We’ve all seen the 20% off coupon oversize postcard Bed Bath & Beyond sends each week, right? Well, what you may not know is, other retailers aren’t sending customers the same offers all the time. Welcome to the world of favoritism by retailers.

A reader on The Consumerist (a popular consumer watchdog site) wrote in, saying that she receives ad mailings of past tenants occasionally, and she noticed that this time

there were two packs of Target coupons. I opened one of them to flip through the coupons. It was mostly name brand stuff, the majority of which didn’t interest me since I tend to buy store brand items. I put both packs on the dining table and ignored them until the weekend. I picked up both packs on my way out, intending to do some grocery shopping and pick up some cleaning supplies, and I notice that the packets have different coupons in them. One of them promises “over $43 in savings,” and the other one only “$20 in coupons.”

Not only did Target send her past apartment tenant an ad for higher savings, it also was less restrictive of the products the coupons could be used on.

What does target know about her previous tenant that makes him more valuable as a customer?

Retailers often target different messages to different demographic and geographic audiences, but is this the new trend?

I’m interested to hear from consumers and marketers alike, in the comments.

If you’re a consumer, does this anger you? Will this change how you go about finding coupons?

If you’re a marketer, do you think this is ethical? Do you have a story about segmenting the direct marketing offer in a way that gives certain recipients an advantage over others?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about growing your business using LinkedIN, and shared those tips with Brynne Tillman, a sales and business development coach, who had some tips of her own for finding and closing sales prospects on LinkedIN.  I’d like to share those tips with you today.

Share Events

If I am attending an event or business card exchange I will often share the event with a prospect.  It’s a great reason to reach out with a soft approach and another way to get in front of them.

Be Present in Discussion

Leave a comment on a LinkedIN discussion that is relevant to what you do, so as others comment you are emailed updates and often those folks are prospects or referral sources.

You can find discussions in LinkedIN groups, and here is a screenshot of how it looks:

An Additional Point of Contact

Make LinkedIn your follow up to every contact you’ve made networking offline. By adding the contact as a follow up you’ll “solidify” your connection to him/her by that

Keep Track of Who’s Attending

When invited to events that you can not attend but are relevant to your business, mark them as “interested” to keep track of folks who are attending…they are often prospects or referral sources.

Do you have any tips to add? I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

One major indicator of the health of our economy is the state of the automotive industry. Since cars are one of the largest purchases we will make in our lifetime, we tend to put a lot of thought into it, and can generally afford a new car only during good times.

Being that times are not so great for the Detroit 3 and car sales are dropping, let’s look at some strategies that can help dealers sell cars more efficiently. This will hopefully be interesting to everyday people, and vital to car dealers to read.

The inventory of most dealers consists of new and used cars. Although it seems counter-intuitive, dealers usually make a larger profit per car on used car sales than on new cars.

Car Manufacturers

The car manufacturers try to control the amount of a certain model of new cars sold in a given month by:

• national advertising campaigns, to increase interest
• rebates and discounts, to compete with other vehicles in the same class
• offering incentives to dealers, to encourage them to push that car and sell more

Aged Inventory

Car dealers are most stressed out about the car that has been on their lot for the longest, and are wondering when they will finally manage to sell it. This often leads them to corner a potential customer into taking that car, and salespeople push it aggressively.

This is exactly the wrong approach to take, because it is a tactic that is very likely to leave the customer unsatisfied, and there is no faster way to lose long-term business from him.

If the shopper is coming in looking for a Ford Edge, and you were so focused on selling him a Ford Focus, the shopper is likely to leave your dealership, and go to a different dealer who can focus on selling him a Ford Edge.

Dealer Advertising

Furthermore, if we take a look at most advertising that car dealers do, they are advertising the cars they just can’t wait to get rid of…a car in an unusual color, 30 days or more in inventory, without the options most customers want (such as no power windows).  True, you’ll find some dealers pushing new leases, but for each ad like that, you’ll find 15-20 pages of used cars being hawked, and many more of them packed in per page.

So the car manufacturers are pushing millions of dollars to convince John Doe to come into your dealership to get the “wonderful” Ford Edge, and then, instead of satisfying that need, and being consistent with the national advertising - you go and try to sell him something different.

Manufacturer Advertising

Manufacturers usually advertise a lot for two different reasons.

The first one is to push a wildly successful car, and the other one is to try to get rid of a terrible car, that no one wants. As a dealer, you need to make sure you have a good grasp on just which one they are doing. Stay away from the terrible car - resist the urge to advertise it yourself.

Consistency in advertising is key - I can’t emphasize that enough. Unless your car manufacturer is trying to “dump” a certain car by advertising it when they know that people don’t want it, you are ALWAYS best off running the same car in your ad.

The Winning Strategy

The better way to sell is to realize some facts. You know, on average, about how many of a certain car will sell in a given month in your target area. You know this because your manufacturer tells you how you and your competitors did each month for each car. Add up all of the sales of a given car in your market for the month, and you’ll know what the market is in a given month.

If you spend, say, $20,000 a month on advertising it will make more sense to advertise the same car as the national advertising (assuming it isn’t a “dump” as I discussed above) instead of your oldest stocked cars.

