards its guests additionally towards outside speculators. You ought to feel welcome at whatever point you make a trip to that specific nation, be it for business or for delight. It is a known reality that each entrepreneur ought to perform spot wiretaps the supplier’s office every now and then, to verify that everything is working out as expected and that the standards and regulation of the nation being referred to are completely regarded.

3. Get to be Familiar with the Country You Have Chosen

You must get to be acquainted with the nation you have picked – know the conventions and traditions, begin to take in the dialect and the lawful framework, and also the regulations that apply there. It is indispensable to know the dialect of that specific nation, so you can supplant your mediator on the off chance that he or she is not able to help you.

Likewise, it is exceedingly suggested to have a representative who dependably watches your best investment and is continually searching for arrangements that are in your focal point. On the off chance that you have a feeling that you just can’t take in the dialect, in any event enlist an expert interpreter or mediator on whom you can depend all day, every day, else you may lose incredible business opportunities.

Conclusion

To aggregate everything up, worldwide sourcing is a genuine business section that obliges all your exertion and attention. Correspondence and extraordinary business aptitudes assume a fundamental part for the achievement of each business that depends on worldwide sourcing to lessen the generation costs, without needing to make any trade off as far as work quality or item quality.

The National Marine Fisheries Service records China as supplying 70 percent of America’s tilapia. China and Thailand are the biggest suppliers of transported in shrimp. In the wake of going in excess of two thousand miles all through Mainland China and using five days on the Yangtze River, I have ended up frightened at the state of our transported in fish from Asia.

The conduits of China and Hong Kong are so dirtied with mechanical chemicals, ranch effluents, and human waste that fish exporters must depend on anti-microbial treatment just to keep the fish alive. I saw a few bloated and rotting bodies, both human and creature, gliding down the Yangtze. The Yangtze River purges into the conduits from which a significant part of the traded fish is angled. Fish from Asian Fish Farms is no healthier than fish got in nature. Thai and Chinese fishponds are famously tarnished and pumped loaded with anti-microbials. The FDA found the vicinity of the compelling anti-toxin, chloramphenicol, in the foreign made Asian shrimp. Studies connect the anti-toxin chloramphenicol, a cancer-causing agent, to paleness and leukemia, particularly in youngsters. In an as of late distributed article, CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews cites sustenance security master Caroline Smith Dewaal, €chloramphenciol is a genuine issue in the human nourishment supply,€ she said. €it’s similar to taking a medication that is not prescribed.€

Catfish imports from China are an alternate genuine sympathy toward the vicinity of anti-microbials. Flouoroquinolone anti-infection agents, which the FDA has banned for utilization in sustenance, are appearing in tests directed on catfish foreign made from China. €aside from the dangers to wellbeing, the imports have likewise been a risk to the economy of the Mississippi Delta, which gives more than three-fourths of the catfish consumed in the United States,€ underlined a report disclosed on National Public Radio. A convergence of shoddy imports from Asia is making the American catfish agriculturists bankrupt.

Since just around one percent of our foreign made fish is observed by the FDA, the greater part of the sullied fish winds up on our supper tables.

Our foreign made foods grown from the ground are not fairing any better. As per an Associated Press examination of FDA records, outskirt reviewers reliably dismiss Mexican peppers and chilies. Ten percent of the rejected peppers and chilies were contaminated with salmonella. Since the FDA examines short of what one percent of all outside sustenance entering the nation, ten percent of one percent is disturbing. Mexican imports are exasperating wellsprings of concern, not just from salmonella and E. coli, additionally from the overwhelming pesticides the Mexican Agricultural Industry use in developing produce. It is alluded to as €the round of poison.€ Chemical organizations offer Mexican Agrifarms pesticides that are banned in this area. There are no regulations in the United States for the exportation of banned or unregistered pesticides. Little, if any, oversight exists for the utilization of these pesticides on the leafy foods developed by the Mexican agrarian homesteads. With fifty percent of the foreign made foods grown from the ground in the United States originating from Mexico, we have an excruciating issue of dirtied nourishment.

Since the FDA is underfunded and undermanned, it rests on the customer to compel change.

