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1 CHAPTER NAME

Innovations in Marketing

Darrell Backen Copyright © 2016 Darrell Backen All rights reserved.

ISBN-13:978-1533435262 ISBN-10:153343526X

DEDICATION

Dedicated to all the small business owners trying new methods to grow their businesses.

“Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication” Leonardo da Vinci

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CONTENTS What Is A Digital Garden Radio Interviews Magazine Interviews How To Publish A Book How To Market Your Small Business How To Promote Your Small Business Digital Marketing Examples How I Started A Magazine Screenshots Of Marketing App !

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Tom MacDonald for having me on his radio show Extreme Business Thanks to Robert MacDonald for his interviews for Business Decisions

This book has an App

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1 Digital Garden?

Digital Garden™. What is that? Digital Garden™ is the word that I have coined the phrase, as for the unique method of digital marketing that I do. The idea of it is, I compare traditional digital marketing to fresh flowers.

They're beautiful. They're cut. They come to you, they smell great. They work great, but they only lasts two weeks.

When your budgets gone, so are they. You throw them out.

Digital Garden™ is a different method, a different approach. What I do, is develop a multi-faceted approach to it there, so that there are many different ways to get on the first page. I developed all of these methods so that there's basically a machine gun of input, so that you get placement month in, month out. Over, and over, and over again. It lasts for years.

The first one that I did in 2009 is still there today. It is the top of the page, on Page 1 Google around the world. This systems doesn't work just locally. It can be done across the city, across they country, or around the world. I have placed in North America, South America, Asia, Europe. This system works around the world.

My objective was ... In 2008, I started this. I was working for a company. I was the chief marketing officer for a plastics corporation. They wanted to have videos and online stuff. This all very new, back in 2008. Remember that YouTube was only started in 2005, and nobody knew about it.

I put the website together for them. I put videos on there. They didn't work, because they wouldn't show up, until YouTube created the system that was universal. It would show up on a Mac. It would show up on a PC. There was no universal system to show video content. We had one. It wouldn't show up on mobile. It wouldn't show up on PC. If I did it on my PC, there were many, many flaws in the system.

I persevered and I decided to have a goal. My goal was to place well. First page of Google. Top of the page. I wanted to dominate the page. Have many, many different ways of getting on the page. Instead of just a website, I developed a Multi-Channel Multi-Platform Multi Media Program to stay there. The system that I developed lasts for years, and years. It's almost coming up 8 years now.

There was no book. There was no place to go to when I started. All these ideas are original ideas that I must have done 20,000 hours of trial and error to figure all this stuff out. It was a passion. I just enjoyed it.

I did not start out as a digital marketer. I didn't even hear that word until I've been doing for six years. I thought, "Hmm, I guess I'm one of those." I was just a person who was interested in getting the job done. All these terms and technology things came later. I had a simple goal; dominate the market, because when you control the first page of Google and have pushed your customers to page two, they are now basically invisible people. They don't bother looking at page two, three, and four.

It's a system that's been developed. It's been a lot of trial and errors. I can tell thousands of ways it doesn't

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work, but I have come up with a couple dozen that work very well. That's what this book is about. I hope you enjoy it, and get a few ideas. I am always available for consultation.

Call Darrell at 1-855-216-6010. Across North America. Or Europe, you can send me an email. You can go to my site, dob.tel.

Darrell Backen Guest on CKPM-FM Radio Extreme Business Show Host Tom MacDonald

Darrell Backen Guest on CKPM-FM Radio

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Extreme Business Show Host Tom MacDonald

Extreme Business Show: Thank you for joining us, and welcome back to the Extreme Business Show: on CKPM FM. I'm glad you've joined us, I've got in studio with me a guest, a friend his name is Darrell Backen he's from Backen Media and he's an innovator, he's a social media innovator.

He's taken some really cool apps that other people like Google has made with YouTube and .tel which is another one, and the search engines and iPhones and androids, smartphones.

You've taken all that technology and you've put in a blender and you've come up with a very unique innovative way to help small businesses market online. One of the things you were talking about off air was digital referral marketing. I wanted to know a little bit about how you did that.

Can you give us some sort of ... that's so a user or listener can understand, "I see what Darrell is trying to do here."

Darrell Backen: Yes, when you have people, your customer base and you've given them your app which is a simple email and instructions to add to their home screen, then what has happened is that there's a section if they want to refer you, they click on the button and it gives a positive referral to all of their social media, to all of their Twitter, all of their Facebook without them typing a single word. It's just a two-button click.

Extreme Business Show: Tell me more about that because referrals are important. Is this something where people say, "Tom is great, he makes great pizza, buy his pizza." Is that what you're talking about?

Darrell Backen: Okay, I'll give you an example. I did one for the Kits Chamber of Commerce. Now on there it said,(well it's my testimonial.) It says that I've been a member for many, many years and I've found it very beneficial and I thought you may want to know about it.

When I clicked that on Twitter or Facebook on the share button, it went to my entire social media, to my entire Twitter and Facebook accounts and that exact wording is what was there.

When I send an email, that's the text, that's the letter when you go to email. I didn't have to do any work or the next person didn't have to do any work.

Extreme Business Show:

Then that showed up on your Facebook page, so people are looking on your

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Facebook page they see ...?

Darrell Backen: It went on my Facebook page and the nice part too is that my personal friends they get push notifications from me, it went on their first page of their iPhone.

Extreme Business Show: Okay, so that's a very unique way to do referrals because I found myself ... it's great to have referrals on my website and I'm trying to get more and more on there, but it's difficult for people to put a referral on.

Like Google reviews really vets their stuff very aggressively and sometimes it doesn't make it on. Then just doing it on LinkedIn or doing it on ... LinkedIn has come up with their own solution. They've sort of endorsed somebody but that's gotten so old and tired I think.

Darrell Backen: Unfortunately, people are just pressing a button, pressing a button but the thing is it doesn't say anything about what we've done.

Extreme Business Show:

No, it's not personal reviews and endorsement.

Darrell Backen: You can write a personal endorsement but you know what, people don't write anything.

That's why I devised this system, if they read it and it makes sense. I bought this car, I'm happy with it and deal with Joe at Acme Auto or something like that. That's simple and he says, "Yeah I agree with that it was good."

Press the button and that's done.

Extreme Business Show: You're getting the automation that LinkedIn is trying to do, but you're getting the personal touch which LinkedIn fails at with this endorsement?

Darrell Backen: turned 15 years old.

Well they're good but the thing is that everything changes. Remember Google has just

Extreme Business Show: Darrell Backen:

Fifteen years old.

Extreme Business Show: Darrell Backen:

Wow.

All the major fortunes in the world are less than 15 years old.

Extreme Business Show: Darrell Backen:

Fifteen?

The most money that's been made has been made in the last 10, 15 years.

Right and out of information marketing, that's it.

Extreme Business Show:

Yeah, because the little companies can reach millions of people now.

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Darrell Backen: Google paid a couple of kids 1.65 billion dollars for YouTube, I think they were less than 25 years old, pretty good.

Extreme Business Show: Darrell Backen:

Pretty good.

Yeah. When I was 25 I had no billion dollar dreams.

Darrell Backen: Well if you look at the situation is that whatever your business is, you need to have a strong online presence. You have to have an integrated digital marketing strategy and you need to have an app.

They’re so affordable. When I went through searching app, I wanted an app from $10,000, $20,000 or $ 30,000 only goes outrageous quotes.

You have to develop it for Apple, and you go to do it for Android scrap that idea, but then I learned about the systems and well that worked, that’s what I want. I could share it by email, I can share it by … it’s really on the phone but I can send it 20,000 people and they have my app. That’s what I wanted and that’s what I shared with people.

There are simple new technologies that you don’t have to do things complicated and expensive.

Extreme Business Show: Small businesses like us are inundated with a lot of advertisers. We get calls every day for being number one on Google search engine and they charge thousands of dollars for that. Mostly because businesses … Yahoo page does the same. If you go to Yahoo page they’re all try to get you on what they call their system and I suppose is a search engine and they’ll try to get you ranked high but they’re not Google.

They can it do within their own domain, the yellow page domain, they can get you ranked, but it’s going to cost you a fair amount of money to do that.

Darrell Backen: I always laugh and I always tell my customers, when is the last time you saw a Vimeo or Hulu video or any of these other video things ranked on the first page of Google? They don’t, because Google doesn’t own them.

Extreme Business Show:

Google doesn’t want them up there.

Darrell Backen: Listen, they’re not giving them the golden gate. The only thing that ranks on Google I’d say once or twice of Vimeo, that’s about it. The thing is that YouTube ranks consistently because it’s landed and owned by Google. The other thing too is that once you’re using the system, I might suggest that anybody use Google, use every tool Google uses, drive Google. Most people don’t use Google Drive, it’s a fantastic system. I love Google products, they are the best.

Google Maps, if you’re not listed in Google Maps properly, you’re losing a lot of money because some people they typed their name and they figure that’s it. If people are searching for your name, that’s not a search.

Extreme Business Show:

No, that’s not a search. They’re using your name they’re like

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acmeengineeringlimited.

Darrell Backen: No and that’s not a new customer, we already know you. They’re already searching for you, but if you’re looking for acme fast or faster that maybe …

Extreme Business Show:

photos whatever …

Darrell Backen: Here’s the secret, what to do when you surf, that’s it. Put an address on your mail, that’s what I say is that, everything I’ve done either by mistake … and I’ve made hundreds and hundreds of mistakes, that didn’t work. Tried this… that didn’t work. When I come to somebody, I can share the knowledge that I’ve gone through. It’s been through many late nights, been working through 2 in the morning.

Extreme Business Show: system.

I know, and I also know that when you share the knowledge with them with the

Darrell Backen Guest on CKPM-FM Radio Extreme Business Show Host Tom MacDonald

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Business Decisions Magazine Interview by Robert MacDonald

What’s New In Digital Marketing.

Robert: got going on?

Darrell, can you tell me a little bit more about the educational base marketing program you've

Darrell: Yes. What we have is a system that has been developed, one of the customers that we did before was Samsung. You type in how to use business phones, not Samsung, just business phones, anywhere in the world, a series of videos pop up. What it is is that it's linked to a app that we built that answers the questions that people most often ask. If you look at a phone system, how do you put the Christmas greeting on? How do you transfer to another call? How do you put "We're on holidays for two weeks?"

Robert:

Sort of the details.

Darrell: The details. It's an operations app. This is part of education. Instead of selling people, you answer their questions. What's the major problem with companies? Staff turnover. What it is is that when a new person starts, you give them the app and it answers all their questions because they are putting an app that runs like the remote control for the TV. When you want to find out what to watch on TV, you scroll down, you look what you want, and you click on it. Same with this app. You scroll down, find what you want, and click on it. You don't need to watch everything. We've made it very user-friendly. Use what you want when you want!

Why education-based marketing? When you educate people, you build trust, you build loyalty, and you

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have credibility. In this particular case, the Samsung dealer had a phone call and the fellow says "I want the 7200."

He says "Okay, who's your rep?" "There's no rep. I watched all your videos online. It all made sense to me and I don't have time to waste. That's what I want. Go set it up on Tuesday."

Robert:

That's excellent, Darrell.

Darrell:

That's the benefit.

Robert: That leads me into my next question, Darrell, which really pertains to, your website's really not enough, how do I dominate the first page of Google and multimedia channels, and all that?

Darrell: Being the first page of Google, while this is very important, being top of mind with all of your existing customers and getting referrals is far more productive. If you ask any businessperson "What is your best source of new customers?" "Oh, it's word of mouth." What do they do to build that? Nothing. They just expect they will. People do not carry your name, your phone number, and every detail about you. For instance, a fellow who painted a house, "I got my house painted, he was a great guy." "What's his name?" "Can't pronounce it." "Is he in the phone book?" "Maybe, I don't know." I couldn't spell his name, I don't have his name, his address, his website, or anything like that. Whereas, if you've developed a rapport with this person by him giving your app, you've had it for years because it costs you nothing. It was just in the situation. It was done. What else would you have?

Robert: Google Maps.

The thing that I'm really curious on is map listing maximizing, how you maximize your affect to

Darrell: Google Maps, there are many tools that Google has, and they're fantastic tools, but everybody knows there's no 1-800-Help Me Google. You can't, there's no textbook on Google. They change their ways every three months. They change everything every three months. But, what I've found, because I spend tens of thousands of hours on this, it's been a lifelong experience, I found what works. I've probably done seven or eight thousand things that don't work. The things that I share with my clients are the ones that do work. I do this as a major project and I found there is no school to go to. By the time it's in a textbook, it's out of date and useless.

Robert: placement?

Darrell, can you explain a little further on this maximizing your effective Google Map

Darrell: Google has fantastic tools. Unfortunately, they don't have a user manual. There's no textbook that says how to use it. What you have to do, one of the services I provide is setting up your Google Maps section. They've changed their way on the name of it over the last five years about six different names. It used to be called Google Places, now it's called Google Your Business. It was always the same thing. It used to be linked to your Google+. There's all different factors. The one main factor is it's still connected to your Gmail account.

This could be set up, if you got maximum effectiveness on it, it'll serve every city that you serve. All over the city or different cities. Without having an office there because there are sections that you can set up there. It can have videos in there. It can have your text in there. It can answer a lot of questions. The number one thing

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about it is that Google seems to give priority to what Google owns, and they own the maps.

Robert: Darrell can you tell me a little bit more about the branding and how branding your branding system benefits your company?

Darrell: I've developed a specific system I call Logo Branding. What it does is when customers search what you do, not your company name, but what you do, the logo of your company appears in the first page of Google, followed by a video. The video can be set up with a click to call app assigned to it, which will give them access to your website, your Twitter, your LinkedIn, all your social media, and a direct map to your store. I've developed this far beyond the usual methods. This is something I've uniquely developed that is proprietary to me.

Robert: customers.

Excellent. Darrell can you explain how to find my customers? There was a way to find the best

Darrell: What you're probably talking about, Bob, is that with the 80/20 rule, most of your business comes from your top 20%.

Robert:

That's it, yeah.

Darrell: What I did is I sat down and said, "Birds of a feather flock together." If you've got a company that does one type of thing, and he's your number one customer, I have a system to find other companies that are in the exact same market category that they are and you can service them as well. Now, it's done by SIC code, Standard Industrial Classification, I have systems where I can research it and give you a list of the companies that you can do a dedicated program to go after the ones that pay. There's no use spending all your effort going after somebody who doesn't have the money, who doesn't have the credit, and doesn't have the need for your services.

We just go after the cream of the crop.

Robert:

Darrell, how can I have 80% of my ad costs covered?

Darrell: This is a thing I developed because originally I was an advertiser. I was the guy paying the bucks.

I know what it's like to decide "Am I going to pay ad dollars, or pay the rent?" I've been there. You've got to put food on the table? Or you're going to risk? I remember a time, this is back in the eighties when I started all this, I said to my ad rep, the fellow who was selling me newspaper advertisements, I said "It's just not working." He said "Well, Advertising is accumulative." I said "So is your ad bill. This just isn’t working and it's costing me a fortune.

An arm and a leg."

That's when I decided to research and put something together that would work better. That's what I did.

The system that I put together, I ended up putting several companies together that shared the same target market and sharing the cost with others. I've done this many, many times over the past thirty years. It works very well.

Leverage your ad dollar by sharing with other companies.

Robert: segment?

Darrell, can you explain a little bit of the 800 long tail key word variations for your market

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Darrell: This is one of the most misunderstood things about digital marketing, SEO, Search Engine Optimization. Some people use two, or three, or five key words they put in their website and they wonder why they're not getting much business.

The truth of the matter is is that, I don't invent these key words, they're software, I just buy it. I research it, I buy it, and then implement it.. I use it with the most plausible way that'll work.

Robert:

Oh, wow.

Darrell: House painter, or house painters, you've got to look at the whole picture. Online search has been around for about fifteen years.

Robert: The average person wouldn't know that.

Darrell: They have, basically, for instance, for a painter, they put in House Painter, the number one thing is House Painting. That's what is the top SEO word. The other thing is is of you've got a house that is one specific area, you've got a heritage, Queen Anne, Victorian Queen Anne home that you want restored, if you have that as a long tail key word, that's a customer. If you specialize in that, that is the only person who's going to find it. That is a customer! It developed hundreds of thousands of dollars for the painting company I did digital marketing for.

That's what it is. I have a program where I research up to eight hundred, and I share these with my customers. I don't believe in this Wizard of Oz thing where they say "I'm the great guru expert and you have to pay me all the time." I share with my clients this is what it is. There is no big screen on the wall and I'm not pulling the numbers in the back. I share with them, because I was a business owner. I know what it's like. Give me the facts and don't give me the razzle dazzle. That's what I do. Simple… share and build a relationship for life!

Not just, get as much as I can now.

Robert: Darrell, can you explain a little bit further on Craig's List and how could you do marketing programs that place on the first page of Google?

Darrell: Yeah, this is another system that I've developed is that once you've developed your website and you've developed your maps, and you've developed the other things that you can have on them, it's seven other digital tools that will place on the first page of Google. My objective all the time is to control the first page of Google. Everybody's worried about getting the website up there, it's only one of ten. I want ten of ten. I have done seven out of ten. I've done it where the first five pages were controlled by clients of mine. There is a promise. Once you've put your competition on page two, you've eliminated them. People don't go to page two.

They see you four, five, six times on page one; they figure you're the biggest guy on the block.

How do you do that? You've got to have different digital tools that will place. They include Kijiji, Craigslist, Activerain Super Blogs, all of these things. I develop them all for you.

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Darrell: Walt, the website is limited with his SEO, and is limited with ... Here's the problem with websites.

Google has to crawl the websites, error fight, and then place it. If they don't do that instantly, everyday ... The other thing is Google doesn't have ... They don't own your website. They give priority to the media they own.

Maps, videos, they own YouTube. YouTube will always place on Google. Whereas Hulu, and all these other video sites, they never place on Google.

Robert:

Can you tell me where ... What the referral QuikCall?

Darrell: Yes. We've developed a system there that is a digital app that is highly effective of ... You get everything that you need to know, and referral that company with one click. It lists your nameRobert:

How does it work though? How do you get quikcall to work?

Darrell: Yeah. Basically what then open up the app, it lists every digital detail about your company. Your phone number, your fax, your SMS, your Twitter, LinkedIn, everything. There's no other place that you can have a simple system like this. Now with one click, it will refer to ... It'll be referred. If you have aRobert:

Who it will refer to? Who ...

Darrell: The system is built in, and it'll refer to the friends and families of the person with one click.

There's a one click referral system, with a preloaded message. I used XYZ Services, and I was happy with it. That goes to all their social media, and they can click and refer you.

Robert: Can I can download it from an app store ?

Darrell: I did a lot of research into this system. I wanted a simple, easy to use. People don't like downloading. They forget their password, and it's intimidating for them. We are basically two generations. The ones that are under 20, and the rest of the population. They are very used to tech. They grew up with it. They're very tech savvy. The persons that are 30, 40, 50 years old, which are the major decision makers, the ones that you want as your customer, they would like something quick and easy, and easy to use.

Robert:

Darrell, you spoke a little bit a while back about click to call out. What is that click to call out?

Darrell: This is my solution to ... I've been doing this for a long time there, and when you put a 1 (800) number in your digital media, they can't click and call it on Facebook, or a lot of these other things. On your YouTube videos, they still have to sit their with their iPhone, or whatever they have, and copy and type in the number. I created a click to call number that is simple. They click it once, and it works!. It's the app. I has every detail about the company with one click.

Robert:

It's a app thing, or ...

Darrell: There's a ... What I ... I've gone through the learning curve too is that, still need having a long name that is ... Well for instance, let's put my name. Darrell Backen. There's 57 ways to spell Darrell. Most people put an R, in Backen, and it becomes Bracken. It's not an easy thing to pass on to people. If I go 1.1l.tel, that's a

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simple thing. People ... We are in a large ESL population. They read numbers in their own language. They understand it instantly. One, two, three, four, five, is une, deux, trois, cinq in French. They look at numbers immediately in their own language, and it's instantly usable for them.

Robert: Darrell, it's been really informative for me. Personally, I really wanted to thank you for your time, and the Digital Gardens app.

Darrell: The idea of the Digital Garden is that it takes more work to set it up. Just like all gardens. It takes a bit of maintenance, but it has long term effects.

Robert: Darrell: Robert:

You got to water the garden.

That's it, and weed it.

Yep.

Digital Marketing Programs Developed

By Darrell Backen

Solution to Copying An Address and Phone Number From A Magazine This is a solution to the aggravation of when you're reading an ad in a magazine or wherever and down at the bottom is usually the address, the phone number, the website and an email contact list. The problem is, you've got to transfer it by hand into your Smart Phone or computer, whatever it is you're doing. This system is called

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QuikLook. It's instant all info. For this Samsung ad, all you would type is 30.1B.Tel. Very simple, it is excellent for people that are second language and you can give it over the phone because you don't have to spell it. There's no other way to spell 30 except 3-0, period.

Basically you just click that 30.1.Tel, just enter it into either a mobile or a desktop and it gives you all the instant info. You click on the contact center, gives you the telephone number, the web address, the office phone number, email, even text, facts. Everything you need in seconds. With One Click, there is no typing once you've entered that. You just click it and it's added to your screen.

10 to 15 years ago, small businesses did not have to do much to develop business. They put an ad in the phonebook, put out a few flyers and occasional ads... that was enough. However, your clients don't look there anymore.

Now virtually all business is developed online through Google. Most businesses do not know how to market themselves online effectively. They're missing up 80% of their potential market.

Darrell Backen has developed a simple cost-effective marketing solution a fresh approach to digital marketing

Take a look at Google's philosophy #1 Focus on the user and all else will follow.

We Focus On Your Customer... the Google user.

We make their experience the fastest, easiest way to buy from you.

Our Goal: Dominate the First Page of Google The Result: A Revolution in Digital Marketing Think Different!

“Give the prospect all the information... instantly to make a well-informed decision”

Branding Innovation When people search your market segment Your Logo appears on 1st page Google

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When Logo is clicked, your introduction video story plays

Make it Easy for People to: Find You...when they ask Google a question your video answer pops up Like You...give them the info they need to make a well informed decision Buy From You... with mobile 'on the go decisions' Keep You... on their mobile phone with your app Refer You...using the app with 1 click to all their social media

“Innovations In Digital Marketing Systems that are the easiest to use by your customer."

This new app system solves many of your customer's wants and needs Providing a better customer experience Easier to find Easy to recognize Easy to keep info with app Easy to use flyer system Easy to refer Easy to find daily needs and wants quikcall Easy on the emvironment Totally green...no environment impac No typing... no searching... no spelling Easy to refer system...increase your referrals!

Preloaded messages that auto post to Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ with just two clicks When people want to share your mobile site with others and to their social media followers, there is no work for them to do it.

Most people are not comfortable with Twitter and typing. This system solves that problem, messages are preloaded all they do is click twice.

The message is posted on their Facebook Twitter and their Google+ as a personal referral from them

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How the mobile app works The site works like a TV remote to all of your digital information on the Internet Mobile marketing system is easy to use for Seniors People with disabilities People who speak English as a second language (ESL) As there is no typing searching or spelling that is needed people can recognize what they want and click on it Designed to Be Easy to Spread the Word The mobile site does not have to downloaded from app store. This is a major improvement over traditional apps.

The mobile site can be sent to thousands of people by email SMS text.

It is a simple process to add the site to the home screen of any mobile device 1 Mobile Search Easier Mobile Use... "when you're in the rain with an umbrella and one hand and groceries and the other"

Making Mobile Search Easier The most common searches preloaded so you just click your smart phone like a TV remote No typing, no spelling, no 'big finger' aggravation!

Always There When You Need It On Your Mobile Device 'the complete information to make a well informed decision!'

Websites LinkedIn Facebook Featured In the News Pinterest Google+ Networking Associations Email Skype Converts your viewers to instantly view your mobile website if you have one Direct connect to any employee you choose to list GPS directions to your stores brings customers to your doors

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Why Mobile Search?

PEOPLE USE THEIR MOBILE DEVICES INSTEAD OF THEIR COMPUTERS On the Daily Commute In the Waiting Room In the Lunchroom Over Coffee Over Lunch Waiting for the Bus Between Appointments

I want to get away for the weekend

The system makes it very easy for people to make plans for the weekend. All of the details for a weekend getaway can't be profile very easily in this section What are ideas for a weekend getaway from my city?

Videos articles and connections to various places that are perfect weekend getaway can be featured here How far is it to this place?

The GPS in their phone will tell them what is the driving directions to their weekend getaway and how long it would take to get there What is in the area?

Details of what else is in the area while they're on their weekend getaway can be provided here What activities can I do while I'm there?

Click to enter a detailed answer to the question above. You can add as much text as you like, but we recommend keeping your explanation concise: Visitors to this page will want to find the answers they need quickly! You might consider including images if they help illustrate the information you're providing.

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Buying a New Home Instant answers to your buyers questions People want to make the decisions on the go with their mobile devices. 1 mobile search makes it easy.

Where is the sales presentation center The GPS in your mobile device shows you exactly how to get the sales presentation center with driving instructions from where you are as well as bus instructions from where you are including what bus when it leaves and what transfers you need to make What are the floor plans The floor plans of each of the units are displayed instantly on your mobile device What Public transportation is nearby The system shows the closest busstops as well what buses go there What is the contact information The address phone number website and all contact information is instantly available on their mobile device.

The homebuyer can contact instantly while they're driving around. They are on the go in fall where they can take a look at your complex where it is what the layouts are what the prices are what the availability is and where the site presentations in respect of where they are now according to GPS in their phone What videos can I see to see what the place in the grounds look like Videos as far as the interior the building and the grounds in the area are all provided in the system What does the area look like There is a quick link to a Google earth overview of the area which shows the amenities nearby what the terrain looks like and where it is located in the city Who is the person to contact The correct sales presentation personnel are listed in the site. Their phone number email and other social media can also be listed

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Shopping Decisions App Where is the nearest store to me now?

Complete directions by driving and also by public transit are given to the store of your choice with the GPS in their mobile device How can I learn more about this product?

A complete product display can be set up showing all the features and benefits of each individual productline What number do I call to get in touch of the person I want to talk to you?

People cannot get in touch with the department that they want using the direct dial system direct from their mobile device. This eliminates the need for them going through voice mail and the operator if they have a direct line to that department they just click it and it dialed for them automatically on their mobile phone What is nearby that store?

Part of the shopping experience is what other stores are beside it. A Google map Street view of what else is on the block can be listed What hours is the store open?

A direct link to the website page that shows your stores hours can be provided so that when you change the store hours on your website is updated automatically on the systems.

Where Should We Eat App? People now have a method to access a restaurant close by them according to the GPS in their phone. They maybe three blocks from your restaurant but there's no other way of knowing it until now What's on the menu?

You can now have your online menu available for easy viewing with a mobile device What are the specials on the menu today?

You could have a direct link to the special section of your website giving people instant access to your specials of the day Are there any coupons that are applicable?

You could have an online coupon system built into your profile Give information on your nutrition for the meals?

You can have a direct link to your nutrition explanation of your meals Are there any photos of your meals?

People can choose a meal that they like. That looks good!!!

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Do you have a takeout service?

You can easily provide your take-out menu with the profile. There would also be an online order number as well as a phone number to order the food Do you do delivery?

Your delivery menu can be placed there as well as the delivery order by online menu as well as phone number Where is the closest _____________restaurant near me?

The GPS will indicate where they are and where the closest specialty restaurant is near them Do I need a reservation?

Easy reservation phone numbers make mobile reservations perfect for on the go people Do you have a kids menu?

You can displaya kids menu complete with photos What does your restaurant look like?

