Determining the Value of Advertising Business Gifts
Advertising business gifts can be a significant expense for your company. Like most advertising, it can be difficult to determine a bottom line return on your investment. With advertising business gifts, it can be especially difficult to measure their true worth to your company, since a great deal of the value comes from intangibles like increased customer loyalty and heightened brand awareness. Here are some considerations and figures that may help you determine the relative cost-per-value ratio of your marketing campaign using advertising business gifts.When you purchase advertising in a magazine, online or on the television, one of the determinants of pricing is how many times your advertisement will be viewed and by how many people. You pay far less per column inch in a low circulation newspaper than in the Daily News with a circulation in the hundreds of thousands. When determining the relative value of advertising business gifts, you can use the same logic. Simply estimate how many times your logo or message will be seen and by how many people, and then divide it into the cost of the item. For instance:Custom-Printed Promotional T-shirts Promotional t-shirts are one of those advertising business gifts that offer high visibility. Assume that a promotional t-shirt costs you ?3.49 and lasts about 18 months. During that time, the shirt is worn 3 times per month, and seen by an average of 50 people each time it is worn. That’s 150 impressions per month for your message, or about 2,700 impressions over the life of the t-shirt. The cost per impression is about .0013p, and CPM (cost per thousand impressions) is 1.2p. Of course, that doesn’t take into account the value of endorsement – every time one of your customers wears their t-shirt, they are endorsing your product as well as publicizing it.Promotional Car Stickers Car stickers are a popular, low cost way to advertise your business, and make great advertising business gifts for businesses like pubs, clubs and spas. Suppose you spend ?0.29 per car sticker and the life of the sticker is about one year. During that year, the sticker is seen every time the car is driven on the highways and streets. Assume an average of 30 people per day view the sticker. That works out to about 900 impressions per month, or over 10,000 vies per year. The estimated CPM of your bumper sticker is ?0.02. In other words, it cost you tuppence to put your name in front of 1,0

Women in Business
The Greatest Day in History…Today is the greatest day in the history of the world! That statement sounds optimistic because it sounds promising and it feels good to say it. That statement is often said in the context of today being the first day of the rest of your life and one is appreciative. Such appreciation should never go unattended, as it is real. However that statement is not a statement at all nor is it optimistic. “Today is the greatest day in the history of the world” is not a proclamation of promise. It’s a declaration of truth. The history of the world has been one of women’s suppression and struggle and though that still continues, today is better than any other day before. Today, women have power unlike never before and the power grows. Power is not something someone gives you; power is something one must take. Women have taken this power and by way of reasonable measures. Aristotle believed that at his best, man is the most noblest of all animals but separated from law and justice, he is the worst. Women can never be separated from the laws of nature because it’s their birthright and their gift. Women can never be separated from justice because justice begins with the woman. Women have been the victims of misguided laws and malicious injustice. Today, women have the power to impact the laws and levy justice where justice does not exist. In a civilized society, just laws must not only be prevalent, they must prevail. When women prevail in a society, all those in that society will profit and the society will prevail.Oftentimes when the subject of women in business is discussed, comparisons with men are made as if men are the barometer for business. This is a false perception and false too is the language. Business is not an entity separated from life; it is an entity encompassed by life. The definitions of a business consists of a line of work, to work, a profession, a job, a trade, a position, a vocation, a field, a calling and a career. Before today, societies around the globe have claimed that women didn’t work and therefore couldn’t understand the parameters of “formal” business. This misconception rivals some the largest platitudes in history: the near-sighted earth is flat, the purposeful stork delivers babies and the perforated theory of evolution. The business world has presented itself to women as if it spoke a foreign language on an uncharted map. But the truth is that t

Is Being Attractive a Career Asset or Liability?
I don’t recall exactly how many girls turned me down when I asked them to the senior prom, but there were a few. Even though that was 25 years ago, I still remember how much I wished I was one of “the beautiful people”. Today, I’m glad I wasn’t. When I finally made it to the major leagues of my industry, two things immediately struck me.The first was how accepting everyone was. People were amazingly supportive and oddly non-competitive. I later realized this came from their sense of security and accomplishment, since successful people don’t feel threatened by others who succeed. The second thing was that most of the powerful and famous people I met looked like ordinary average individuals, even though some of them get more for a one hour speech than many people pay for a house. This made me wonder how much one’s looks really impacts career success.Being attractive can certainly help in the short term. Television news magazines such as 20/20 have conducted tests which confirm that society gives special consideration to attractive people. However, being so attractive that one draws excessive attention to him or herself can impede long term career success. Beauty can become the temporary crutch that some people try to keep leaning on long after it has been taken away. While attractive people can skate by on looks for a while, eventually beauty fades. They may then struggle when it’s gone and they can no longer charm people with their million dollar smile. Meanwhile, their average looking counterparts start to excel in their careers because their greatest assets –their job skills– are increasing.This success principle of “what matters most is what’s on the inside” isn’t limited to work. It also applies to personal relationships. While the newest glamour couple here in my hometown of Nashville is the equally attractive Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, not every pretty woman goes for the handsome leading man look. Just look at Lyle Lovett, who married Julia Roberts in 1993, and Billy Bob Thornton, who married Angelina Jolie in 2000. Both Thornton and Lovett readily admit they don’t have Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise looks. The one thing they needed to get these beautiful women to say yes was the same thing that made their careers so successful – confidence.So what’s the moral of this story? If you happen to be an ordinary average looking individual who’s competing against a job applicant or coworker who has drop dea

