Cargo Finance: UPS gives small businesses working capital!

On September 9th, the company is launching a new program for small businesses called Cargo Finance. Basically, UPS customers will be able to borrow up to $100,000 to use as working capital. According to a BusinessWeek article:

“One of its trial customers is Pedors, a $2 million Marietta (Ga.)
importer of orthopedic shoes. Along with shipping Pedors products from
Chinese factories to U.S. warehouses, UPS pays the Chinese supplier up
front for the goods. Pedors wires UPS half the cost of the shipment
once the shoes leave China and has 60 days to pay the balance, with
interest. Pedors Chief Executive John O’Hare says working with UPS has
helped his firm expand its product line. “This service cuts out all the
middlemen in international trade,” he says. Prior to the UPS deal,
O’Hare relied on a bank credit line secured by his personal assets.
With UPS, the collateral is the shipment itself.”

UPS: Making Loans to Small Biz

This is a great opportunity for small business importers or exporters! And now that the value of the dollar is relatively low, US goods are less expensive to some foreign markets, such as those in Europe.

No time for marketing?

Today, on the Duck Tape Marketing Blog, John Jantsch a blog titled “I Don’t Have Time for Marketing” :

Parkinson’s Law is the adage that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” It was first articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson, appearing as the first sentence of a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955.Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing, Sep 2008

Since I started Aldeia Global Marketing, Parkinson’s Law has had been quite active in my life!  As a marketing consultant, you would think that marketing my own business would be on top of my to-do list.  Unfortunately, after creating and executing my client’s marketing plan, I often find that I don’t have time for marketing” my own company.  Of course, if I don’t take care of marketing in-house, how can I line up future clients.  Perhaps I need to hire a company like mine to do our marketing!  Seriously – if you don’t have time for marketing, find a way to make time.  Hiring a company like Aldeia is one way to “make” time.  Another way is by creating more efficient processes.

One of the biggest drains in our time as small business is the very passion that can drive our business to success.  We become emotionally attached to our businesses and want to get every detail perfect.  Voltaire put it best when he said “Perfection is the enemy of the good.”  Sometimes things need to be perfect.  But more often than not, good is better than perfect.  Why?  Because you can get a lot more “good” accfomplished than “perfect”.

Encouraging customers to recommend your business

Today one of my favorite marketing industry websites, Marketing Sherpa, had an interesting how-to article about cutting marketing expenses. The article lists the 11 steps taken by a marketing director for a plastic surgeon’s office in order to reduced marketing expenses. What caught my attention is that the main theme running through the article is to concentrate your marketing efforts on existing customers. This is a great strategy if you sell a product or service that is consumable or have a variety of offerings targeted at the same audience. But in this case, it was a plastic surgeon. Isn’t plastic surgery an infrequent type of expenditure, where clients spend years between procedures? The idea here is to target existing clients and help them become advocates of your business. One of the most brilliant techniques was giving customers a laminated card with their before and after pictures. This allowed them to easily share their experience with friends and family.

I imagine the same marketing technique can be used by web designers, remodeling contractors, hair dressers, gyms, and other businesses that create a visual difference in their client’s lives. So, how do you encourage customers to share their experience with your company?