Marketing departments of franchise chains are diving deeply into social media, with the latest frenetic energy to engage their customers going into the newly upgraded smart phones.  As more of our customers are integrating the smart phones and iPod touch into their everyday lives, franchise businesses want to be right there with them.  The goal is to get consumers to install and habitually use the application, engage the brand and find the most convenient franchise to patron.

“Creating a smart phone application is just one more way we are helping customers place orders in a way that best firts their mobile lifestyle.” Says Brian Niccol, Pizza Hut CMO.

If your franchise does not have an application for smart phones, contact your franchise today and ask them to help you develop one.  Who knows, this just might open a new market for your business.

For many mom-and-pop shops with no ad budget, Twitter has become their sole means of marketing.  It is far easier to set up and update a Twitter account than to maintain a web page.  Twitter is a way for small business owners to talk directly to customers in a way that they were able to do only in person before, this helps to shorten the emotional distance between businesses and their customers.

Twitter is the digital manifestation of word of mouth, allowing users to broadcast messages of up to 140 characters in length, and the culture of the service encourages people to spread news to friends in their own network.

Twitter is not just for businesses that want to lure customers but it can help find both suppliers and customers nationwide.  It can give a small business national presence in a way only large marketing and advertising budgets have allowed in the past.  Twitter is also a great place for information.  For example you can learn business tax tips from an accountant, marketing tips from a consultant in Tennessee and start-up tips from the founder of several tech companies.

Click here to create your free Twitter account today and start connecting!

Here are a few suggestions to help you assess your business and determine if you’re giving your customers what they’re expecting.

1. They’re Saying What?!: The first place you must start in your analysis is your telephone.  Make it a priority to thoroughly train everyone who might ever come into contact with a customer.
2. Listening In: Make numerous calls to your business, answering service, or call center over a period of days and record them.  Ask all sorts of questions and conduct yourself in various manners, all in order to capture a response to many different situations.  Then analyze the tapes and make necessary changes.  As a business you absolutely must have weekly meetings not only to stay on top of what is going on, but to let the manager know you are paying attention.
3. Sweat the Small Stuff: It’s not just what they say, nor just how they say it; it’s also their ability to give the prospect sufficient information in a coherent and understandable way  that the prospect is about to make the decision to take the next step and make an appointment or a purchase.  You and your employees are so accustomed to being in your space that it is all but impossible for any of you to see it through a customer’s eyes.  Fresh eyes not only look for problems, they also identify additional opportunities to create, reinforce, and maintain the image you want your customers to have of you and your company.

By conducting a basic audit of your business, you will be improving your sales conversion rate by addressing all the loose ends.  If you don’t remember the old saying, “A confused mind always says no”

How do we judge if a math-learning center is successful? It depends on what types of learning centers. There are many types of math learning centers.  Some learning centers mainly prepare children for tests, some are for total skills training including thinking skills. It also depends on what parents want? Some parents only look at if there children’s marks have improved, while some parents also like to see if the math program can improve their children’s thinking skills. To put in a nutshell, a successful learning center is a place where children like to go and also enjoy it.

A successful math learning center is a place where children are smiling and happy while they are learning at the center and then come home telling their parents what they have learned and are happy to go again. A successful math-learning center makes kids learn in a happy mood.

A successful math-learning center will not be successful if their materials are boring and inhuman. Why will children be happy if all they do at the learning center is just drilling on math worksheets even it means their computation ability have improved? The untold negative side effect is they will not have fond memory and experience with this kind of learning center, I have my students in my class telling me that they “hate” this kind of math learning center but some of their parents “forced” them to go.  One thing I can say is these unimpressed children will not send their own kids to this kind of learning centers again when grow up to be parents one day.

I have done some research and also personally observed on what kind of math as pressure as their old brothers or sisters to just wanting to get high math marks for universities so these young children are happier to go to a math learning center where they do not just sit there and do pure math work.  The problem is most of math learning center cannot offer what these young children want. I know what kind of worksheets children like to work on since I have offered them choices and I have the chances to observe their reactions and feedbacks.

Children like to be entertained while learning; learning while having fun is a great way for children to learn.

We cannot turn math learning center into a circus so children having lots of fun but doing very little math. This is not an idea of integrating fun and math learning.

Many children like puzzles but not math work, so how do we “trick” them to do puzzles while they also have to do math work? We are not talking about computer games or computer-based learning here. We also are not talking give children some separate puzzle worksheets in a math class. We are talking about pencil, paper and re-printable “game, puzzles, and math” integrated worksheets.

If a math learning center can integrate math, game such as chess, and puzzles all into one worksheet then this is what children prefer to do rather than traditional type of math worksheets.

How to deliver these fun worksheets in a systematic way such that they will also increase children’s math marks is very important to make a math-learning center succeed.

A successful math-learning center must have fun worksheets and these fun worksheets also foster the environment of thinking.

A successful learning math-learning center offers something that children like and the end results are children are happy to learn and their math marks also improve while having fun.

Author:  Frank Ho, Canada certified math teacher and founder of Ho Math and Chess.

2010 brought with it a renewed sense of expanding the business.  With that came plans to target the untapped demographic and reinvent the company to include them.

Now that you have set your new goal, that hard part is achieving it.  Below are three ways that can help you recruit new clients:

1. Go where the growth is:  Identify key industry segments that are growing and reach out to them with something as simple as attending their trade show.  “At Homestead Resort, in Midway, Utah, general manager Britt Mathwich says the hotel made a quick shift away from the corporate and training market to families, after seeing a slump in business travel.  The resort picked up more business by attending home-decorating and bridal shows, he says.”
2. Strategy of secondment: Partner with companies that provide similar or complementary services.  “Maclay, President of engineering-consulting firm Voler Systems, is now working on two projects that combine Voler’s electrical-engineering expertise with the other firm’s mechanical-engineering specialty.”
3. Online Tools: Maintain a blog or a social media profile which includes facebook.come, linkedin.com, and twitter.com.  Social-networking tools are also places to post promotions.  “Mr.Maclay says he gained new clients by posting the company’s resume on Craigslist.”