Employee Salary Surveys
Employee salary surveys are conducted by organizations to determine the latest trends in salary and compensation. This is very useful, since companies can set their own salaries on the basis of these results. This would enable the company to attract as well as retain the most talented people in the industry.Companies as such do not undertake comprehensive salary surveys. They use the survey results of special organizations that conduct these surveys. There are many organizations that provide professional employee salary survey services. These companies not only offer salary structures for different kinds of jobs, but also provide additional information services like cost-of-living comparisons, employee relocation allowances, geographic reference reports, compensation reports, job analysis reports, salary structure analysis and so on. Specific salary reports such as executive compensation, non-profit executive salaries, charity executive salaries, college graduate salaries, salary increase reports, are also accessible.Globalization has made the employee salary surveys even more significant, as the salary trends in different parts of the world have to be analyzed to arrive at the right figures. Some salary survey consultants even provide salary comparisons for over 1,000,000 jobs in around 200 countries. The reports are also categorized on the basis of the industry. These companies use highly reliable international data and sophisticated statistical techniques in these employee salary survey reports.Another kind of employee salary survey is the personal salary report that determines whether a person is getting the right kind of salary for the job he/she is doing, and experience and education level. Salary comparisons to check with the current competitive labor market rates can also be done. Most of these tools are also available online and can be purchased at exclusive websites. The software needs a minimum system configuration of 32 MB RAM and a 150 MHz processor speed.

Public Relations for Space Tourists
The World we living is changing rapidly and soon as capital pours into the Space Tourism Markets we will see more advances in space flight and soon more exploration and the start of the commercialization of space. In fact in the future we will see all this and more.Some people are leery about non-government sanctioned space flight and worry about Free Enterprise moving into space, yet the truth is that free markets do things much more efficiently than groups like NASA and therefore this is a consideration as well.Perhaps you did not realize but there are indeed waiting lists of people 50,000 names long to go into space at the $200,000 price point, as well as many people on waiting lists at the 25 million dollar price points. Why are humans so interested in space you ask? Simply put it is curiosity of the unknown and proof of our little pale blue dot and its relations to the entire universe.Private space tourism is an industry, which is quickly developing and there are many entrepreneurial capitalists who definitely understand the value of publicity and community goodwill amongst the citizenry. In fact they have launched a huge public relations programs in order to promote their businesses. We will see more of this in 2006 and as a case study all businesses both small and large can learn a lot from it.

Time Tracking or Employee Time Management
Employees, the most important source of any organization to grow, grow & grow. Industry is full of jobs & requirements. You name it and there is a company looking to hire such professionals. The connecting lines these days are internet. Many and many job hunters look forward to internet portals for new jobs and are successful in reaching out to the right employer.Internet has slowly become an integral part of much organizational growth these days. Today for all small-scale industries to move ahead and get into a mid size company, internet plays a very important role. Just imagine the amount of business happening these days with internet as a resource. With Google, playing one of the most important gateways to connect these business happenings, it is growing with a pace of 200% every year.Coming back to employees, it is not just hiring an employee for any company; it is also about retaining the same for a long time. Facilitating them with loads of benefits, better workplace, holidays, incentives & bonuses are some ways used by good corporate companies to refresh and retain their employees. Amidst all these, is an important segment and that is employee time management. The first step to it is employee time tracking.In days past, all these was done manually on paper, then came computers, excel and then software to manage. Now we find the buzzword "On Demand" and that means all software features are available online. You need not manage your database, files backups etc. The service providers do all for you. All we need is a PC & Internet connection.Slowly and gradually, companies are moving towards the new technology and find it very easy to adapt, since in the package we get the setup, an account manager, a support personnel and training for implementation as well.Can we predict with the pace technology is moving, what can be the next step to it…Paul