Dockers launched its “Wear the Pants” contest in February to promote its line of khaki pants.  The contest awards a $100,000 post-tax prize for the best business plan submitted through its Facebook page.  Submissions were accepted through March 15, 2011, with the winner to be announced on May 2, 2011.  Entrants were asked to submit their ideas for a new business or project in 400 words or fewer, and community members and friends could vote on the plans.  A panel of judges selects five finalists, with the community again voting on the final winner from April 25, 2011 to May 1, 2011.  In addition to the $100,000 prize, the winner receives a year’s worth of Dockers khakis, and the first 500 entrants receive a free pair of Dockers.  Every entrant gets a shareable coupon for 30 percent off Dockers pants.

Over 200,000 likes and 1,800 entries were generated through March 15, 2011, and contestants spread the word on blogs and social and other sites to gather votes.  Dockers is also running a similar contest through November where $2,000 (in total value) is awarded to an entrepreneur every week for plans submitted through the Dockers Facebook page.  The $2,000 prize can be in the form of tools, products, services or cash, depending on the resources needed to put the plan into action (possible examples include software, consultation with an expert, equipment and so forth).  Winners receive a free pair of Dockers, and every entrant gets a sharable coupon for 30 percent off.

The “Wear the Pants” contest, in particular, offers many takeaways for any size business seeking to create a successful social media contest, some of which include:

• It’s not the size of the prize:  While a $100,000 prize is nice, most small businesses won’t be able to afford it.  Small things can make a big difference, such as a discount or free shipping – the possibilities are almost limitless.  The best prizes, however small, positively impact people’s lives, which has the added benefit of creating a positive association with the company or brand.

• Make the contest all-inclusive: Dockers made sure everyone got something for their participation. This not only encouraged participation but helped make everyone feel included in the promotion and that their efforts to enter the contest didn’t go to waste. It also encourages later sales with a special offer.

• Associate with a good cause: Whether it’s offering the chance to start a dream business or helping people overcome life’s obstacles, this type of cause marketing creates a strong emotional appeal and provides a compelling reason to spread the message beyond just winning the prize.  For example, many entrants with disabilities received an outpouring of support (and lots of votes and word of mouth as a result).

• Add “stickiness” to social destinations: The Dockers contest made its social presence “sticky” by running the contest on and through its Facebook page, keeping visitors there longer and interacting with the brand (and each other).

• Mix commerce with messaging and contest strategy: Dockers was able to mix its branding and sales efforts with the contest seamlessly.  This type of strategy uses a “soft sell” approach, which is often more appropriate for social media (where it’s more about conversations) than for many other forms of marketing.

• Align social efforts with overall goals and objectives: Whether it’s a contest or any other type of social media campaign (or presence), make sure it aligns with overall business goals and objectives.  Define how it fits into a complete marketing strategy and whether such an effort will be beneficial, and be sure the needed resources (including time) can be dedicated to ensure a successful outcome.  And perhaps most importantly, define what a successful outcome is.

NOTE:  The takeaways are solely the interpretation of the writer and are not intended to speak for Dockers in any way.

The post Social Campaign Shows the Power of Contests appeared first on Small Business Trends.

A recent study from Info-Tech Research Group found that most companies outsource to gain access to specialized skills, which result in faster product delivery. Howard Kiewe, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group, said another good reason to outsource is if a business needs to act quickly to take advantage of a market opportunity but doesn’t have the internal talent to respond. Other advantages of outsourcing include improved business processes and workflow, flexible staff allocation and the ability of internal staff to focus on other important business areas.

Of course, potential cost savings cannot be ignored, although analysts differ on whether it provides a major benefit. “Cutting costs was not the primary reason organizations considered outsourcing, and doesn’t appear to be a driving motivation anytime soon,” said Kiewe. However, Peter Ryan, lead analyst at Datamonitor, emphasized cost reduction as a primary driver. “Currently, [a major outsourcing driver] is cost containment, with many companies desperate to remove as much overhead as possible through the recession and into the recovery.” Cost savings as a reason to outsource will depend on the individual business and its objectives.

While there are plenty of advantages to outsourcing, there are also disadvantages. According to the Info-Tech study, these include misunderstood requirements (outsourcer doesn’t deliver project as specified), cost overruns (actual costs exceed budgeted costs), inadequate deliverable quality, cultural and language issues (particularly with offshore consultants), and problems selecting appropriate and quality vendors. Ryan added that there can be issues related to loss of jobs, especially if the work is to be done offshore.

