Hub You - Business

Don't Damage Your Brand With The Next Cheesy Cable Ad
We’ve all seen, and laughed at, the cheesy cable ads. From the low-quality video production, the ugly flashing headlines, the silly scripts, the ridiculous acting…they’ve been entertaining us for years. And, they've raised the question "What were they thinking?" What is so hard to understand, is that the very advertisers who continue to spend good money to produce and run these brand-damaging ads, had to have seen ads like these, themselves...and asked the same question.We think we can speak for the general cable audience when we say “STOP the madness!”Prospective advertisers, you might want to answer these questions before proceeding:1. Do you have quality products or services?2. Do your products/services hold strong benefits for the demographic audience who will be exposed to your cable spots?3. Do you believe that advertising is a necessary investment in those products/services?4. Do you want to

itability.

Yet many avoid this process, shield it from their clients, or conduct “analysis lite” on the data. The problem is that you can’t distill the insights if you don’t dive into the analysis. As a result, perfectly viable campaigns are being deemed failures. In these situations people declare “radio just doesn’t work”, and proceed to run away as fast as possible. Avoid this mistake by making sure your media buys are backed by thorough, detailed analysis, not a cookie-cutter approach cloaked in unproven, formulaic assumptions.

When Are Background Checks A Good Idea?
Background checks can be used for a variety of purposes and are a good way to have confidence that someone with whom you are involved personally or professionally is disclosing all necessary information. Employers often use background checks to get verification of previous employment, driving records and to ensure there is no criminal activity. This is an important step in the hiring process especially in positions where employees may handle sensitive information or who may be working with the public or with children. Having the security that background checks were made will not only allow the employer to feel better about their hiring decision but it may also reduce the liability of the company should something happen in the course of employment and the company is sued.Background checks are not only for employers, though. People will do background checks on other before getting into a personal relationship with them. This is be

How do we know what the 5 Biggest Mistakes are?

After over a decade in direct response, we have peered “under the hood” of hundreds of direct marketing campaigns across every type of category imaginable. Sometimes a new client will come to us after a failed attempt with another agency, or simply to get a second opinion on whether their campaign was or is being run optimally. As a result of this extensive experience, not only have we seen which decisions make campaigns successful, but also which decisions condemn campaigns to certain underachievement of their potential.

The most difficult part of writing about the “5 Biggest Mistakes” is narrowing down the list. It would be easier to write about the “Top 20 Mistakes”. Nonetheless, this paper presents the blockbuster mistakes that are a) way too commonly made, b) sure to doom a direct response radio advertising campaign, and c) relatively easily avoidable. In other words, get these things right, and you’ll live to face the lesser challenges with greater strength and greater knowledge.

Biggest Direct Response Radio Mistake #1: Faulty or non-existent testing methodology

There are many ways for a testing methodology to fall short, which is why this is #1 on the list. Testing the wrong variables, testing in the wrong order, testing too many variables, testing too few variables. The list is long. The point to remember is that success requires a scientific approach. That means disciplined and well thought out – a “ready-aim-fire” approach verses “fire-fire-fire”. Any good direct response agency has staff that understands the process for conducting scientific research, particularly research methods, statistics, and database management. The best DR agencies have applied this knowledge over time and have developed a proven testing methodology, along with the supporting technological infrastructure, that will get you from testing to profitability with the least amount of up-front time and money.

If you don’t follow a well-defined, proven testing methodology, you are throwing your ad dollars away. Period. You simply will not know why one ad works better than another or whether there are other approaches that could work better. You will just be out of money before you can determine whether your campaign has legs.

Biggest Direct Response Mistake #2: Inadequate data capture and analysis

The power of direct response radio stems in part from the ability to collect and analyze results from the bounty of data that can be collected - and to distill insights that drive further refinement of the campaign. As all experienced marketers know, it is the insights that lead you to grand successes. With the right tools, technology, and processes, it is possible to conduct station-by station analysis, look at performance by market, format, day of the week, daypart, and a whole host of other variables to understand what’s working and what’s not for a particular campaign. This is vital to the process of optimizing campaign profitability.

Reverse Auction Success Hinges on Pre-Qualfying Vendors
The first reason is that if you try to do a post-reverse auction qualification, to the bidders, that gives them the impression that price really doesn’t matter. So why should they bid lower in the reverse auction if they believe their quality alone will win them the business? Well, the Buyer's job is to pre-qualify bidders so they know that they are competing against like-quality vendors and price will absolutely matter during the reverse auction. A simple way to do this is to create a survey with qualifying questions. Examples of these types of questions are how long the company has been in business, how many employees they have and if they have a proper level of insurance. This will automatically give the vendors the impression that you are doing your homework and are only going to invite other companies that can meet these standards to your reverse auction.The second reason why you should have qualified vendors is to guarantee tha

paper presents the blockbuster mistakes that are a) way too commonly made, b) sure to doom a direct response radio advertising campaign, and c) relatively easily avoidable. In other words, get these things right, and you’ll live to face the lesser challenges with greater strength and greater knowledge.

