Legacy Marketing Services

This week Administaff, a PEO company based in my hometown of Kingwood, released a survey stating that 78 percent of the clients surveyed, small business owners and managers, said that their business was meeting or exceeding their growth expectations.

Forty-four percent of respondents stated that they were hiring full-time employees and 11 percent part time.

In an additional report with a compilation of their customer data, they stated that employee compensation was up 4.9 percent from last year.

I have to wonder if this survey is truly representative of the current plight of small business in today’s economy. The businesses surveyed were just those using Administaff’s services.

At the Career Waymark, all of the recent job search related entries by author Scott Williamson have indicated the complete opposite. His forecast is to expect layoffs, rescinded job offers, and further fallout in the job market from the housing crisis.

Although today on Kiplinger.com, Richard Sammon put a positive spin on the weak dollar by pointing out that it made U.S. exports more attractive abroad. Even in service industries such as advertising, architectural services, and public relations.

So what do you think? Are the doom and gloom forecasts true, exaggerated, or somewhere in the middle?

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

One of our suppliers is running an amazing promotion on brochure printing. To celebrate Cinco de Mayo, we are passing that savings on to you and rounding it out with four additional offers for a total of five promotions for five days.

So take advantage of these specials and give your business a springtime boost! Offers are valid through May 10, 2008. Check your marketing kit and stock up.

Free Business Cards: Receive 1,000 business cards free with a business card design, a $69 value! (Promotion for 1,000 3.5″ x 2″ full color business cards on 14 pt card stock)
Code: CINCOBIZ08
Save 30% on brochure printing: Order 1,000 for only $230, a $100 savings!(Promotion for double sided, full color brochures on 100 lb gloss book with your choice of fold)
Code: CINCOBROCHURE08
Save 50% on Banner Advertising on the Kingwood Connection: Promote your business to the north Houston area on the Kingwood Connection. Lock in and save! This offer is valid on banner, featured event, and text advertising, save up to $500!
Code: CINCOAD08 …

photo credit: ToastyKen

I think anyone who has an email address has received a fraudulent email stating that their Paypal or bank account needs to be updated.

The scammers have moved on to GoDaddy now. I recently received an email stating that the contact information on my GoDaddy account had been recently changed.

The poor grammar, misspellings and links that weren’t even masked gave it away immediately.

However, the thing to remember is that if you have a domain registered with them, GoDaddy will be sending you emails. Just don’t click on the email links. Go directly to web site to log in.

Here’s the reality. Phishers are successful because we are LAZY. Does it take more than 5 seconds and a couple of keystrokes to go to the web site in a browser? No. It is just more convenient to click on the link in the email.

Besides online banking services, Paypal, and GoDaddy, another prevalent scam is for ecards, particularly Hallmark.

As I said before, we are LAZY. Ecards are lame. Instead of, “Show you care to send the very best, ” it should be, “I forgot your birthday and don’t have time to buy a $1 card and …

Legacy Marketing has published an email newsletter for the past few years, and I’ve decided to add a blog to it.

Why?

Well, there have been quite a few times that a topic has come up that I wanted to address, and I just didn’t have the time to put out a special edition of the newsletter and it was a out-of-date by the time the next newsletter publish date came up.

So the monthly Legacy Marketing newsletter will still go out with highlighted tips, but if you want the news fresh from my fingertips sign up for the blog RSS feed.

For those of you who are current subscribers to the newsletter, I’ve switched distribution platforms so if there is anything that is wrong with your subscription please let me know.  Also, I’ve added a second mailing list for online advertising updates.  This will be mailed as new opportunities come available and as a reminder for submission deadlines.

It’s hard to believe that in less than two months, 2005 will be coming to an end. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m just getting resituated after Rita (I finally found my portfolio that I thought I had lost when we evacuated!), and now it’s time to get ready for the holidays.

I’ve created and prepared my business holiday cards, made sure everything is in order for the year-end accounting, and I’m getting ready to put together my marketing plan for 2006 (more on that later). But what I’ve really been spending time on lately is Picnic on the Park!

If you missed Picnic on the Park last year, it is a community Easter …

August has been a month of landmarks.

Congratulations go to Germaine Porche with Eagles View Consulting and current ABWA president for being named to the Top Ten Business Women of ABWA.

Congratulations to Liz Fogt who has officially launched fogtnotes and will be creating custom thank you cards and note cards. She designed the note card that I use for my business. She reserved the domain name seven years ago and it is very exciting to see the actualization of a dream.

Also, I completed my first seminar series, The Exhibitor’s Edge. The next series will be in November on developing a marketing plan.