Recycling – Good for Environment, Good for Business

Recycling
Recycling is one of those initiatives everyone agrees is wants to do, yet few fail to follow through. They believe it takes too much effort and, in some cases, costs more than it is worth to do. This is a wrong assumption. While no one can argue about the benefits of recycling to the environment, its benefits to the business bottom line are equally convincing.

Majority of large corporations have adopted recycling. After all, they have many resources available to do this. Small businesses, on the other hand, have been somewhat reluctant due to apparent lack of resources and perceived high cost. While the will has always been strong among small business owners, many have been unable to make a commitment to recycling for these reasons. But as I will show below this does not have to be the case. Here are few compelling benefits recycling provides to businesses, large and small.

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Education Foundation of Joelle Wyser-Pratte

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Education foundation of Joelle Wyser-Pratte
Charitable foundations such as the one started by Joelle Wyser-Pratte are helping address the challenge of educating world’s poor. “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” This powerful proverb that has taught generations the power of education is still true – probably more so today when the world economy is moving from labor oriented tasks to cerebral tasks. Millions of people in developing nations, such as India and China, have come out of poverty by educating themselves and moving up the rungs of economic ladder. Not only can education help you realize personal dreams, but it can also solve many of the world’s pressing problems such as terrorism, war and other social malice.

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Joelle O’Reilly-Hyland’s Focus on Girl Education Charity

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Joelle Oreilly-Hyland focus on charity
Small business owners can benefit by getting involved in the community in which they operate. Giving back to the community is not only the right thing to do, but it also pays you back in terms of brand recognition and higher sales. The community involvement can happen in various forms. You can sponsor the Little League softball team in your city or participate in fund raising for the high school football team. The community involvement doesn’t have to be limited to local community. With the rise of globalization the world has become smaller and as a result the community you participate in has become global. Joelle O’Reilly-Hyland has started one such global foundation to help educate the girls.

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Improve Small Business Profit with Corporate Social Responsibility

Improve profit with corporate social responsibility

Many small business owners once dismissed Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a public relations stunt used by large corporations to look good in front of customers and governments. However, over last few years an increasing number of small businesses have started implementing CSR policies.

Why? The simple reason is because CSR can help to improve profits no matter what size of business you are running.

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Are you Wasting Money with These 7 Marketing Mistakes?


Many small business owners think of marketing as a black magic that involves spending lots of money in advertising in the hope that it will magically bring additional customers and sales. They get frustrated when not as many customers as they had hoped show up and the scant few that do never return again. The worst part is business owners feel they have no choice but to continue doing this because they will lose even more customers and sales otherwise. As a result, they end up wasting their hard earned money on marketing when they could have received better return on their money.
While consulting with number of small business owners we have uncovered several recurring mistakes that many of us make in terms of marketing. By simply understanding those mistakes and taking steps to avoid them from happening with your business you can not only save money on marketing, but also get much better return. The list below shows 7 common mistakes many small business owners make. We also show references to other articles that provide additional details and explain how to prevent them from hurting your business.
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How can you Beat the Larger Rivals at their Own Game


In the previous post we mentioned that it is possible to beat your larger competitors and own a successful small business. Many small business owners are scared of their large competitors because of their wrongful perception that large companies can use their size and vast resources to drive smaller rivals out of business.
We described why this is not true in the last post. Here we will take it one step further and show how you can beat those larger rivals.
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Yes, You can Beat the Larger Rivals at their Own Game


Many small business owners are scared of competing against their larger rivals. After all, large competitors have all the resources at their disposal to put you out of business, right? It is a battle of David versus Goliath! What chance does David stand against the Goliath?
While it is true that Wal-Mart has put number of mom-and-pop shops out of business in the last 10 years, there is hope for small business owners. In fact, we believe you can beat them at their own game and become a very successful small business owner. You probably are thinking we are nuts and don’t know what we are talking about, but allow us to explain.
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How to Team up with Cool Businesses and Improve Sales by 10%


In the previous post we mentioned that small businesses can improve brand and increase sales by 10%-20% by teaming up with “cool” businesses. Subway’s partnership with American Heart Association to position them as a healthy food purveyor by teaming with an organization that promotes heart health is a great example. Recently, Ford announced partnership with a Zipcar to improve their brand perception in the minds of college students based on the same principle.
Small businesses such as yours can also realize benefits from such partnership. It can improve the brand image of your company by “rubbing some the coolness” from your partner to your business. In the process, it can bring new customers and increase sales from those new as well as existing customers. The association can also teach you a great deal about how to work with and attract different customer base.
The key to successful partnership is to understand your overall objectives as well as the target customer base you want to attract and find businesses that are deemed as “cool” by those customers. This needs careful planning on your part. We have come across number of ways in which businesses have gone about implementing this. Below we explain some of the tactics based on our experience and observations.
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How to Grow your Business without Spending a Fortune


The great recession of the last 2-3 years has made many small business owners skittish about spending money even if it can help them improve sales in the future. Many of the small business owners are hunkering down to survive till the sky is cleared. They are happy with maintaining current sales and making reasonable profit. While we agree that these are difficult times for all small business owners, you should not have to sacrifice long-term benefits at the expense of short-term survival.
We believe, there are ways to satisfy both the needs of conserving cash and growing your business at the same time. The key is to utilize low-cost marketing techniques to improve sales combined with flexible operations to control cost. We have covered several of these techniques in previous posts. Below we summarize them for your convenience.
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How to Run Successful Free Sample Program


In the previous post we discussed why giving out free samples needs to be part of marketing strategy for every small business. There are number of benefits small business owners can obtain by giving out samples to existing and new customers. The key to achieving these benefits is to execute the program well. You have to ensure that you reach out to target it to the customers you want to attract. Give out free samples to anyone and everyone and you will waste your money without reaping proper benefits.
To successfully run the sample program you should aim to reach maximum number of potential customers in your target market. You also need to look into getting recommendations from influential people that your target customers admire. Here are some suggestions to make that happen.
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