As the year 2015 progresses, the message is loud and clear. Digital marketing is here to stay and is consistently becoming an important consideration of marketing budget for most companies. Companies now are spending equal amounts for TV and on digital. So what now? Well if your website is not fulfilling the latest developments or you are not doing Content Marketing or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or else developing some strategy for Search Engine Marketing, you might well start doing so. However, buying into the hype of different digital jargons seen online or on social media without a true understanding of the results of digital marketing efforts may turn your marketing effort into a damp squib without the expected results. Here are the 3 biggest mistakes in digital marketing often made by most companies.Mistake 1: Poor PlanningOne biggest mistake that is made in digital marketing is the absence of an organized cohesive strategy, resulting in a waste of valuable time and money, not to mention the loss of opportunity. Before investing, you should plan the following for effective digital marketing:· Understand your market: A sound understanding of a brand’s competitors, customer demographics, geographical boundaries, existing distribution channel, and knowledge of market trends (both about the product and demographic).· Perform a SWOT analysis: Find your opportunities, threats, strengths and weaknesses.· Clear definition of your marketing objectives: What results you are looking for with your marketing efforts and what KPI’s and goals will you use for measuring success?· Have a budget: What is your budget for this marketing effort and what are the individual marketing channels?Mistake 2: Unrealistic ExpectationsIt should be noted at the very outset that digital should not be taken to mean instant results, especially with companies who are new to this digital marketing practice. In fact, it takes some time for digital campaigns to develop, optimize and improve to get the results you expect for. It is imperative that clients are given realistic expectations. Here are the average timelines per service offered:Pay Per Click Campaign: 90 days.Search Engine Optimization: 90 – 180 days.Social Media: 30 days.Mistake 3: Not Being InformedThe presence of new analytics software makes it easy to track and analyze every view, every click and every dollar. However, what is important is to be informed about how the marketing budget is being spent by the company. So if a marketing agency is working for a brand, important data points should be known to key stakeholders. Hence, if it is a PPC campaign, you should have the knowledge of how to log into AdWords and also be able to check the account history as well as follow any account modifications. This should be true with the different digital aspects. You should have a fair knowledge of the KPI’s, the terms and best practices.If you don’t have the time to go through learning materials, hire a consultant who could run audits and help in removing unqualified work. This will keep the primary marketing agency and staff on their toes and save you money.
Business Loans In Canada: Financing Solutions Via Alternative Finance & Traditional Funding
Business loans and finance for a business just may have gotten good again? The pursuit of credit and funding of cash flow solutions for your business often seems like an eternal challenge, even in the best of times, let alone any industry or economic crisis. Let’s dig in.
Since the 2008 financial crisis there’s been a lot of change in finance options from lenders for corporate loans. Canadian business owners and financial managers have excess from everything from peer-to-peer company loans, varied alternative finance solutions, as well of course as the traditional financing offered by Canadian chartered banks.
Those online business loans referenced above are popular and arose out of the merchant cash advance programs in the United States. Loans are based on a percentage of your annual sales, typically in the 15-20% range. The loans are certainly expensive but are viewed as easy to obtain by many small businesses, including retailers who sell on a cash or credit card basis.
Depending on your firm’s circumstances and your ability to truly understand the different choices available to firms searching for SME COMMERCIAL FINANCE options. Those small to medium sized companies ( the definition of ‘ small business ‘ certainly varies as to what is small – often defined as businesses with less than 500 employees! )
How then do we create our road map for external financing techniques and solutions? A simpler way to look at it is to categorize these different financing options under:
Debt / Loans
Asset Based Financing
Alternative Hybrid type solutions
Many top experts maintain that the alternative financing solutions currently available to your firm, in fact are on par with Canadian chartered bank financing when it comes to a full spectrum of funding. The alternative lender is typically a private commercial finance company with a niche in one of the various asset finance areas
If there is one significant trend that’s ‘ sticking ‘it’s Asset Based Finance. The ability of firms to obtain funding via assets such as accounts receivable, inventory and fixed assets with no major emphasis on balance sheet structure and profits and cash flow ( those three elements drive bank financing approval in no small measure ) is the key to success in ABL ( Asset Based Lending ).