You can provide chair photos as well as videos of the interior on as well as the neighborhood. These are all part of the dining experience.

Do you provide catering services for Company parties?

This is an excellent method to have your catering services profile for Company parties birthday parties and other special occasions Is your restaurant large enough to seat _______ people?

You can show the capacity of your restaurant here

Shopping for Furniture App People could now have an easy method while you're out shopping with their mobile devices to find a store find a style of furniture to looking for and also research and get information on the brands of furniture What are the furniture stores near me?

GPS location in their mobile devices will direct them to the closest furniture stores to them How do I get there by public transit?

The GPS in their mobile device will give them complete transit information including what bus to take the next bus to take and what transfers they need to make from whatever location they are presently app to your store Do you have an online Catalog I can see with the furniture looks like?

By viewing the online catalog thinking preview and research information they want to know before they go.

When they arrive at your store they already have a pretty good idea what they want Do you have a delivery service?

You could outline what your delivery areas are Ansol this question for them quickly and easily Is there parking nearby?

You can let them know details of parking what do you have a customer parking, free parking or validated

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parking Can I ask a question of a certain department?

You could have direct lines to area departments for email and telephone so that people can quickly find out what they want on the go on the way to your store This eliminates all of phone tag and being put on hold while they find people and the frustrations of going through a automated operator.

What name brands do you carry?

People can research the name brands online and arrive at your store as a qualified well-informed buyer but just a shopper

Benefits Of The App Social media All Media in one easy to locate place. Facebook twitter LinkedIn Pinterest GPS map right to your stores door The GPS in the mobile device gives direct directions to your stores door by driving by bus including which bus to take and what's the next time and by walking Educational videos You can now answer the 20 most asked questions that your customers ask you in a series of videos that are quick and easy for your customers to find so they're completely answering all the questions that they would have all your service or product Instant contact to the correct person Your client can contact the correct person in your organization directly by phone by Skype by email This eliminates all the voice mail auto attendant aggravations when they phone you and can't get through. People like to deal with people not machines

Showcase your products and their features and benefits This system allows you to get the features and benefits of each one of your products so that people can shop on the goal have their questions answered and make a decision wallet out and ready to buy

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Keep in touch with your current customers with the constant upgrade

"Click Click and You're There!" ™ Shop in seconds No searching, no spelling, no typing...

USE YOUR SMARTPHONE Like Speed Dial Works on iPhone, iPad, iPod, Blackberry and Android Instantly have all the information to make a well informed decision. Videos, online articles, product feature demos. Maps give directions using your mobile's GPS from wherever you are by auto and bus routes.

PEOPLE USE THEIR MOBILE DEVICES INSTEAD OF THEIR COMPUTERS On the Daily Commute In the Waiting Room In the Lunchroom Over Coffee Over Lunch Waiting for the Bus Between Appointments People Use Any Spare Moment They Have To get Instant Info. They do not wait to get home or to the office to turn on a computer. People use their Smartphones while watching TV, going to the bathroom even at 2 in the morning when they can't sleep! Look to find what you like then click on it!!! Near Here -works with the GPS in your mobile device to find instantly stores, banks, services that are around where you are now. For Kids and seniors there is a direct connect to hundreds of YouTube videos

Preloaded Mobile Searches Videos, online articles, product feature demos. Maps give directions using your mobile's GPS from wherever you are by auto and bus routes.

Searches for: Planning the weekend, Events are happening, What trade shows are coming up, Mobile version of the home show, A simple use guide for seniors,

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Planning a RV vacation Planning a vacation to the island Planning a vacation to the USA Planning a vacation on a cruise Planning a vacation in BC Mobile visitors guide with links to local information A mobile guide for shopping for a new condo A mobile guide for shopping for a new home A mobile guide for shopping for a new car A mobile guide for shopping for a new Heavy Truck How to plan your trading and investing strategies Special Applications for: English as a second language. ESL people can recognize what they want but they can’t spell it.

Search & Assist app for people with disabilities so they can use the Internet effectively.

Your App ...

Your Blueprint to Your Complete Online Profile 1L App is an all in one source for your complete online profile. When you are given as a referral, the person has all the information in seconds to make a well informed decision. The results are ACCURATE, COMPLETE REFERRALS IN SECONDS. No searching, no spelling, no typing...use just like a TV remote 1L App...USE YOUR SMARTPHONE LIKE A TV REMOTE Instantly have all the information to make a well informed decision. Videos, online articles, product feature demos. Maps give directions using your mobile's GPS from wherever you are by auto and bus routes.

1L App...works on all mobile devices: smartphones, iPods, iPhones, iPads, Android and Blackberry.

1L App...also works on laptops and desktop either mac or PC.

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Car Buying App Answer all your car buyers questions while there are out car shopping and bring them to your dealership with the GPS in their mobile device Which model of car suits me best?

You can have a complete product display including videos and photos of each of your line of automobiles Which models have the best fuel consumption?

You can give the fuel consumption of each of the models in your automobile lineup What are the newest models available?

You get instant updates to your productline What is your location of the dealership?

When they click on the map it gives step-by-step directions of how to drive there as well as step-by-step directions of how to get from wherever they are by public transit including the next bus and what transfers they have to make all on the GPS of the mobile device What is your service center like?

You cannot complete profile on the service center of your dealership Are there any videos of the cars?

You can have a features and benefits video for each of the models in your automobile lineup Are there any awards for your model lineup?

People love to research and get all the details of the vehicle before there ever come to a dealership you provide the best research material for them and they come to your dealership What do I know about this dealership?

Here you can profile all of your awards and service sales as well as your Facebook Twitter and any social media accounts that you have

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I have questions, who should I call?

You can have a list of your sales people with all their contact numbers as well as your service people as well as your financing people When a person changes position in your company it can be updated instantly in your profile How do I get to your dealership by transit?

There are step-by-step directions to get to the dealership from wherever the person is showing what buses The catch it and what transferred they would have to make this is all done by the GPS in the mobile device

Condo Shopping App Instant answers to your Buyers questions People want to make the decisions on the go with their mobile devices. 1 mobile search makes it easy.

Where is the sales presentation center The GPS in your mobile device shows you exactly how to get the sales presentation center with driving instructions from where you are as well as bus instructions from where you are including what bus when it leaves and what transfers you need to make What are the floor plans The floor plans of each of the units are displayed instantly on your mobile device What Public transportation is nearby The system shows the closest bus stops as well what buses go there What is the contact information?

The address phone number website and all contact information is instantly available on their mobile device.

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The homebuyer can contact instantly while they're driving around. They are on the go in fall where they can take a look at your complex where it is what the layouts are what the prices are what the availability is and where the site presentations in respect of where they are now according to GPS in their phone

What videos can I see to see what the place in the grounds look like Videos as far as the interior the building and the grounds in the area are all provided in the system What does the area look like?

There is a quick link to a Google earth overview of the area, which shows the amenities nearby what the terrain looks like and where it is located in the city Who is the person to contact?

The correct sales presentation personnel are listed in the site. Their phone number email and other social media can also be listed Click to enter a detailed answer to the question above. You can add as much text as you like, but we recommend keeping your explanation concise: Visitors to this page will want to find the answers they need quickly! You might consider including images if they help illustrate the information you're providing.

Where Should We Eat App? People now have a method to access a restaurant close by them according to the GPS in their phone. They maybe three blocks from your restaurant but there's no other way of knowing it until now

What's on the menu?

You can now have your online menu available for easy viewing with a mobile device What are the specials on the menu today?

You could have a direct link to the special section of your website giving people instant access to your specials of the day Are there any coupons that are applicable?

You could have an online coupon system built into your profile

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Give information on your nutrition for the meals?

You can have a direct link to your nutrition explanation of your meals Are there any photos of your meals?

People can choose a meal that they like. That looks good!!!

Do you have a takeout service?

You can easily provide your take-out menu with the profile. There would also be an online order number as well as a phone number to order the food Do you do delivery?

Your delivery menu can be placed there as well as the delivery order by online menu as well as phone number Where is the closest _____________restaurant near me?

The GPS will indicate where they are and where the closest specialty restaurant is near them Do I need a reservation?

Easy reservation phone numbers make mobile reservations perfect for on the go people Do you have a kids menu?

You can display kids menu complete with photos What does your restaurant look like?

You can provide chair photos as well as videos of the interior on as well as the neighborhood. These are all part of the dining experience.

Do you provide catering services for Company parties?

This is an excellent method to have your catering services profile for Company parties birthday parties and other special occasions Is your restaurant large enough to seat _______ people?

You can show the capacity of your restaurant here Narrated Brochure... a new concept in communications.

"All the information to make a Well Informed Decision" This narrated brochure is optimized to appear on Google when prospects are searching Google. It is like a digital sales presentation giving all the information in a normal sales call. The prospect become well informed in minutes. There is a major savings of their time as they get what they want... "All the information to make a well informed decision"

Video Brochure and

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Video Billboard Marketing Dominates Market Niches on The First Page Of Google

Video Brochures Have proven to be the most effective way of marketing online. I have developed websites and SEO for the websites but the Video Brochures outranked and outperformed every time. The reason...Google bought YouTube for 1.6 Billion Dollars. It is their best interest to features well produced, highly developed SEO videos so they rank well.

If they can't find you, they can't buy from you.

Are you invisible on Google, Yahoo and MSN? Here is an example of the effectiveness of SEO and paste each into google to see the ranking. house painter, vancouver house painter, west vancouver house painter, north vancouver house painter, richmond house painter, langley house painter, port moody house painter, coquitlam house painter, delta house painter, new westminster house painter, white rock

Multi Channel Multi Platform Multi Media Program Development of an Education Based Marketing Program Sets Your Firm up as an Authority in the Industry I have over 20 years’ experience of writing, editing and producing magazines and newspapers. I can write education based articles on your industry and develop your firm to a position of authority in the marketplace.

This is a major advantage over the rest of the marketplace, as most companies do not have a publishing or marketing presence. Most companies have a full-color brochure kit with a few pictures of samples. This is the extent of their marketing efforts. This does not differentiate them from anyone else in the marketplace. If there is nothing memorable or beneficial for the client to keep and use this piece, it'll be thrown in the garbage or filed and forgotten.

Research and Development of Client Needs Evaluation Systems

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Programs can be developed, which will address the needs of your clients. Most companies make the mistakes of taking care of their needs, instead of concentrating on the client’s needs first. To be successfully competitive, a company needs to have a priority marketing system in place, which intrigues the client to remember, value and do business with your firm.

Development Of Advertising with Your Suppliers Paying Part of the Advertising Cost A major reduction in you advertising costs can be achieved by co-marketing with established cooperative marketing budgets set up by your suppliers.

Participation in Direct Mail Campaigns to Your Target Market on a Wholesale Basis For a fraction of the cost of doing direct mail campaigns monthly to your complete target market a system can be set up with major savings. The returns on this marketing are up to 25 times the effectiveness of the regular advertising. My campaigns are returned similar results for the last 15 years.

Develop an Automatic Referral Generation System.

An automatic referral generation system can be set up with Maximizer. This system, both brings in referrals, as well as brings in new business from past clients. There are many different methods of implementing an automatic referral generation system.

Development and Implementation of an E-Commerce Strategy Development to of a comprehensive E-Commerce program is essential to bring in business from the new media sources that have developed over the last 10 years. An E-Commerce program is very cost-effective once it is set up.

Web Site Development and Strategy Development of an effective web site, complete with proper search engine optimization is essential to a productive E-Commerce program. Once your site is developed, you have to make it easy for anyone to find you, by using the proper Meta tags and optimization techniques Research and Development of Prospects Who Share Your Top Clients Classification Code.

Research of the classifications that your best customer lists are now in is extremely profitable. For example, if you have good results with one market segment, I can research and deliver the entire market in that market segment. This follows the 80/20 rule in 80% of your business comes from 20% of your clients. The objective is to find more those 20% of those clients who have a similar classification code. 100% market penetration in the 20% top producing market is very profitable and affordable Development of Alliance Marketing for Your Web Site Additional revenue sources and networking of clients can be achieved through Alliance Marketing on your web site.

Development of Maximizer Customer Relationship Management.

Training of your staff on the effective use of Maximizer would increase their productivity tremendously. I've been using Maximizer since 1986 when it first came on the market. I attended Corporate Communications Training College for the course on Computerized Sales and Marketing to learn the full capabilities of Maximizer.

Most people only use 10 to 20% of the capabilities of Maximizer. When properly used, Maximizer can completely control and organize your customer relationship management, commonly known as CRM. When I was a student at the BCIT Venture Development Program I was asked to give seminars to the students as my knowledge on Maximizer was more than the faculty had Development of Public Relations and Publicity Releases To Take Advantage Of Free Promotion Writing and producing publicity releases and developing a public-relations strategy is another function I

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provide. Every editor, managing editor, news editor, and features editor for every publication in the lower mainland is in my database. Once a release is produced, it is quickly sent out the entire market.

Registration with All Supply and Services Sourcing Systems Simple registration is free for most of these sourcing systems, which can bring you an additional revenue from large corporations, targeted market segments, Provincial and Federal purchases Research Development and Implementation Of a Marketing Calendar Creation of a marketing calendar, which coordinates peak periods and pivot points in the marketing cycle with the appropriate marketing implementation. Coordination of direct-mail campaigns, promotional materials, institutional ads, trade shows, guest appearances on local radio and TV and personal visits to key personnel.

PowerPoint Presentations to Key Client Information Seminars.

Research, development and implementation of lunch hour, informational seminars with PowerPoint presentations to educate your clientele with a multimedia presentation of the benefits of your services.

Development of Financial Analysis Spreadsheets and Projections Development and implementation of a Financial Analysis Spreadsheet. The creation of a analytical spreadsheet will give instant answers when any variable is changed. An example of this would be to create a Financial Analysis Spreadsheet that shows changes in profit margin with incremental increases in price, materials cost or commissions.

Relationship Selling Techniques Staff can be trained in relationship selling the new concept in the selling process. Relationships’ selling builds customer loyalty. Perfection provides information that helps customers make intelligent actions. The goal is to build long-term relationships with clients. You become a consultant, partners and problems solvers for the customers. Not a salesman. The focus of relationship selling its improving the customer's bottom line. You consider sales planning as a top priority. He spent most of your contact time attempting to build a problemsolving environment with the client. They value your time experience then because it is in their benefit to do so.

Development of a Market Research Program.

Development of a market research program is vital to clarifying your actual target market. There are many modern methods that can be implemented, which the clients will participation in and bring in crucial information.

Step 1: Perform a reverse search to find out what the customers are actually asking for when they enter their search queries. if you do not know what they're asking for precisely, you'll not be allowed by Google to give the answer, because your company a lot come up in the search results. I research and develop the top 50 search variations for your market niche. I research up to 800 long tail keywords to maximize the results of your campaign.

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Look at the major difference in local search results for these common keywords, See the difference adding the the s makes Home Improvement 301,000 Home Improvements 18,100 Most people would think a house painter would be the main keyword a major mistake.

Painting Services 74,000 Housepainters 4,400 House Painter 2,400 Step 2: There are seven ways to get your business listed on the first page of Google. The old way out is getting your web site listed is not as effective as it once was. Google is giving prior ready treatment to the new services and programs they are developing. Google bought out YouTube a few months ago. If your video is in compliance with Google's Algorithm, it will have a dominant position on the first page of Google for your target market.

Have The Cost Of A Handful Of DIRECT MAIL..

Buy Truckloads with Wave after Wave of DIRECT MAIL Ask About Our Secret ...

Reach One Million Readers With Only 10,000 Deliveries...

They Read It Daily and Keep Using The Info for Months Afterward!!!

Step 3 There are two major dominant positions that are the center of attention in the first page of Google.

The First Major Dominant Position is the Google map listing.

The second major dominant position is the video search results. Google places the YouTube videos in the most dominant position on page 1 Google. The videos that get placed are the ones that have the best SEO. Products and Clients Featured in Darrell Backen's Publications, Business Development Systems or Digital Marketing Campaigns Molly Maid California Closets Bang & Olufsen Inglis Canada UBC Douglas College Sylvan Learning Centers Sears Kwik Kerb Kohler Canada Grohe Merrill Lynch Goepel McDermid Global Securities Re/Max Realty Executives Century 21

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Sutton Group Arctic Spas DuPont Corian Levelor Blinds Tilley Endurables PCO Pest Control ADT Security Systems Second Cup Toro Dec-k-ing ReflechTech MicroSoft Certified Professional Systems Engineer Phonetic Reading Centre Fantasy Weddings Luxury Bath Liners Vino-tec Wines Ceiling Clean Duraguard Fencing Green Thumb Irrigation Rohit Homes Robin Lawn TMSI Business Phone Systems Spartan Construction Chateau Designs Sunrise Kitchens Vantech Plastics Corp Delta Glass Aromask European House Painter Art Knapps Athenry Gate Focused Networking

Getting your website onto Google

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is not enough anymore Multi Media Marketing + Multi Channel + Multi Platform = Results On Google Key features of the mobile marketing system Works all platforms iPhone iPad iPod Blackberry and Android Usually shared between friends and family without going to the App Store This is not an app that needs to be downloaded This is a system that works on the DNS, it is extremely fast as it is not hosted on a website.

It provides a web link app that is easily added to any mobile home screen. It can also be added to any desktop as well ( as a weblink) Easy to use for people who don’t normally use computers well. Seniors people with disabilities and people with English as a second language (ESL) can easily use this system.

Uses that you can use it for: Index to your YouTube account. Some companies have hundreds of videos YouTube account but there’s no quick and easy way to find any particular video Instantly share by SMS text, email, Facebook, twitter, and Google+ With no typing and just a couple clicks you can jpread your message to thousands of people.

When you share the app with your friends and family a chain reaction can start.

When they click on the Facebook button it is automatically posted with the preloaded message to their entire Facebook connections. The same happens to their Twitter connections and Google plus connections To do a mobile marketing campaign like this could spread to hundreds of thousands of people within a few hours.

The system is perfectly designed for fundraising, events organization and political campaigns It is easy to use and understand just like a TV remote control. There is no typing, no spelling mistakes or frustrations just Look Like and Click.

HOW TO LEVERAGE YOUR SALES FORCE The solution to increasing sales without increasing your sales staff

QuikFind a new paradigm in marketing By putting extra into your ordinary you can have an extraordinary results!!!

A simple concept...Have other complimentary businesses send out your information as well as there's anyone at that all of your customers would carry on their iPhones Instead of having, 50 companies with their three-person salesforce sending out only their sales brochures have everybody send everybody's on an app.

A life cycle of ordinary marketing tools Single company's full-color brochure sent out by mail

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Results if you're lucky is filed away Most likely thrown out of not need it now Salesperson cold calling maximum 50 clients a day Results the national average one and four and it takes up to seven impressions to close a sale One company holding a booth at a tradeshow handing pens mugs calendars with only their name on it Results most of this way ends up stored in a drawer or thrown in the garbage Very small percentage will remember who the item was given to from unit of the name is on Now add The EXTRA to ordinary..

All companies in a market segment are on an app that all of their clients carry on their mobile devices to access whenever they need them There is a mutual benefit between all participants as their information is all digital and active 24 seven Every participating company has mutual benefit to the actions of all The app is listed on email signatures brochures invoices and other printed material and email material the word is spread rapidly To send 50,000 email by one company from a button list will have a 1% open rate To have 50 companies send out 1000 emails to their clients it'll have an 80 to 90% open rate

OUR 8 WAYS TO DOMINATE YOUR MARKET SEGMENT

1. MOBILE MARKETING 2. VIDEO BROCHURES 3. VIDEO BILLBOARDS 4. INTERACTIVE DIGITAL BROCHURES 5. NARRATED DIGITAL BROCHURES 6. VIDEO BLOG 7. VIDEO MAGAZINES 8. VIRAL NEWS FEEDS

Mobile Marketing for Political Campaigns The site works like a TV remote to all of your digital information on the Internet

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Mobile marketing system is easy to use for Seniors People with disabilities People who speak English as a second language (ESL) As there is no typing searching or spelling that is needed people can recognize what they want and click on it Designed To Be Easy To Spread the Word The mobile site does not have to downloaded from app store. This is a major improvement over traditional apps.

The mobile site can be sent to thousands of people by email SMS text.

It is a simple process to add the site to the home screen of any mobile device It is then available for use anytime anywhere The Mobile Site works on All Platforms iPad iPod iPhone Android BlackBerry Windows mobile Easy to refer system Preloaded messages that auto post to Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ with just two clicks When people want to share your mobile site with others and to their social media followers, there is no work for them to do it.

Most people are not comfortable with Twitter and typing. This system solves that problem, messages are preloaded all they do is click twice.

The message is posted on their Facebook Twitter and their Google+ as a personal referral from them Easy-to-use It works just like a TV remote control brings you to that precise location on the TV broadcasting system.

Designed to use like a TV remote control. People look up-and-down to find what they want and just click on it instantly is taking them to that digital location on the Internet Control Distribution about Your Speech Instead of the Media Putting a Spin on It Your followers can now broadcast the whole correct story to their friends, family and co-workers! So many times the essence of what was said is completely misunderstood by the public, as he didn’t get the whole story Time and time again, the essence of what you speak about, gets misunderstood in media Control media spin by sharing your entire speech conveying your entire thought instead of the little snippets that the media will print or broadcast.

Video marketing is a very powerful tool. You can now have your own video of your speeches that go on your mobile site so that the entire story is told correctly.

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The mobile marketing site enables the user of the mobile site to find the video they want instantly as it is a video index YouTube is a great broadcasting system but there is no effective index The TV remote style of this mobile site enables the person to choose what they want to watch them be connected to it instantly.

Political parties have hundreds of videos and have spent thousands of dollars developing these videos, but they have very few views because they’re not optimized to seen.

The mobile marketing video Index feature enables your main videos to be instantly seen by your entire audience.

QuikFIND™ Mobile Speed Search "Click Click and You're There!"™ “Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication” Leonardo da Vinci Shop in seconds with QuikFIND™ No searching, no spelling, no typing... use just like a TV remote USE YOUR SMARTPHONE LIKE A TV REMOTE Instantly have all the information to make a well informed decision. Videos, online articles, product feature demos. Maps give directions using your mobile's GPS from wherever you are by auto and bus routes.

With the new paradigm shift to mobile, PEOPLE USE THEIR MOBILE DEVICES INSTEAD OF THEIR COMPUTERS ✆n the Go Info™ On the Daily Commute In the Waiting Room In the Lunchroom Over Coffee Over Lunch Waiting for the Bus Between Appointments People Use Any Spare Moment They Have To get Instant Info. They do not wait to get home or to the office to turn on a computer. People use their Smartphones while watching TV, going to the bathroom even at 2 in the morning when they can't sleep!

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QuikCALL™ MOBILE What We Do 30 years ago, Darrell Backen developed QuikCALL™ MOBILE Wallet Directory the newly developed mobile phone. It was an Emergency Contact card to carry in the wallet with local companies phone numbers on it.

THE NEXT EVOLUTION OF MOBILE REFERRAL MARKETING… USE YOUR SMARTPHONE LIKE A TV REMOTE webREMOTE by QuikCALL™ MOBILE Shop in seconds with webREMOTE. No searching, No spelling, No typing…

Accurate instant referrals Referrals are the lifeblood of our businesses. However very few companies have a referral marketing plan in place.

The solution to the TWO MOST VALUABLE ASKED QUESTIONS WHAT DO YOU DO? and WHO DO YOU KNOW THAT DOES…?

PEOPLE USE THEIR MOBILE DEVICES INSTEAD OF WEBSITES On the Go✆Info™ On the daily commute In the Waiting Room In the Lunchroom Over Coffee Over Lunch Waiting for the Bus Between Appointments People Use Any Spare Moment They Have To get Instant Info. They do not wait to get home or to the office to turn on a computer. People use their Smartphones while watching TV, going to the bathroom even at 2 in the morning when they can't sleep!

webREMOTE gives all the information to make a well informed decision. Videos, online articles, product feature demos. Maps give directions using your mobile's GPS from wherever you are by auto and bus routes.

Apps for: Planning the weekend, events are happening, what trade shows are coming up,

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a mobile version of the home show, A simple use guide for seniors, Planning a RV vacation Planning a vacation to the island Planning a vacation to the USA Planning a vacation on a cruise Planning a vacation in BC Mobile visitors guide with links to local information A mobile guide for shopping for a new condo A mobile guide for shopping for a new home A mobile guide for shopping for a new car A mobile guide for shopping for a new Heavy Truck How to plan your trading and investing strategies

Special Applications for: English as a second language. ESL people can recognize what they want but they can’t spell it.

Search & Assist app for people with disabilities so they can use the Internet effectively.

Over Lunch ...where employees have 22 days a month with a spend up to an hour to relax and read on their mobile devices.

Quick find government services... a simple point-and-click app instead of trying to figure out those long URLs AN APP TO LEARN ABOUT CANDIDATES IN AN ELECTION ...all the information to make a wellinformed decision at election time without the media hype.

Concept Developed Watching The Nature Channel!

As a publisher of Home and Leisure Magazine, I was trying to figure out how to improve the communications without the massive waste.

I was watching PBS nature channel and started thinking well let's develop marketing based around what works in nature.

Objective: Develop what the consumer wants and instantly views it as worth keeping. People do not tend to read print magazines anymore, they don't go to the phonebook anymore and they hate junk mail.

Works on 3 Natural Laws of Success Share the Load...Canada geese fly in V formation to share the work changing the lead as the lead bird cuts the wind resistance, the rest of the flock flys behind without much effort... a 70% improvement in efficiency.

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How We Share the Load... Each participant pays one month full marketing cost then 11 months follow along cost.

How the app is spread...

Backen Media promotes monthly to it's database You send out monthly to your field of influence We select allied companies to send out to their database.

From a trusted source... if one person sends out to a group's email database only a small % will be opened and used as they do not recognize the info form a trusted source. Instead, the program enables everyone to send out to their own database where they are well known ...result a very high open rate.

Everyone works in their own best interest...Fruit attracts animals to eat and carry their seeds. Have something that benefits the user to keep and use instantly THEY WANT TO HAVE IT BECAUSE IT IS IN THEIR BEST INTEREST TO HAVE IT. The app can solve many of life's problems in seconds The next train The 14 day weather forecast Border lineups Ferry lineups Planning for the weekend with local events calendar Weekend getaways What is near here Emergency QuikCall directory 24 hour pharmacy 24 hour vet clinic Mutual Benefit... Honeybee carries pollen from flowers to help grow the network of flowers the flowers benefit and the honeybee benefits How we use Mutual Benefit: We donate space to charities and local events to share with their database Charities School sports programs Local school theatre Local communities events Once the app is on their mobile device, it is the only media that is effective...

24 hours a day 7 days a week Always with the user Instantly shared with 2 clicks Instant referral with 2 clicks

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CELEBRATING 30 years OF MOBILE REFERRAL MARKETING (1983 - 2013) The Motorola DynaTAC handset was the first commercial cell phone was created in 1983. It weighed about 2.5 pounds and cost nearly $4,000. It had only a few stored numbers.

Darrell Backen created and developed QuikCALL™ Wallet Directory in 1983 to have local business numbers ALWAYS HANDY IN YOUR WALLET to make a 'Quik Call' The Instant Mobile Referral to "Who Do You Know That Does..."

“What Do You Do?" It was a card designed to carry in wallet to always have handy EMERGENCY CONTACT INFO and local sponsors phone numbers. The basis for 'Mobile Marketing' was created, bringing in business with mobile devices.

The QuikCALL™ Glovebox Directory was created for the original mobile phone market mounted in automobiles.

The QuikCALL™ design evolved into a dollar bill size directory that people carry in their wallet effortless like money, which was easier to carry and share because it was just like money.