Getting The Greatest Creative From Your Advertising Agency
After working at 10 different advertising agencies, I was fortunate to work with many smart clients. Along the way, I learned how they got the best out of their creatives. And here is what I’ve found.1. Great clients wanted the best creatives working on their account. Not just any creative team.2. Those clients gave a brief document that was simple and to the point. It had a single message that creatives were to follow to come up with concept ideas. The clients were even open minded if an idea jumped off strategy from the brief. They wanted the best and realized sometimes it came from a new strategy.3. They wanted to be wowed. This enthusiasm from the client to the creative staff motivated them to do more and do their very best work.4.The clients respected the creative team. They never try to do the creative work, and also respected writers and art directors for the job they did so well. They trusted their j

fire” approach verses “fire-fire-fire”. Any good direct response agency has staff that understands the process for conducting scientific research, particularly research methods, statistics, and database management. The best DR agencies have applied this knowledge over time and have developed a proven testing methodology, along with the supporting technological infrastructure, that will get you from testing to profitability with the least amount of up-front time and money.

Advertise Your Business Using Blogs
How can a blog improve your online business?Lets take a look at what a blog really is. A blog is like an online journal were people, can comment and rate your entries/posts.Companies all over the world have started blogging. Why? Simple, blogs are used for:• Getting a high ranking on search engines. • Getting exposure to the public. • Making a relationship with costumers/readers. • Keeping costumers updated about your business.So the question is, does it really have an impact on yourbusiness? And if so how can you start taking advantageof this new way of getting exposure and free traffic?Yes blogs can have a positive impact on your onlinebusiness.The best ways to start a blog is using some of the free services there’s provided on the world wide web.The best ones in my opinion are blogger and wordpress.Blogger is owned by google which gives

mine whether your campaign has legs.

Small Business Bookkeeping Outsourcing Rescues You from Workload
Outsourcing is a special service that unfolds the practice of handling various business related tasks in less money. It is quite beneficial for small business organizations, as it can help to save thousands of dollars. Small business bookkeeping outsourcing is meant to relieve business owners from those pressures that crop up at the time of overload of work. It is quite popular that small business owners try to handle every department on their own. On other note, keeping a trained staff to handle their bookkeeping work will accompany so many expenses. Just think that how a small business will run if it is paying so much to its staff.Bookkeeping involves handling of the financial records, business revenue, profits and losses incurred by the company and various other expenses. At the time of tax session, if you are loaded with excess of bookkeeping work then the slight negligence can cause problems. Every single account can go wrong or

itability.

Biggest Direct Response Mistake #3: Flying blind

It still astounds us how many people, smart businesspeople, ask us to move forward with advertising before they know the basic key metrics associated with their campaign. We refer to this as “flying blind.” It is not unlike deciding to fly a plane surrounded by instruments that are providing you data you can’t use to make important decisions about flying the plane. Turn left, turn right, speed up, ascend, descend? Scary thought? It should be, because absent a tremendous amount of luck it spells sure death.

Every direct response campaign has a similar set of key profitability metrics and each one has a hurdle or break-even level that must be met in order to achieve some level of profitability. The big mistake is spending a dime before this exercise has been completed. Why? Because when you get the test results back, you won’t know what to make of the data. You won’t have a context within which to assess whether what you are looking at is good, amazing or awful. Bottom line: model the campaign, identify the key metrics, and know what those numbers have to be. And by all means, make sure your agency knows so they can maximize the profitability of your media campaign.

Biggest Direct Response Mistake #4: Having the wrong people on the bus

Each DR campaign is comprised of similar vendors. This includes a manufacturer, a creative and media buying agency, a sales center, a customer service group, and a fulfillment center. You can poll any one of these groups of vendors and there is one thing they would all agree on: not one of them alone can make the campaign a success. This is a classic team situation. If one member drops the ball, the whole team fails. As the client, perhaps the single biggest impact you’ll have on the success of the campaign is how you decide to choose the members of your team – who you put “on the bus”. Sales centers will always tell you they will meet the needs you’ve expressed (guess what, they’re good at sales!). Big agencies will always try to convince you that only they can get the lowest rates and only they can grow your campaign really big (as if suddenly the laws of market economics don’t apply). Will you choose the ones who say they’ve been around since the beginning of time and believe they know all there is to know, or the ones who are experienced but also unassuming enough to be constantly learning, improving, and giving birth to new ideas? Will you choose vendors who play nice with the other team members, or those who throw the others under the bus at the first sign of trouble? If you don’t choose wisely, your campaign could fail for reasons you won’t even understand.

Biggest Direct Response Mistake #5: A corrupted creative process

Once you communicate the definition of success, allow the creative process to unfold. A professional direct response ad creator is someone who has learned a tremendous amount about what works and what doesn’t, on millions of other people's dimes. We’ve built a large database of direct response wisdom that can save you a lot of time and money. If you define success as an ad that reaches a certain CPO, and trust the creative process, you’re much more likely to get an

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Business involves a lot of commitments and handling them perfectly is an art. The key to open the success of any business lock is possible only if one has the right sources. Business forms play a major role in an organization. Customized business forms are an adapted set of forms required to run an organization. Customized business forms usually consume more time than the standard business forms, as they are perfect with information and require exact details. Running a business successfully with inadequate resources or with insufficient knowledge is not feasible. To run a business proficiently and successfully, one should know the pros and cons of business and to handle it tactfully.

Success in a previous position doesn't guarantee success after a change of jobs. This article highlights the importance of proper assessment and preparation for any new position, particularly in case of a major change in the job role. Efforts to fix the situation when it's perhaps too late risk to fail.

Are you an entrepreneur or small business owner? Do you know what consortiums are? Consortiums can expand your revenue stream in big ways. They have been around for years but most people don't understand what they are or how they work. This article starts the learning process.

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