The Role of an Investor Relations Firm

Depending on the size and nature of a public offering, it may be necessary to hire a separate investor relations firm. In many instances, both direct and initial public offerings can benefit from the services of professional investor relations assistance.

For a company going public with an initial public offering, the decision to hire an investor relations firm will probably depend on the company's ability to internalize the function or the underwriting firm's ability to provide the service. Because an investor relations firm can be very important in the establishment and maintenance of relationships within the financial community, many corporations opt to hire a firm that specializes in such tasks. In some cases, companies may opt to hire out this function in hopes of gaining additional contacts through the investor relations firm.

The function of a good investor relations firm is relatively straightforward. The investor relations firm serves as a highly visible point of contact for interested investors and members of the press, answering questions and providing information as necessary. These goals are often accomplished through a combination of internet resources, press releases, webcasts, and phone calls. Brochures and other types of corporate collateral are also the responsibility of the investor relations firm. This includes the fact sheets, presentation materials, and earnings releases that are necessary before an offering.

Prior to an initial public offering, the role of the investor relations firm is especially critical. A good firm can play a major role in the success of an issue, creating an impression of success and stability for investors. Heavy roadshow support is a given with any investor relations firm, and the company may help compose various financial reports to present to prospective investors. Good firms will also help by arranging numerous meetings with potential investors, based on the preferences of the issuing company.

Because direct public offerings are generally used by companies with smaller capital needs, the use of an investor relations firm is somewhat less common. Regardless, its function is just as important to a smaller company as it is for a company seeking funds through an initial public offering. With a direct public offering, there is no underwriter to guarantee sales, so full responsibility for the success of the issue lies with the issuing corporation.

Because the process of issuing and selling public shares is time-consuming and stressful, it may be beneficial to enlist the aid of an outside investor relations firm to help with marketing the issue and communicating with investors. In addition to easing the stress, the use of an investor relations firm can help a corporation appear more professional to investors, creating a greater image of stability and profitability.

It's not impossible for an issue to be successful without the aid of an investor relations firm, but success is certainly more likely with one. By allowing capable hands to take over investor relations functions, the corporation can focus on other important tasks at hand before the issue.

Author: Joel Arberman is the Managing Member of Stock Aware, LLC. Details @ www.stockaware.com

Social Media Nightmare - What To Do When a Social Media Relationship Goes Bad

Social media nightmares do happen, believe it or not. One minute everything's all rosy and great and then all of a sudden, you don't want to have anything to do with a certain individual. Maybe you did business with them and found their business practices to be less than ethical. Maybe they post stuff that you wouldn't want to share with your dog, much less another human being. What do you do in a situation like this? Here are some tips to help you resolve this unfortunate situation.

Do not panic. These things happen. Remember that you are networking with actual human beings. Human beings do have flaws. People aren't perfect. It's not worth getting stressed over.

Disconnect from that person. If what they've done is really bad, you can always remove that person from your list of contacts. Most social networking sites have a delete button. There's no rule that says you have to stay connected to everyone that you connect to.

Make sure not to put that person on blast. I know it's tempting to let everyone and their momma know about the bad thing that person did. Don't do it. It's not professional. Remember what goes around comes around. There's always two sides to every story. Don't go putting people on blast unless you're ready for the backlash that could happen.

Social media mishaps can happen. It's inevitable. Don't let one bad experience ruin your outlook on social networking. Just shake this off and keep on trucking.

Author: DeAnna Troupe (www.www.deannatroupe.com/list.html)

Good Advisers Are Worth Their Weight in Gold

Most successful business people will acknowledge that their business success is due in no small way, to the help they received from a selected group of people known as "business advisers".

It is impossible for a business owner to know everything about everything, and it is a mistake to think that they can do everything on their own. At some time or another every business owner will need to consult these people for business advice or assistance.
Don’t do it all yourself. 
The requirements of commerce, the strategies involved in business, and the expertise required in many areas of business, mean that most people are unlikely to have all the specialised skills necessary to run their business efficiently and profitably.
Any type of arrogant thinking is a recipe for failure, stress and burnout.

We hear too often from our clients "Oh... I can do that myself or have an intern write the marketing materials to save some money." Think again. 100% of the time our clients come back humbled, having wasted precious time not getting the job done right or done at all. Or even worse, they started paying tid bit fees to to get stuff done without an overall strategy or plan on what to do and when and how to do it.