Developed in 1983 by 2 childhood friends Darrell Backen and Robert MacDonald

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QuikCall WALLETMATE

WHY WASTE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TARGETING GARBAGE CANS TARGET THEIR WALLET Designed to keep in the wallet like a dollar bill Always ready for use!!!

A Rethinking of Word Of Mouth....Something to Talk About Have your business in the wallet of thousands of people, both local and tourist!

Taking the JUNK OUT OF JUNK MAIL

QuikCall The New Digital format to be used with your cell phone and smart phone.

Instant info on any city you are in. Like having, hundreds of companies on your cell phone speed dial that change whenever you change cities.

Instantly Know...

Weather Of The City You Are Going To Ferry Info...Are There Delays?

Transit Info...Which Bus Do I Take?

Border Info...Are There Line Ups, Church...Where Is A Church I Can Go On My Travels?

Banking...Where Is There A Branch Of My Bank?

Events...What Is Going On While I Am In Town?

The MOBILE✆SMARTPHONE will be the primary and often exclusive platform NOT THE WEB! SmartMARKETING for ✆SMARTPHONES™

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THE NEXT EVOLUTION OF COMMUNICATIONS

With the new paradigm shift, first to social, now to mobile, PEOPLE USE THEIR MOBILE DEVICES INSTEAD OF WEBSITES•••For On the Go✆Info™ •••On the daily commute •••In the Waiting Room •••In the Lunchroom •••Over Coffee •••Over Lunch •••Waiting for the Bus •••Between Appointments People Use Any Spare Moment They Have To get Instant Info. They do not wait to get home or to the office to turn on a computer. People use their Smartphones while watching TV, going to the bathroom even at 2 in the morning when they can't sleep!

MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS INNOVATIONS

NearHere.tel ... Find What You Are Looking For In Seconds. Use Like A TV Remote•••Point☞Click☞ Connect☞ No Typing, No Spelling, No Searching, No Waiting in the Weather ✺ ☃ ☔ ❄ AsK4 ➢Assisted Search Keyless ➢Easy to use like a TV Remote No Spelling, No Searching, No Typing Mobile Search is easy now like a video channel selector SmartMARKETING for ✆SMARTPHONES™ has placed➢ North America✹ South America✹Europe✹Middle East✹Asia With the following ✆SMARTPHONES™ Platforms •••Video Brochure •••Video Billboard •••Home & Leisure Digital Interactive Magazine 43

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•••Business Decisions Interactive Digital Magazine •••Home & Leisure Magazine Multi Media Marketing Multi-Channel Multi-Platform = Great Results on Google Placement in the Interactive Digital Brochure also ranked on Google with this placement Today's consumer is the most educated consumer in history. With over 5 billion mobile devices in use around the world the consumer expects to get whatever they want instantly and on their timeframe.

There are 6.7 billion people in the planet, there are more mobile devices in use around the world than televisions, land lines and computers combined. It is the largest information revolution in history. People access instant information with the new smart phones with Any Spare Moment They Have Time on Their Hands...

On the Go Info On the daily commute In the Waiting Room In the Lunchroom Over Coffee Over Lunch Waiting for the Bus Between Appointments

Inspired By Nature We Have Developed Marketing Systems That Save up to 70%

By Sharing the Investment so We All Achieve More Results with Less Investment

Introduce innovative training and workplace strategies to increase the long term competitiveness of the organization and its workforce: Our training program is unique in its approach. Where most companies with our core skills (Social Media Marketing) are busy selling high-priced services to local small business, we're teaching these same companies how to get fantastic results in-house using their own employees. It's this innovative Social Media training that will set the companies up for long-term, sustainable growth and allow them to be much more competitive in their market

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space and allocate their advertising dollars more effectively!

7 WAYS TO DOMINATE YOUR NICHE MARKET WITH SEO MULTIMEDIA ONLINE

· Google map in local business listing, Google Places to place on 1st page Google · SEO for your website to place on 1st page Google · SEO for Videos from You Tube to place on 1st page Google · SEO for Social Media to place on 1st page Google · SEO for Blogs to place on 1st page Google · SEO for Images to place on 1st page Google · SEO for News Items to place on 1st page Google

Social Media and Inbound Marketing - Terminology - Inbound versus outbound marketing - Description of the Social Media landscape - Establishing realistic Social Media goals Website Analysis and Discussion - Your website will be graded and analyzed by our search engine optimization (SEO) specialists - Immediate recommendations will be given to optimize your website for search engines such as Google, Yahoo and bing Your competition - Monitor your competitors - Grade your competitors - Follow your competitors

Page Design Optimization for Social Media - CMS systems (content management systems) - Page layout & design suggestions - Landing pages & Conversion - Calls to Action - Conversion forms - Keywords & Meta descriptions

Google and YouTube - The number 2 search engine - Google places - Blended search

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Twitter - Introduction to Twitter - Useful additional tools to make Twitter more valuable - Twitter integration & benefits - The ‘Retweet’ - Automated tweets

Facebook & LinkedIn - LinkedIn overview - Facebook overview - Facebook vs. LinkedIn - Facebook event, fan or company pages

Location Based Social Media - Facebook places - Foursquare

Generating Content. Blogs, Blogging & Co - Blog options - Bloggers - Blog benefits - Content generation - Press releases - RSS Feeds & Netvibes - What are RSS feed and how do they work?

- Introduction to netvibes

Inbound Links - What are inbound links and why are they so important?

- How to get more inbound links - Advanced Link building 101 The Sharing Landscape - Overview of available tools Sharethis - Introduction to Sharethis - Real-life example - Code generation

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Addthis - Introduction to Addthis - Real life example - Code generation Google Analytics - Overview - Implementation guideline - Uses for Google Analytics

Resources - Useful Links & websites - Social Media tools

The Next Evolution of Communications Backen AsK4 Assisted Search Keyboard less Easy to use like a TV Remote No Spelling No Searching No Typing Who would use AsK4 Seniors who were afraid to use the computer. Originally developed for this market ESL (English Second Language) Major target market that find it easier to use that the old spell to find online system

People know what they want they can recognize it instantly but have difficulty spelling it in English to find but show it to them they click...they see... they buy

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People with Disabilities: Many more people can search online with computers and use their smart phones with the QuikFind System ...just point and click like a TV remote Using the 80/20 rule That people really look 80% of the time for just 20% of the categories on the internet.. The 20% are linked with the QuikFind Remote system.

Testimonial I’m Tom MacDonald from TMSI, Telephony Managed Solutions. I want to share with you some good news today, on one of the efforts I've been working on with Darrell on trying to get our company more business off of the internet, specifically off Google searches. I have that good news I want to share that with you today and I will get to it very, very quick here.

In the past what I was doing, and I've spent 4 years on this, I used to advertise in Yellow Pages, and I was spending about 40,000 dollars a year with quarter pages all over the main line here. I was getting business off it, but it was very, very expensive. I was looking for alternatives, and one of the alternatives was to say, "If I could get myself placed high Google on the first page, I'll probably could get some business coming my way." Not easy to do, as it turns out. I spent 4 years on it, I have looked at proposals from people who wanted to clean up my website, and spend 10 to 15,000 dollars improving my website, ongoing monthly fees of 300 or 400 dollars a month up to 4000 to 5,000 dollars to keep my ranking up, as they call it, with Google. I said there's got to be a better way of doing it.

After the 4 years of working, I finally hooked up with Darrell and we've got an effective way of doing this, through video for sure is where I'm going to talk a little bit about that. More importantly, I'm going to tell

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you how it worked in my company. I'm going to give you examples right now of some real success off of Google searches. Let's start right away.

I've got an insurance company in Fraser Valley. They called us off of the Google search, and didn't know us at all before that. Turned it into an 8,000-dollar sale right off the get-go, and about 400 dollars a month in revenue from them ongoing because of our FlexLines service that we sell. We've replaced Telus dial tones with our dial tones. They're very happy by the way. They save probably about the same amount of money that we're making, so if we're making about 350 dollars a month, they're saving about 350 dollars a month. That's about 4,000 dollars, a year that my company is pulling in. If you extrapolate that to 10 years, that's 40,000 dollars in the next 10 years because this dial tone will probably be with us for the 10 years. That's a good example of one where we initially 8,000 sale and 40,000 over the next 10 years.

Another company, a retail organization down in Vancouver, called us up off our keyword search, which is I think was probably a hotel in Vancouver in this case. We sold them a phone system on a complete rental. We're probably pulling in about 500 dollars a month from this customer. If you look at that, that's about 6,000 dollars a year, or 60,000 dollars in the next 10 years, which will probably add 30,000 in 5 years for sure, easy. I got a towing company in North Vancouver, you probably know of this. Within a week we had a system in there, it was about 3,000 dollars sale and another 200 to 300 dollars a month coming in. Again, you're looking at times 12, 3,600 dollars, times 5, 15,000 dollars every 5 years, I'm getting from that one. I've got some that I can't even post because there's so much activity. A company in Richmond, a broadcasting company in Richmond.

I've got an old manufacturing company in Port Coquitlam here. They had an old telephone system that is out in business any more folks. They were looking for someone to help them get out of that, so they called us, so we got them being helped and saving a lot of money. We've got another company, there's a Port Coquitlam as well. They're spending more than an enormous amount of money with Telus I think it's like 500 or 600 dollars.

They were on contract, we got them out of the contract with Telus and now they're well on there way to being able to save probably about 300 to 400 dollars a month. It will be probably 6,000 dollars 5 years revenue, 30,000 to 60,000 dollars every 5 to 10 years, that's revenue with them. A cool storage place in Cloverdale. Again they've got 3 large warehouses, they're trying to facilitate connections to. I would not have got that if it wasn't from our SEO efforts, our ability to get them coming to us. Same with another property management company in Coquitlam.

All these are real, all these have all transpired in the last probably 8 months after 4 years of efforts. The last 8 months have yielded the most effective campaign I have ever seen. It's taken my FlexLines business which is the ability to sell dial tones and replace Telus from zero over 100,000 dollars a year in less than 8 months already.

Very successful. It wasn't easy in the beginning, but I can definitely assure you now, that it's become a lot easier.

From 0 to over $100,000 a year. In less than 8 months already. So very successful. It wasn't easy it the beginning. But I can definitely assure you now that is has become a lot easier This testimonial was from 2010 so there has been hundreds of thousands of dollars of yearly revenue since from the campaign!

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Darrell Backen Started First Business in High School at 16

INTRODUCTION When I first told my friends that I was going to do aerating, most of them laughed. They started making jokes about AIR RAIDING and making siren sounds like an air raid alert. They laughed again when I met them later that evening, looking rather worn out and a bit dirty. "So, how much did you make 'AIR RAIDING'?" one jeered.

I replied that I didn't know as I hadn't taken the time to keep count. Their mouths dropped and the room filled with silence when I started to unload my pockets. I pulled 10's, 20's, 50's and checks from every pocket I had stuffed the money into when I had finished each job. The silence erupted into an excited chatter as they began to count the total. Shock quickly turned to envy as the total was revealed. I had made more than the total combined income of all of them had earned working at their part time jobs, all month! I had done this in one evening after school! The next evening, I was teaching them how to aerate lawns! I have been giving this same instruction to people who have been interested for the last 20 years since then. This is a very simple business that almost anyone can start in. I started when I was 16 years old, still in high school, in 1972.

Many people, to whom I have explained what aerating was and how to do it, have gone on to start successful aeration businesses of their own. Many have done it part-time as a supplement to their regular jobs. Aerating is a perfect part-time business! One can earn several thousand dollars in a few short weeks and then put the equipment away until next season. One can then enjoy the rest of the year, leisurely. If one were to concentrate their efforts on a single, large goal, such as to pay off the mortgage, the time to pay off the mortgage would end up being years shorter. Sometimes all we need to 'get ahead a little' is only five or ten thousand dollars, which really isn't all that much money, but it is almost impossible to save up through regular paychecks! Every time you get a few months savings accumulated, something always seems to happen to eat up your savings account. The benefit of aerating is that a year's worth of regular savings can be made over a short period of time so you end up with a 'chunk' of money. You can accomplish something with a 'chunk' of money, instead of only a little bit accumulated at a time. Wouldn't you rather have $10,000 by working 100 hours at $100 per hour than by working 1000 hours at $10 per hour? Aerating is the only way I know of to earn up to $100 per hour without investing ten years of life becoming a doctor, lawyer or other professional.

If one wants to go full time in this business, they can enjoy the benefits of seasonal employment with the winters off, traveling like I do. I have met many people who envy my 6 months per year vacation. Some were far wealthier than I am, but were stuck in the rat race of not being able to AFFORD THE TIME to enjoy the fruits of their labor. They always dream of retirement time, so they can then travel freely. Aerating has allowed me to earn enough money that I can enjoy the freedom to travel in my R.V. all winter, 30 years prior to normal

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retirement age I hope that this information will enable you to fulfill some of your dreams and goals.

I decided to write this course so that other people may benefit from this business, as well. I have analyzed and made learning it simple enough that anyone receiving this instruction can start an aerating business and proceed in building their business rapidly.

This course was written in a QUIK-LEARN FORMAT to make it as easy as possible to learn about aerating.

Most of what I have gathered over the last 20 years of aerating experience, I have put in this course. I have also included two very valuable sections to answer the most commonly asked question, "How do I get enough customers?" These sections are on Advertising Ideas and Promotion Ideas and are major parts of this course. I doubt that anyone would be able to utilize all of the ideas mentioned in these sections as there are over 75 pages of Ideas and Marketing Methods listed! These ideas were developed for aerating but would be adaptable to almost any business, so they would be valuable no matter what service or product you are interested in selling.

I have also included into the QUIK-LEARN FORMAT of the course, an idea net to catch any new ideas you may have flash through your mind while reading the course. YOU SHOULD HAVE A PEN WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES WHILE YOU READ THIS COURSE! Many valuable ideas are lost if not written down immediately. The second purpose of the idea net column is for you to jot down 'key' phrases as you read the course. These phrases will trigger your memory of the whole page when you review the course later. This learning technique will help minimize your study time and allow you to utilize the information.

With what you learn in this course, I believe that aerating will prove to be a rewarding endeavor. The marketing methods described herein will accelerate your business success!

Q&A

Q. What is AERATING? A. Aerating is the relief of soil compaction caused by snow, rain, and drought or foot traffic. The following diagram will illustrate how it works:

Q. How is it done?

A. It can be done manually with a device that looks much like a pitchfork with hollow tines on it. This device works well but takes a very long time. The professionals use machines, which weigh several hundred pounds, have many tines and are motor driven.

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Q. Why is it done?

A. The purpose is to relieve soil compaction and allow the roots room to breathe, ensuring a healthy lawn.

Water and nutrients need easy access to the roots, (as we all know, water takes the path of least resistance). If we don't clear a way for the water to go to the roots, the water flows off the top of the lawn onto the street and down the drain along with all the nutrients. In effect, lawns die of thirst and starvation if negligent conditions continue.

Q. How much does a professional charge for aerating services?

A. A professional aeration job generally starts at around $50 per lawn for a minimum square footage and then the price goes up based on a per 1000 square foot basis. There are aeration jobs priced in the thousands of dollars range.

Q. How long does it take to do an aeration job?

A. A lawn of about 3000 square feet takes me about 20-30 minutes. The time will depend on the type of terrain and how many twists and turns you have to make around flower beds and trees. A flat lawn with no obstructions can be done in almost no time at all as some machines are capable of doing 18,000 to 25,000 square feet per hourl This is where the maximum profit is obtained when you don't have to swerve around trees and flower beds. You are sometimes lucky to have several of these no obstruction lawns to do in a day so your day becomes very productive.

Q. Is it difficult to operate the aerator?

A. In general, I have found that if a person can run a gas powered lawnmower they can easily learn how to run an aerator. The mechanical functions are very similar, however the aerators are heavier and faster. The major concern is to learn how to stop the machine as it is self-propelled and can get away from the operator if he hasn't trained himself to be proficient with the machine. I always train new people on a flat, open area. PRACTICE ALL FUNCTIONS BEFORE YOU START THE ENGINE SO YOU CAN BE IN CONTROL AT ALL TIMES! Q, How big and heavy are these machines?

A. The earlier aerators were quite heavy and awkward. The machine that I started with was a 1967 Ryan Motoraire that we purchased new that year. It was very well built; as a matter of fact I still have it in operation today1 It was basically a motorized, cast iron drum with tines sticking out of it. It was very effective at going deep into the soil as it weighed nearly 500 pounds 1 It was a struggle to get the machine on and off the truck and was restricted to flat lawns as I couldn't push it up hill even with the engine helping. The new style of aerators on the market today handle much more easily. They are lighter and have removable weight systems for transport. They are faster and more maneuverable than the older style models. The newer machines are also better balanced for ease of operation so that you can turn without as much effort as before. They will aerate at a rate of 18,000 to 24,000 square feet per hour.

Q, What about those little dirt plugs, do you pick them up?

A, No, the plugs break up in about 10-14 days and create a top dressing that is very beneficial to the root system of the lawn. The other reason you don't take the plugs away is that if you did that every year you would

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soon erode the lawn of it's topsoil (which is very expensive to replace).

Q. How are the machines powered?

A. They are usually powered by small 3-5 horsepower gas engines. They are very economical to run as they use only a few gallons of gas to run a whole day of full operation. The power of the engine is put through a series of deep reduction gears to provide more torque and a more manageable speed of drive. This arrangement allows the engine to provide the power needed but doesn't wear itself out too fast. I still have the original engine on my 1967 model aerator!

Q. Are the machines hard to maintain?

A. All I do is change the oil and filters on my machines, depending on the dust conditions. I prefer to use my regular small engine repair shop for major repairs even though I myself took a small engine repair course. I find that it is more important to be able to do on the job 'haywire' repairs. This gets you through the workday so that you don't lose downtime hours. Remember that downtime is a loss of 50-100 DOLLARS PER HOUR. The repair shops usually only charge you about $40 per hour. More importantly, they may loan you a machine for your downtime hours after you become a regular customer.

Q. How do you transport the machine?

A. I usually use a small utility trailer with the proper tie-down systems. This way I can use the trailer all year long for other purposes. I have also used a pickup truck for several years. Two strong men can lift the newer, small machines directly into the bed of the truck. You can also use a ramp system to drive it up into the truck with the self-propelled models.

Q. Where do you store the machine if you don't have a backyard or a garage?

A I usually just leave the machines on the truck or in the trailers right on the street provided that they are securely locked up of course. This way I don't waste any time in the morning getting started.

Q. What about at the end of the season?

A. The machines are small enough to be stored in the smallest of rental sheds. I used to pay about $20 per month all winter long. I could stand some of the machines on end and some I could take the handles off to save space. The entire year's storage cost would be recovered in a couple hours of work.

Q. Do you have to prepare the machines for storage in any special way?

A. Yes, when you are going to store the machines for a long period of time you should follow the manufacturers guidelines for storage. I usually drain the gas out the machines and then run the lines dry of fuel. I also fill the cylinder heads with oil to prevent the walls from rusting.

Q. What is the procedure in doing a scheduled customer's lawn?

A. My usual procedure begins as follows: As soon as I arrive, I ring the doorbell to find out if the customer is home. Most of my customers are not home during the day so I do the job and just leave a bill. However, if the customer is home, I usually collect payment then. Next I rattle the back gate to check for dogs. I have had a few surprises I wasn't expecting. I have already asked the customer if they have underground sprinklers (I have the customer 'flag' the sprinkler heads if

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they have a sprinkler system). THE AERATORS WILL DAMAGE THE SPRINKLER HEADS IF YOU HIT THEM SO BE SURE ALL THE HEADS ARE FLAGGED BEFORE YOU START. The underground lines should not be harmed if the system was properly installed as the tines should not reach the depth of the lines.

Generally, the sprinkler system has to be turned on to find all the heads as some of them are below-surface heads so the owner can cut the grass without coming close to the heads. These heads need to be flagged after they pop up when the water is turned on. After I have been satisfied that there are no sprinkler system problems I look the entire ground area over for obstacles and hidden pipes. There are often water shut-off pipes or even gas line pipes that need to be flagged as they are often hidden in the overgrown grass, I usually ask the owner about the obstacles when I talk to them about the sprinklers. When I book a job I follow a little checklist that I make up of questions so I don't forget anything. Only after I have checked all these things do I unload the machine (it really only takes a few minutes to check everything out but it takes hours of downtime to repair a machine if you carelessly proceed).

Q. How do I set up the business?

A. That will depend on your individual circumstances and your local area's laws and regulations. If you've never been in business I would suggest you seek professional advice on what you may require. There are all kinds of books and courses you can read to expand your understanding of the subject.

Q. Do I need to hire employees?

A. That will depend on your circumstances, as you can run this operation as a one person show. I have done it both ways, by myself and by hiring employees. If you hire people you have more time for organizing your workload and are not as physically tired at the end of the day; of course, there is more paperwork and responsibility when hiring people. I suggest that you follow your own judgment as to whether you could benefit by hiring a work crew. I started out working for my father in this business so maybe your best source of help could be your family. Otherwise you can find help by advertising in the paper. One place that I find most of my help is the government employment office as it costs me nothing as an employer to advertise there. I also do a bit of inquiry work finding out what the going wage is for the area so my wages are competitive. I can usually find people who have their own pickup trucks and are willing to use them for a couple dollars an hour more. This provides great savings for me as I can set the person up with their own crew and double ray efforts for only a few dollars more per hour, or whatever we negotiate. I usually pay for all their gas as well.

Q. Are there different types of grass?

A. Yes, there is Bermuda, Ryegrass and Fescue to name a few. All of these grasses have different characteristics.

Q. How do I tell which grass is which?

A. You should check out at your local library, as they will have books with color pictures of the grasses. You may try calling the agricultural department of your local university. Other sources would be the local Parks Department of your town or your local Gardening Center.

Q. Do I have to be an expert on lawns to do this business?

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A. You will acquire specialized knowledge along the way while you work. To aerate a lawn is mostly a mechanical process however you should read up as much as you can about lawn care at your library. There are many books that simply explain how a lawn is best cared for. You do not have to be a lawn expert to aerate lawns but you should understand the effects of aeration.

Q. If there is a question about lawn care that I don't know the answer, where do I go?

A. There are usually lawn experts at your Horticulture Department at your University or your local Parks Department. Probably the best place to ask would be at the established Gardening Center near you. They have staff that are well trained in the local grass conditions and problems.

Q. How do I know if the lawn needs aerating?

A. If the lawn hasn't been aerated in the past year it probably needs it. A simple test that an 'old timer' in aerating showed me years ago was the pencil test. If you can't easily insert a pencil into the lawn several inches, the lawn probably needs aerating. There is also a lawn probe that is available now that pulls a single core sample out to be inspected. If there is an excess of 'thatch' in the core sample the lawn will need aerated to help eliminate thatch buildup in the lawn.

Q. What is thatch?

A. Thatch is a build-up of dead grass and roots that obstructs water and air from getting to the root system.

This is similar to how thatch roofs work in the tropics on the grass huts. The leaves are intertwined to become impervious to the rain. Thatch is a normal development of a healthy lawn, but does need cared for yearly.

Q, I have heard of a term called De-thatching, is that the same as aerating?

A. Aeration helps relieve thatch problems by allowing air to reach the thatch layers and the soil. This circulation of air assists the breaking down of thatch so that it will properly decompose. De-thatching, however, usually refers to power raking the lawn. This process involves the 'raking' of the lawn with high speed vertical blades spaced about 1" apart. The blades are able to be lowered or raised just enough to comb the thatch out of the lawn without digging up the soil. Thatch is pulled out by the bushels in this manner. It is not unusual to have 20 to 30 bushels of thatch from a previously neglected lawn. Power Raking is also known as Scarifying, Dethatching and Vertical Mowing. Another process that is similar is lawn reconditioning or renovating. This process requires the most powerful power rakes to go deeper into the soil and create deep furrows to reseed the lawn.

Q. That sounds like a lot of work, is there good profit in that, as well?

A: It is far more labor intensive so less profit.

Q. Is it possible to offer both aerating and power raking?

A. Yes! many companies offer both services. A lawn can be aerated and power raked right after each other so you can offer a package deal. I started out just aerating as it was more profitable and cleaner, however the demand was so great that I expanded and started doing complete lawn clean-ups with crews.

Q. How do I find customers?

A. I have found many interesting, cost-effective ways of acquiring clients. To me, this is the most fun part of

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this business as it allows me to enjoy trying new ideas to improve business.

I devoted a whole section of this course to marketing ideas! I have divided the marketing section into two parts. Advertising Ideas and Promotion Ideas. Many of these methods and ideas are transferable to other businesses as well. You should check out with the proper sources before proceeding with any of these ideas to see if they are permitted in your area. All of these marketing ideas were designed with one thing in mind ... to create business in the most cost effective manner! These ideas should solve your main concerns "Will I get enough business?" and "How do I get the customers if I don't have a fortune to spend?"

ADVERTISING IDEAS How to save money advertising your small business.

Advertising is a market segment of the entire marketing process. Marketing encompasses the entire business process from inception of idea to research and development, manufacturing, advertising, promotion, selling and distribution. The following deals primarily with advertising ideas and methods that are designed to produce maximum results with the minimum of expenditure. Some of these ideas are useful for promotion as well as advertising. There is a subtle distinction between the two marketing segments. My definition of advertising is when the goal of the activity is to ask the customer directly for an order by any means of communication. My definition of promotion is when the goal of the activity is to ask for the order indirectly through various communication media. The major function of promotion is to become well known within your target market.

This way you are thought of first when your services are required. Many advertising ideas and methods would work well for promotion. Before trying any of the following ideas or methods, VERIFY WITH THE PROPER AUTHORITIES IP THAT PARTICULAR IDEA OR METHOD WOULD BE ALLOWED IN YOUR AREA. 1. NEIGHBORHOOD NETWORK. While I am on site doing a job, I always knock on every door for 10 homes up and down the block on both sides of the street. I do this while ray employee is doing the original job and I usually get 1 or 2 before he is finished. This has tripled the revenue for one service call. I usually entice the neighbors by offering everyone on the block a $5 or $10 discount for everyone including the original service call

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customer. Sometimes he or she will call their neighbors for you when they realize that they will all save the $10 and the whole block is going to look greatI If I have several homes to do in an area and it looks like I'll be there for a few days finishing all the jobs, I'll put together a concentrated flyer campaign. I would select an area of about 10 square blocks around my jobsites, and then I would cross-reference this area to the postal route maps. I would then send out a personal letter to all these homes inviting them to enjoy my 'in the neighborhood discount'.

This method produces profitable results and costs very little because I only mailed a couple hundred pieces.

2. FLYERS. I put out flyers by the tens of thousands. I get excellent returns from this method of advertising.

This sounds expensive and it's true, at first, it was expensive to produce and send out flyers in such numbers so I had to devise a way to stretch my advertising dollar. I decided on printing a larger flyer than I needed and selling the left over spaces to other small businesses in the area. The net effect was that I got my advertising practically free. Sometimes I even made a PROFIT ON MY OWN ADVERTISING BEFORE I GOT ANY CALLS 1 This method takes a bit more work to set up, but it is well worth the hassle. You usually only have to sell the other side of the flyer to break even.

3. WORD OF MOUTH. I always get about 1/3 of ray customers every year by word of mouth (referrals).

This is an excellent method of obtaining business as it is almost a certainty that the new customers will buy from you again and again and continue the word of mouth1 4, LETTERS, I have revived a lost art that has netted me thousands of dollars for a few dollars’ worth of postage 1 I send every one of my previous customers A HANDWRITTEN LETTER every spring, two weeks before the aerating season starts. People hardly ever receive a personal letter anymore these days, so I know that 100% of my letters get read! I get up to 90% repeat business in this manner. I also get fantastic referrals, as the customer is so surprised in receiving a handwritten letter from some fellow who only did their lawn last year they tend to tell several of their friends. Most people would agree this is a great way to secure repeat business.