Fortunately, some disadvantages aren’t necessarily reasons to avoid outsourcing. Although job loss is a key concern, the Info-Tech study found that outsourcing led to very few layoffs, with only 14 percent of companies that outsourced having laid off any staff. As Kiewe explained, “Most companies use outsourcing to augment existing staff, not to replace them.” Also, while offshoring has cultural, language and time-zone challenges that must be considered, it can be more successful at cost reduction than onshore outsourcing. “If your primary motivation is cost reduction, consider offshoring,” said Kiewe. However, a company must know the tolerance of their customer base before using such a strategy according to Ryan. “In the end, there is no right or wrong in either business model, only what will best serve the end-user,” he said.

Kiewe addressed the issue of sending jobs overseas by offshoring and its impact on the economy. At least according to Kiewe, this shouldn’t be a deciding factor. “[Offshoring] is a decision to make on business merits. The recession was not caused by offshoring and it will not be fixed by avoiding offshore business relationships. Today the economy is truly global, and we will all prosper if we work together to fix it,” he said. Given the global nature of the recession, perhaps this idea isn’t too far fetched, although it’s certainly up for debate.

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About the Author: David Cotriss is a business, technology and new media writer, having published 500+ news and feature articles to date worldwide in magazines ranging from PC Magazine to The Industry Standard.

The post The Pros and Cons of Outsourcing appeared first on Small Business Trends.

While some may be annoyed by them, they are powerful sales tools driving an enormous industry that can teach almost any business how to sell effectively no matter what medium is being used.

Here we’ve listed just some of the tips you can apply to your business to boost sales – feel free to add more in the comments section below.

• Demonstrate your product or service. No matter what you’re selling, show how it works and how it can benefit someone. Try posting a video on your site and/or YouTube or similar sites. This will boost viewer engagement and enhance your sales message.
• Use testimonials. This will add enormous credibility. Use full names and company names if applicable, and possibly a photo of the person. Feature them in any video you use.
• Incorporate upsells into your offerings. Keep advertised price points low (perhaps spread into payments) and offer an upgraded, more expensive version or package deal when the customer takes action to order. This is where most of the money in DRTV is made. If just 10 percent of responders upgrade, for example, this can mean an enormous boost in revenue and potential profits. This can be done not just for phone orders but during the checkout process online, where customers are prompted with a special offer.
• Send offers to your in-house list. Keep customers in the loop with more offers later on. They may buy a much more expensive product (or place a larger order) once you’ve built trust. It’s best to use opt-ins and opt-outs so you’re not sending unwanted communications.
• Be enthusiastic. Stand behind your product or service and make sure it shows. Enthusiasm conveys emotion, such as the joy someone will experience by using the item.
• Fulfill basic needs and wants. Whether it’s to lose weight or help a child learn better in school, your offering should solve a common problem quickly and easily backed by a promise (such as a strong guarantee). Just be sure the offering lives up to its claims.
• Use repetition. You’ll normally hear the same information repeated several times during an infomercial. Within reason, repeating ads and offer details reinforces the sales message and motivates someone to buy.
• Use time-sensitive offers. Whether it’s the first 100 responders or “we only have a limited quantity available” or another tactic, this motivates the potential buyer to take action now rather than wait and be much less likely to order. Woot has made highly effective use of this technique by offering one new item per day only while supplies last or until another item is offered the next day.
• Know when to say when. If someone indicates they’re not interested in an upsell, for example, don’t try to push the offering further. You might be able to sell them through followup contacts later.
• Offer multiple ways to order. DRTV commercials often include a web address and sometimes a way to order via mobile, and even a regular mailing address in addition to a phone number. Give buyers as many ways to order as possible regardless of the medium used so they can take action in the way they’re most comfortable with.

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About the Author: David Cotriss is a business, technology and new media writer, having published 500+ news and feature articles to date worldwide in magazines ranging from PC Magazine to The Industry Standard.

The post 10 Things You Can Learn From Infomercials appeared first on Small Business Trends.

A good diet can go a long way towards making your business a success. Eating the right foods can give you energy, focus and improve your mood, not to mention your health. Drinking coffee will give you a temporary boost of energy and focus, but won’t give you the nutrition you need. Plenty of water is always a good idea no matter your diet.