As a business owner you simply will not have the time or energy to do everything yourself and if you are a one-man business or one-woman business, the stress will be more evident if you have no-one else to discuss business issues with. In any event, it is unwise to try to do everything alone or in isolation when there are people available who have the expertise and the skills to help in your business - the business adviser.



Find and build your team
. Your team of advisers will generally be made up of an accountant, a lawyer, a bank manager, an insurance consultant, and a finance broker. In addition, make sure that you have a marketing & PR specialist on bord, somebody that helps you create or re-define your company, your branding your image and how to communicate what you have to offer.

Advisers can make a huge difference to the smooth running of your business. Always look for professional advisers who are business oriented, rather than professionally oriented. 

Most lawyers and accountants, for example, are experienced in their field, but they also need to offer advice regarding the law and accounting as it directly relates to business. It's not enough to simply get a professional adviser. You need to seek the services of a person who knows something about business. Your Marketing & PR Specialist should not only create ads or write a press release: he should consult you on your branding and image, research your market and get you in touch with your target group via a selected array of Marketing and PR tools

Too many people think there is a special mystique attached to the members of professions such as lawyers or accountants and they believe that any professional adviser will do a good job. WRONG!

The fact is, while some advisers have specialist knowledge, their competence to apply that knowledge may be questionable. 

Make a point not to seek an adviser simply because they happen to be handy to your business. Seek someone who has competency in their field, relating to business even if they have offices on the other side of town.

Conclusion: Outsource, be the CEO of your company and work on your business, not 'in' your business. Focus on what you do best and leave the rest to the experts.

Source:StartRunGrow 2006



© 2006 Copyright StartRunGrow

Conquer the Top 6 Small Business Marketing Challenges

Whatever industry you are in you are likely to encounter the top 6 marketing challenges for small businesses. As a small business what can you do? We will have a limited war chest of marketing dollars or even marketing staff at our disposal to tame these challenges. Like most small businesses you will be faced with other priorities from all aspects of operating a business and will struggle to find the time to do any marketing at all. That is until you realise that sales are not growing to the levels that you want or worst you are faced with declining sales.

This guide will tackle the key marketing challenges revealed in a recent online survey we run and will offer some very practical guidance that will help you improve your efforts for better marketing results.

Marketing is Business Development
Let us understand that marketing generates business development opportunities. This is the end-objective of marketing to build qualified prospects that convert into sales revenue. You must make the time for marketing or face closing your business. Marketing does not have to be complicated or time consuming. Every small business must develop a marketing engine or process that can be managed and fine-tuned with a planned effort of a couple of hours per week. Now let's get started and tackle those top 6 marketing challenges for small businesses:

1. Defining Target Markets
Who are you targeting and where can we find them? Basic stuff, but the very foundation of your marketing starts here. If you want to be successful with your marketing you must have a clear idea of your target market. Put together a short description or profile of your ideal customer. Write it down and refine it, work with your team or a marketing specialist and identify the buying criteria used by your ideal customer. Once you have conceptualised your ideal customer it will help you prepare and personalise your marketing message to make it relevant and important to the intended recipient. The next time you are writing promotional messages or offers put the profile in front of you and it will guide you in your efforts to communicate more effectively with your target market.

2. Increasing Repeat Business
The ability to deliver to the satisfaction of your customer is the threshold level to remain in business. Make sure you deliver. That said - you need to give them a reason to come back for more! Consider including a thank you coupon with every purchase that provides an incentive or discount that they can receive on a future purchase. You need to nurture the customer relationship by keeping in touch and offering value with every contact you make with your customers. The most cost effective manner to stay in touch with your customers and drive repeat business is with permission based email or e-newsletter marketing. Every business must have email marketing in their communications tool box in today's Internet connected world.

3. Getting Consistent Referrals
People generally want to help so why not ask them for their help in getting referrals? We have found this as quite striking among small business in general. Small business owners and managers agree that referrals are important to their business but so many are hesitant to openly ask for referrals. Let all your customers and network of contacts know that their referrals are important to your business. Make sure you can track their referrals, keep them updated and show your gratitude for their efforts in some way whether it is informal or structured as part of a referral program. Make a working system of it and drive referrals as an integral part of your marketing activities.

4. Increasing Sales Conversions
Sometimes we may even think to ourselves marketing does not work or we have tried that before with minimal results. Well look again what was in the marketing message? Make sure you make a relevant and attractive offer to your target market that requires a decision to be made by the recipient. However, before you commit to it, test it to refine and improve your results and test it again before running the entire campaign. Small business can not afford to spend on purely image or brand building advertisement. You can build and promote your brand or company image while generating increased sales conversions by providing an offer with an incentive to take action within a specified time frame! Make sure every promotional campaign is primary focused on generating a response that converts into a sale while at the same time building your brand.

