Many growing companies would benefit from an experienced marketing director to help them develop their overall strategy and accomplish key projects, but most small companies simply can not afford to hire a senior level, full-time marketing executive. In these situations, a marketing consultant can often serve as an affordable alternative and bring much needed skills to the table.

While it is very common for businesses to hire accountants and attorneys, some owners are reluctant to bring in marketing assistance. However, a skilled marketing consultant can bring great value to the team and often dramatically improve marketing results.

Here are several reasons to consider adding a consultant to your team:

Add “Seniority” Without Adding Staff:

A marketing consultant can allow you to affordably add a senior business development or marketing executive to your team on an “as needed” basis. They can also mentor and train junior employees to boost productivity.

Gain Specialized Marketing Expertise:

If you need to address specific marketing issues on a project-by-project basis, a marketing consultant is a great resource. For example, a consultant can help develop a corporate identity package or develop a direct marketing campaign.

Overcome a Personnel Shortage:

A marketing consultant can provide you with qualified, temporary assistance to get you through a crunch. Also, there are no costly employee benefits or taxes to pay.

Get Relief from Deadline Pressures:

When multiple priorities come crashing in all at once, a marketing consultant can help you meet your deadlines without compromising quality.

Benefit from an Outsider’s Perspective:

A marketing consultant can offer you unbiased recommendations and provide you with a second opinion to help you make informed business decisions.

Make the Most of Your Time:

Think about the marketing activity you enjoy the least. Now, think about handing that activity off to a qualified consultant. With a good marketing consultant in your corner, you can get more done and make the most of your valuable time

Tips for Selecting a Good Fit for Your Business:

In selecting a consultant, it is important to identify your goals and find someone to work with you as a ‘partner’ in the process. You should feel comfortable exchanging ideas and brainstorming with them.

To avoid surprises, it is important to clearly define the work to be accomplished and the corresponding compensation up front. Many consultants, also work with a team of other resources and can help pull in the right specialists on an as-needed basis. Therefore, it is a good idea to search for someone who is well-connected and highly resourceful.

To find a consultant that matches your needs, start by asking locally and/or within industry-related groups for referrals. Always be sure to check references thoroughly. Local chamber of commerce offices can often provide names. Other resources are professional associations such as the American Marketing Association (AMA) which offers a directory of specialists by category. Businesses can also turn to websites aimed at linking consultants and/or freelancers with projects, such as: www.guru.com or www.sologig.com and/or www.ifreelance.com.

By adding a quality marketing consultant to your team, your business is one step closer to reaching its goals. When you improve your marketing, you will achieve better results. Here’s to your future success.

Lori Reed Tilt is the owner of Tilt Marketing in Canton, GA. For more information, please visit: http://www.tiltmarketing.com

Are you looking to finance some of your small business related expenses? Did you know that small business credit cards can help you afford many of your business expenses? In fact, small business credit cards not only help you pay for business related expenses, but they also provide myriad benefits to credit card holders including expense management, detailed statements, frequent flyer miles, cash back, and reward points! Thus, small business credit cards are an asset for any small business owner!

Expense Management

As a small business owner, you want to make sure your business runs as smoothly as possible. Nevertheless, as Murphy’s Law would have it, things can go wrong at any given moment and you could incur unexpected business related expenses. What’s even worse is when you do not have the finances available to handle sudden expenses.

Picture it; your web-based business is well established and you have created a respected reputation for getting the job done in a timely and professional fashion. Suddenly, your computer system fails completely and you have several projects due within the next 24 hours. To make matters even more complicated, you can’t completely afford the expenses related to replacing your system; what would you do?

Let’s face it; life’s small catastrophes happen all the time. Yet, with a small business credit card, hassles like the one describe above are far easier to rectify. A small business credit card can keep your business running smoothly; even when things go horribly wrong. Consequently, small business credit cards can help you protect your professional reputation!

Detailed Statements

Did you know that small business credit cards can help you track your business related expenses? As a small business owner, you will have to keep track of every purchase you make and every bill you pay. Further, when managing your small business, you will also need to have an orderly form of record keeping; without some sense of organization, when it comes time to file your taxes, you will encounter quite a few difficulties. What’s more, without an adequate way to keep track of your expenses, you could even lose out on tax deductions that could save you a lot of cash.

Paying your business taxes doesn’t have to be a source of aggravation. If you own a small business credit card, you can use your credit card statement to keep track of monthly expenditures. Your monthly credit card statement will provide you with a detailed account of your business related purchases. Therefore, with a business credit card, you can make tax time a whole lot easier to endure.

Frequent Flyer Miles

Does your small business require you to travel a lot? Do you frequently fly from one place to another to meet with your clientele? Then you can benefit from the frequent flyer miles that some small business credit card suppliers offer.

With certain small business credit cards, issuing companies will supply you with frequent flyer miles every time you use your credit card and such miles can add up quickly. What’s more, with your accumulated frequent flyer miles, you can begin to reduce your business related flying expenses!

Cash Back and Reward Points

Much like frequent flyer miles, some small business credit card issuers will provide card holders with reward points or cash back rebates. Reward points accumulate with every dollar that is spent during a business related transaction. Later, you can use your accumulated points to purchase a number of services offered by the credit card company; frequently reward points will afford you various forms of entertainment or flyer miles.