To help guide you in choosing the best foods for snacks and meals for productivity in business, we’ve listed 15 to get you started. While some of these power foods may not be healthy in large amounts, it goes back to the old saying: everything in moderation. Consider these foods for business success:

• Whole grain bread: Much better than white bread in providing energy and nutrients whether eaten by itself or used for toast or sandwiches.
• Whole wheat pasta: A good source of complex carbohydrates to give your body an energy boost, and can be broken down easily.
• Vegetable juice: Provides a quick energy boost and vegetable servings and the same time.
• Fresh salads with vinaigrette: You may want to opt for fresh vegetables, and using vinaigrette for salads helps the body absorb protein and nutrients longer, which improves focus.
• Bananas: Provide potassium, vitamin C, complex carbohydrates, and energy.
• Avocados: Contain fats that add to heart and brain health, promoting blood flow. Great for sandwiches and salads.
• Eggs: Contain protein and cholin needed for the brain to develop motor functions and memory.
• Apples: Great source of vitamin C to help the blood vessels and overall health. A great snack or addition to salads and other foods.
• Grapes: Inexpensive and healthy. A great source of vitamins A, C, B6 and folate. Also provide magnesium and iron.
• Walnuts: Good source of omega-3 fatty acids, protein, vitamin B6, and other nutrients for brain health.
• Almonds: Also a good source of vitamins and protein.
• Salmon: Often called “brain food” (as with other fish), a source of good fatty acids and protein for heart and brain health.
• Green tea: Inexpensive source of caffeine, energy and a great mood booster.
• Air-popped popcorn: It may not be the most filling, but a quick snack that’s healthier than potato chips.
• Dark chocolate: It may seem counterintuitive, but when eaten in small amounts can help curb your appetite while helping digestion and improving your mood and focus.

For hundreds of recipe ideas and ratings for these and other foods (including vegetarian), check out All Recipes.

Zeer is also a great source for full nutrition information and reviews on tens of thousands of grocery items to help make more informed decisions about what to purchase and eat. The above are only a few healthy food ideas to help in your business success – feel free to add your suggestions in the comments section below.

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About the Author: David Cotriss is a business, technology and new media writer, having published 500+ news and feature articles to date worldwide in magazines ranging from PC Magazine to The Industry Standard.

The post 15 Power Foods To Boost Your Business appeared first on Small Business Trends.

According to Jennifer Perrier-Knox, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group, where companies allocate resources will vary according to their strategic objectives. “The organization needs to decide if its practice of IT gives it a competitive advantage in the market or if the department has core competencies that it needs to retain,” she said. Any practice or process that doesn’t fit this description could be a way to cut costs.

The typical IT costs a business incurs can vary depending on company type. For example, IT costs for a low-tech businesses may be relatively low, but they can still greatly outweigh other costs. As Perrier-Knox explained, “One thing about IT is that the capital expenditure tends to be much higher than for other departments. In terms of overall budget, IT can easily take the larger share of spend.” The number becomes smaller when only looking at operational spend.

The question becomes how to reduce IT costs while keeping the company running smoothly and not impacting customers. Outsourcing is one way to do so, but Perrier-Knox provided many additional examples such as buying refurbished IT gear (reduced capital spend), reducing the application portfolio (fewer licenses and simplified management), consolidating the printer fleet (reduced operational costs), and virtualizing servers (lowered energy consumption and future capital spend avoidance).

“But at the end of the day as far as operational spend goes, IT writes checks to two groups: staff and vendors,” she said. “Any cost reduction actions taken must, and will, result in changes in one or both of these areas. For staff, we’re talking about layoffs. For vendors, we’re talking about reducing software licensing costs, finding less expensive vendors and aggressively renegotiating product and service contracts.”

While measuring the impact of IT costs on revenue can be challenging, there are many ways to do so. Perrier-Knox explained that connecting the dots between operational cost control and impact on revenue is always a challenge since some benefits, like increased productivity, are hard to quantify. “Calculating ROI or Payback Period for an investment of any sort is an old standby, and can be done for both hard and soft benefits,” she said. “But ROI doesn’t factor in how much it costs for an investment to be supported and maintained over its life cycle.”

Perrier-Knox explained that for operational purposes, calculating Total Cost of Ownership [TCO] provides more fine-grained insight into discrete costs over the entire life cycle of the investment (as well as requires an ROI calculation to do the final math). “Typically, the majority of the cost to implement a new technology or service is tied up in the long-term management and maintenance, not in the initial acquisition of capital and resources,” she added.