5. Finding Time & Resources for Marketing
Do you find yourself thinking that you can not afford to spend time and money on marketing? If you do, then do not be surprise to find out that your business will not be achieving its capacity to grow. Can you afford to let your sales opportunities run out? Absolutely not! The fact is that you simply can not afford not to invest the time and resources into marketing. Say again - you can not neglect your marketing if you want your business to prosper. Take the time to explore what you can achieve with the exceptional marketing methods that are now available to small businesses that have minimal costs to implement.

6. Developing a Marketing Plan
Everyone seriously in business must have a marketing plan to support their business objectives. Take the time to prepare and develop your marketing approach and strategies including how you will track and test it. If necessary get a marketing specialist to assist you develop your marketing plan. Without a plan to run it is likely you will find yourself trying different "marketing ideas" that others have suggested and ending up with the expenses and no profits to show for it. If you ask others, who are no marketing experts, make sure you ask the ones, who run a successful business and understand the value of marketing.

About the Author
Patrick Zuluaga has more than 20 years experience in marketing and business development roles with Australian and international companies. You can visit the web presence at http://www.pmzmarketing.com.au

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Patrick_Zuluaga

Surpass your Competition in the Internet and use Reverse Keyword Search

You have a website, but nobody can find you. You have your product or service on ebay, google, Yahoo, Amazon, but still nobody can find you. That's mainly because you're not using the relevant search keywords/phrases people are entering when looking for your product or service.

A key to showing up at the top of search engines is to include the very keywords your business is related to in your website, in the headline name and/or first paragraph of each page. Think of your website as a book. The name of your website is like the title of the book. Just as a book is categorized in a library by its title and content; likewise, your success in the search engines depends upon the title, or headline, of your website and the content. In fact, using keywords in the title and content of your site is critical to your marketing.

We recommend to all our clients to use our Reverse Keyword Search Tools when writing content for their website. This cutting-edge technology researches keywords and phrases their clients or potential clients are actually typing into the search engines to find products and services in the internet. Our search term data is collected monthly from numerous search engines worldwide. This includes major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and other global and premium databases. For instance the more accurate Premium database bases its results on 4.3 billion keyword searches using user panel data. This data is free from skew caused by automated agents, a problem that has traditionally faced all keyword suggestion services.

Keep in mind: you need to check and change your keywords on your website at least every three months. Need help? Contact us. Crawlers and spiders like updated keywords on each of your pages - (content is king again); they give you credit for the content changes and rank you higher on search engines.

We not only do the Reverse Keyword Search for your web site and help you with the content, we also offer a full 20 page Reverse Keyword Search Analysis of keywords your competition uses. You do not need to wonder any longer why your competitor is always No 1 in the ranking. Our Reverse Keyword Analysis will give you the reasons, and you can act accordingly to surpass your competition in the ranking! Don't have time to do it yourself? You shouldn't: "Do what you do best and leave the rest to us."

Many of our clients find that comparing their site, their choice of words, and even the design of their site, to other sites that are at the top of search engines, is helpful in developing an effective Marketing strategy for their own website. By the way: we not only search single keywords, but also double and triple phrases!

Keep in mind: Although keyword usage is important, and indeed critical, in certain aspects of Internet marketing, keywords alone are not a "magic bullet". They must be used in conjunction with other efforts and strategies, especially with search engines. More on that in our next Blog "The 10 Steps you need (us) to do to get anywhere close to page ONE on Google".

This month we're giving friends of Breezewelt the opportunity to optimize their website with our inbound marketing tools.

This helps you:
* Evaluate the search engine optimization of your website.
* Track your company's Internet marketing position compared to competitors.
* Launch or enhance an effective business blog.
* Monitor and snapshot relevant product, service and Google trends.
* Keyword Distribution, Search Demand, Competition.
* Relevant Link Search Report on major search engines and bookmarking siteson Delicious
* Measure the return on investment (ROI) of all inbound marketing activities.

We have a limited number of trials we can offer, so start your trial now.

We offer "Do-it-yourself" starter packages, for a limited time only, for $249.00 (normally $599.00) up to "All Inclusive" bundles for $1500.00 (normally $3,500.00). Email us for more details.