So, if you are a small business owner, and don’t yet have a small business credit card, you may be missing out on the great rewards these cards offer, as well as the added convenience they provide.

Copyright 2005 Ed Vegliante. This article may be freely reprinted provided the resource box remains intact with a live link back to http://www.credit-card-surplus.com .

Ed Vegliante is the owner of http://www.credit-card-surplus.com , a well organized credit card directory enabling the user to compare and apply for a variety of credit card offers including Small Business Credit Cards. Find links to secure online credit card applications.

All businesses do marketing and advertising to bring in new customers. But if they are really on the ball they give Excellent Customer Service and allow all those new customers a reason and an incentive to come back and buy more and to tell all their friends and associates to do the same. Failures in Customer Service will eventually mean the death of your business.

Trading one for one advertising for new customers is a dead end game because generally advertising works best when you bring people in on a special and that means you probably are not making as much as you could if they just came in out of the blue without a coupon to buy a higher priced item, which was not on sale.

Great customer service is not free, it takes practice and commitment from all your employees who must have by-in and be dedicated to the process of offering great service. However, great service produces word-of-mouth advertising and also means that the customer will come back over and over again to shop in your store.

There really is no substitute for great service and even if you have the lowest prices in the county, you can bet that it is only a matter of time until someone else offers a similar price with great service and all those customers will migrate over to your competition. Play it smart and offer great customer service from the start.

The first step of writing your business marketing plan is to understand what type of industry you are in.

Do people know what your line of business is, so they will call you and look for you in Yellow Pages? Have they bought from your business prior?

Or do you have the other kind of business where people don’t know all about what you do, either because they don’t know your industry exists as an industry, or they know a little bit about your line of business but aren’t sure to know where to find you?

This is vitally important. The answer may seem obvious to you, but you must understand which type of business you are in as it greatly affects your business marketing plan creation.

The first business lends itself to websites, Yellow Pages, other phone directories, local newspapers and trade directories where you would be listed alphabetically. This may surprise you, but you don’t need to get into unusual marketing strategies when you’re an everyday, well known industry type like a plumber or electrician.

I call this type of business the “here I am” industry. In other words the customer already knows what your line of business is and what sort of products/service you provide. All you have to do is put yourself in front of the potential customers and let them know effectively with marketing, “here I am!”

What you do need to do if you’re in ths more common industry type is to become an excellent copywriter and redesign all of your marketing with proven advertising principles. Read every book you can on advertising as the words alone do make a massive difference to the response you get by running a promotion in the same place, one week to the next with a rewording of the ad.

Ask people in the street and your customers where they found you and you’ll find they will normally just think to look for you in the common media places.

Now for the harder to market businesses. I call these “this is why you need me” businesses. In other words you have to explain to the customers why they would want to buy from you and how your product/service works in helping them in their lives.

These industries won’t find much success with Yellow Pages. These industries need marketing like direct mail, letterbox flyers, newspaper/magazine inserts, websites (with much thought given to key word phrases), joint venture partners (or alliance partners).

So to write your business marketing plan you need to begin with the industry type you are in and work out which marketing strategy suits the industry you are in.

Next work out who your ideal customer is. What age, where do they live, do they have kids, what car do they drive, what’s their income.

Then work out all strategies that are relevant to your line of business and which ones you can use to communicate in significant volume with your ideal customer. This isn’t hard, most marketing books will tell you all manner of available strategies.

Now work out which strategy when implemented has the greatest potential for profit return instantly with the least amount of financial risk. This is important as many businesses chew up cash reserves at a rapid rate due to not understanding the business they were in, or by taking a risk on a strategy like TV advertising that costs a lot and can still fail to product profit enough to pay for itself.

Then work out the next most likely to succeed strategy and keep going. You don’t need two dozen strategies. I’ve worked with businesses that grew 1,000 percent in 5 months just by using 4 marketing strategies.

Decide on 6 to 10 strategies is best. Add more if needed, but usually you don’t need to.

Before you know it you will have written a brilliant business marketing plan a professional would be proud of!

Tim Stokes is considered a marketing genius by his peers. Clients love the fact he teaches them how to market for themselves. Tim has taught hundreds of business owners how to get fantastic improvements to their own marketing pieces.
To find out more about Tim Stokes and his legendary sales and marketing results go to http://www.bbms.com.au Read more of his articles at http://www.ezinearticles.com under the lookup of expert authors.

Most vitamin stores offer very good customer service and the people that work there are very knowledgeable about all the products. This level of customer service is something you do not see in most retail stores. The vitamin business requires special care and the customers always have lots of questions. Being able to answer these questions is indeed a major step in great customer service for a vitamin store.

Unfortunately, with unemployment rates so low it is really hard to find someone who really knows their stuff when it comes to vitamins. Nevertheless, it is required that each employee being knowledgeable in a vitamin store otherwise you really cannot say you have good customer service. When vitamin store customers have been surveyed; they say the number one most important thing to them is being able to have their questions answered before they buy the product.

There is no doubt that the Wal-Mart Super Centers would sell more vitamins and supplements in all those rows of products, if only they had a knowledgeable and well-trained person to answer all the questions. While I’ll bet they could triple or quadruple their sales in vitamins. But their loss is your gain if you own a vitamin store. So please consider this in 2006 when you are upgrading your customer service for your customers.