HOWEVER, who has time to write all those letters? If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. I was no exception; in the beginning, I only sent out a few letters because I would quickly tire of writing the same letter over and over again. I usually only sent as many as I could write in a couple of hours. That was only about ten letters before I got tired of the idea. Then an event happened that changed my whole 'personal approach to marketing' system. I was using a calligraphy pen because it had such an interesting effect in the way it turned my ordinary writing into an intriguing scripted-looking style. I happened to photocopy something that I had already written on. I noticed that the photocopy and the original ink (black) were practically identical! My problem was solved! I could now write one well written letter of any length I chose, leaving spaces for the appropriate inserts and then photocopy as many as I required. I would then fill in the blank spaces and the inks would match, creating the effect that I had individually written hundreds of personal letters. This is the same process that expensive word processors use but their end result looks like impersonal, computerized 'junk mail*. I accomplished with ray simple system, a more effective marketing program for about $5.00 (for the pen) and 3cents(for the photocopy)!!

5. BUSINESS CARDS. I got fed up handing out my normal business cards as I knew that most of them would end up in the garbage. Most people wouldn't need my service but once or twice a year. Rarely do people tend to organize their collection of business cards all that well as a rule. When they finally need your services, they have lost or chucked your card long ago. I made my card interesting with all kinds of beneficial information on it

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so it wouldn't be thrown away. The results were amazing.

6, COMMUNITY PAPERS. I have always run a small ad in the local community paper during the season and it has always proved profitable. I find that if you are a little original in your ad copy you can draw dramatic results from a $50.00 ad. The first thing I do in designing an ad is to go to the paper's office and ask to see last year's ads for that time of year. This way I can find out who my competition is, how much they were charging, how much they spent on their ad, what they said in their ad, and how they presented it. Then I can design an ad that stands out from the crowd, (If everyone is in standard typestyles, then I'll go in reverse letters, white type on a black background, for example). I'll supply my own ad copy instead of having the Paper typeset it for free for me. The extra few dollars I spend having my ad in a different type style and layout is well worth it because the ad immediately jumps out at you when you look at the page with all the standard ads next to it. Small differences can produce huge results!

7. CLIP ART. Finding out about these valuable advertising tools has saved roe thousands of dollars over the years. Clip Art is a collection of standardized graphics that are designed to make flyers and ads quick and easy.

Using this method will save you thousands of dollars/ compared to if you had to hire an artist to custom draw the same graphics for you. There are many drawings of men and women doing lawn care work available. It is quite easy to put together a professional looking flyer complete with professional graphics for a very reasonable price. These Clip Art books are available at your local art supply stores that cater to graphic artists. They are generally under $20.00 each. A note here: When making an ad it is wise to respect copyright laws.

8. TELEPHONE POLE SIGNS. I have had good response to simple small ads put on telephone poles. You will have to check out whether this is allowed in your area. The advantage of these signs is the extreme low cost.

You can start off with just photocopies of your sign on heavy stock paper, A lot of the large photocopy places now have desktop publishing facilities so you can have your simple sign typeset in large letters and then have them photocopied onto heavyweight (thick) paper. The cost of this is so minimal that if you get one job you have paid for the entire program! Another way you can produce large quantities of the signs is by silk-screening the signs onto corrugated plastic. These will cost you more money but will last longer. The paper signs are designed to last only a few weeks as rain will obviously affect them. The advantage of the paper signs is that they are instant, you can produce them in an hour, put them out and receive calls on them that same evening 1 9. PLYWOOD SIGNS. These signs are very effective and last for years. When I finish a job, I always leave a small wooden sign on the lawn (unless the owner objects) for a couple days afterwards. People passing by notice the sign and then the little plugs on the lawn. It starts them thinking that they should have it done as well. These signs work well but are fairly expensive to have professionally made for you, SO, MAKE YOUR OWN SIGNS! It is possible to make professional looking signs for about one tenth the cost of having them made at a sign maker's.

It doesn't take a lot of artistic ability as you can use stencils, and the rest of the skills are basically coloring within the lines. First, you purchase a 4x8 sheet of 1/4" or 1/2" plywood (make sure it is good both sides which means that it has been sanded on both sides and has no major faults). Then, from your art store again you need to get a few supplies. You will need a few sheets of oil board (this is a cardboard that has been oiled to prevent it from becoming soggy when it has been sprayed over and over again), a few spray cans of paint, a can of One Shot lettering paint, a small artists brush and some paint thinner. Of course, you will need the stencils as well. I prefer the Roman style letters as they look richer and more professional than the regular letter styles. Old English is

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interesting but hard to read from a distance. Measure the sizing of the stencils to match the size of the signs you are making. Prime and paint both sides of the sheet in the color you want the background to be. Now you can cut the sheet into the sizes you want the signs to be. I would suggest you cut them to a size that you can have a master stencil easily made for. Don't forget to seal the edges with paint as well to prevent water seeping in. At this point you can start on your stencil. Arrange the letters on the master stencil (the oil board) in the wording you desire, then pencil in the outline of the letters. You now have your sign laid out on the oil board in pencil so you can trace the lines with an sharp knife and cut out the letters (leaving of course the little connecting tabs so the letters don't fall out). Now you have a master stencil that you can position on any number of surfaces and spray on a sign! However, at this stage the sign looks amateurish as it looks like a cheap, stenciled sign. Now all you need to do to produce a professional looking sign is to take your artist's brush, dip it in some of the same spray paint (in a cup) you used for the letters and fill in the connecting tabs to make the letters complete looking and eliminate that stenciled look. Have a rag handy to wipe away any overpainting. Now you have finished a professional looking sign. To add even more professionalism, I usually add a shadow. Put the stencil back on the (dried) sign, line up the letters again then move the stencil 1/4" to the lower left or lower right. Pencil in the parts of the letters that are still showing against the original painted plywood background. Then remove the stencil and fill in the penciled outlines with a darker colored One Shot lettering paint. This produces a very expensive looking shadowed effect. Signs like this would cost several hundred dollars to have professionally made but the materials for making about 10 signs costs less than $75.00! I have made thousands of dollars over the years from my original $75.00 investment!

10. LA\fN SIGNS. These signs are a little different than the bigger plywood signs. They are meant to be left on the lawn untill the homeowner decides to remove them. These signs are about 3" x 6" and are made of corrugated plastic. They stand up on the lawn by a little solid tube that slides in between the corrugated edges and sticks in the ground. The signs are commercially silk screened and made in the hundreds.

11. CHURCH NEWSLETTER. You may be able to advertise in the local church's newsletter. You may also be able to trade your services for the advertising fee (many churches have large lawns that need aerating). If you can leave a sign on the lawn when you are done it will be noticed by the congregants over the weekend.

12. LOCAL ARTS EVENTS. The local opera and ballet companies usually have fund raising events throughout the year where they ask local businesses to participate as sponsors donating their services as a prize in the raffle. You can offer your aerating services as a prize in exchange for advertising in the programs. The people who attend these functions are good prospects for your business.

13. BULLETIN BOARDS. The old bulletin board is very useful for providing cost effective advertising aimed at the local neighborhood. Make sure that you make your ad with detachable phone number tabs WITH YOUR AERATING NAME ON IT I So many people pick up a phone number tab and forget what the number was for a day later so they toss it. Naturally, you should not just have your info on a main sheet without pull off tabs as people never seem to have a pen on them to write your phone number down. If you want to get their business you are going to have to do all the initial ground work to make it as easy as possible for the customer to call you. I have had a great deal of success putting cartoons on ray ads to attract interest to even the casual onlooker.

14. CITY NEWSPAPER CLASSIFIEDS ADS. These differ greatly from the little local papers we talked

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about earlier. These will generally service the entire city, this may not service your needs as you may not want to travel 20 or 30 miles out of your area. When you are expanding to larger areas, however, these papers can be quite an asset. You can sometimes preselect advertising in only certain areas in some papers or you may have to mention in your ad that you service only the north and west sides of the city, for example. Some astute customers will already figure what areas you probably serve by your telephone prefix. The advantage of the large papers is that your cost per thousand readers is less than the smaller papers so you get greater exposure. Sometimes a small ad can have the phone ringing off the hook!

15. CABLE T.V. The local cable companies sometimes have very inexpensive community advertising on their channels. There is usually a ribbon of advertising along the bottom of the T.V,, with the News or the events calendar. Some stations even have a local video classified that you can be on for $20 to $50, That is a great deall You will be able to reach many people with this method, I don't believe too many people watch these channels for extended periods of time, however, as they are usually just checking to see what's on. It is a hit and miss method but the price is so cheap that only one aerating job will pay for it!

16. RESTORED VINTAGE VEHICLES. I have had more fun and profit by restoring older pick-up trucks and using them for my company vehicles than by utilizing any of the new vehicles I have bought. These vintage trucks are real eye-catchers and put my company's image on par with the large corporations that restore their own antique vehicles. The image conveyed is one of stability, pride, longevity and commitment to the community. I don't know how many times I've been stopped and talked to when I simply drive into the corner store's parking lot. People admire and ask questions about the vehicle and my business. Kids love the old vehicles and always point them out to their parents! The best part of it is that it is far less expensive to get an old truck and paint it up than to purchase a new truck! The new truck is so ordinary it is almost invisible to the public which is pretty sad considering one probably invests $20,000 in itl In contrast I spent less than $1000 on ray 1966 Cheverolet Stepside truck. That included the paint job of $400! I did invest another $160 to have a professional sign painter put my company name on the doors. I also decided to have my phone number put on the fenders in the old style phone number method (e.g. Dial CRestwood5-1234) many people still remember the old telephone exchange names and are happy to see it used again. Besides being a great marketing tool I drove the truck all the time JUST FOR THE FUN OF IT! I also restored another old truck that I had found on a farm. Because the body of this old truck was not that great (no major holes but pitted and surface damaged) I decided that I could use this vehicle as a rough usage vehicle.

17. THE $30 PAINT JOB. On this older vehicle that was not in the greatest of shape I didn't want to invest the $1000 it would have taken to put the body in shape and paint it. I decided to try an experiment and paint it by BRUSH AND ROLLER! This sounds ridiculous but it was only my rough usage truck that had cost me next to nothing and it looked so bad I had to do something. I tried the brush and roller method out first on the interior of the box and the results weren't that bad so I finished the truck off in about 3 hours with a brush, a FOAM roller (to leave no visible roller marks), and two gallons of Hi-gloss oil house paint1 I followed the body lines and made the paint job a two-tone with my company colors. The amazing thing was that it looked great from 10 feet away which is as close as the customer usually comes to the truck when it is on the job site. I actually had compliments on how bright and clean my truck was I When you put your signs on the truck people tend to regard your vehicle as a company truck. It seems more professional to have an older painted up truck v/ith signs on it than a shiny new vehicle that is 'anonymous'. Something I could never understand is why so many tradesmen

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service their customers without a sign on their vehicle. They lose thousands of dollars’ worth of in-the-area business this way. As we can see by this example, it doesn't have to cost a fortune to look like you really are in business.

18. STAKE BED SIGNS. These signs are a natural with the old restored pick-ups. They can be made the same way you made the plywood lavm signs using the stencil-and-fill -in-the-lines technique. Stake bed signs are signs designed to fit in the little stake bed holes along the top of the pick-up box sides in the pick-up. You can have the signs any height you are comfortable with and can even enclose the entire area making a locking canopy for your tools inside. The best feature of these signs is that they are removable for when you sell the vehicle or need the truck for other purposes. This way the signs are good for years to come, 19. CO-OP FLYERS. You may benefit from joining one of the local co-op flyers services put out in your area.

This is where you pay a few hundred dollars to share in the expenses of putting out a major mailing of flyers. In this program, the company putting them together will generally take care of all your graphics, layout and type setting needs. This is a great time saver if you are not knowledgeable about printing and distribution methods.

The only drawback is that you are not the main advertiser and may be lost in a pile of ‘junk mail’. The returns may be of a lessor percentage but the overall program is usually profitable. After you figure out how the system works you can put together your own flyer system and lower your costs.

20. MALL VIDEO. You may find that a video about your services may be able to be placed in your local mall.

There are combination T.V. and video player units now available that are the size of 12" portable T.V. You can rent a video camera at many places these days so you can make a simple 3 to 5 minute video explaining the benefits of your service and your rates. I suggest you have your company name, phone number and what you do on a sign beside the video so people don't have to wait through the whole video to get that information. It would be wise to have hand out business cards as well so people can just grab one and run. Remember to make your business card worth keeping as I mentioned earlier.

21. MOBILE VIDEO. I chose a combination T.V. and video player unit that was 12 volt adaptable so I could use it in my R.V. when I wanted to advertise and play the video through the windows in the R.V. This was a great hit in the parking lots at the shopping malls or community events. The novelty of the idea attracted a lot of attention. The unit has a automatic rewind feature so it would take care of itself as I went and enjoyed myself at the local event1 You should check about the rules of doing something similar in your area before you invest in the equipment.

22. RADIO CONTROLLED CARS. You may enjoy sponsoring a sort of 'mini Indy' radio controlled toy car race. There would be all kinds of interest and most likely lots of free publicity. You could have local businesses sponsor prizes and trophies for the winners. You could also involve local celebrities as the drivers and get publicity that way. Each business could sponsor a car just like the big races or the cost could be shared by many.

Most of all, it would be a fun way to make business contacts and get well known locally.

23. RADIO CONTROLLED BOATS. The same thing could be applied here if you have a local park with a pond in it. You don't even have to sponsor an event just put a sign on one toy boat or have it tow a barge with

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your ad on it. You can have great fun with your kids with this as I'm sure they'll help you advertise this way anytime1 Be sure to take a picture of the child playing with the toy boat. You may get the picture in the local newspaper as a human-interest story (the sign can't be too large or gaudy or the paper won't accept it).

24. RADIO CONTROLLED BLIMPS. There are small radio controlled blimps that you can purchase and have your ad put on the side like the Goodyear Blimp does. This may be a little expensive but would sure be fun!

24. RADIO CONTROLLED AIRPLANES. These may be a bit too tricky and dangerous to put a sign on them so I wouldn't recommend this.

25, TELEVISION AD. If you have a large enough budget, television does produce results but is generally reserved for larger companies. You can save a bit of the expense of the ad by using a good quality video tape but only if you are expert with it. The ad will look second rate if not done properly.

26. POSTERS. I have used posters with good results for many years. There are usually notice boards all over your neighborhood that you can post your posters on. Don't overlook employee noticeboard or public notice boards. These are different from the bulletin boards we talked about earlier in that these are generally outside and the posters have your telephone number in large letters so it can be read from a distance away. It is not designed to have give out cards or pull tabs either. The simpler you design your poster the better you will find your responses as people only glance at them.

27. MINI BILLBOARDS. I have used mini billboards for years with super results. You may have to research whether the billboards can be put up in your area without legal problems. I was fortunate that there were several vacant fields near the major traffic routes of my targeted areas. The signs can be made of plywood just like the lawn signs using the stencil and fill in method. There can be a major return on investment with these signs as they cost less than $100 to make four 4' x 4' signs. Buy two sheets of 4' X 8' plywood and cut them in half. Then paint the lettering on them using your stencils. You will probably be able to use your old master stencil that you used for your lawn signs as it will have almost the same information on itl You may want to make the signs portable as many places discourage permanent signs putting holes in their lawns! This is better anyway as you will only need the signs up for a short period of time. • 28. $10 REFERRAL CARD. I offer a $10 referral card to all my customers and include several to give to their friends every spring when I send them their personal letter. With this program I offer the person referred a $10 discount towards any services that I offer. I ALSO GIVE THE PERSON REFERRING THE SAME $10 DISCOUNT AS A THANK YOU FOR THEIR EFFORT. YOU would be surprised how many more referrals you get when you reward the person referring as well! I don't mind giving up the extra $10 because I usually get the original customer and their referrals as repeat customers every year. I usually incorporate the discount into my business card as well.

29. BIG POSTERS. There are now many photocopy places that can produce the super large posters the size of blueprints. The great part of this is that they are blown up from ordinary 8 1/2" X 11" paper. You can take something that you can quickly produce on a desktop publishing computers (most of the photocopy places have these desktop publishing computers right there as well) and instantly blow the ad up to poster size! This is useful

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when you want attention grabbing headlines or even an inexpensive banner.

30. BANNERS. There are specialty banner making shops now that can make a custom made banner in a day or so. These are the traditional banners that are long and narrow. They are made on computer so they can be made almost to any specifications. The banners that I priced out were only about $30 for an 8'.

31. HATS. These are always a good item to make extra amounts of. With the new technologies available now the price of high quality so that even the small budget companies can afford to have a professional image. Your logo can be 'scanned' into their computer so that they can reproduce your logo in any color and any size on any garment you desire. Prices may vary but I paid around $100 to have my intricate logo scanned. I then had baseball caps made for all my employees and I made several more to hand out to customers who wanted them. The price of the hats were down to about $5 apiece including the logo! What a small investment for have people display your company's name for you.

32. T-SHIRTS. Another valuable asset that is well worth the investment is T-Shirts with your company's logo on them. Once you have your logo on file with the embroidery company's computer you can have the logo transferred to anything for only a few dollars per logo. You can have the same quality as the major corporation's promotional T-Shirts on a small budget and small volume output. You can have a conservative style T-Shirt or something more trendy that will be appealing to the younger crowd as they are the habitual T-shirt purchasers.

They will gladly wear your T-shirt if it is considered 'cool' (being free won't help if it's not 'cool' in fact I doubt if you could even pay kids to wear something they don't want to wear if they would be embarrassed wearing it) Some major companies have achieved the ultimate in having the kids PAY outrageous prices for clothes with the company's logo on it, just because it's 'IN'!

33. COMPANY JACKETS. When you have your logo on file it can also be transferred onto great looking jackets that your employees would want to wear. These are more expensive than just a T-Shirt of course so you may want to have the jackets as a reward for outstanding service or always being on time. The price range of the jackets can range from around $20 for a Windbreaker to several hundred dollars for a quality leather jacket. Many companies offer the jackets to their employees at wholesale cost to encourage the purchase of the jackets and to build up a good company spirit. When everyone has a matching jacket they feel like they are part of a team, 34. UNIFORMS. This should be quite evident now how easy it would be to have your entire crews in matching uniforms. The effect on their pride and performance is quite measurable. A uniform can be as simple as a T-shirt and a hat so the cost to you is less than $20 per person! The most important effect will be when your crews arrive on the jobsite and the customer notices how professional you and your crews look. This builds confidence and repeat business. Most people would rather see an uniformed serviceperson arrive at their door than some scruffy looking people that seem to have invaded their private home!

35. COMPANY COLORS. The other part of a simple corporate identity is to have a simple standard color scheme for your vehicles, uniforms and advertising. If you have a haphazard collection of different colored vehicles and everyone wearing something different you will have no company recognition. If you take the time and the little bit of money to make everything standard your company will become well known in your community. If, for instance, you think for a minute of how many plumbers you know of in your community, you

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start to think of which companies you have seen around your neighborhood (unless you are personally connected with a plumber most people never think of plumbers until they need one). Now think again, what you thought of that instant was of the COMPANY'S TRUCKS YOU SAW AROUND! If a plumber doesn't have a company truck how would you know he is a plumber? He may have lived in the next block to you for 20 years!

Anonymously!

You don't want that lack of recognition do you? If you carry the same color scheme throughout your entire company's procedures you will rapidly gain recognition and business! The total cost is small. For example 5 TShirts, 5 Baseball Caps (approximately $100), and a paint job for your truck (roughly $400) would be only around $500. If you have a truck in good shape already and you would like to follow through with the colors of the truck already you will be hundreds of dollars ahead. You also have the option of doing what many large companies do which is to have a white truck (or any other solid colored truck) and just add a stripe down the side of the vehicle (there are vinyl pre-made strips for this purpose for around $20). Another way the larger companies distinguish their vehicles is by painting only the doors a different color. You would have to decide how much you want your vehicle to look commercial or do you want a dual purpose, pleasure also color scheme.

36. BUSINESS CARDS FOR EVERY EMPLOYEE. Everyone got a business card with their name and title on it. I told everyone that they would get a 10% commision for every job they brought it. The 16 year old high school kid came in the next day with 4 apartment blocks tha this dad owned!

37. GARDENING SHOPS. One source of cultivating new business is your local gardening centers. They have a constant coming and going of people who already have their lawns on their minds. This would be an ideal place to leave behind some referral cards and pamphlets (with the owner's permission of course). It wouldn't be a bad idea to get to know the owners too as they may be interested in a mutual referral arrangement. They would like to be referred to for supplies of plants and flowers just as much as you would like their referrals. It never hurts to drop by and introduce yourself!

38. MALL INFO STAND, Your local mall may have a public service stand that it rents out for a week at a time. The purpose of these booths is to have an ever-changing atmosphere in the mall at all times so that the mall seems interesting all year long. The booths generally have to have someone in them to answer questions. You will need some form of an attention-getter sign. You may consider the blueprint size photocopies or the inexpensive banners. You should have some of your lawn signs there as well so the people will 'connect' your booth with your signs when they see them on the street. Every time a person sees your logo and company name, the more likely they will think of you when they need your services. Why do you think the major soft drink companies keep plastering their logo around everywhere? I don't think there is a person who is in this country more than a day who can't name the two big soft drink companies 1 The secret is repetition, repetition, repetition! When I was on vacation I traveled through this small town of maybe 100,000 people, I noticed one company's trucks about 20 times in the 2 day stay that I was there, I didn't know how many trucks the company had or how large it was. As I was leaving that town early in the morning (to get foreign car and had the appearance of a large boot driving down the road. It was very effective at indicating where the shoe repair store was because the owner would park it right in front of the store. Another interesting vehicle was a SIX-PACK BEER TRUCK built on a 1 ton standard chassis. It had a standard 14 foot cargo van body modified to look like the 'case' for a six-pack of beer. Out of the top of the case (cargo box) were six capped necks of the brand of beer the company made. It was an eye-

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catcher1 The most extravagant novelty vehicle I've ever seen was a 5 ton truck built especially to display a light show on the sides of a 30 foot long truck box. The truck was custom made to display changing light signs on the thousands of light bulbs on it's sides similar to the rolling message light machines like the stock market reports come over on. The messages could be changed by simply typing in a new message. You could see this truck from blocks away and still read it's messages 1 The representative said the unit and the truck cost over $300,000 and weighed the maximum carrying capacity of the truck just for the computer and generator! You may be able to think of some little twist that you can apply to one of your vehicles to give it eye-catching appeal. Those little Japanese trucks the Parks Departments use would make an interesting service vehicle to haul the aerators around.

They almost look like toy trucks to begin with. Once you have a novelty vehicle you will become known as the company with the________ car just like the companies mentioned above. Some very large companies started out using these vehicles. Can you guess which meat company had a wiener-mobile?

40. SCHOOL YEARBOOK. If you have a close association with your local school, you may want to sponsor a page in the school's yearbook. Whether this will be profitable will depend upon your judgment. The goodwill may be worth something in the community as you are supporting local education. I believe that the amount of business you derive from this will depend on how many parents read the yearbook. I could see a benefit if you were in a small, very community-minded town that took an intense interest in their school. The bottom line is profit. If you feel the ads will produce, then proceed.

41. KLEENEX STAND SPONSORSHIP. This may seem like a strange idea but in the spring time during the 'sniffle season', one of the most appreciated public service promotions that you could offer would be a Kleenex stand in your local mall. Everyone seems to need a tissue but never seems to have one on them. Offer to the local mall organization that you will install it and keep it stocked full of Kleenex in exchange for the exclusive right to advertise on the stand. They may go for it, so it is worth a phone call. To advertise any regular way in the mall would probably cost you hundreds of dollars. I would negotiate to get the exclusive rights to the stand as they may change their mind once you have installed the stand.

42. COMPANY CARICATURES. I have enjoyed much success by using caricatures of my equipment working. I use the cartoon of the equipment in all of my ads as it adds life to boring ‘junk Mail’. This way people have a good feeling when they think of my company. It has made them chuckle the first time they read about me.

These cartoons are a great eye-catcher in the posters we talked about earlier as well.

43. SCHOOL BOOKS SPONSORSHIP. This benefits the parents of the children as they are the ones who usually pay for all those schoolbooks. You will probably be able to purchase the books at wholesale because you are buying a large quantity instead of the outrageous inflated price the school bookstore charges. You may have to do some research as to the feasibility of such a sponsorship. You would have to also investigate the cost of the sponsorship to see if you can get some other companies involved to help with the cost.

44. SENIORS MAGAZINES. This is a valuable source For advertising because most seniors have their lawns done for them. They have more time to appreciate a beautiful lawn so they do everything to keep the lawn looking it's best. I always mention a Seniors Discount with my ads and even use a standardized Seniors Discount logo sometimes.

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45. P.T.A. MEETINGS. Often, there is a newsletter here that you may be able to advertise in. This would be an excellent medium to advertise in because the cost should be low and the involvement in the community would be very high. An ad in this newsletter may start people talking about your company over coffee the next day. I would suggest offering a discount to any group of three or more so they get in on the 'me too' principle. People like to do things if their friends or neighbors are doing it. I built my initial business on the 'me too' principle. I used to go down the block knocking on all the neighborhood doors, until I had convinced one to have their lawn done. The first job would sometimes take 20 doors to knock on before one would give me the go ahead. Then every second door it seemed would give me the go ahead once they heard the machine running and saw that their neighbor was having it done. In fact several times the people that I had asked earlier on in the block who had said 'no thanks' to me at first would search me out down the block to tell me that they had changed their minds and would like to have theirs done as well. No one wants to be first but everyone wants to be included once someone has started the process. I learned this early in life through these experiences. Even if I didn't have a first customer yet on the block I would start the engine and have it idling as I would knock on the door and say "Hi I'm aerating your neighbor’s lawn down the block today, would you like yours done as well? I could do yours right after I finish theirs and you would qualify for the' in the neighborhood discount'." Most people would go with the plan because they wanted to save money and have what their neighbors were having. I was only 16 when I was doing this approach and I later discovered that this same marketing and sales approach is used by major sales corporations.

This exact wording is effective still today, 20 years later, for direct selling of aerating services.

46. GOLF COURSES. A prime area for visibility in is golf courses. Golfers are among the best people to make your aeration business known to because they see the benefits of aeration every time they play golf. Golf courses aerate constantly to relieve soil compaction and provide the best greens possible. Most of the golfers will be able to recognize your professional quality machinery as the same as they have seen on the golf course. This enhances your credibility; when they see that you have taken the time and effort to invest in the best equipment to do the job properly. One way that I market myself to the golfers is simply to go play golf. I park my company truck right near the front entrance so everyone can see as they arrive. Of course, I wear my company jacket and cap while playing and relaxing after the game. The best exposure is when you organize a company golf tournament. Of course, you have the entire fleet of trucks in the parking lot and all the teams are wearing their jackets and caps. This display of company colors would be memorable and you are sure to get some business out of the exposure. There may also be a club newsletter that you may be able to advertise in for a reasonable rate.

47. COMPANY VEHICLE PARADE. This is such a simple concept I don't know why more companies don't do this. If you have 3 or more company vehicles that are painted up in company colors you should stage an informal parade or convoy. To see 3 or more identical vehicles traveling together is extremely rare. This not only attracts attention but boldly states to the community that your firm is a major force in the market place. The most memorable display of this kind that I witnessed was a real estate company that had over 100 white cars which each of it's salespeople drove as their company car. All the cars had the company logo painted on their doors. The effect was traffic stopping, when they all convoyed together to view the open houses on the market (as all Realtors do once a week.) There were hundreds of other Realtors viewing these open houses at the same time but they were merely invisible in their expensive luxury cars. There wasn't one open house 'parade' event that didn't produce phone inquiries eventually leading to sales, for the 'parade' team. From what I understand this real estate company became the number one selling company in that city within a year, surpassing long established leaders!