To begin with, don’t purchase any crisp or solidified fish from Asia. Help your neighborhood fisheries and anglers. Fish cultivates in the United States regularly utilize clean water, no anti-microbials and no chemicals. On the off chance that your neighborhood supermarket just conveys Asian imports, solicitation fish and fish from the United States, or more secure imports from Canada, Australia and New Zealand, for instance. World exchange is not going without end. Simply verify you purchase the more secure imports.

Second, restrain any leafy foods from Mexico to decrease pesticide ingestion. Purchase mainly, if conceivable. Shop your neighborhood ranchers and ranch markets. Purchase natural products of the soil. Plant your own garden.

Like everything in life, your conservatory isn’t going to last forever. Over time, both the roof and windows will reveal signs of damage and wear and tear. Many conservatories that were originally built in the 1970s and ’80s are no longer up to the job. Upgrading your conservatory not only makes it look nicer, but it can also help to reduce energy bills and keep your home warm while reducing damp.

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Condensation

If you notice condensation forming between the glass panes, it is a sign that the double glazing is not working properly. According to Which, it’s likely that a lot of the warmth from the house is escaping through the panes, resulting in lost energy and higher monthly bills.

Condensation looks bad on a conservatory, but the more pressing issues are those of mould and damp. A conservatory that is insulated properly will be both cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. The best thing to do is to call out someone who is an expert in conservatories Worcester or wherever you happen to live.

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Droughts

A conservatory that is functioning well should be able to keep droughts out. A conservatory is meant to trap warm air into the house during the winter months, so a cold conservatory is a sign that something isn’t quite right. If the windows themselves are cold to the touch, this is a signal that the double glazing might need renewing.

Interior Roof

Always check the roof regularly and remove any sludge build-up that occurs. Over time, the polycarbonate sheeting on the roof can become weak and brittle, which can cause water penetration that leads to even more damage down the line. If you notice that your roof is looking a little worse for wear, it may be time to seriously consider an upgrade. Whatever you decide, make sure you speak to a professional who knows all about Conservatories Worcester or your local area.

Design Change

Times change and so do styles, so if you’re stuck with an old aluminium or white-framed conservatory, maybe you should think about upgrading to some more contemporary styles. The glass box is not really in fashion anymore, and many people are turning to brick to provide more of an extension look.

So you’ve finished building a great website and you’re ready to start raking in the profits – if you can figure out how to let the world know your business exists. Although creating an attractive website is an important first step if you plan to start your own online business, it is definitely not the last. In fact, once the website is complete you’ve still got quite a lot of work on the horizon.

Just because you have a website up and running, it doesn’t mean people will automatically know where to find you. And yet, surprisingly, many first-time web entrepreneurs drop the ball at this point in the game. They assume customers will find them amongst all the other sites floating around in cyberspace, as if through some kind of psychic connection. But if you think about it, this type of thinking is very misguided.

It is the same with any business: customers won’t start flocking to your store unless you invest some time and money into advertising. Depending on your budget, you can either blast the trumpet really loud or toot the horn a little bit at a time. But in the end, you have to make some kind of noise in order to be heard.

But how do you achieve this in the vacuum of cyberspace? Or perhaps more fittingly, how do you make yourself heard amidst a crowd of other aspiring musicians all trumpeting their own cause? Obviously, online marketing is different from marketing a bricks-and-mortar business, so it’s important to know exactly where to begin. If you take the proper steps you will be attracting interested customers in no time.

The first step is to know your customer, inside and out. This is key if you want to be successful in your marketing strategy because you can’t market to potential customers if you don’t know who they are. For someone selling baked goods, targeting the “Carb-Haters of America” might not result in the profits you are anticipating.

Next, determine where you want to market your product. The Internet allows every new or expanding business the opportunity to reach a global market, but not every business is aiming for that goal. If your website is set up as one arm of your existing offline business, you might wish to target potential customers in your local area who also want the option of online shopping. In this case, integrate your website into promotional materials for your store so people will learn about the new branch of your business. Essentially, the efforts you make to promote your business outside of the Internet can be used to get your web address out there as well.

Internet Marketing

But of course, most people who begin an online venture are looking to broaden their customer base and attract a global clientele. There are several ways to start advertising online. Just remember: online marketing is always changing, and nothing works perfectly for every business. You might have to tailor a marketing plan to suit your company’s specific goals, or if Internet marketing makes your head spin, you also have the option of hiring a company to do the marketing for you.