Take a few minutes to update your marketing plan and get your business off to a great start in 2010!

Editors and Journalist receive thousands of press release everyday; On average only 3 percent get published.  How can you make sure your press release is the one that gets published?  Below are a few steps in the right directions:

1. One-on-One Time:  The best public relations strategy is to b uild relationships with key members of the press.  You can easily identify a core group of media outlets that can deliver coverage vital to your business.  It takes a bit of homework to create your own short list of the media that influence your cutomers when they’re considering buying what you market.
2. Choose the Right Tool:  When sending a press release, make sure its headline contains a stat, fact, or compelling piece of information that’s new or revelatory, and that your first sentence has the power to sell your story.  Never send a stream of ho-hum pitches in the hope that over time you’ll capture attention.
3. Follow up to seal the deal:  Follow-up is essential for taking your new PR relationships to the next level.  You can make contact by phone, e-mail, or both.  The key is to determine that your pitch was received and whether there’s any interest in that particular item.  Most of all, you want to uncover what type of information you can provide that each media contact will find most compelling.

Maybe you’re press release will be the next big story on the home pages of CNN, MSNBC, and all the other major websites!

Thanks to regulatory quirks text messaging is still a relatively uncluttered and spam-free marketing channel. In order for business to participate in this marketing channel, few basic rules must be followed:

1. Don’t even think about doing it the illegal way.

2. You basically have three (legitimate) options.

o The simplest and cheapest option is to hire the text-messaging equivalent of the old Valpak mailings.

o Create a custom approach specialized in by Distributive Networks. This involves registering for your own proprietary “short code,” the technical name for the five- or six-digit phone number that dialers use to access a text marketing campaign.

o Start with an off-the-shelf platform offered by companies like Mobile Commons or HipCricket that lets you share a short code.

3. Text marketing can be supported by traditional marketing.

4. It is better to give than to receive.

5. Don’t waste your time with one-offs.

6. Show restraint (and don’t get too cute).

As you are planning your marketing budget for next year, why not look into this channel, who knows this might be the most effective marketing tool you discover.

VetFran(Veterans Transition Franchise Initiative), an International Franchise Association program is offering discounted franchise fees to veterans who are looking to transition into the world of franchised small businesses.

“The VetFran program is our way of saying thank you to veterans for their service,” said Matthew Shay, president of the IFA. “They deserve our help in pursuing the American dream of business ownership because without them to protect our nation, such opportunities would not exist.”

Is your franchise one of the more than 160 IFA member companies are participating in this program?  If not, keep in mind that to date, 360 franchises have been sold through the program and an additional 126 are in various stages of negotiation.  This could be the key to your next franchisee.

Online Directories are the perfect place for a small business to gain exposure to investors, partners and potential employees.  But as always there “risks that can hurt the company’s reputation.”

Many online directories such as crunchbase.com and wikipedia are great platform for small business to get their message out but small businesses should check monthly to ensure the information is accurate.

An easy way is to set up alerts from the directory and additional alerts such as Google Alerts.  Therefore every time something is added or removed from the listing the small business will receive an email.

Hurry and take advantage of all the free exposure and free advertising for your small business today!

Google AdWords makes it affordable for Small Business Owners to advertise their business. “No matter what your budget, you can display your ads on Google and our advertising network. But if you don’t do some careful planning, you can easily find yourself spending thousands of dollars with little to show for it.”

Before you start your own Google AdWords campaign, answer the below three questions:

Are you AdWords the right Keywords for your business?

“Brent Hollowell and Jesse Travis, co-founders of a travel accessory retailer in Baltimore called Zen Class, had high hopes when they began using AdWords to promote their Nirvana eat Back Organizer, which slips over an airplane’s seatback tray. While they knew they might get clicks if they paid for words like “travel accessories,” they feared the cost of close to $1.50 a click would be prohibitive because not every visitor would be looking for their product. They decided to be more specific and set up an AdWords campaign using the keywords “airline seat back organizer,” which cost about 5 cents a click.”

Is your budget realistic?

“About a year ago, Georgette Blau, who runs On Location Tours in New York City, set up an AdWords campaign to promote tours that were timed for the release of the “Sex in the City” movie. In doing so, she says she made a mistake: She ran the ad on the Google AdSense network but failed to understand how quickly she could run through the money she had budgeted for her campaign. An ad placed on the Google network can quickly appear on hundreds of Web sites and generate thousands of clicks. While this can be a good thing, it can also run up quite a tab.”

What markets do you want to focus on?

“When Apple irst introduced the iPhone, Matt McCormick, who runs a phone-repair business called Jet City Devices,  saw an opportunity. Knowing that the iPhone’s screen was prone to damage, Mr. McCormick began bidding on keywords like “iphone repairs” and waited for business to flood in. A problem soon became apparent: while his site was swamped with traffic, very few people were actually mailing in their phones to get them repaired. But, after changing his campaign to run only on searches initiated within 50 miles of Chicago and Seattle — cities where he had physical shops where customers could drop their phones off in person — Mr. McCormick says his conversion rate jumped to 10 percent: “If you’re in business in only one or two cities, then Google’s localization feature can save you a ton of money, reduce AdWords competition, and bring great traffic.”