Anything is possible with the right marketing campaign!

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48. PIGGY BACK ADVERTISING. This method of advertising will save you hundreds of dollars in postage.

Some of the local businesses may let you 'piggy back' on their regular mailings as an insert in their envelopes for a fee. Prime candidates to approach would be gardening shops, gardeners and lawn supply companies as these places share your similar target market (the group of customers you wish to do business with.) These companies are noncompeting, complimentary businesses. One major advantage would be that you would be aligned with some of the better companies around so you would become more well known along with them. These companies would appreciate the cost reduction of their regular mailing costs. In today's recessionary economy and spiraling taxation policies a dollar saved is not equal to a dollar earned but to TWO DOLLARS EARNED. It would take probably two or more dollars of pre-tax earnings to have enough left over to have one dollar saved. There are large companies that regularly take on 'piggy back' inserts. You have no doubt received some of them with your department store credit card bill.

49. OFFICE TOWER CANVAS. The office towers downtown are often overlooked by the home service trades, but most of the decision makers are concentrated in that little section of town. Hire some people to help you drop off a few discount cards just before the height of the season this will start the office networking principles in motion. I find that if a good deal is available, the referral and networking principles spread like wildfire. The same is true of a negative experience, so if you have disgruntled customers deal with them to their satisfaction, because if you don't they will spread your name out as a red flag. It is possible to turn a disgruntled customer into an ally if you solve their needs emotionally as well as financially. They want to feel that they were treated fairly and if you deal with them fairly, you may get referrals and repeat business from them.

50. KITE SIGN. A very simple way of putting your logo and phone number out to the public while having some fun at the same time is to have a kite sign. The kite would have your logo and phone number on it so it, would have to be custom made. You may be able to stencil the letters onto a large kite. You can do this just like you did the lawn signs earlier, by filling in the stencil lines. If you were to have a kite contest, you could have your phone number in large letters with one number per kite. The kites could then be flown in formation with your name and phone number spelled out. It is likely that you could get a picture of this scene in the local paper as publicity stunt. You may decide to have several of your single kites with your complete name and phone number on them for sale at a reduced rate. Kids will want to have the larger kite with your logo on it to fly rather than just a plain kite. You could create some more publicity by sponsoring a kite-flying contest for a local boys or girls club.

Have the kites as part of the prizes. Being as you are the sponsor you can have all the contestants \7earing your T-shirts, This is similar to how the large radio stations or soft drink companies stage their contests. Let the kids keep the T-Shirts after the contest so that everyone will get something from the event. It doesn't hurt that your logo is on all those shirts so they'll remember for years to come who sponsored the contest. So will their parents, your target market! "Go fly a kite" will have a new profitable motive for you now!

51. COLORING CONTEST OF CARICATURES. If you incorporate some fun in your business your interest and profits will soar. One way I did this was to hire a cartoonist to draw caricatures of my equipment.

The additional graphics to my flyers increased my response rate remarkably. I even held a coloring contest on my flyers that I sent out every spring. I offered prizes for the best colored flyer. The prizes were provided at no cost to me as I exchanged advertising space on the flyer for Teddy Bears from a Teddy Bear Delivery Service. This exchange is called a contra in advertising lingo and is a form of barter, I enjoyed the production of the flyer

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campaign much more than when it was just business. The smiles on the little kid's faces who won the prizes were priceless.

52, BARTERED SERVICES. Aerating is a service that you can exchange for money or other goods and services from other businesses. The best part of this arrangement is that you exchange on the retail price of your service not your cost so to exchange $50 or $100 worth of your services will only cost you a few dollars’ worth of gas and some of your employees or your time.

53. SAIL SPONSORSHIP. If you live in a area Where there is a lot of sailing done near the city center or where there is a lot of people watching the sail boats you may benefit from 'sail sponsorship'. This is where you would offer to subsidize the cost of new sails for the boats. Of course, you would want to have your logo on the sails (there is usually some sort of design on the sails anyway so they may as well have a design that pays). Once the sails were made, the effect of the advertising would last for years to come. To entice the boat owners to purchase your sails you might have to offer a substantial savings to them. (You should have the benefit of getting to purchase the sails wholesale as you would purchase them in bulk). I suggest sticking to one standard size of sail (pick out which boat seems the most popular) rather than trying to please everyone. I would also suggest that you concentrate only on the smaller sailboats that have to stay close to shore. There are usually lots of these little boats out in the harbor on a weekend. The sails for these boats are also much cheaper than the big sailing boats.

Generally a lot of the people that are sailing these small sailboats are on a restricted budget and would welcome a price break.

54, MONTHLY CARD, .For your regular customers you may consider sending them a regular monthly or quarterly letter or card. If you wrote them a letter, you could use the calligraphy pen and photocopy technique I showed you earlier to save time and make it a personal approach. You could write a letter at the appropriate time to inform them of what to do to help their lawn. In the winter, you could send tips on house plants. Your customers will be so surprised to hear from you in this manner that they are sure to tell their friends. In doing this you also increase your chance of repeat business in the next year. If you think that this is a little bit too much effort, consider the amount of effort and cost you invested to get these customers originally and how much it will cost to replace these customers. It is possible to make your business grow at an astonishing rate of 50 to 100% per year! Can you imagine doubling your income every year? This can only be accomplished by taking care of your previous customers with a high standard of excellence so they don't look elsewhere for their needs next year.

Then you can concentrate on building upon that customer base. If you sent out 200 letters per month it would cost you only about $58 postage (29 cents X 200) and your letterhead. Using the timesaving method I showed you it would only take a couple hours to complete this mailing (most of the time is spent addressing the envelopes).

How many referrals or repeat orders would it take to recover $58? The large companies have figured this out years ago; that's why you get all those 'junk mail' letters with your name spelled wrong. Even with all their mistakes and how impersonal the computer letter is they turn a profit on the mailings. Imagine how pleasant it would be to receive a PERSONAL HANDWRITTEN LETTER WITH THEIR NAME SPELLED RIGHT! 55. CHRISTMAS CERTIFICATES. A welcome gift to send along with your December letter would be aerating services gift certificates. These certificates would be worth $5 towards any service you perform. Since your starting price is usually $50 all you will be giving up is the $5 certificate amount so this is a perfect way of bringing in new customers around the holidays. The customer you sent the certificates to will also appreciate them

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because you may have solved one of the age-old problems of "What do I give the milkman for Christmas." Many of your customers will use one of the certificates themselves and then pass the others out as presents. This will certainly start people talking about your company. Remember, the most effective method of advertising is word of mouth, so give them something to talk about!

56, COUPON BOOKS, There have been aerating companies that have had great success with coupon books.

These are the mass produced coupon books that generally a marketing company puts together. They organize several other businesses (non-competing) into a large mailing of coupons that are delivered free to the local areas.

These companies usually do mailings in the hundreds of thousands. You can usually purchase an area in minimum runs of 10,000, the price of doing these coupons is cheaper than doing the mailings yourself because they have many companies sharing the postage. You will have to decide on what kind of promotion you want to run. The idea of the coupons is that the customer will save some money. I would recommend that you offer a sliding scale discount based on volume. This works on the principle that if one person wants to get his lawn done, he gets 5% off, but if he can influence his neighbor to have his done at the same time, then they both receive 10% off their total bills. If they can organize 4 or more neighbors, THEY ALL V7ILL RECEIVE 20% OFF THEIR RESPECTIVE BILLS 1 This means that on a standard starting price of $50 they would all receive $10 off. This also means that you will only receive $40 dollars per lawn BUT YOU WILL MAKE MORE MONEY PER HOUR AS YOUR TRAVELING TIME IS ELIMINATED! I can usually complete about 3 lawns in an hour if they are side by side compared to only 1 and a half when I have to drive, load and unload between jobs. I have doubled my efficiency this way; I have had up to 20 neighbors on the same block agree to have their lawns done all at once. I believe my fuel expenses were around $3.00 that day (the aerators use hardly any fuel. a 5 gallon gas can usually lasts a few days). So how much profit is involved in that days work? The maximum profit is always in volume business, SIDE BY SIDE to eliminate driving time, 57. 2 FOR 1 COUPON BOOKS (purchased by customers). These are a slightly different approach to coupons. The coupon book company doesn't charge you for the ad but expects you to offer a substantial benefit to the customer, usually a 2 for 1 deal. The coupon company then sells the books, which are quite thick and full of hundreds of dollars of savings to the customers. The price is usually around $40 to $50 so the customer has to use the book to recoup their investment. This book is popular with restaurants. It may be good for your purposes as well because you don't have to risk your advertising money up front. All you have to do is aerate the couponholder neighbor’s lawn for free when you arrive to do the aeration job. This would be a superb method of getting customers when you are just starting out and don't have your appointment books full. This is a benefit especially when you have more time than money. Remember that once you arrive at a jobsite, you will likely get more neighbors if you go up and do\-m the street asking them, and watch the 'me too' principle take effect.

58, CITY MAGAZINES. These 'glossy', high quality magazines are usually only available in the larger cities.

These magazine's readership are aimed at the well to do women of the city. There are usually many fashion stores advertising in this magazine but there is also a classified ad section that may prove profitable, I would suggest you only advertise with a special offering during the height of the season.

59. A.T.V. TOW VEHICLE. A multi-purpose vehicle you could invest in would be a four wheeled All-Terrain Vehicle. These little 'dune buggies' have extra wide tires that can go over the grass without sinking into the ground. Care would have to taken that you don't spin the wheels, tearing up the grass. The purpose of this vehicle

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would be two fold. First, it could tow an aeration device behind it. There are factory made aerators that are designed to be towed behind small garden tractors that you could tow with this vehicle as well. This would only be serviceable if you were doing large flat areas of grass, like commercial accounts, which are highly profitable. If you tried it on ordinary house lawns you couldn't turn it around short enough. Secondly, the vehicle will certainly attract lots of attention! HOWEVER, CARE SHOULD BE TAKEN THAT THE A.T.V.'s ARE OPERATED SAFELY! 60. DUNE BUGGY. As an eye catcher, one of the best vehicles I've ever owned was a Dune Buggy. This was one of those fiberglass body models with a Volkswagen running gear. This vehicle would have people all over it whenever I would stop at a parking lot. This would be an ideal company vehicle upon which your logo could be displayed and it could be a great deal of fun as well. This vehicle could be used for community events likened to how radio stations always have their vehicles at events.

61. ENVELOPE SPONSORSHIP. This unique idea may be beneficial to local charities and other groups on a tight budget. You could approach them and explain that you would be willing to purchase all of their stationary supplies provided you could place a small statement that your firm supplied the supplies. This is similar to how vans are sponsored by certain companies.

62. MATCH SPONSORSHIP. This is a new twist on an old concept. Matches with the names of restaurants have been around for years. With times being as tight as they are now. the restaurants may wish to share the advertising space available in return for a cost subsidy. You will have to negotiate with the individual restaurants to find out how much they expect you to pay. They will be distributing the matches all the time at their restaurants.

63. SHOPPING BAG SPONSORSHIP. The local grocery or drug store may want to go in on a sponsorship arrangement as well. If you cover part or all of the cost of supplying all of the store's paper bag needs the both of you will profit. You get the benefit of the exposure to their customers and they get the reduced operating costs of not having a bag supply expense. Many large supermarket stores are doing this already!

64. TAKE OUT DELIVERY BOXES. The local pizza, Chinese Food and other takeout places will probably be willing to talk about a sponsorship arrangement, as well. They spend hundreds of dollars on packaging a year, if not thousands.

65. PARADES. This is a outstanding time to show off any unusual vehicles you have acquired. Of course they will have your logo on them even if it is only a banner for the day! Many of the large companies restore and build specialty vehicles just for such events.

66. PARADE PROMOTIONS. This is the time to have some people in your uniforms passing out $5 gift certificates to the crowds as your float goes by. You may want to have one of your aerating machines (clean of course) on display as well.

67. HOME AND GARDEN SHOWS. If you can afford to go into the local home and garden show it would probably be a good source of customer leads. The attendance of these events is sometimes staggering so the price to go into one is fairly high. To lower your costs, you may be able to share a booth with some other

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complementary business such as a garden shop.

68. HOME AND GARDEN SHOW PARKING LOTS. If you can't afford to rent a booth you can still display your company to all the people who go there. How? By putting advertising on their cars in the parking lots around the trade fair center! If you printed up a few thousand gift certificates and left one on each window of every car in the area you would reach the same people as if you rented a booth in the show. This would probably cost about $100 compared to several hundred or even thousands of dollars for a booth.

69. 2 WEATHER BALLOONS AND A BANNER. An inexpensive attention-getter would be to have a couple of helium filled weather balloons with a banner strung between them! You could even have these attached to the front and back of your truck and leave it in the parking lot of the Home and Garden Show near the entrance. You will have to move the vehicle if the establishment complains but you should be O.K. On the public street if you have checked out the local rules prior. This promotion would attract a lot of attention as it could be seen flying over all the cars in the parking lot.

70. CAR WINDOW ADS. These are different than leaving pamphlets on the windows of cars. This is where you have the entire surface of the inside of your car's windows covered up with a removable, light, paper sign.

This sign could be a blueprint size photocopy with quick release fastener devices on the corners. The main benefit of this system is that when it gets dark out you can turn on your interior light and the entire sign becomes illuminated.

71. R.V. WITH BANNER. Your R.V. can serve a dual purpose during the aeration season because it is so tall.

The unit stands out way over all other the cars and pick-up trucks in a parking lot so it is easily seen. You could install detachable banners to the side of it while you drive around and go shopping on your normal chores. If you get even one or two customers from this it more than compensates for the hassle and poor fuel economy. When election time rolls around you'll see a lot of R.V.s used as mobile billboards in this manner.

72. MASSIVE BUSINESS CARDS. If you want massive results, take massive actions! Why just have 250 or 500 business cards when it only costs a few more dollars to have 5,000 or 10,000. Most people don't realize that to print such large numbers costs surprisingly little as most of the cost is in the setup of the printing. To make several thousand more cards, the printers just leave the press run a few more minutes 1 The cost of the extra paper is minor. You really use so little paper when a business card is made because the cards are so small. What do you do with so many business cards? Well, first of all, you should have printed a card worth keeping with some interesting information on it. Don't have just your name and phone number on it, make it interesting, then you could leave the cards everywhere you go. This means any restaurant, store or public place you go to; leave a stack of 20 or 30 cards. If people are interested, they'll pick one up.

73. NIGHT PROJECTOR. If you have a place that you could shine, a slide projector onto at night outside you may be able to try this. You will first have to check out local rules to see if it is permitted, then you can show your advertisements against the wall in the dark. You could blow the image up as tall as possible (the image will only be focused up to a certain size). Of course, you won't be able to leave the projector on for extreme long periods of time as the bulb will soon burn out.

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74. SUN SHADES FOR AUTOS. The sunshades that shield the interiors of autos have become very popular lately. You could have some printing up with your logo on them and then offer them to local stores at a much cheaper rate than they normally could purchase them for.

75. BUS STOP BENCH ADS. These are an old standard advertising that does work; however, they are expensive for a small budgeted company. You may try to find another complimentary business to share the cost with you.

76. TRADITIONAL ADVERTISING SHARED COST. You may be able to afford the traditional methods of advertising such as radio, T.V. billboards and newspaper display ads if you find another complimentary, noncompeting company to share the cost with you, 76. BICYCLE FRAME SIGN. A pleasant way to get your exercise and still promote your company would be to have a custom-made sign that would fit in between the center frame on a men's style bicycle. You could advertise your company as you were riding along in the park enjoying yourself.

PROMOTION IDEAS How to save money promoting your small business.

This section deals with how to promote your company in a cost effective manner. Promotion, like advertising, is part of the overall marketing program. This is a little different from the ways I was talking about how to advertise your company in that with promotion the objective is to get your company well knovm within the community. This may or may not involve a direct asking for business like running an ad does. Promotion includes trying to get free publicity, which is a lot better than paying for ads!

1, LOCAL ARTS EVENTS, The local opera and ballet companies usually have fund raising events throughout the year where they ask local businesses to participate as sponsors donating their services as a prize in the raffle.

The programs of events in exchange for advertising in the programs. Many times, you can offer your aerating services as a prize in their raffle. The people who attend these functions are good prospects for your business.

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2. ECOLOGY THEME. You may wish to expand upon the ecology theme as you are in the greenest business around ... the grass business. This is a very opportune time to enter the grass business with a ecology minded program. It is very well accepted by the public now. I always use recycled paper in all my advertisements and I explain the benefits of having healthy, green grass in our own backyards. Aeration is the mechanical NOT chemical way of making your lawn healthy and green.

3. BULLETIN BOARDS. The old bulletin board is very effective at providing cost effective advertising aimed at the local neighborhood. Make sure that you make your ad with detachable phone number tabs WITH YOUR AERATING NAME ON IT! So many people pick up a phone number tab and forget what the number was for a day later so they toss it. Naturally you should not just have your info on a main sheet without pull off tabs as people never seem to have a pen on them to write your phone number down. If you want to get their business you are going to have to do all the initial ground work to make it as easy as possible for the customer to call you. I have had great deal of success putting cartoons on my ads to attract interest to even the casual onlooker.

4. CHURCH NEWSLETTER. You may be able to advertise in the local church's newsletter. You may also be able to trade your services for the advertising fee (many churches have large lawns that need aerating). If you can leave a sign on the lawn when you are done it will be noticed by all the people over the weekend.

5. AERATION EXPERT ON THE NEWS. You may be able to get on the news or a current event show as an aeration expert explaining what is the best thing to do for your lawn at that particular time in the season. You should contact your local T.V. station to inform them that you would be interested in doing this at THEIR CONVENIENCE. T.V. stations sometimes have slow days for the news and they have to fill the time slot up with local interest stories.

6. WRITE A COLUMN IN LOCAL PAPER AS A LAWN CARE ADVISOR. After you have been in business for a while you could approach the local papers to offer your services as a column writer answering lawn care questions. Once you have this column your lawn care services will take on a new position of authority as people begin to recognize you and call your firm because you are the ‘authority’ on the subject. When you look at the base word in authority, it is author. This means that if you must be an expert on the subject if you wrote the book on it', Don' t be intimidated by a lack of formal education as it is irrelevant in this case. Your expertise is in lawn care and you don't need a Ph.D. to write about it. Just use simply language and answer the peoples questions as best you can (note if there is a question you don't know DO NOT BLUFF YOUR WAY THROUGH, do the research to get it right1 Almost all the answers are at your local library and your local government agricultural department). You are considered an expert (a rule of thumb definition ) when you know more about a subject than the people you are dealing with. By this definition you can see there are many different degrees of expert.

The local math teacher is an expert compared to his students however he is not compared to the university professor of mathematics. The professor would have to agree his has a lot to learn for someone like Einstein. So you can see you don't have to know everything about lawns just what's relevant to your business 7, CABLE T.V. The local cable companies sometimes have very inexpensive community advertising on their channels. It is usually along the bottom of the T.V. News or the events calendar. Some stations even have a local video classified that you can be on for $20 to $50. That is a great deal! You will be able to reach many people with

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this method. I don't believe too many people watch these channels for extended periods of time however as they are usually just checking to see what's on. It is a hit and miss method but the price dictates that only one job will pay for it!

8. MALL VIDEO. You may find that a video about your services may be able to be placed in your local mall.

There are combination T.V. and video player units now available that are the size of 12" portable T.V. You can rent a video camera at many places these days so you can make a simple 3 to 5 minute video explaining the benefits of your service and your rates. I suggest you have your company name, phone number and what you do on a sign beside the video so people don't have to wait through the whole video to get that information. It would be wise to have hand out business cards as well so people can just grab one and run. Remember to make your business card worth keeping as I mentioned earlier.

9. MOBILE VIDEO. I chose a combination T.V. and video player unit that was 12 volt adaptable so I could use it in my R.V. when I wanted to advertise and play the video through the windows in the R.V. This was a great hit in the parking lots at the shopping malls or the local events. The novelty of the idea attracted a lot of attention. The unit has a automatic rewind feature so it would take care of it's self as I went and enjoyed myself at the local event1 You should check about the rules of doing something similar in your area before you invest in the equipment.

10. BIG POSTERS. There are now many photocopy places that can produce the super large posters the size of blueprints. The great part of this is that they are blown up from ordinary 8 1/2" X 11" paper. You can take something that you can quickly produce on a desktop publishing machine (most of the photocopy places have these desktop publishing machines right there as well) and instantly blow the ad up to poster size! This is useful when you want attention grabbing headlines or even an inexpensive banner.

11. BANNERS. There are specialty banner making shop now that can make a custom made banner in a day or so. These are the traditional banners that are long and narrow. They are made on computer so they can be made almost to any length. The banners that I priced out were only about $30 for a 8'.

12. RADIO CONTROLLED BLIMPS. There are small radio controlled blimps that you can purchase and have your ad put on the side like the Goodyear Blimp does. This may be a little expensive but would sure be fun!

13. RADIO CONTROLLED BOATS. The same thing could be applied here if you have a local park with a pond in it. You don't even have to sponsor an event just put a sign on one toy boat or have it tow a barge with your ad on it. You can have great fun with your kids with this, as I'm sure they'll help you advertise this way anytime! Be sure to take a picture of the kid playing with the toy boat. You may get the picture in the local newspaper as a human-interest story (the sign can't be too large or gaudy or the paper won't accept it).

14. RADIO CONTROLLED CARS. You may enjoy sponsoring a sort of 'mini indy' radio controlled toy car race. There would be all kinds of interest and most likely lots of free publicity. You could have local businesses sponsor prizes and trophies for the winners. You could also involve local celebrities as the drivers and get publicity that way. Each business could sponsor a car just like the big races or the cost could be shared by many.

Most of all it would be a fun way to make business and get well known locally.

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15. RADIO CONTROLLED AIRPLANES. These may be a bit too tricky and dangerous to put a sign on them so I wouldn't recommend these.

16. HATS. These are always a good item to make extra amounts of. With the new technologies available now the price of high quality custom stitched lettering has come down that even the small budget companies can afford to have a professional image. Your logo can be ‘scanned’ into their computer so that they can reproduce your logo in any color and any size on any garment you desire. Prices may vary but I paid around $100 to have my complex logo scanned. I then had baseball caps made for all my employees and I made several more to hand out to customers who wanted them. The price of the hats were down to about $5 apiece including the logo! What a small investment for have people display your company's name for you.

17. T-SHIRTS. Another valuable asset that is well worth the investment is T-Shirts with your company's logo on them. Once you have your logo on file with the embroidery company's computer you can have the logo transferred to anything for only a few dollars per logo. You can have the same quality as the major corporation's promotional T-Shirts on a small budget and small volume output. You can have a conservative style T-Shirt or something more trendy that will be appealing to the younger crowd as they are the usual T-Shirt purchasers. They will gladly wear your T-shirt if it is considered 'cool' (being free won't help if it's not 'cool' in fact I doubt if you could even pay kids to wear something they don't want to wear if they would be embarrassed wearing it) Some major companies have achieved the ultimate in having the kids PAY outrageous prices for clothes with the company's logo on it !

18. UNIFORMS. This should be quite evident now how easy it would be to have your entire crews in matching uniforms. The effect on their pride and performance is quite measurable. A uniform can be as simply as a T-shirt and a hat so the cost to you is less than $20 per person! The most important effect will be when your crews arrive on the jobsite and the customer notices how professional you and your crews look. This builds confidence and repeat business. Most people would rather see a uniformed service person arrive at their door than some scruffy looking people that seem to have invaded their private home!

19, COMPANY COLORS, The other part of a simple corporate identity is to have a simple standard color scheme for your vehicles, uniforms and advertising. If you have a haphazard collection of different colored vehicles and everyone wearing something different, you will have no company recognition. If you take the time and the little bit of money to make everything standard, your company will become well known in your community. If you think for a minute of how many plumbers, for instance, you know of in your community, you start to think of which companies you have seen around your neighborhood (unless you are personally connected with a plumber most people never think of plumbers until they need one). Now think again, what you thought of that instant was of the COMPANY'S TRUCKS YOU SAW AROUND! If a plumber doesn't have a company truck how would you know he is a plumber? He may have lived in the next block to you for 20 years!

Anonymously! You don't want that lack of recognition do you? If you carry the same color scheme throughout your entire company's procedures you will rapidly gain recognition and business! The total cost is small. For example 5 T-Shirts, 5 Baseball Caps (approximately $100), and a paint job for your truck (roughly $400) would be only around $500. If you have a truck in good shape already and you would like to follow through with the colors of the truck already you will be hundreds of dollars ahead. You also have the option of doing what many large

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companies do which is to have a white truck (or any other solid colored truck) and just add a stripe down the side of the vehicle (there are vinyl pre-made strips for this purpose for around $20). Another way the larger companies distinguish their vehicles by painting only the doors a different color. You would have to decide how much you want your vehicle to look commercial or do you want a dual purpose, pleasure also color scheme.

20. COMPANY PREMIUMS. Premiums such as pens, calendars, watches and buttons can be useful to promote your company. Be sure that your phone number is on all of these numbers, not just your company name, because people will be too lazy to look your phone number up! Think of it this way, if they have to look up your name they will be also looking at all of your competition!

21. COMPANY CARICATURES. I have enjoyed much success by having caricatures of my crew and equipment working. I use the cartoon of the equipment in all of my ads as it adds life to boring 'Junk Mail'. This way people have a good feeling when they think of my company. It has made them chuckle the first time they read about me. These cartoons are a great eye catcher in the posters we talked about earlier as well.

22. SCHOOL BOOKS SPONSORSHIP. This benefits the parents of the children as they are the ones who usually pay for all those school books. You will probably be able to purchase the books at wholesale because you are buying a large quantity instead of the outrageous inflated price the school bookstore charges. You may have to do some research as to the feasibility of such a sponsorship. You would have to also investigate the cost of the sponsorship to see if you can get some other companies involved to help with the cost.

23. SENIORS MAGAZINES. This is a valuable source For advertising because most seniors have their lawns done for them. They have more time to appreciate a beautiful lawn so they do everything to keep the lawn looking it's best. I always mention a Seniors Discount with my ads and even use a standardized Seniors Discount logo sometimes.

24. P.T.A. MEETINGS. Often, there is a newsletter here that you may be able to advertise in. This would be an excellent medium to advertise in because the cost should be low and the involvement in the community would be very high. An ad in this newsletter may start people talking about your company over coffee the next day. I would suggest offering a discount to any group of three or more so they get in on the 'me too' principle. People like to do things if their friends or neighbors are doing it. I built my initial business on the 'me too' principle. I used to go down the block knocking on all the neighborhood doors, until I had convinced one to have their lawn done. The first job would sometimes take 20 doors to knock on before one would give me the go ahead. Then every second door it seemed would give me the go ahead once they heard the machine running and saw that their neighbor was having it done. In fact several times the people that I had asked earlier on in the block who had said 'no thanks' to me at first would search me out down the block to tell me that they had changed their minds and would like to have theirs done as well. No one wants to be first but everyone wants to be included once someone has started the process. I had learnt this early in life through these experiences. Even if I didn't have a first customer yet on the block I would start the engine and have it idling as I would knock on the door and say "Hi I'm aerating your neighbor’s lawn down the block today, would you like yours done as well? I could do yours right after I finish theirs and you would qualify for the' in the neighborhood discount'." Most people would go with the plan because they wanted to save money and have what their neighbors were having, I was only 16 when I was doing this approach and I later discovered that this same marketing and sales approach is used by major sales

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corporations. This exact wording is effective still today, 20 years later, for direct selling of aerating services.

