myCalgaryBusiness.com | Share and Grow

RRSPs: How are you saving?

Editor — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:02:41 +0000

: RRSPs

If Canadians seem to be in an extra-cautious mood this RRSP season, it’s not hard to see why. The effects of the recent recession that saw many lose their jobs and nest eggs continued to be felt late into 2009. Wary investors are wondering what’s next.

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Grow a huge facebook group in one week

Editor — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:01:20 +0000

Marketers should launch Facebook groups with specific goals or messages instead of bland branded fan pages, writes Richard Millington. The most successful user-started groups are those that try to find a huge number of people who agree with a single clear message, Millington notes there’s no reason marketers can’t use the same strategy. “You make an offer, people join if they like an offer,” he suggests. “In doing so, you get permission to speak to them and can work on forging a community

Read it here

Mobile to change online advertising

Editor — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:40:34 +0000

Mobile technology will transform local online advertising in 2010 through location-based applications such as Foursquare and Gowalla to allow targeted mobile display, as well as Google’s mobile Place pages, according to this blog post. Other likely mobile trends will include shopping applications and coupons, a focus on ad-buying instead of apps, and more connections between handsets and digital out-of-home signage.

Read the full story in the Advertising age

Managing an ageing workforce

Editor — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:57:07 +0000

MARTIN AMIS and Christopher Buckley are writers who are entering their silver years and are worried about the costs of an ageing population. Mr Amis, who has a new novel out recently compared the growing army of the elderly to “an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafés and shops”. Mr Buckley devoted a novel, “Boomsday”, to the impending war of the generations. They have both touted the benefits of mass euthanasia, though Mr Amis favours giving volunteers “a martini and a medal” whereas Mr Buckley supports more sophisticated incentives such as tax breaks.

Read full story in the Economist

The New CEO Accessory – Chief of Staff

Editor — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:01:14 +0000

In headier days a CEO’s must-have accessory was a Gulfstream V or a house on Nantucket. These days it’s a chief of staff, a top-level adviser who’s part confidant, part gatekeeper, and part all-around strategic consultant. While that has long been a key position in politics, many top executives are now adding this person to the payroll.

Read the full-story CNNMoney.com/Fortune

Does an MBA make you a better CEO?

Editor — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:52:02 +0000

A new ranking of 2,000 top business leaders found that executives with an MBA ranked an average of 40 places higher than CEOs without a business degree. However, the effect seems to be declining: CEOs who started before 2000 ranked more than 100 places higher if they had an MBA. “Has the performance value of an MBA decreased over time? That’s one hypothesis,” write Herminia Ibarra and Morten T. Hansen.

Read full-story at the Harvard Business Review online/The Conversation blog

Microfinance – Why Multinationals Should Think Small

Editor — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:53:42 +0000

The future of poverty eradication lies in the private sector, says Nancy Barry, president and CEO of Enterprise Solutions to Poverty. Barry, former CEO of Women’s World Banking, created the venture to mobilize corporations and entrepreneurs to engage millions of low-income people to build competitive business models. In an exclusive interview with Columbia Business School at the 2009 Social Enterprise Conference, Barry highlighted the ways in which U.S. and European multinational companies can learn from emerging markets.

“In [companies’] engagement they are still skating on the surface,” she said in the video interview. “Their traditional business models and ways of working are getting in their way. They need to actually learn from emerging markets and entrepreneurs how to build decentralized distribution systems. The beauty of decentralized systems is that the mom-and-pops of this world actually are the poor people. If you figure out a way how to add value to that mom-and-pop, which is your distribution system, you are helping that family make more money and you are selling more products.”

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Editor — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:27:57 +0000

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myCalgaryBusiness.com Team
c/o GOLDstream Data Corp.

Market research can save your business

Editor — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:24:11 +0000

To be successful, a small business must know its market. Marketing research is simply an orderly, objective way of learning about people — the people who buy from you or might buy from you.

WHAT IS MARKETING RESEARCH?

Basically, marketing research is just what the merchant did with the peanuts. Find out what catches customers’ attention by observing their actions and drawing conclusions from what you see. To put it more formally, in the words of the American Marketing Association, marketing research is the systematic gathering, recording, and analyzing of data about problems relating to the marketing of goods and services.

Marketing research is an organized way of finding objective answers to questions every business must answer to succeed. Every small business owner-manager must ask:

What kind of people are they?

Where do they live?

Can and will they buy?

Am I offering the kinds of goods or services they want — at the best place, at the best time and in the right amounts?

Are my prices consistent with what buyers view as the product’s value?

Are my promotional programs working?

What do customers think of my business?

How does my business compare with my competitors?

Marketing research is not a perfect science; it deals with people and their constantly changing likes, dislikes and behaviors, which can be affected by hundreds of influences, many of which cannot be identified. Marketing research does, however, try to learn about markets scientifically: to gather facts and opinions in an orderly, objective way; to find out how things are, not how you think they are or would like them to be; to find out what people want to buy, not just what you want to sell them.

It’s tough — impossible — to sell people what they don’t want. (Remember the New Coke problem?) That’s pretty obvious. Just as obvious is the fact that nothing could be simpler than selling people what they do want. Big business does marketing research to find out what consumers want. Small business needs market research too.

For once, small business holds an edge. The giants hire experts to define the mass market in which they sell. Owner-managers of a small business are close to their customers; they can learn much more quickly about customers’ likes and dislikes and buying habits.
Small business owners often have a feel for their customers — their markets — that comes from years of experience. But experience can be a two-edged sword, as it includes a tremendous mass of information acquired at random over a number of years, information that may no longer be timely or relevant to making selling decisions. In addition, some facts may be vague, misleading impressions or folk tales of the everybody knows that variety.

Marketing research focuses and organizes marketing information. It ensures that such information is timely. It provides what you need to

Reduce business risks.
Spot problems and potential problems in your current market.
Identify and profit from sales opportunities.
Get basic facts about your market to help you make better decisions and set up plans of action.

For more information on how to grow your business with effective market research, please contact GOLDstream Data Corp. a leader in market research, analytics and business process management services at http://www.goldstreamcorp.com

Article courtesy of GOLDstream Data Corp.

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Editor — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:08:33 +0000

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