Step one: register with search engines. Unfortunately, this doesn’t guarantee hits to your site, and the promises many search engines make are usually more pie-in-the-sky than realistic, but it is still a necessary evil. If you have to choose, register with Yahoo! and Google, as the highest percentage of web traffic originates from these two giants. In the past, achieving top search results could be done for free; now you have to shell out some cash if you want to get top placement and advertising space. Yahoo! Express and Google’s Adwords program are two examples of this type of paid search engine placement.

Another way to get noticed is to participate in a link exchange. Simply put, this involves seeking out other websites that are related to your company or product in some way and asking the owner if he/she will post your link on the site. If the owner agrees, you offer to post their link on your site, hence the term “link exchange.” This is a good way to start advertising your site because it involves targeting the right kind of people (someone visiting a site already related to your business) and forming solid bonds with other websites. And the more links other sites have to your site, the more popular you become with the search engines, without having to pay for top placement.

Finally, don’t sit back and wait for customers to come to you. Be proactive and go directly to your clientele. Of course, this means you must know where to find them, but this sounds harder than it actually is.

For instance, many new businesses actually use eBay to source potential customers. It depends on what you’re selling, but if you know a lot of people looking for your product spend a good amount of time making eBay purchases, that might be a good place to begin and get your name out in public. Use eBay as a marketing tool – sell a few items for very low prices, get people on your email list and invite them to consider future purchases from your website. EBay is more than a place to sell goods; it can be used as a highly effective marketing tool.

Or, as mentioned above, make business connections with people in a related business. Pay to have banner ads displayed on other websites to help spread the word about your business. This will bring you closer to the people who make up your target market.

This is just the beginning when it comes to online marketing, but if you start off on the right foot and persevere, you will succeed.

Research suggests that there are a whole host of benefits surrounding having plants in a workspace. In this article we take a look at the top six reasons why they should be introduced.
Whether you are looking for offices to let Basingstoke or Bradford, chances are greenery isn’t at the top of your list. But scientists have discovered that humans naturally want to be connected with nature, a condition called ‘biophilia.’ The bad news for us humans is that those offices to let Basingstoke or in Bradford, are mostly devoid of the nature we crave.

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Stress reduction

Australian research from 2010 found a 37 percent fall in anxiety, a drop of 58 percent in depression, a 44 percent reduction in anger and fatigue reduced by 38 percent, where plants were found in workplaces.

Productivity on the up

If you are looking for Offices to let Basingstoke through http://www.matrix-house.co.uk/basingstoke.html, you’ll want your employees to be productive. Other research has shown that spaces with plants saw an impressive 15 percent increase in productivity.

Sickness and absence

In 2011, a report announced that more than 58 percent of office workers had no plants in their work environments. However, those that did had a 15 percent higher score for wellbeing and 6 percent for productivity. Another report from the 1990s saw a 2 percent decrease in ill health.

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The law of attraction

A third of us are reported as saying that workplace design and its environment will have an impact on our decision whether we would like to work for an organisation or not. This corroborates the biophilic theory above and should have employers sitting up and taking note.

Clean air

Through photosynthesis, plants release clean oxygen, a thoroughly convincing argument why you should add plants to your indoor space. In fact, NASA scientists in the 80s found that plants were expert at removing chemicals such as benzene, trichloroethylene, and formaldehyde from the air. More recent studies have shown that indoor plants reduce carbon dioxide by around 10 percent in air-conditioned offices and up to 25 percent in non air-conditioned ones.

Noise pollution

Plants help to reduce background noise by absorbing them; this means that office chatter and open plan meetings won’t distract colleagues. Living walls are the perfect choice for reducing such noise levels.

The “gender pay gap” has been a hot-topic news story for several years now, and the media never seems to tire of reporting stories about big corporations and the differences in salaries of various employees. But it seems that not everyone understands exactly what the term actually means.

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Mind the Gap

In a survey commissioned by YouGov, it was revealed that just under two in three people nationwide incorrectly identify it as men being paid more than women for performing the same job, when in fact the term relates to men being paid more than women overall.