25. GARDENING SHOPS. One source of new business is your local gardening centers. They have a constant coming and going of people who already have their lawns on their minds. This would be an ideal place to leave behind some referral cards and pamphlets (with the owner's permission of course). It wouldn't be a bad idea to get to know the owners too as they may be interested in a mutual referral arrangement. They would like to be referred to for supplies of plants and flowers just as much as you would like their referrals. It never hurts to drop by and introduce yourself!

26. MALL INFO STAND. Your local mall may have a public service stand that it rents out for a week at a time. The purpose of these booths is to have an ever-changing atmosphere in the mall at all times so that the mall seems interesting all year long. The booths generally have to have someone in them to answer questions. You will need some form of an attention-getter sign. You may consider the blueprint size photocopies or the inexpensive banners. You should have some of your lawn signs there as well so the people will 'connect' your booth with your signs when they see them on the street. Every time a person sees your logo and company name, the more likely they will think of you when they need your services. Why do you think the major soft drink companies keep plastering their logo around everywhere? I don't think there is a person who is in this country more than a day who can't name the two big soft drink companies 1 The secret is repetition, repetition, repetition! When I was on vacation, I traveled through this small town of maybe 100,000 people. I noticed one company's trucks about 20 times in the 2 day stay that I was there. I didn't know how many trucks the company had or how large it was. As I was leaving that town early in the morning (to get a full days driving in before the major traffic) I noticed, in a quiet residential area 2 older trucks and one small car, all painted up in company colors and with the logo painted on the doors. This was most likely the entire 'fleet' that I had seen working around the town! I would estimate the value of all the vehicles put together would not have been worth more than $3000, but the company's name and what they did stuck in mind from the first day. They had their marketing program together better than some companies worth over $100,000 that I know of!

27. GOLF COURSES. A prime area to be visible in is golf courses. Golfers are among the best people to make your aeration business known to because they see the benefits of aeration every time they play golf. Golf courses aerate constantly to relieve soil compaction and provide the best greens possible. Most of the golfers will be able to recognize your professional quality machinery as the same as they have seen on the golf course. This increases your credibility when they see that you have taken the time and effort to invest in the best equipment to do the job properly. One v/ay that I market myself to the golfers is simply to go play golf. I park my company truck right near the front entrance so everyone can see as they arrive. Of course, I wear my company jacket and cap while playing and relaxing after the game. The best exposure is when you organize a company golf tournament. Of course you have the entire fleet of trucks in the parking lot and all the teams are wearing their jackets and caps. This display of company colors would be memorable and you are sure to get some business out of the exposure. There may also be a club newsletter that you may be able to advertise in for a reasonable rate.

The readership would be an excellent target market, 28. SCHOOL YEARBOOK. If you have a close association with your local school, you may want to sponsor a page in the school's yearbook. Whether this will be profitable will depend upon your judgment The goodwill may be worth something in the community as you are supporting local education, I believe that the amount of

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business you derive from this will depend on how many parents read the yearbook. I could see a benefit if you were in a small, very community minded, town that took an intense interest in their school more than if you are located in a large city with an indifferent local community towards school spirit. The bottom line is profit if you feel the ads will produce then proceed.

29. KLEENEX STAND SPONSORSHIP. This may seem like a strange idea but in the spring time during the 'sniffle season' one of the most appreciated public service promotions that you could offer would be a Kleenex stand in your local mall. Everyone seems to need a tissue but never seem to have one on them. Offer to the local mall organization that you will install it and keep it stocked full of Kleenex in exchange for the exclusive right to advertise on the stand. They may go for it so it is worth a phone call. To advertise any regular way in the mall would probably cost you hundreds of dollars. I would negotiate to get the exclusive rights to the stand as they may change their mind once you have installed the stand.

30. FRIENDS AND RELATIVES LETTER. You may not be comfortable calling all your friends and relatives to tell them you have started a new business, but these people are an excellent source of business and contacts. Some people feel awkward when they are talking about money with relatives, A solution would be to write them all a personal handwritten letter.

31. OFFICE TOWER CANVAS. The office towers downtown are often overlooked by the home service trades, but most of the decision makers are concentrated in that little section of town. If you hired some people to help you, it wouldn't take long to drop off a few discount cards just before the height of the season to start the office networking principles in motion. I find that if a good deal is available, the referral and networking principles spread like wildfire. The same is true of a negative experience, so if you have disgruntled customer deal with them to their satisfaction, because if you don't they will spread your name out as a red flag. It is possible to turn a disgruntled customer into an ally if you solve their needs emotionally as well as financially. They want to feel that they were treated fairly and if you deal with them fairly, you may get referrals and repeat business from them, 32. KITE SIGN. A very simple way of putting your logo and phone number out to the public while having some fun at the same time, would be to have a kite sign. The kite would have your logo and phone number on it so it, would have to custom made. You may be able to stencil the letters onto a large kite. You can do this just like you did the lawn signs earlier by filling in the stencil lines. If you were to have a kite contest, you could have your phone number in large letters with one number per kite. The kites could then be flown in formation so that your name and phone number would be spelled out. It is highly likely that you could get a picture of this in the local paper as publicity stunt. You may decide to have several of your single kites with your complete name and phone number on them for sale at a reduced rate. Kids will want to have the larger kite with your logo on it to fly rather than just a plain kite. You could create some more publicity by sponsoring a kite-flying contest for a local boys or girls club. Have the kites as part of the prizes. Being as you are the sponsor you can have all the contestants wearing your T-Shirts. This is similar to how the large radio stations or soft drink companies stage their contests.

Let the kids keep the T-Shirts after the contest so that everyone will get something from the event. It doesn't hurt that your logo is on all those shirts so they'll remember for years to come who sponsored the contest. So will their parents, your target market! "Go fly a kite" will have a new profitable motive for you now!

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33. COLORING CONTEST OF CARICATURES. If you incorporate some fun in your business, your interest and profits will soar. One way I did this was to hire a cartoonist to draw caricatures of my equipment.

The additional graphics to my flyers increased my response rate remarkably. I even held a coloring contest on my flyers that I sent out every spring, I offered prizes for the best colored flyer. The prizes were provided at no cost to me as I exchanged advertising space on the flyer for Teddy Bears from a Teddy Bear Delivery Service. This exchange is called a contra in advertising lingo and is a form of barter. I enjoyed the production of the flyer campaign much more than when it was just business. The smiles on the little kid's faces who won the prizes were priceless.

34. COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS. If you can acquire several commercial accounts you will have a healthy addition to your customer base. These accounts are a pleasure to do as they can be done on weekends when no one is around in the way. Most commercial lawns are wide open, flat areas that are a breeze to do. The only problem with these accounts is that some people get intimidated with trying to get the accounts. One of the easiest ways is to first decide on which areas you would like to do business in, and then you need to do a bit of research. If you have driven by a place that interests you, take note of the address and company name. Then look the firm's phone number up in the phone book. Call the number and ask what is the name of the person who makes the decisions about their firm's lawn care. Ask this person how to spell that name, then ask for the correct mailing address and zip - code. Send this person a typewritten letter on your company letterhead introducing yourself and your firm. Mention how long you have been in business and v/hich places you take care of in the area if any. End the letter stating that if the person has any questions please feel free to call upon you at any time.

After you have mailed the letter, wait about a week AND THEN CALL HIMl In using this method you will be able to call up and ask for the person' s name immediately and will probably not be 'screened' by the secretary (one of the secretary's job is to screen any salesman for her boss) as she will likely believe that you are familiar will the person as you asked for them by name. When you get connected to the person state who you are and ask if they received your letter. They likely have by then but probably haven't thought much about it as of yet. This gives you a chance to ask them a few questions about their requirements in respect to lawn care. This may seem to be a roundabout method to do this but if you are not comfortable 'cold calling' (walking straight in and asking right from the start) you would do better 'warming' the person up by a letter first. This method has a better success ratio as it is usually hard to walk off the street and see the person in charge. They are just to busy to see an unscheduled person. PEOPLE ARE MUCH EASIER TO REACH BY PHONE THAN IN PERSON! It is not necessary to see this person to get the information you require. The added advantage of this method is that you research and contact many more times the amount of businesses than going door to door and trying to see someone. These activities should be done BEFORE THE SEASON STARTS AS MOST FIRMS PLAN IN ADVANCE AND YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO LOOK FOR WORK DURING THE HEIGHT OF THE SEASON YOU SHOULD BE DOING THE WORIU 35. TELEPHONE NEIGHBORS OF YOUR NEXT DAY'S CUSTOMERS. By using the city directory you can find out the telephone numbers of your customer's immediate neighbors. This directory has a reverse directory which lists all the neighbors on the block according to address, their names and their telephone numbers. You could call up everyone on the block in a matter of minutes I Mention that you are going to be doing Mrs. Brown's place down the block tomorrow and you could be glad to do her place as well. Both you and Mrs. Brown will receive our 'in the neighborhood' discount of $10.

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36. PUBLICITY RELEASES. If you have a interesting twist to your business, you may be able to receive free publicity. It may be something as simple as you are a new business opening up. To accomplish this you will have to issue a publicity release. This is really just a simple letter on your letterhead explaining the story. At the top of the release you should mention whether this is for immediate release or not until a particular date. The best way to write one would be to contact your local media and ask for a sample release. The is no guarantee that if you write a release it will be published however it is almost a certainty that you won't if you don't! So, why not give a try?

At least it's FREE! 37, ARMY OF KIDS. You may be able to enlist the help of an ARMY OP KIDS! If you organize several kids to put flyers on the windshields of cars you can completely 'blanket' an area very quickly. The total cost would probably not be very expensive and the kids will do a good jog if you pay them fairly, 38, FUND RAISER PRIZE, Aerating can be offered as a prize in local fund raising events. This will give you a good community involvement that should prove profitable as well if you request recognition for your efforts, 39, COMMISSIONED CANVASSERS. If you have a limited budget you may consider commissioned canvassers. These people would only get paid if they brought in some business. You would have to have an enticing commission structure to enlist a good crew but the money you put out would be on a 'sure' thing compared to any form of advertising where results are determined after the money has left your hands.

40. CONDOMINIUM AND APARTMENT ASSOCIATIONS. These organizations can be a gold mine for you but may be as hard as gold to find the list of members. You may be able to locate the list at your local library or chamber of commerce. Sometimes the organizations prefer to remain hard to reach, as they would be besieged with all kinds of offers daily. Despite the hard work, digging the owners out you will find that once you do quality work for one or two of the members your referrals will accumulate rapidly as these people are very well connected.

41. CHRISTMAS CERTIFICATES. A welcome gift to send along with your December letter would be gift certificates. This certificates would be worth $5 towards any service you perform. Since your starting price is usually $50 all you will be giving up is the $5 certificate amount so this is a pleasant way of bringing in new customers. They feel they have received a gift and you are benefiting as well. The customer you sent the certificates to will also appreciate them because you have solved one of the age-old problems "What do I give the milkman for Christmas." Many of your customers will use one of the certificates themselves and then pass the others out as presents. This will certainly start people talking about your company. Remember, the most effective method of advertising is word of mouth, so give them something to talk about!

42. COMPANY MASCOT. This is a great way to develop a positive company image with the community.

Think of all the major corporations that spend millions of dollars identifying themselves with their mascot.

Which burger chain uses a clown that is more recognizable than the leader of the country? You can develop a mascot on whatever you favorite animal, object or plant. Mascots have been developed out of all of these. Just pick one and give it a personality!

43. ASSOCIATION OF LANDSCAPE PROFESSIONALS. You will enjoy benefits belonging to your local associations as well as the international associations. This will be an excellent chance to advice from some of the

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old pros. This advice can sometimes be immeasurable in value.

44. GARDENER'S NETWORK. You would be very well connected when you get to know your local areas gardeners. These people can be an inexhaustible supply of new customers. The majority of gardeners don't invest in the equipment required for aeration as their service is more general care oriented rather than specialized like aerating. They do however welcome an opportunity to service their customers by recommending your service to their clients. Sometimes they may request that you perform the jobs and then bill them instead of the customer.

This is a benefit to the both of you then as he can make a mark-up on the service as well.

45, GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS. There are usually many different departments of the government that may need aeration services, as so many buildings are owned by many different branches. There is usually a central bidding system that will allow you to enter your bid on various jobs.

46, CRAZY SONG. If you have musical ability or know of someone who does you may try writing a crazy song about your company. If it is good you may develop a local following and get airplay on the local radio station.

47, LOTTERY TICKETS. You may benefit by giving away lottery tickets as premiums for aerating. It would give a reason to call back the customers a couple weeks later to ask if they won anything and if they know of anyone who may need aerating as well!

48. ROSE IN A VASE. An idea that will win the heart of every woman customer you have is to present her with a long stem rose in a custom made vase with your company name on it. This would be such an unusual but delightful gift for them to receive that you could almost be assured of referrals for years to come as your name and number would be on the vase and they would think of you whenever they used it long after your rose was gone. I would suggest maybe another color of rose than red as the may be tensions built over where the roses came from and why!

49. HOW TO CARE FOR YOUR LAIVN BOOKLET. Write a simple how to booklet explaining the best way to care for your lawn. Of course you can elaborate on the benefits of regular aeration! The research for the booklet could be done at your local library. This will greatly increase your worth as an advisor of care for their lawn as you have "written a book on it!"

50. FOLLOW YOUR DOLLAR. Wherever you spend your consumer dollars, you should be asking to reciprocate the services with your aeration.

51. BARTER EXCHANGE, You can offer your services in exchange for payment for other people's services or goods. It would be an advantage to propose barter to several businesses in your area as they may want your services, as well.

52. NIGHT SCHOOL COURSE. You would gain plenty of recognition in your community by putting together a night school course on how to take better care of lawns and solutions to common lawn care problems.

53. FREE ADVICE SERVICE. For a certain amount of time (same time each week), you could offer free

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advice on lawn care problems over the phone. Because this service is free, you will probably receive free publicity from your local media.

54. FREE USE OF YOUR TRUCK DURING OFF SEASON EVENTS. When you are not using the unit in the off season, you could volunteer the services of your vehicle to a worthwhile cause.

55. REAL ESTATE PEOPLE NETWORKING. Several of the local Real Estate people may have homes that they have on the market that, to enhance a sale, need improvement in their lawn's condition. A simple letter to the branch manager should facilitate your being known throughout the offices of that company.

56. PROPERTY MANAGERS. These people have many different development projects that require aeration of their lawns. These managers deal with many property service companies so your prices will have to be competitive and your presentation professional looking. Sometimes these managers have so much work that they may become your main or even only customer.

57, ENLIST THE HELP OF SENIORS. Sometimes some of your best employees, whether part time or full time, may be seniors that have retired. Many of them look forward to having something exciting to do after a few years of retirement. They may or may not need the extra income, but to be actively involved in their community brings them pride. These people enjoy interacting with your customers and add to a great company spirit.

58. FAMILY EMPLOYMENT. Your family may turn out to be your greatest asset if you have kids that need jobs for the summer. They will learn the value of a dollar early on in life and develop their own self-worth as they are earning their own money and not asking for handouts. Generally, if a family member feels involved in the business they will perform better than just an employee that is with you for only a few weeks.

59. BIRTHDAY CARDS. A simple thing like remembering and recognizing a person's birthday warms them up and makes you unforgettable, as well. This goes for your employees as well as your customers.

60. THANKSGIVING CARD. Instead of sending a Christmas card and being lost in the flood of cards at that time of year, try sending a Thanksgiving Card. People rarely receive any cards at this time of year so your efforts will really be noticed. Besides, it seems appropriate that a thank you card be sent on Thanksgiving as you are thanking the customers for their patronage.

61. SPONSOR A PARKING METER. You may have to obtain permission to do this but a welcome sight to customers looking for parking would be to have a meter sponsored by your firm. This would be very beneficial if you had a meter sponsored in front of your office. You would have to talk with the local authorities for permission.

62. PAY THE METERS ON A BLOCK FOR THE CARS THAT THEIR METERS HAVE EXPIRED. After you have paid for some more time in the meter for a car, put a note on their window explaining what you have done for them. Most people will appreciate your efforts and remember your company's name the next time they need your services.

63. LEAST EXPENSIVE 'OFFICE' IDENTITY. The best deal you could obtain for a telephone number and

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address separate from your home would be to get a pager with voicemail capabilities and a private mailbox. The pager should have an ordinary phone number and not require additional code numbers that your customer has to enter to reach you. The voicemail option enables you to leave a message in your own voice and your own wording so the customer knows they are properly connected with your company. The private mailbox companies usually allow you to address your mail, for example, just #000 instead of P.O. Box #000. Together, these are probably available for less than $100 per month. The greatest advantage of having these is that if you move you don't have to go through all the expense of address changes on all your stationary. You will also not lose customers business who would otherwise have only your old number.

64. LO COST WORD PROCESSING. One of the best ways to get word processing done at a reasonable rate would be to hire a local student to operate one of the machines that you can rent at the local photocopy place.

When the rate to have a professional do the complete job ranges between $50 to $60 per hour you could save considerably in hiring the student for about $8 to $12 per hour. The desktop publishing machine will probably rent for $8 to $12 per hour, as well, so together they are less than half the professional rate!

65. REVOLVING ADVERTISEMENT CLOCK. An old novelty idea that could be revived would be a clock installed in the local restaurant with a series of advertisements revolving every minute.

66. PLACE MATS. The place mats in the local restaurant could also be utilized to display advertising on them.

Of course, the restaurant would like some sort of compensation.

67. BARTERED SERVICES. Aerating is a service that you can exchange for money or other goods and services from other businesses. The best part of this arrangement is that you exchange services based on the retail price of your service and not your cost to exchange $50 or $100 worth of your services will only cost you a few dollars’ worth of gas and a few minutes work!

68. SAIL SPONSORSHIP. If you live in a area where there is a lot of sailing done near the city center, where there is a lot of people watching the sail boats, you may benefit from ‘sail sponsorship’. This is where you would offer to subsidize the cost of new sails for the boats. Of course, you would want to have your logo on the sails (there is usually some sort of design on the sails anyway so they may as well have a design that pays). Once the sails were made, the effect of the advertising would last for years to come. To entice the boat owners to purchase your sails, you would have to have a substantial savings for them. You should get the benefit of being able to purchase the sails wholesale as you would purchase them in bulk. I would suggest that you stick to one standard size of sail (pick out which boat seems the most popular) rather than trying to please everyone, I would also suggest that you concentrate only on the smaller sailboats that have to stay close to shore. There are usually lots of these little boats out in the harbor on a weekend. The sails for these boats are also much cheaper than the big sailing boats. Generally a lot of the people that are sailing these small sailboats are on a restricted budget and would welcome an price break.

69. MONTHLY CARD. For your regular customers you may consider sending them a monthly or quarterly letter or card. If you wrote them a letter, you could use the calligraphy pen and photocopy technique I showed you earlier to save time and make it a more personal approach. You could write a letter at the appropriate time to inform them of what to do to help their lawn. In the winter, you could send tips on houseplants. Your customers

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will be so surprised to hear from you in this manner that they are sure to tell their friends. In doing this you also increase your chances of repeat business in the next year. If you think that this is a little bit too much effort, consider the amount of effort and cost you invested to get these customers originally and how much it will cost to replace these customers. It is possible make your business grow at an astonishing rate of 50 to 100% per year!

Can you imagine doubling your income every year? This can only be accomplished by taking care of your previous customers to a high standard of excellence so they don't tend to look elsewhere for their needs next year. If you sent out 200 letters per month, it would cost you only about $58 postage (29 cents X 200) and your letterhead. Using the time saving method I showed you, it would only take a couple hours to complete this mailing (most of the time is spent addressing the envelopes). How many referrals or repeat orders would it take to recover $58? The large companies have figured out this for years that's why you get all those 'junk mail' letters with your name spelled wrong. Even with all their mistakes and how impersonal the computer letter is, they turn a profit on the mailings. Imagine how pleasant it would be to receive a PERSONAL HANDWRITTEN LETTER WITH THEIR NAME SPELLED RIGHT! 70. FINDING A GOOD ANSWERING SERVICE. To find a good answering service, ask for references from the prospective answering service. When they give you a list of companies that use the answering service, call the companies up, but after working hours so the answering company will answer! This way you can judge, first hand, if they answer the phones in a manner you want you company's phone answered. Did they let it ring to long? Did they sound like just an answering service rather than an interested person trying to help the customer?

As far as your clients are concerned, whomever they talk to over the phone IS your company.

71, HOME AND GARDEN SHOWS. If you can afford to rent a booth in the local home and garden show it would probably be a good source of customer leads. The attendance of these events is sometimes staggering, so the prices are fairly high. To lower your costs, you may be able to share a booth with some other complementary business, such as a garden shop, 72. HOME AND GARDEN SHOW PARKING LOTS. If you can't afford to rent a booth, you can still display your company to all the people who go there. How? By putting advertising on their cars in the parking lots around the trade fair center! If you printed up a few thousand gift certificates and left one on each window of every car, you would reach the same people as if you rented a booth in the show. This would probably cost about $100 compared to several hundred or even thousands of dollars for a booth 73. 2 WEATHER BALLOONS AND A BANNER. An inexpensive, attention-getter would be to have a couple of helium filled, weather balloons v/ith a banner strung between them! You could even have these attached to the front and back of your truck and leave it in the parking lot of the Home and Garden Show near the entrance. You will have to move the vehicle if the establishment complains but you should be O.K. on the public street (if you have checked out the local rules prior). This promotion would attract a lot of attention as it could be seen flying above all the cars in the parking lot.

74. SHOPPING BAG SPONSORSHIP. The local grocery or drug store may want to co-operate on a sponsorship arrangement, as well. If you cover part or all of the cost of supplying the store's paper bag needs, the both of you will profit. You get the benefit of the exposure to their customers and they get the reduced operating costs of not having a bag supply expense. Many large supermarket stores are doing this already!

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75. TAKE OUT DELIVERY BOXES. The local pizza, Chinese Food and other takeout places will probably be willing to talk about a sponsorship arrangement, as well. They spend hundreds of dollars on packaging a year, if not thousands.

76. CAR WINDOW ADS. These are different than leaving pamphlets on the windows of cars. This is where you have the entire surface of the inside of your car's windows covered up with a removable, light, paper sign.

This sign could be a blueprint size photocopy with quick release fastener devices on the corners. The main benefit of this system is that v/hen it gets dark out you can turn on your interior light and the entire sign becomes illuminated.

77. KIDS SPORTS TEAM SPONSORSHIP. You will have to judge whether this would be a profitable or just a goodwill gesture. Sometimes, goodwill can pay off big.

78. MATCH SPONSORSHIP. This is a new twist on an old concept. Matches with the names of restaurants have been around for years. With times being as tight as they are now, the restaurants may wish to share the advertising space available in return for a cost subsidy. You will have to negotiate with the individual restaurants to find out how much they expect you to pay. They will be distributing the matches all the time at their restaurants 79. ENVELOPE SPONSORSHIP. This unique idea may be beneficial to local charities and other groups on a tight budget. You could approach them and explain that you would be willing to purchase all of their stationary supplies provided you could place a small statement that your firm supplied the supplies. This is similar to how vans are sponsored by certain companies.

80. PARADES. This is an outstanding time to show off any unusual vehicles you have acquired. Of course, they will have your logo on them even if it is only a banner for the day! Many of the large companies restore and build specialty vehicles just for such events.

81. PARADE PROMOTIONS. This is the time to have some people in your uniforms handing out $5 gift certificates to the crowds as your float goes by. You may want to have one of your aerating machines (clean of course) on display as well.

82. COMPANY VEHICLE PARADE. This is such a simple concept, I don't knov/ why more companies don't do this. If you have 3 or more company vehicles that are painted up in company colors you should stage an informal parade or convoy. To see 3 or more identical vehicle traveling together is extremely rare. This not only attracts attention but boldly states to the community that your firm is a major force in the market place. The most memorable display of this that I witnessed was a real estate company that had over 100 white cars that each of it's salespeople drove as their company car. All the cars had the company logo painted on their doors. The effect was traffic stopping when they all would convoy together to view all the open houses on the market (as all Realtors do once a week). There were hundreds of other Realtors viewing these open houses at the same time but they were 'invisible' in their expensive luxury cars. There wasn't an open house viewing that went by with this 'parade' that didn't produce phone inquiries that eventually led to sales. From what I understand this real estate company became the number one selling company in that city within a year surpassing long established leaders! Anything is

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possible with the right marketing campaign!

83. RESTORED VINTAGE VEHICLES. I have had more fun and profit by restoring older pick-up trucks and using them for my company vehicles than by utilizing any of the new vehicles I have bought. These vintage trucks are real eye-catchers and put my company's image on par with the large corporations that restore their own antique vehicles. The image conveyed is one of stability, pride, longevity and commitment to the community. I don't know how many times I've been stopped and talked to when I simply drive into the corner store's parking lot. People admire and ask questions about the vehicle and my business. Kids love the old vehicles and always point them out to their parents! The best part of it is that it is far less expensive to get an old truck and paint it up than to purchase a new truck! The new truck is so ordinary it is almost invisible to the public which is pretty sad considering one probably invests $20,000 in it! In contrast I spent less than $1000 on my 1966 Cheverolet Stepside truck. That included the paint job of $400! I did invest another $160 to have a professional sign painter put my company name on the doors. I also decided to have my phone number put on the fenders in the old style phone number method (e.g. Dial CRestwood5-1234) many people still remember the old telephone exchange names and are happy to see it used again. Besides being a great marketing tool, I drove the truck all the time JUST FOR THE FUN OF IT! I also restored another old truck that I had found on a farm. Because the body of this old truck was not that great (no major holes but pitted and surface hail damaged) I decided that I could use this vehicle as a rough usage vehicle.

84. THE $30 PAINT JOB. On this older vehicle that was not in the greatest of shape I didn't want to invest the $1000 it would have taken to put the body in shape and paint it. I decided to try an experiment and paint it by BRUSH AND ROLLER! This sounds ridiculous but it was only my rough usage truck that had cost me next to nothing and it looked so bad I had to do something. I tried the brush and roller method out first on the interior of the box and the results weren't that bad so I finished the truck off in about 3 hours with a brush, a FOAM roller (to leave no visible roller marks), and two gallons of Hi-gloss oil house paint! I followed the body lines and made the paint job a two-tone with my company colors. The amazing thing was that it looked great from 10 feet away which is as close as the customer usually comes to the truck when it is on the job site. I actually had compliments on how bright and clean my truck was! When you put your signs on the truck people tend to regard your vehicle as a company truck. It seems more professional to have an older painted up truck with signs on it than a shiny new vehicle that is ‘anonymous’, Something I could never understand is why so many tradesmen service their customers without a sign on their vehicle. They lose thousands of dollars’ worth of in-the-area business this way. As we can see by this example, it doesn't have to cost a fortune to look like you really are in business.