Factoring, aka ‘ Receivable Finance ‘ is the other huge driver in trade finance in Canada. In some cases, it’s the only way for firms to be able to sell and finance clients in other geographies/countries.
The rise of ‘ online finance ‘ also can’t be diminished. Whether it’s accessing ‘ crowdfunding’ or sourcing working capital term loans, the technological pace continues at what seems a feverish pace. One only has to read a business daily such as the Globe & Mail or Financial Post to understand the challenge of small business accessing business capital.
Business owners/financial mgrs often find their company at a ‘ turning point ‘ in their history – that time when financing is needed or opportunities and risks can’t be taken. While putting or getting new equity in the business is often impossible, the reality is that the majority of businesses with SME commercial finance needs aren’t, shall we say, ‘ suited’ to this type of funding and capital raising. Business loan interest rates vary with non-traditional financing but offer more flexibility and ease of access to capital.
We’re also the first to remind clients that they should not forget govt solutions in business capital. Two of the best programs are the GovernmentSmall Business Loan Canada (maximum availability = $ 1,000,000.00) as well as the SR&ED program which allows business owners to recapture R&D capital costs. Sred credits can also be financed once they are filed.
Those latter two finance alternatives are often very well suited to business start up loans. We should not forget that asset finance, often called ‘ ABL ‘ by those Bay Street guys, can even be used as a loan to buy a business.
If you’re looking to get the right balance of liquidity and risk coupled with the flexibility to grow your business seek out and speak to a trusted, credible and experienced Canadian business financing advisor with a track record of business finance success who can assist you with your funding needs.
How Do We Determine Nutritional Need?
Today, we’d like to focus on the amount of nourishment and physical exercise our bodies need and how best to accomplish these objectives. It is very important to study and understand our own bodies’ individual needs, in terms of physical needs, caloric intake, and nutritional health. If you know where to look, you will find libraries, doctors, and fitness centers are stocked with nutritional information and guidance for healthy living choices for people of all ages.A healthy body requires nutrition to nurture our bodies and keep them fit and in working order. Every day, the vitamins and minerals we consume in our foods provides us with nutrition we need to thrive.How can we ascertain our individual nutritional needs? Simply by getting more information about our own individual needs and the needs of our loved ones, we can start to make smarter choices on the foods we purchase, prepare, and present to our families.When it comes to day-to-day life, nutrition is defined as what we consume as it relates to what we need to keep our bodies healthy. Thanks to recent participation of the USDA in our daily food requirements and the FDA keeping up the standards of safe eating, nutrition has become more of a common household word.So what actions should we take with regards to nutrition? How can we find out what our nutritional requirements are, how to fulfill them, and in which foods to find the best nutritional value? Nutrition in its own right hasn’t garnered the amount of attention it probably needs. We hear all sorts of buzzwords regarding milk and cereals fortified with vitamins, our daily vitamin intake, and what nutritional value we get from our food choices. But how does all this actually apply to our daily body functions?Our vitamin and mineral requirements frequently outweigh our caloric needs. Here is where supplemental vitamins and minerals are necessary to fill the gap. All these things are part of our basic nutritional needs.Because everyone has individual needs and because there are so many different facets to nutrition, nutrition is a very complex topic. Men and women have very different needs, and even young women’s needs are different from that of older women. Continual education and reevaluation of our nutritional needs as we age is a necessary part of our bodily health.It stands to reason that an athletic middle-aged hiker would have differing nutritional needs from a person who suffered from heart disease. So many different elements factor into our nutritional health, it’s easy to see how it can become so complex. In a perfect world, everyone would have their own scale they could use to determine their bodies’ physical and nutritional needs on a cellular level to recalibrate every so often for optimum nutrition. People need to realize that everyone is different, and a good nutritional education is the key to having our body run as efficiently as it can. The goal of everyone’s life should be good nutrition.