Gender Split

In fact, it is young men, aged 18-29, who have the best understanding of what the gender pay gap is, and conversely women in the next age bracket of 30+ were the least likely to define the gender pay gap accurately. 70% of women overall misunderstand the term. Almost all people questioned in the survey felt they knew the correct definition.

The lack of understanding poses a problem for those looking to remove the difference, as it’s not always easy to spot. There are also complications of parental leave and the gender stereotypes that still persist. The government is taking steps to address that, as are some employers, but there is also a part to play for society to get everyone challenging inequality when they see it.

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Reporting

Currently, smaller businesses are exempt from having to report their salaries and the differences between genders, and those that have a payroll of 250+ are the only companies required to report.

For small businesses, the intricacies of employment law and salaries can appear very complicated, but paying for an HR Manager might seem like a significant expense. A consultancy basis is a great solution on a needs-only basis.

Small Business goes into more detail about the benefits for start-ups and smaller businesses of HR outsourcing services or other specialist skills from experts. Look up companies offering specialist services like https://www.mushroombiz.co.uk/homepage/services/hr/ and take some weight off your mind.

The time saved by outsourcing to people with expert knowledge is important, and it allows you to get on with what you know best: your business. Imagine what you could do with that!

As we’ve already seen, although car security technology has improved a lot in recent years, new technology has also opened up innovative ways for criminals to gain access to and even drive away your car. Technology means it’s often no longer necessary for thieves to physically damage the car by breaking a window or hot-wiring the ignition. Here are some more techniques that can be used.

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Range Issues

Keyless entry systems are convenient, but they can also leave cars unexpectedly vulnerable. Most keyless systems have a range of just a few feet, but do you know exactly what that range is? If your car is parked outside the house and the key fob is on the hall table, that could be close enough for the car to be unlocked.

Thieves know this and use the old-fashioned method of trying door handles to see if a car is unlocked. Even if your car isn’t stolen in this way, you run the risk of a flat battery as proximity to the key leaves electronics on standby and draining power. To guard against this, keep the key out of range or put it in a metal box.

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Code Grabs

How effective this threat may be is not currently fully understood. The theory is that criminals will lie in wait near desirable cars and use a scanner to capture the key fob’s signal when the owner approaches the vehicle. There’s not much evidence that this technique is widely used, but it is a theoretical risk. Additional security measures like Ghost Vehicle Immobalisers can ensure that even if the lock code is ‘grabbed’ the vehicle still can’t be driven away.

Hacking Apps

Many of the latest high-tech vehicles – particularly electric cars like the Tesla – are now linked to smartphone apps. These allow owners to locate the car and to control certain functions remotely. Apps can allow the vehicle to be unlocked via a password on a phone. Though of course fitting Ghost Vehicle Immobalisers available at http://www.mphvehiclesolutions.co.uk/ghost-vehicle-security can stop the car from being driven.

App passwords can be stolen or guessed – especially if they haven’t been reset from the default. The best way to keep your car secure therefore is to choose a secure password with a mix of letters and numbers that is hard to guess.

Banking has never been easier than it is today. Online banking allows you to access your bank at any time of day or night. You can even do this dressed in your underwear if you like. And if you choose to do it that way, it’s just as well there are no lines to wait in for online banks.

1. Probably the first thing to consider with online banking is the convenience. You can access your bank via the Internet at any time of day or night, even while lying in bed if you like.

2. Transaction performed online are generally much cheaper than those done over the counter at a bank branch. You can pay bills, transfer cash, check balances, and much more for much less.

3. Online savings accounts is something worth considering. The interest rates are usually higher and the fees are lower than traditional bricks and mortar bank branches.

4. Your computer has convenient ways to help you remember your login details. But don’t use the “remember my password” option if your computer suggests it. Keep your bank login details very safe and very secret.

5. Most online banks will allow you change your password. This is a very good idea and something you should do regularly. Of course, you must also remember your new password each time it is changed.

6. Logging on to your online bank is easy and very convenient. But after you have completed your business, remember to log out of your online bank again. This is especially important if you access your bank from a library, at work, or in a cyber café.

7. Enjoy your online banking, but beware of any email you receive asking you to verify your bank details by clicking a link. The site may look authentic, but it will probably be a fake. Respectable banks don’t ask anyone to verify details by email.