85, NOVELTY VEHICLE. I have seen some excellent examples of novelty vehicles over the years. These are vehicles that have incorporated the main theme of the company business into their vehicle by some kind of modification. One example I saw was a SHOE CAR for a shoe repair place. This car could not go down the street without people turning their heads to see it. It was built over a small foreign car and had the appearance of a large boot driving down the road. It was very effective at indicating where the shoe repair store was because the owner would park it right in front of the store. Another interesting vehicle was a SIX-PACK BEER TRUCK built on a 1 ton standard chassis. It had a standard 14 foot cargo van body modified to look like the 'case' for a six-pack of beer. Out of the top of the case (cargo box) were six capped necks of the brand of beer the company made. It was an eye-catcher! The most extravagant novelty vehicle I've ever seen was a 5 ton truck built especially to

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display a light show on the sides of a 30 foot long truck box. It was at the Rose Bowl Parade. The truck was custom made to display changing light signs on the thousands of light bulbs on its sides similar to the rolling message light machines like the stock market reports come over on. The messages could be changed by simply typing in a new message. You could see this truck from blocks away and still read it's messages! The representative said the unit and the truck cost over $300,000 and weighed the maximum carrying capacity of the truck just for the computer and generator! You may be able to think of some little twist that you can apply to one of your vehicles to give it eye catching appeal. Those little Japanese trucks the Parks Departments use would make an interesting service vehicle to haul the aerators around. They almost look like toy trucks to begin with. Once you have a novelty vehicle you will become known as the company with the________ car just like the companies mentioned above. Some very large companies started out using these vehicles. Can you guess which meat company had a wiener-mobile?

86. DUNE BUGGY. As an eye catcher one of the best vehicles I've ever owned was a Dune Buggy. This was one of those fiberglass body models with a Volkswagen running gear. This vehicle would have people all over it whenever I would stop at a parking lot. This would be an ideal company vehicle that your logo could be displayed and you could have a great deal of fun as well. This vehicle could be used for community events similar to how radio stations always have their vehicles at events.

87. A.T.V. TOW VEHICLE. A multi-purpose vehicle you could invest in would be a four wheeled All-Terrain Vehicles, These little ‘dune buggies’ have extra wide tires that can go over the grass without sinking into the ground. Care would have to taken that you don't spin the wheels, tearing up the grass. The purpose of this vehicle would be two fold. First, it could tow an aeration device behind it. There are factory made aerators that are designed to tow behind small garden tractors that you could tow with this vehicle as well. This would only be serviceable if you were doing large flat areas of grass, like commercial accounts which are highly profitable. If you tried it on ordinary house lawns, you couldn't turn it around short enough. Secondly, the vehicle will certainly attract lots of attention!

INFORMATION SOURCES There are a vast amount of directories and available to you for free! Actually, you have already paid for them with your taxes! Where are these sources you have already paid for? Here is a list of some of the places: 1. Public Library 2. University Library (you do not have to be a student to research at most of these libraries) 3. Federal Government. There are thousands of information guides and directories that the Federal Government has published. Just look in your local phone and phone up the general information number for directions to locate the lists.

4. State or Provincial Government, 5. City Government

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6. Chamber of Commerce. All of these places have information services available free for the asking. Some of the directories you may find at these places would be: A. CONTACTS INFLUENTIAL. This is a directory that is best for searching out local business information.

It lists such items as who are the officers of a company, how many employees the company has, the address and phone number and what type of business the firm is in. The directory lists this information several ways; 1. S.I.C. CODES. S.I.C. stands for Standard Industrial Classification, every good and service available is categorized by the Federal Government for easy reference standards. With these you can choose any detailed business classification and locate how many businesses of this type, there are. It will indicate who are the officers of a company, how many employees the company has and the address and phone number. This is great when you want to find out new suppliers or new customers, 2. ZIP CODES. If you want to restrict your search to only one area, all of this information is listed over again according to ZIP CODES. This enables you to search for new customers or suppliers, block by block so you don't have to drive all over town when you set up appointments!

3. KEY PERSONNEL. This section lets you find out what company a person works for if you only know his or her name. Only the leaders of companies are listed in this list.

4. PHONE NUMBER. This is a reverse directory section that can direct you to the name of a company even if you only have the phone number.

B. CITY DIRECTORY. This directory has a listing similar to a telephone book, but it has all the information categorized differently. It lists; 1. BLOCK BY BLOCK ADDRESS DIRECTORY. All the names and telephone numbers of every house, apartment and business on the block is listed according to sequential address. This is of great value when you are telephone canvassing an area for prospects or would just like the phone the neighbor of your present customer to find out if you can service them, as well.

2. SEQUENTIAL TELEPHONE NUMBERS. This lists whoever has telephone number in sequence and their address.

3. NAME AND OCCUPATION. People are listed here according to their last name. Their occupation is listed beside their name.

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C. ASSOCIATION DIRECTORIES. These are directories that will list different and similar associations.

D. PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORIES. These will list all the people belonging to a particular profession.

E. ALUMNI DIRECTORIES. These are directories of various alumni.

F. TRADE DIRECTORIES. All manners of trades may be listed here, G. DUN AND BRADSTREET. This is a large directory for national and international companies. It lists various information including the company's D&B rating for credit.

H. STANDARD AND POORS. This is another nationwide listing of companies that gives information according to what they do.

I. STANDARD RATE AND DATA. This directory list information on the media. It lists what the circulation of a magazine is and the advertising rates. For complete information on any of these directories, your best source is the REFERENCE LIBRARIAN at your local library. Their number one function is to answer questions for you, FREE! They would be more than happy to assist you in any way possible. They would also be able to give you a complete list of directories that their library has. One important service that many people don't know about, is at most libraries, that have a reference department, you can usually just phone up the librarian and she will look up the information you require. She will then phone you back with the answer! If you only have one or two questions this will sure save you some time instead of driving all the way to the library.

Q&A About the lawn aeration business.

Q. Are there different types of grass?

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A. Yes, there is Bermuda, Ryegrass and Fescue to name a few. All of these grasses have different characteristics.

Q. How do I tell which grass is which?

A. You should check out at your local library, as they will have books with color pictures of the grasses. You may try calling the agricultural department of your local university. Other sources would be the local Parks Department of your town or your local Gardening Center.

Q. Do I have to be an expert on lawns to do this business?

A. You will acquire specialized knowledge along the way while you work. To aerate a lawn is mostly a mechanical process however you should read up as much as you can about lawn care at your library. There are many books that simply explain how a lawn is best cared for. You do not have to be a lawn expert to aerate lawns but you should understand the effects of aeration.

Q. If there is a question about lawn care that I don't know the answer, where do I go?

A. There are usually lawn experts at your Horticulture Department at your University or your local Parks Department. Probably the best place to ask would be at the established Gardening Center near you. They have staff that are well trained in the local grass conditions and problems.

Q. How do I know if the lawn needs aerating?

A. If the lawn hasn't been aerated in the past year it probably needs it. A simple test that an 'old timer' in aerating showed me years ago was the pencil test. If you can't easily insert a pencil into the lawn several inches, the lawn probably needs aerating. There is also a lawn probe that is available now that pulls a single core sample out to be inspected. If there is an excess of 'thatch' in the core sample the lawn will need aerated to help eliminate thatch buildup in the lawn.

Q. What is thatch?

A. Thatch is a build-up of dead grass and roots that obstructs water and air from getting to the root system.

This is similar to how thatch roofs work in the tropics on the grass huts. The leaves are intertwined to become impervious to the rain. Thatch is a normal development of a healthy lawn, but does need cared for yearly.

Q, I have heard of a term called De-thatching, is that the same as aerating?

A. Aeration helps relieve thatch problems by allowing air to reach the thatch layers and the soil. This circulation of air assists the breaking down of thatch so that it will properly decompose. De-thatching, however, usually refers to power raking the lawn. This process involves the 'raking' of the lawn with high speed vertical blades spaced about 1" apart. The blades are able to be lowered or raised just enough to comb the thatch out of the lawn without digging up the soil. Thatch is pulled out by the bushels in this manner. It is not unusual to have 20 to 30 bushels of thatch from a previously neglected lawn. Power Raking is also known as Scarifying, Dethatching and Vertical Mowing. Another process that is similar is lawn reconditioning or renovating. This process requires the most powerful power rakes to go deeper into the soil and create deep furrows to reseed the lawn.

Q. That sounds like a lot of work, is there good profit in that, as well?

A: It is far more labor intensive so less profit.

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Q. Is it possible to offer both aerating and power raking?

A. Yes! many companies offer both services. A lawn can be aerated and power raked right after each other so you can offer a package deal. I started out just aerating as it was more profitable and cleaner, however the demand was so great that I expanded and started doing complete lawn clean-ups with crews.

How A Frustrated BUSINESS OWNER Starts His Own Magazine

What I found to be The Highest Return On Investment Here is what I have learned and what works, and what does not. I did do citywide coupons. I shared the cost with 2 others. It was very expensive, because we are going to hundreds of thousands of homes. They were marginally good, because my market is not the entire city. My market is only 10 to 15 percent, because I only serviced the upper income homeowners. Number one thing I learned is targeting. Because I worked in the areas for decades, I knew exactly which homes to go to. What I did was I did my usual flyers to only those areas, and I sent them up. My returns were much better than doing a citywide campaign, because I don't serve the whole city.

Now, the other thing that I learned was I had to have full color. Going into a full color flyer was expensive, so I looked at alternatives.

I was talking with the printer. "How much does it cost to put three or four pages? Maybe I can get somebody to share.” He says, "Well, once you're doing that, you may as well print a magazine."

"What do you mean a magazine?

They're expensive, right?"

"No, they're printed on a web press."

All newspapers, all magazines, are printed on a web press, which is a big roll of paper and it comes through, and it prints them out. It's surprisingly cheap. It was more effective, cost-effective, to print a magazine than for you to put out a four page, full color piece.

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I was talking with the printer.

"How much does it cost to put three or four pages? Maybe I can get somebody to share.”

He says, "Well, once you're doing that, you may as well print a magazine."

"What do you mean a magazine?

They're expensive, right?"

"No, they're printed on a web press."

All newspapers, all magazines, are printed on a web press, which is a big roll of paper and it comes through, and it prints them out. It's surprisingly cheap. It was more effective, cost-effective, to print a magazine than for you to put out a four page, full color piece.

Well then I say, "Okay, well now I got a magazine.

Magazines are printed in eight page segments.

I could use up two, three pages myself," so then I said, "Well, who else can I share it with?"

I got on the phone with ...

I made 247 phone calls.

Out of that, I managed to get 32 co advertisers....

I explained the idea to the people.

"I'm going to put this out.

We go both go to the same area, so let's share the cost."

Everyone got a full page in full color at a price that was unheard of.

I gave everybody a full color brochure and put it all in one catalog.

What's it called?

All In One Catalog.

It worked great, except for one thing. The post office wouldn't deliver something that called "catalog" unless you had a catalog number.

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My first print, I couldn't go with the post office. I had to go find a different delivery system, but in the end, that was better anyhow. They were one-third the cost of the post office. I still wanted to go to some with Canada Post. What I did then is I searched late at night. I'm went to the drug store, and I'm looking at magazines. I'm saying,

"Okay, how am I going to come up with a name of this publication?

Well, I'll call it home and leisure.

Home and Leisure."

That's what it is. That's how the start of Home and Leisure magazine was, was because I needed to come up with a name because the post office wouldn't deliver it.

Now, the benefits of going to this is that I learned there's two things that you save money on. Number one, because I wasn't hiring writers and all this other staff to make a traditional magazine, they come up with this great idea and you pay for their idea with your advertising. In this situation, everybody was their own writer ... Every story that was there was on them. They wrote it. They were the expert. There's nobody that is a better expert than the owner of the business.

The other thing I learned with this web press printing, once those rolls are going, just keep them going. I printed three months at once, and the extra two months were about 20 percent more than doing one month. It just made sense, so it let us make the print very affordable. My ad does not change, nobody's ad changed. We just

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sent it out because now the advertising was on autopilot. I converted from all this effort to put a little flyer out for the price of a handful of flyers, I could now deliver truckloads, truckloads of it. They were delivered by the pallet to the distribution company with a fork lift. It was a game changer. It changed everything.

There's one thing I've learned with advertising. HERE’S the whole reason that I got into this was that I was saying to my ad rep,

"My ads are not working well."

He says, "Well, advertising's accumulative."

I said, "So is your ad bill. It just isn't working."

That's why I started doing my advertising on my own.

I went into newspapers, coupons, flyers. I did all those things. They were marginally effective, ... and percentages.

People would always talk percentages, but in reality, percentages don't mean anything.

I came up with the phrase, "Are you selling pizzas or pianos?"

If you get $10,000, that's one piano, or a thousand 10 dollar pizzas.

Same dollars, but your percentages are way different.

The only thing that I found that was a constant is return on investment. If I invest a thousand dollars, I get so many times that thousand dollars. My investment when I was doing traditional marketing, I'd invest a thousand dollars and I'd get two or three times, maybe four times my ad cost. Four times my ad cost was the best I could do.

Well, if I could put any investment in and get four times my ad cost that was good. What happened when I switched to marketing leveraging and sharing with 10, 15, 20 other customers, other advertisers, my returns went to 25 and 35 times my ad cost.

These percentages were a 3500 percent return!!

It works every month, month after month, repeatedly.

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It was a great system.

Now, the number one thing that I've always said, if you want to have something that is recognized and read all the time, send a personal handwritten letter. That is what I did to my customers every year. It worked fantastically, because who gets a handwritten letter anymore. Everybody is all digital, or they're sending out some junk mail and stuff. You send a handwritten letter, it is 100% certain it will be read. My returns on that little investment was dramatic. Now, there is a secret to them. Am I going to write hundreds of letters? No! I wrote in black ink, one well-written letter that you could read. My handwriting is not that great. Then I photocopy it!!!

Then, I said, "Dear Mrs. Jones," "Dear Mr. Edwards," that is all I did was fill in the salutation, because the black ink ... When I photocopied these, they matched. Now I just said "Dear Mrs. Edwards," and then the letter address I would say, "Mrs. Edwards, 12345 Main St.," that was it. It took me a few hours to send out several hundred letters, and my arms weren't falling off me. That's one of the major things that I'd learned.

How I Published My Book After it sat in my basement for 25 years!

Darrell: We both had struggles to get our books published, what can you tell about your experience.

Robert: A good question, Darrell, I came from the magazine publishing industry. Twenty years ago, we had to do a lot of the set up and the lay out and graphic design and artistry and all this stuff was scattered around. We had artists in different cities and different places, but what we found is that to really have a one shop you know would be the ideal thing and this is what's come about in the digital world.

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Darrell: book.

No, this is the more specific publishing a book. More specifically this is about publishing the

Robert: Ask me the question.

Darrell: What struggle have you had to get your book published? No, no stop. You were trying to get a person to design a cover for months. You were stuck; remember you were looking for an artist to do the cover.

The cover didn't matter because it wouldn't be formatted right.

Robert: Now, what happened with a fellow I know, his experience ... He wanted forty, fifty books, a hundred books, and he paid a company out of Winnipeg a very reasonable, he got the whole thing done for under $2000, which I thought was pretty good. He's got a hard cover book.

Darrell: He had forty copies of the book.

Robert: Yes. Darrell: Wow, that's major. That's something, because that works out to be like $10, $15 a book.

Robert: What he did is he was stumbling around and what he did was he went and asked people, "How did you do yours?" We generally go to somebody that's done it already.

Darrell: Here's the thing, Bob. Robert: Trial and Error.

Darrell: That's how we're doing it. We're doing it. We're searching online. We're basically stumbling in the dark.

Darrell: What struggles have you had in making your book published?

Robert: A lot of trial and error and a lot of mistakes. I couldn't get the answers I needed to get.

I was walking in the dark with no money.

Darrell: That's a big factor too, is that there's a lot of people going to help you, but they want a few thousand bucks. I remember you had a quote from some company.

Robert: Yeah the press company.

Darrell: They were going to print your book, and what were you going to get for your five thousand bucks?

Robert: Basically, what they would do at the five thousand, which is the deluxe package, what they would do is, I would send them my manuscript right now, they would edit it, get it all cleaned up, they would find some changes that I would need to make, and basically get it in their system. They would take an order. Once they get an order I would have to pay them two thousand up front, and on that $2000 check they'd take it to the next level. Then they want more money. Then they take it to the next level.

Darrell: What I'm getting at, did you have to put five thousand up front or two thousand up front.

Robert: No. You put a percentage down. For me I was dealing with a guy that was basically a sales rep for a printing company. Really good and very caring, but they have a department maybe two graphic artists that sit there and just design book covers all day.

Darrell: So they would've designed your book cover as part of that package?

Robert: Yes, except its a private company in Victoria.

Darrell: It's a major difference, Bob, because they're not worldwide. You ended up with I think it was forty books, is that right?

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Darrell: Yes, Bob, I don't get into those things. They did very well. The bottom line was you get 40 books!

Robert: You're not listening.

Darrell: The bottom line was for five grand you got forty books.

Darrell: Did you know what an ISBN number was, Bob? Robert: Yes I did.

Darrell: Did you know how to get one?

Robert: It's a bit complicated.

Darrell: My experience with the ISBN number. I knew about it, but I didn't know how to get it and I searched online, you had to register it with Canada. I wasn't sure if you had to register it with every country in the world. I didn't know. Again, here's the whole thing about publishing, if you don't know what you're doing there's lots of people to empty your pocket. That's what I've found. Nothing's for free. Now, what research did you do to find out how to get one. I know you were going online, we were looking at it for a couple weeks, and we gave up on it. How about designing the cover for your book? What trial and errors did you go through for that?

Robert: Again, I had to get a graphic artist ... You get a designer to design your cover. I wanted a lot of input into it. I wanted this font, I wanted it to look like this, but then I realized Darrel, how much do I really know? I'm not a graphic designer.

Darrell: The thing that I learned, Bob, is that with other new systems they do it for you. You don't have to be ... Where you trying to format your book?

Robert: Yes. Pretty much.

Darrell: You were having a friend try to put it at like six inches wide.

Robert: We went out and bought Apple pages, and we thought that was the answer but that's not the answer.

Darrell: It's not the answer and I learned that too because I had pages and I did it all in the fancy stuff, but none of it was transferable into there. In addition, the big thing too …

Robert: To make a long story short, Darrel, there was a lot of things that ... you're dealing with the knowledge you know.

Darrell: That's the thing, its a very complicated ... until I found that CreateSpace, Bob, I did not publish my book. It was written twenty-five years ago and it would sit in my basement for the rest of my life.

Robert: I believe you do. Because I do, and I've done it. Here's the reality, Darrell, people that don't know pay more than they have too.

Robert: What was the solution that you discovered for all these problems?

Darrell: It was actually owned by Amazon. It was called CreateSpace and it's the most amazing service I've ever found. It was the solution to all my problems.

Robert: Now that you've discovered CreateSpace, can you tell me what the process is?

Darrell: They take you completely from step one to completion. I don't have to have a graphic artist or all these other things that I could never find and get it done. They are a one-stop shop.

Robert: What is the guided setup?

Darrell: That's the most important thing. Whenever you go into it, it'll ask you, "Do you want to have this

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or do you want the guided setup?" You take the guided setup - I'm not sure, some expert - because it walks your through step by step exactly, line for line, what you have to do. It guides you through it like they're holding your hand.

Robert: How is the cover design now?

Darrell: That was a big obstacle that I had before. I was trying to find graphic artists and I didn't know what size to make and stuff. All that's gone now because it made it all template. You watch a cover design program and it's basically plug and play like paint by numbers. So simple.

Robert: What can be done with these cover templates?

Darrell: You can import your own art or you can use theirs. They've got dozens of covers that you can choose from.

Robert: How many different templates are there?

Darrell: I didn't count them all but there must be dozens.

Robert: How long does it take to design your cover?

Darrell: With their system now, start to finish, it's done within an hour. It's very, very effective. That includes all your text, all your logo design and the pictures on there and the cover and everything else.

Robert: Can I insert my own photos on the cover?

Darrell: Yes, you can but they have to be high resolution. It will tell you if they're not. That's the nice things about this thing. If you're making a mistake, they tell you up front. If I put a low res, it will tell me. It won't allow me to go any further because this is not high res enough to continue. That's a major, major step. You can go through the whole thing and then have a piece of junk at the end because it didn't tell you.

Robert: Did you have to allow space for the spline?

Darrell: No. That's the most amazing thing, too, because it automatically builds it for you. When I was thinking of a graphic artist, I had to think, "Well, I don't know how many millimeters a hundred-page book is or a 300-page." I don't have to know. Their automated template system does it for me. So there we go. If it's 300 pages, it'll be thicker than a 50-page book and it's all automated.

Robert: What photos do you have to have ready when you put your cover together?

Darrell: If you're going to have a picture of the author, you need to have a high res picture of the author.

It has to be not a head shot because it'll end up cutting off the forehead. You have to have enough space around you so that it will fit within the space. It has to be something that gives them some leeway.

Robert: What goes into your "About Your Author" section? What goes into that?

Darrell: I've been looking on Amazon and generally what they do is they tell their little life story. For mine, I said, "Well, I started in business 50 years ago as a kid and just told of the milestone markers on what I did.

Robert: What text do you have to have ready to put your cover together?

Darrell: Well, what you need to have is your author's bio so you need to write that author's bio and you also have to have ... It will tell you how many words to use but it is roughly maybe 1,000 words telling about your book or what's the big story about your book.

Robert: Where does that go?

Darrell: It's automated. Everything is done for you. You don't have to place anything. It's just plug and play.

Robert: It goes on the back cover or on the inside leaf or is there an inside leaf ?

Darrell: It goes on the back cover. There is no inside leaf because it is not a hard cover book. Hard cover books have paper covers with inside leafs.

Robert: The ISBN number, where do you put that on the cover?

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Darrell: The ISBN, you don't touch it at all. They put it in for you. It's all done and they build a bar code for you.

Robert: Where is that? On the back?

Darrell: It goes on the back, yes.

Robert: What resolution do you need for these photos?

Darrell: They have to be 300 dpi. Now 300 dpi should be at least 3 or 4 megs as your best quality picture.

Now dpi is different because a 2-inch photo is a different dpi than a full page. You'll have to have a much larger resolution to cover a full page.

Robert: What perimeters do you need for your head shot to be?

Darrell: As was mentioned before, you have to have a lot of white space around your head if you want your head to show up and not be cut off.

Robert: Is there a help line for CreateSpace?

Darrell: Yes, there is but it's a little bit different. You fill in your phone number and you say call me and instantly they call you 24/7. There is no number for you to phone. What they do is they've got people around the world around the clock working on this, so it comes up on their screen to press the button and call you. That's how it's done.

Robert: What does this callback feature do? How does it work, Darrell?

Darrell: You put in your info there and you say contact us and then you say what it's about. Well, I'm putting in my title and my files and you fill that in.

Robert: You listen or you talk?

Darrell: No, you type this in. There are little drop-down screens in the call me feature and if I'm putting a book, you have a question on how to submit your files and then you click that and you say call me and it will go down and it will say USA or Canada and you put your phone number in. As soon as you press that, your phone starts ringing instantly.

Robert: It's friendly.

Darrell: Yeah.

Robert: Can you have your book in full color?

Darrell: Yes, you can. I was very surprised because most books we see are just black and white but you can have every page in full color.

Robert: Can you have photos in your book?

Darrell: Yes, you can. You can have photos in there. Again, they have to be high res. You can also have pictures taking up a whole page, which is a full bleed.

Robert: Oh, that's very interesting. Yeah.

Darrell: You can actually have a picture book like if you have a nice looking dog and you want to tell the story of the dog, you can have 50 pictures of your dog doing things and that's a children's book.

Robert: Does the section of the style of the photo make a difference when you insert it into the template?

Darrell: This is something that I learned. When you're using pages, on the right-hand side, there are six different little selections. When I did certain ones with a drop-shadow, it dropped down to 72 dpi. I couldn't have those fancy things. It had to be a raw image on there with no fancy borders.

Robert: Say that again. Does the selection of the style of the photo make a difference whenDarrell: Yes, it does. I tried to make it fancier with nice drop shadows but it took my 300 dpi photo and

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reduced it to a 72 dpi and the review process shows me that, so I know before. You don't want to go to press and then you've got something that's blurry and it looks like a half-baked project.

Robert: What sizes can you make for your book?

Darrell: There are literally dozens of the sizes. I was amazed. You choose what size you want, a small book, a big book. It can even go 8.5 x ll like a magazine size.

Robert: What's the standard more or less general size?

Darrell: Well, 6 x 9 seems to be one of them and then what did you say that was? 5.5 x 8.5?

Robert: Yeah, 5.5 x 8.5.

Darrell: Yeah, it's a common size.

Robert: Okay. Can your book be hard cover?

Darrell: Well, it can be but not through CreateSpace. They don't support hard cover. Apparently, on Amazon, I've seen hard covers but I don't know how they're doing that yet.

Robert: We're going to find that out, aren't we?

Darrell: Right. I would like to have a hard cover.

Robert: I would, too, Darrell. Can you go on Kindle as well?

Darrell: Yes, this is something that... Kindle is a different company part of Amazon, I believe, but there is a system where you can upload it. Kindle is an ebook system, so that's good.

Robert: You can. That's a yes?

Darrell: Yes. Robert: How can you set up an account with CreateSpace?

Darrell: It's very simple. You go to CreateSpace.com and then you fill in all the information that you need to do it. It takes maybe half an hour.

Robert: Can someone do that without a credit card?

Darrell: Yeah, you don't need a credit card to start it up. It is free to use this system. There is no charge whatsoever.

Robert: I could actually do this.

Darrell: I'm going to help you set it up. It's not quick and easy. It's going to be a lot of time to get this done.

Robert: It'll take a few days but Darrell, theDarrell: No, I could actually do yours in probably two hours, everything.

Robert: How does CreateSpace interface with Amazon?

Darrell: Amazon owns it so it's basically seamless. When you're done ... This was the greatest discovery I ever made because I was going through all these headaches and all these pitfalls.

Robert: They work together.

Darrell: Well, they don't just work together. They own it. It was designed to work together.

Robert: Right, they are the owners.

Darrell: It's like GMC and its Buick. it’s a division of the main company Robert: How do you set up an IRS for taxes?

Darrell: Because you're selling online, you have to account for your taxes. Now if you're a U.S. citizen, you have to fill out your tax info. If you're a foreigner, like I am in Canada, you have to fill out a special info and then you're not charged taxes because you live in a different country. But you still have to get an exemption. I had to do the paperwork and answer 20 questions. That's what it was.

Robert: What format does the text need to be in to insert it into the template?

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Darrell: Well, this was the biggest mistake I made before. Very simple. Just put it in Word and single spacing. You're not designing what it's going to look like. You just have the words. Single space, normal 8.5 x 11.

You don't design anything.

Robert: No fancy Times Roman?

Darrell: It doesn't matter because it will be changed when uploaed.

Robert: Can you pick what fonts you want?

Darrell: When you're preparing the text, you can but just put it simply Helvetica or Times Roman. It doesn't matter.

Robert: Okay, good.

Darrell: It gets converted in the template.

Robert: Okay. Do I set the size of the text before I insert it into the template?

Darrell: Another mistake I made. No, you're not designing the template before it goes into a template.

Just everything at 8 or 9 points.

Robert: Just do the basics..

Darrell: Yes. The point of a template is it's all designed for you. You don't have to design it before you put it in the template.

Robert: Okay. Do you decide on the style of font before it goes in the template?

Darrell: This is what I was saying before. It doesn't matter because it converts it to just whatever their standard font is. Remember whatever font you're using doesn't stay that way.

Robert: Okay.

Darrell: You design it after it's in there.

Robert: Do I place my photos or pics into the document that I'm going to import into the template?

Darrell: Another mistake I made. Don't waste your hours and hours and hours like I did. Just give the straight simple text because you put photos afterwards. If you put it in, you've spent all these hours creating and putting in your little margins and your little pictures and put 50 pictures in. They disappear. They don't show up.

Major, major point.

Robert: Do I place my pictures into my document that I'm going toDarrell: No, you don't.

Robert: Okay. No. Why? Darrell: Because of what I just said. It will not show up. When you copy it and put it into the CreateSpace template, the pictures disappear. They don't show up.

Robert: Oh, really. Okay.

Darrell: That's what I was saying. I wasted hours and hours of time.