Perrier-Knox said that establishing metrics is a way to directly link costs to increases in revenue. As she explained, “The most valuable metrics from a business perspective are those that show a direct impact on revenue.” These may be web site success metrics. For example, the length of time a potential customer spends on the web page (because it’s easy to use and reliable) is directly proportional to their likelihood of becoming a paying customer. “IT would want to track this metric and take actions to improve it since it has a positive impact on revenue,” she said.

Peter Ryan and Daniel Hong, lead analysts at Datamonitor, noted that reporting and monitoring capabilities in the contact center have become more advanced, which helps establish metrics. For example, some companies will know if a customer tried to obtain information via the web before calling into a contact center. Ryan and Hong said that tighter integrations with databases and new business logic will help companies more efficiently upsell and cross-sell products and services that are relevant to customers’ individual needs (based on customer behavior). “Overall, we are noticing the trend towards personalization across all channels – the next trend we may see is more humanization of agents and touch points,” Ryan and Hong added.

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About the Author: David Cotriss is a business/tech and new media writer, having published 500+ news and feature articles to date worldwide in magazines ranging from PC Magazine to The Industry Standard.

The post Reducing IT Costs While Boosting Revenue appeared first on Small Business Trends.

We’ve selected some of the most important things to consider and provide these tips and resources.

• Find the best local credit union. Given their frequent willingness to provide loans, finding a credit union that understands the needs of your business can go a long way. There are many online tools to find credit unions based on specified criteria. Many local credit unions require membership in an affiliated organization, often listed on their web site, but costs to join are usually minimal and well worth it. Here are a few tools to start with: Find A Credit Union, Credit Unions Online, Credit Union National Association.
• Find a trusted mentor. Access to free help is just a click away, with sites that help connect entrepreneurs with mentors fitting their needs. Having a mentor assist with setting up finances can be invaluable if the person is trustworthy. One resource is the Association of Small Business Development Centers, which provides access to full-time business counselors around the country, often former entrepreneurs or M.B.A. graduates. Other sites for finding mentors include SCORE (affiliated with the Small Business Administration), iMantri and MicroMentor.
• Choose the correct accounting software. While software is a mainstay of small business finance, sorting through dozens of choices isn’t easy, since there may be better options for your specific needs than the popular QuickBooks program and related packages. Find Accounting Software is a free tool that helps find exactly the right solution through a detailed questionnaire. TaxSites provides extensive resources including a list of software for small businesses.
• Consider hiring a bookkeeper. A good, trusted bookkeeper can handle all of the mundane tasks that go along with keeping finances on track. Be sure to understand the various types of bookkeepers and how to avoid fraud. A free bookkeeper hiring test (to be taken by prospective hires) can be requested.
• Accelerate cash flow with mobile payment systems. Mobile payment systems can allow faster and easier acceptance of payments for products and services. A system called GoPayment from Intuit allows acceptance of payments through mobile phones and can directly download the data into QuickBooks. To monitor transactions, users can access Intuit’s online Merchant Service Center to search, view and create reports.
• Look into factoring receivables. Accounts receivable financing allows immediate payment for invoices rather than waiting 30 days or longer and tying up working capital as a result. Factoring services advance the amount of the invoice minus a “discount”, or fee (advances of 80 to 90 percent are common), and provide a “rebate” when invoices are paid – the amount depends on how long it takes the customer to pay. FactorFind provides a directory of factors specializing in small businesses. Businesses can be matched with the most appropriate factors at the International Factoring Association, BuyerZone, and Resource Nation.
• Understand and measure capital versus operational costs. The goal often is to drive down the totals on the capital costs side of the spreadsheet and move more over to the operational side of the equation. Operating costs don’t require complex depreciation calculations and are more easily adjusted from year to year. Outsourcing is one way to do this because it sits on the operating cost side and helps to free up cash by not tying it up in capital investments (such as IT infrastructure, servers, etc.) or tasks like head hunting and payroll management.
• Measure bottom line impact by looking at the service budget year over year. Are the costs for delivering a service going up, staying the same or dropping? Figure out how much it costs to deliver specific services to the business such as recruitment, payroll or benefits management. Understanding cost-to-serve offers the business great insight into projects and tasks, how long it actually takes to do them, and as a result how much they cost. If you want to pare back on the budget, there are hard numbers to work with that show exactly what the impact on quantity and quality of service will be if resources are reduced.

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About the Author: David Cotriss is a business/tech and new media writer, having published 500+ news and feature articles to date worldwide in magazines ranging from PC Magazine to The Industry Standard.

The post 8 Tips and Resources for Managing Your Business Finances appeared first on Small Business Trends.