Robert: What is DPI? Darrell: The another thing is I knew about dpi but I didn't really know what it meant as a meg.

Robert: Dots per square inch.

Darrell: Yeah, dots per square inch is what it means but I found out, too, when I did some research that 300 dpi is different. If you're doing a square inch photo, maybe a 1 meg photo will work. If you're doing a full page, a 1 meg photo will not work because it's needs amy more more dots per square inch.

Robert: Will my photos that I take off my website work?

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Darrell: No. That's a big mistake that everybody makes because when it's online, it's at 72 dpi. It has to be better resolution.

Robert: What is the resolution of the photos that are online?

Darrell: They are always 72 dpi. That's what online images are at.

Robert: When CreateSpace reviews my document, will they tell me if my resolution is not high enough?

Darrell: Yes, that's what their system does. You get a document review and it tells you every mistake that you've made, like warning this photo is only 72 dpi. This text is outside the margin. Here's another mistake I made. When I put my full bleed pictures in, I just put it to the square of the page but it doesn't work that way.

You have to have 5% over for a full bleed.

Robert: What other mistakes will it point out to me?

Darrell: Well, that's what I was saying. It will show you that you're going to have problems if you put a full bleed page in it. It has to be 5% larger than the page so they can have space to cutoff.

Robert: Can I change the fonts and sizes once it's in the template?

Darrell: Once it's in the template, yes, you can make all the changes you want.

Robert: Oh, really.

Darrell: Yeah, that's the best part of it.

Robert: Let me ask you that. Can I change the font and sizes once it's in the template? Yes? Darrell: Absolutely.

Robert: That's great, Darrell. That's fantastic.

Darrell: That's the whole thing of it.

Robert: Can I add photos once it's in the template.

Darrell: Yes, you can.

Robert: Wow. That's really good, really good.

Darrell: That's the only time you can. Well, here's the thing, BobRobert: Can I add logos to the book?

Darrell: Yes, you can but they have to be high res.

Robert: I know that. This is good. What are the items I should prepare before I go online to do the process?

Darrell: You're going to need your author's photo. You're going to need your bio done. You're going to need your "About the book," your text for that. You don’t need to have your title; it will be auto-filled. If you want to have a picture on the back cover, get your artwork if you want to have special artwork. That's what you need to do to design a cover.

Robert: Can I buy a book for myself ?

Darrell: Yes, you can and you buy it at a special price. It's not the $29.95 or whatever price you set.

Robert: Can I buy many books to give out to my friends and family?

Darrell: There is apparently no limit, from what I understand. For instance, when I was on myRobert: So I can buy 40 books?

Darrell: No, you can buy 4000 books.

Robert: Okay. That's very interesting.

Darrell: Now the biggest difference there is that now you're buying.. Let's say you're buying 100 to get a start out for handing out at the end of your book introduction. You now have a book that's worth, say, $29.95 on the cover and you're selling it for $20.00 just as an intro... Now the thing is, too, you're paying everything in U.S.

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dollars down here. When they buy on Amazon, they're paying in U.S. dollars. When you sell them at the back of the room, it's $20 Canadian.

Robert: So it's a savings.

Darrell: Huge difference to them but you're paying about $2.50 US for that book.

Robert: Is the price printed on the book?

Darrell: If you decide it is, it is because they don't put it on.

Robert: Really good. Wow. Darrell: Yeah, they don't put the price on the book. When you fill out the price because you have to fill out the price, that's the price that appears online in the Amazon website, not what's on the book.

Robert: If I'm working on the book late at night, can I call for help?

Darrell: Yes. This call me back feature works 24/7. If I'm working late on the book and I want to call somebody at 5:00 in the morning, I can call somebody.

Robert: How many copies of the book can I buy from Amazon at the production rate?

Darrell: At the production rate, from what I understand, there is no limit.

Robert: You checked that out, no?

Darrell: Yes, I did. I phoned. See, everything I have done for these questions, I have done the research for. That's why there's over 100 questions here. I researched and got the answers.

Robert: Okay. How many photos can I put in the book?

Darrell: There's no limit. It can be all photos.

Robert: I don't know about that.

Darrell: Well, I do because I phoned and checked it out.

Robert: Can I have the entire book full of photos?

Darrell: Yes, because people put together travel books and they're nothing but pictures.

Robert: And text over them. Right?

Darrell: Right.

Robert: Okay. What happens if I don't have 300 dpi photos?

Darrell: Well, then your photos end up fuzzy and they look like garbage.

Robert: A bit map.

Darrell: Yeah. That's right.

Robert: I take a picture off the Internet. Can I put it on the book?

Darrell: Number one, you have to respect copyright laws. If anything is on the Internet, you do not have rights to use it. It has to be royalty free before you can use it and basically, when you take it off the Internet, it's useless to you anyhow because they're not enough dpi. You can buy high resolution photographs from companies on the Internet and then you can use them.

Robert: Well, you have a few. Do I have to have a credit card to use the CreateSpace System.

Darrell: Yes, you do. Not to use it. To use it is free. You have to have the credit card to buy your books.

Robert: But can you do all this process without it?

Darrell: Everything. It's all 100% free. To get your book, you have to have a credit card.

Robert: Can I use a debit card?

Darrell: No. They don't take debit cards.

Robert: Can I use a pre-loaded Master Card?

Darrell: No. I thought that you could buy these credit cards and you can load 300 bucks on them. No, they don't do it. The reason they said is they can't refund to that credit card.

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Robert: Can I mail a check?

Darrell: No, they don't take checks.

Robert: What do I have to pay for with the credit card?

Darrell: Just to buy your own book. If you're going to buy one book for your proofing or if you want to buy 1,000 books to start your book tour, it's the same. It has to be paid by credit card.

Robert: Can I pay for it with PayPal? Darrell: No. I asked that, too, and they don't accept PayPal. I thought that would be good, but they don't.

Robert: Does the price that I put in the formatting section appear on the book?

Darrell: No, I found that out, too. I thought it would end up being in the ISBN number. I've seen some at the store. However, they're not. The ISBN number is simply a bar code. There is no prices unless you put your “$29.95” in the “about the book" text, then it doesn't appear.

Robert: Does the ISBN bar code tell the store how much to charge?

Darrell: No, they don't but when I go to the store and I scan books, the store has that little bar code.

They decide what they're going to charge. I've seen a book that was had a price of $29.95 on the cover but when they scan it and it comes out at $14.00 because that's what that store is going to charge for it.

Robert: Right. Do I need a separate ISBN for Europe and North America?

Darrell: Yes, you do. That's another thing I learned, too.

Robert: That's very important for me.

Robert: So the ISBN number is 13 numbers for Europe?

Darrell: Yes, it is 13. That's why, when you write your book, it'll give you your two ISBN numbers, one is a 10 and one is a 13. Now the 13 is only the 10 number previous before plus a 3-digit Europe designation code.

Robert: I don't quite understand that, but that's okay. Moving along, what is Kindle?

Darrell: Kindle is a selling system for ebooks where they don't physically deliver a book. It's something that goes on your Google reader or other device.

Robert: Do I get Kindle as well?

Darrell: Yes, you can. It can be set up. It's something that I'm still investigating but it's something that is set up with the system.

Robert: Will it be formatted with pictures and everything that has been done in Word or will iBooks transfer to CreateSpace template?

Darrell: This is what I mentioned before; that I went and I built the entire book in iBooks and I did it in Word and it was a total waste of time for transferring purposes. I spent hours and hours building it and being all creative and it was a waste of time because it doesn't transfer.

Robert: Okay. That's good information.

Darrell: Oh, yeah. The whole reason that I'm doing all these questions, Bob, is to tell you so don't waste your time. I've already knocked down the bush and bushwhacked the trail. Don't get another machete and start building your own trail. This is the fast way.

Robert: Do I have to have a U.S. bank account to have direct deposits for the account?

Darrell: Yes, if you want to have direct deposits, you have to have a U.S. bank account. Now because I'm Canadian, I can't get a U.S. bank account.

Robert: Okay. I have to get a check in the mail?

Darrell: Yes. In Canada, the only option is to have a check mailed to you.

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Robert: So when I sell a book, a $2.00 check comes in the mail?

Darrell: Never.

Robert: Okay.

Darrell: You have to wait until you've got $100 in volume before they'll send you any checks.

Robert: Okay. Is the check going to be in U.S. funds?

Darrell: Yes, it is. They're a U.S. company so they pay in U.S. funds.

Robert: Once the book has been published, how can I change the cover?

Darrell: Well, I found out that you can change the cover but not the title. If you want to run off a whole bunch of books and then change the cover and have it have a fresh look to it, then you can do that.

Robert: So let me ask you that one more time. Once the book has been published, can I change the cover?

Darrell: Yes, you can.

Robert: Really?

Darrell: Yes. Robert: Because that's exactly what I want to do. I want to put this cover out but within a year or six months, I want to change it to the cover that I'm working on that will take me that long to get it done. It will be like the first edition, you know?

Darrell: I know. You know what? There are changes in everything and this allows you to do it.

Robert: Once the book has been published, can I change the interior text and add more pages or another chapter?

Darrell: Yes, you can. You can resubmit- Yes, you can but only up to 10%. If you've got a 100 pager, you can do 110 pages.

Robert: Oh, wow. That's great.

Darrell: It's so you can make revisions. It's not done. It's not set in stone.

Robert: You know why that's so good, Darrell? You know why that's so great?

Darrell: You can always make revisions.

Robert: I can pull off pages that are irrelevant and put in new ones.

Darrell: That's right. That's right. You can publish the book, get a start, and then there is always a rewrite; there is always a correction so you can make the ... Or say that you've got something that doesn't sound so good.

Robert: Well, Darrell, we can go next week. We can do this Monday.

Darrell: Absolutely.

Robert: Okay, now I'm getting so excited.

Darrell: Now you understand why I went through these two weeks of intense research.

Robert: Thank you, Darrell. Thank you.

Darrell: This is the answer.

Robert: Okay, let's go finish. Okay, once the book has been published, I can change the interior text and add more pages or another chapter. Can I add another chapter?

Darrell: Yes, you can. Yes, you can.

Robert: Like Part II, continued or like ... Okay, good. The book has been published. What can I not change?

Darrell: You cannot change your title. You cannot change your ISBN number.

Robert: Perfect. Okay. That's really important, really important. Okay, good, good. Okay, so once it has been published, can I change the size of the book?

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Darrell: Yes, you can.

Robert: Great.

Darrell: Well, that's what I found out. They said I could.

Robert: Darrell, are you sure? Like are you sure?

Darrell: I spent two weeks on the phone around the world. Now here's one thing. When they call you, I ask, "Where are you from?" Costa Rica, South Africa, Peru, Venezuela. All over the world.

Robert: Okay? Once it has been published, can I change the size of the book?

Darrell: Yes, you can.

Robert: Can I change the author's name?

Darrell: No, you cannot change the author's name.

Robert: Okay, so that's a no. That's okay. Really important. Can I change the title?

Darrell: No, you cannot change the title.

Robert: No. Okay, good. How many pages or percentages can I increase? 10%. Right?

Darrell: 10% and you cannot change the ISBN number. By the way, with the ISBN number, they give it to you free but it's only applicable to their system. So if you want to go on some other system, it won't work in that ISBN. For myself, if I'm on Amazon, what do I care if it's on any place else? I don't care.

Robert: Can I change, Darrell, the ISBN number?

Darrell: No, you can't.

Robert: Now let me put it to you this way. Let's say in a year from now the book's picked up by a publisher and he says, "We're going to take over the publishing of this book now." So they'll create their own ISBN number.

Darrell: Well, it already had an ISBN number but you know what?

Robert: They'll figure it out.

Darrell: I don't know those final details. You can always bring out an updated version. 99.9% the same text but you're adding another chapter or two chapters and its a completely new book.

Robert: Okay, how is the book marketed?

Darrell: This is a do-it-yourself program. I didn't understand that, but they don't do anything for you.

They're just a printer. They print. When they get an order, they print it and they mail it out.

Robert: Perfect. That's where you come in. Okay. Does search engine optimization play a part in it?

Darrell: Yes, a major, major role.

Robert: They don't do any of that.

Darrell: No, but I do it. I’m a digital marketing expert.

Robert: But what I'm getting at...

Darrell: Does Amazon do this? No, they don't. They don't do anything for you.

Robert: That's the answer. That's the answer. Does Amazon do the search engine optimization?

No. Okay. Here we go. Where do I put the search engine optimization?

Darrell: Well, this is one of my systems that I spent hours and hours and hours...

Robert: Darrell, don't give me that.

Darrell: You're not listening, Bob. I had to figure out this system by trial and error. I tried this and this and this and this on books that were published and found out what showed up and what didn't. I've now got a system now that shows up. I know where to put it and how to put it to show up.

Robert: Is this an impossible system?

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Darrell: No, I've done it. It's a special thing that I have developed.

Robert: Darrell, Darrell, just tell me.

Darrell: I have developed a search engine optimization system. It works. People can call me at 1.855.216.6010 if they want it done for them.

Darrell: That's why my videos show up around the world because I know how to do the SEO on it. I can do now the same with a book.

Robert: Is there a promotion system that amazon has?

Darrell: Yes, they have some special system.

Robert: Oh, really. Have you investigated that?

Darrell: Yes, I have.

Robert: So can I build other methods and links for people on my book?

Darrell: Yes, you can.

Robert: Well, that's your system.

Darrell: That's what I do. I developed a marketing system for books online and an app to make sharing and buying the book easy. You can see it 2i.tel.

Robert: Okay. Is there a promotion system that Amazon has?

Darrell: Now let me go about those other methods. How can you promote your book? With video. With social media. That's where your tribe comes in. But you always have to have.. Most people say, "Oh, I wrote it. It was a good book. Yeah." Great! Sold? They don't know how to find the book. I developed the app to solve this problem. www.2i.tel Robert: Is there a promotion system that Amazon has?

Darrell: Is there a promotion system that Amazon has? Is that what you said?

Robert: That's right.

Darrell: Yes, they do, the promotion system, I've seen it where they have the little red price tags with a special price.

Robert: Is there a fee involved?

Darrell: No. What their promotion is, is that they put your book on sale. If it's $29 and they list it for $13, that's the promotion.

Robert: That's fine. Do I lose money on it?

Darrell: But you get the same royalty. That's a big factor.

Robert: How many books have I sold?

Darrell: How do you know how many books you've sold? On your account there's a counter and it shows you how much you've sold online. However, if you order a thousand books, listen to this here, if you order a thousand books and you pay for them they don't show up on your counter. It's considered one sale.

Robert: Good. Good information, that's really good.

Robert: Is the book distributed to libraries?

Darrell: Yes, it's available to libraries. Very important.

Robert: No, is it distributed free?

Darrell: It's not free. They have to pay for it.

Robert: I could get my local library to buy it.

Darrell: Yes you could.

Robert: Wow, that's incredible.

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Darrell: They can buy it right off Amazon.

Robert: Do libraries pay for it?

Darrell: Yes they do. It's not free.

Robert: Are you connected with Chapters or Barnes and Noble?

Darrell: Now libraries get a special rate. They get a library rate.

Robert: Are you connected with Chapters?

Darrell: There is a connection because it's a book store and you can get into book stores.

Robert: What is Advantage Amazon?

Darrell: This is a promotion system, a new thing I found out, they have what's called "Advantage Amazon" and you have to go to advantageamazon.com. It's online.

Robert: What is it?

Darrell: It's their promotion system. It promotes your book on amazon?

Darrell: Just go to advantageamazon.com.

Robert: Can you market them as a series?

Darrell: Can you market them as a series? Yes you can, but it has to be setup in your setup. If you've got three books in your series you've got to list it as a series. How that works is that, say somebody found one book and then it says, at the bottom it'll say this is part of a series. Book two and three are in the same series. It's a cool thing if you've got it.

Robert: Can you get a best seller foil sticker on your front cover?

Darrell: I don't know that.

Robert: Yes you can. What would Amazon do for me in a series?

Darrell: They'd promote the series because when it shows up, like I said before, if you've got one book that shows up but its part of a series then it shows the other two books below it. People have also bought this in this series.

Robert: What, about copyright, should I do about that?

Darrell: This is a big question about copyright that I had years and years ago. Once you write it and you put the copyright symbol, it's there. You don't have to send it to wherever and all the rest of that stuff. When I registered copyright I said, "Well, do I send the book" because I did that years ago. And they said, "Well, no, you just paid us the fee and now it's registered." How do you know what it was? They don't keep all these books in a warehouse.

Robert: What are these highlighted red sale prices that Amazon sometimes has?

Darrell: If you look and there's a price that says, "$29" and now they’re selling ... $21 and it’s in red, that's their sale promotion. If you're going to get ten dollars from the first thing you'll still get ten dollars from the other one. They don't reduce your royalty.

Robert: If Amazon discounts my book on sale does my royalty share Darrell: That's what I was mentioning. You get the same amount of royalties, so you're good.

Robert: Who sets the price?

Darrell: You set your price of your book. If you want to make it ... Something that I learned, because I went through all the scenarios, on a hundred page book roughly the minimum that you're allowed to sell it for, no this is actually for the two hundred page book, I believe it was $8.30, but strangely enough it wasn't that much

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different from when I went to $20 books because their royalty was less when it was a smaller amount. It was in increments and I did a scenario on it to figure out the whole thing.

Robert: Who sets the price?

Darrell: You do. You set the price of your book.

Robert: When a person buys a book, who pays for the shipping?

Darrell: They pay for the shipping unless they're part of this membership club that allows for free shipping.

Robert: Who pays? The author pays?

Darrell: No, whoever the buyer is, they pay for shipping and handling.

Robert: The customer.

Darrell: The customer pays for the shipping and handling. You don't. Really all Amazon is doing is taking the order and printing the book.

Robert: What is the ranking on Amazon and how does it affect your book?

Darrell: This is something that I learned. With Amazon, when you type in something and you get to marketing section, the top ten things that'll show on the page are the ones with the best ranking. How do you get ranking? Reviews of your book. If you want to be a top ... you get a hundred reviews you're a super star. That's how it works. Think of this like google, when you have a five star rating on google, you get more placement than somebody who's a nobody.

Robert: Do I have to set up all the distribution channels before I publish?

Darrell: Yes. This is very important because once you publish you can't change your distribution channels. Now there is a section in there that says "distribute", click them all.

Robert: Say that again. Let me ask the ... Do I have to set up all the distribution?

Darrell: Yes, Let me paraphrase that. Click all channels of distribution before publishing!

Robert: That's a yes.

Darrell: There are channels for Amazon US, Amazon UK, or Europe.

Robert: Click them all.

Darrell: Click them all, and do you want to go to the libraries? Yes. Click them all. You've got to click it all before you publish your book.

Robert: Very important that one.

Darrell: Extremely important.

Robert: What is the B I S A C category?

Darrell: I didn't know what the hell this was, but it's what type of book you have, for instance, let's say for my book if its a marketing book on direct marketing that is a specific book, and the reason they have that is so that libraries and stuff like that can put it in their code. It's probably going to be in the Dewey decimal system.

Robert: For the libraries?

Darrell: Yes, that is the requirement to be in the libraries.

Robert: What does BISAC stand for?

Darrell: BISAC is an acronym for Book Industry Standards and Communications. I looked on Google. it said “The BISAC Subject Heading list is an industry-approved list of subject descriptors, each of which is represented by a nine-character alphanumeric code. The descriptor itself consists of two, three or four levels in the manner described below.” Now I know.

Robert:

Do I need to have a book completed before I can get this listing?

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Darrell: Yes, what it means by completed is you have to have all, remember this is a launch template, all the sections have to be done before you do it. You got to do your cover, you got to do your interior, you got to do your reviews, and you have to get your proof done, this all has to be approved to be printed.

Robert: In the author's title do I put the word "Mr."?

Darrell: That's a big mistake I made too Bob, because I entered Mr. Darrell Backen as author Authored

by Mr. Darrell Backen The book is just authored by Darrell Backen It would be important if I was Doctor. That's why it’s there. It would say authored by Dr. Darrell Backen.

What is different about Darrell Backen Digital Brand Marketing?

Logo Brand Marketing What makes it different from other traditional digital marketing?

The logo places on the first page of Google organically. It lasts for years after it's developed What is the concept of dominant visibility?

The local brand marketing is the very first thing you see when you open the first page of your search it is the dominant feature of the page.

How do people find your company with the logo?

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I do extensive research about 800 long tail keywords to leave no possible market segment left alone. Most websites have 8 to 12 keywords. They're leaving up to 95% of the possible market open for other companies to grab that business.

What is the significance of using the logo?

Your logo is most powerful brand identity statement you have. You've invested years and probably thousands of dollars refining and placing it on everything in your company; your cars, your buildings, your business cards, letterhead and in trade shows people recognize your logo first beyond anything else.

Where can this Logo Branding be effective?

This is the best part of the system it works worldwide!!! Have developed and placed logo branding videos all over the world in Asia South America North America Europe Middle East in Australia. This is impossible to do with a traditional website.

How does Darrell Backen Brand Marketing Campaign tie into traditional such as trade shows your vehicle's business cards?

This is a very partial element to this system you're they have your logo on everything your company owns.

When they open up the first page from their search and they recognize your logo… what are they recognizing is the entire sum of your marketing to date. Your Logo is on your business cards, your cars, your buildings and tradeshows. Your advertising… everything to that date in a split second has solidified that marketing statement!

They Instantly remember!

Developed Multi Media, Multi-Channel, Multi-Platform Digital Marketing Systems Mobile Marketing App Index to YouTube with SEO for Each Section Universal App that works on all platforms, all channels Video Marketing Effective marketing with results around the world Developed method of targeting video so that it appears 1st page Google anywhere in world Worldwide marketing campaigns bring in customers on a global scale

Digital Narrated Brochure Developed a ‘virtual sales call’ that can be sent by email, SMS or posted to social media The narrated brochure answers the FAQs that most clients want answers to Developed method of targeting brochure so that it appears 1st page Google anywhere in world Mobile Apps With Social Media Accelerator Developed preloaded introduction & reviews to share with Post without typing Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and email to their friends and family Digital Referral Marketing Developed referral system that enables happy client to post preloaded reviews to their Facebook, Twitter,

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Google+ and email to their friends and family Instant 2 click referral by email or SMS profiling all info on company Social Media Marketing System Developed referral system that enables happy client to Post with out typing preloaded introduction & reviews to their Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and email to their friends and family Instant 2 click referral by email or SMS profiling all info on company Video Education Marketing System Developed video education channel to educate online prospects in how to use Samsung Business Phones Results were over 10,000 views last year resulting in 100s of thousands of dollar in new business Clients mention watching the videos which help them decide which system they wanted BEFORE they ever called the company Local Mobile Marketing System That Brings in Customers by the GPS in their mobile device.

Developed method to bring customers to your store or event with GPS instructions by driving, transit or walking

QuikCall evolved into a mobile digital version and is part of Darrell Backen Digital Marketing.

THE NEXT EVOLUTION OF MOBILE REFERRAL MARKETING… USE YOUR SMARTPHONE LIKE A TV REMOTE webREMOTE by QuikCALL™ MOBILE Shop in seconds with webREMOTE. No searching, no spelling, no typing…

Accurate instant referrals Referrals are the lifeblood of our businesses. However very few companies have a referral marketing plan in place.

The solution to the TWO MOST VALUABLE ASKED QUESTIONS WHAT DO YOU DO? and WHO DO YOU KNOW THAT DOES…? webREMOTE gives all the information to make a well informed decision. Videos, online articles, product feature demos. Maps give directions using your mobile's GPS from wherever you are by auto and bus routes.

Over Lunch ...where employees have 22 days a month with a spend up to an hour to relax and read on their

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mobile devices.

30 years ago, Darrell Backen developed QuikCALL™ MOBILE Wallet Directory the new mobile phone.

PEOPLE USE THEIR MOBILE DEVICES INSTEAD OF WEBSITES

Home & Leisure Magazine has evolved from a single page flyer to a full colour magazine an now to a mobile media app designed for smartphones. The new mobile marketing system is called webREMOTE. You use your smartphone like a TV remote.. just point and click for what you want.

Advertisers: Molly Maid, California Closets, Bang & Olufsen, Inglis Canada, Sylvan Learning Centers, Sears, Kwik Kerb, Kohler Canada, Grohe, Merrill Lynch, Goepel McDermid, Global Securities, Re/Max, Realty Executives, Century 21, Sutton Group, Arctic Spas, DuPont Corian, Levelor Blinds,Tilley Endurables, PCO Pest Control, ADT Security Systems, Second Cup, Toro, Dec-k--ing, ReflechTech,MicroSoft Certified Professional Systems Engineer, Phonetic Reading Centre, Fantasy Weddings,Luxury Bath Liners, Vino-tec Wines, Second Cup, Ceiling Clean, Duraguard Fencing,Green Thumb Irrigation and Rohit Homes.

You've invested years developing your brand with your logo.

You have your logo on: Your business card Your letterhead Your building Your company cars Your pens Your company uniforms Your trade show booths Your website Your trade show giveaways

NOW HAVE IT AT THE MOST IMPORTANT DECISION MAKING MOMENT!!!

ON THE 1ST PAGE GOOGLE WHY WASTE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TARGETING GARBAGE CANS? TARGET THEIR WALLET Designed to keep in the wallet like a dollar bill

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Always ready for use!!!

A Rethinking of Word Of Mouth....Something to Talk About Have your business in the wallet of thousands of people, both local and tourist!

Taking the JUNK OUT OF JUNK MAIL 🔘 A NEW CONCEPT IN MOBILE MARKETING🔘 📞 1-855-216-6010 This new marketing system provides referrals to all the customers social media followers without effort.

Facebook, Twitter and Google+ in addition to mail.

No searching, no spelling, no typing... USE YOUR SMARTPHONE Like Speed Dial Works on iPhone, iPad, iPod, Blackberry and Android Instantly have all the information to make a well informed decision. Videos, online articles, product feature demos. Maps give directions using your mobile's GPS from wherever you are by auto and bus routes.

PEOPLE USE THEIR MOBILE DEVICES INSTEAD OF THEIR COMPUTERS On the Daily Commute In the Waiting Room In the Lunchroom Over Coffee Over Lunch Waiting for the Bus Between Appointments The most comprehensive report on direct mail target marketing to Vancouver neighborhood’s. Demographics include up to 400 purchasing criteria with accuracy down to the block.

This profile report is a multimedia production, including a report book and computer analysis program. Any Criteria to find your clients, where they live in instantly be acquired. This course is not for sale. It is the resource guide for my direct mail marketing.

The most comprehensive report on direct mail target marketing to Vancouver neighborhood’s. Demographics include up to 400 purchasing criteria with accuracy down to the block.

This profile report is a multimedia production, including a report book and computer analysis program. Any criteria to find your clients, where they live in instantly be acquired. This course is not for sale. It is the resource guide for my direct mail marketing.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

My first direct mail campaign was in 1966. I designed it by hand, mimeographed it on a gestetner mimeograph machine and then hand delivered it.

The results were spectacular! My father made his year’s salary as a milkman in six weeks. He quit his job and started his company which lasted for decades. At the time I was 10 years old. It started a lifelong passion for marketing.

Have fun building your business! Over the last 50 years I've had tremendous fun and profit building my businesses.

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This section you will find Photos of projects that I've done.

These projects include; How I started home and leisure magazine How I restored vintage vehicles to provide effective company promotion Examples on my mobile apps and how to use them Examples of how the mobile app effectively markets of business Examples of how to use Google maps to its maximum benefit on your mobile smart phone Examples of marketing that I found around the world Examples of what you can achieved by doing Barter I traded office space and custom made furniture for advertising Examples of what is he in the quikfind on the go info app

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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