The reason is, your $20,000 PLUS the accumulation of advertising from the national campaigns your manufacturer ran, PLUS the already present intention of your car shopper to end up in that car will make it a much easier sell.

On the other hand, you will find yourself spending much more time trying to convince the shopper that what he really wants is the old stock you have (that for some reason 500 other shoppers that month didn’t want).

I will pre-empt the dealers who will say that they need to purchase the bad cars as well as good cars from the manufacturers due to their franchise agreement, by saying that while that is true in some cases, you will still come out ahead in profitability by pushing the better cars and the specific cars your informed customer came in looking for, and either selling the bad car to another dealer, or just having it sit on the lot.

I was recently reading Ari Herzog’s post about how avatars changed online, and I thought he brought up some excellent insights that you would enjoy.

According to Wikipedia, an Avatar is

 a computer user’s representation of himself/herself or alter ego, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games, a two-dimensional icon (picture) used on Internet forums and other communities.

In the early days of the internet, there was much fear of the internet, and the openness of it.  Additionally, slower modems handled small avatar graphics much better than large graphics. These were also the days where internet dating was laughed at because of the unreliability of the photos people did post.

During those days, it seemed safer, and more “fun” to create a fantasy avatar, that either loosely reflected yourself, or was your idea of an ideal self (i.e. - despite your office professional job, your avatar had an electric guitar and you had long hair).

Over the last few years, the mood online has clearly shifted towards using your actual photo instead of an avatar. Here are some suggestions on how that happenend:

Social Networking

Facebook, Myspace, Flickr and other social networking sites made it cool and fun to display our real photos, under the understanding of having protections to our privacy in place. The idea made sense in most people’s minds, and they felt safe enough to post (in some cases, very) private real photos.

Culture of Being Real

Americans have been getting a steady dose of reality shows with “average Joes” leading a very public life. Personal branding experts have been shouting from the mountain tops that “being real” is most important to connecting with and growing your following. Because your personal brand is actually you, it was bad marketing to waste your visitors eyeballs on a mere avatar, instead of branding your true self.

Indeed, many bloggers even use their real name as their domain name, and broadcast their current location from their twitter profiles.  All of this has created a very strong preference for being real, being authentic, and being public about it.

Big Pipes

As internet connections keep getting faster, and storage keeps getting cheaper, websites that relied on just small avatars are opening their doors to full size photos.  It is now easy and painless to browse a full album on Flickr or Facebook, for most internet users, and the users clearly have a preference for getting to know the real person behind the account they are looking at…right down to their favorite TV shows or color preferences.

Ari had a great phrase describing the change,

Goodbye mystery, goodbye intrigue, goodbye transformation.

Is this a good change, in your mind? or a bad one?

As an entrepreneur, you often need to make do with less, go up against larger competitors, and take big risks.  One of the most important tasks for you to complete is figuring out your raison d’être, or “reason to be”.

What I mean by “reason to be”, is you need to figure out why you are doing what you are doing in the first place, what your goals are, and why you are the right person at the right time to get it done.

A great example of this can be found with Paige Adams-Geller, who started a premium jeans company (Paige Premium Denim) after years working as a fit model.  Fit models help designers create the perfect or “ideal” fit of an article of clothing. During her time as a fit model, Paige noticed that most designers were men, and she had a different idea of how jeans should fit a woman.

Armed with that differing perspective and the years of experience with tiny details about how jeans should ideally fit, Paige found her niche:

I am a woman, and I know a woman’s body, and I know what a woman wants to wear…I really understand shape

That may sound like a very simple and obvious statement, but it made the brand authentic to other women, as well as gave her a competitive edge - which was needed to win over an investor, as well as enter a fully saturated market.

This simple thought, her reason to be, enabled Paige to grow her business to over $30 million in revenue.

What is your “reason to be”?

With the rise of social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you have more ways than ever to get your business in front of potential customers.

Graphic artists can showcase their designs with custom Twitter profiles and Myspace backgrounds. Programmers can strut their stuff by designing apps and plugins that they can give away for free as list building tools to create an audience aggregator, and PR professionals can get the word out for their client.  For the creative marketer, the list of ways to use social networking for self-promotion is virtually endless!

Here are a few tips for navigating the world of social media as a marketer, without looking like you’re only involved for marketing reasons.

Be Real

Your colleagues and potential clients are interested in getting to know the real you - that’s why they took the time to add you as a friend, follow you, or bookmark your blog.

Don’t let them down!

For each post, tweet, or comment that you make marketing a product, make at least one post showing off your personality. Share a joke, a quotation, a book you’re reading - anything to demonstrate that you’re a real person with real interests, not just someone interested in selling a product.

Include Your Real Life Friends

Don’t make the mistake of using social media solely for marketing. Instead, use it to interact with your friends and family, as well. You never know when your cousin’s friend might know someone who needs your services or products, and establishing networking connections is what social media is all about! On top of that, your cousin has a better chance of convincing his friend to give your service a shot than you would have with a cold lead.

Promote Wisely

There’s nothing more annoying than someone who does nothing but link to affiliate products. Instead, take the time to be social, and share products that you’re truly passionate about and feel good about recommending to your followers.

Build a network of people who trust your recommendations, and soon you’ll have a highly responsive list that feels good about purchasing products and services based on your recommendations.

The key point to take away is that when it comes to social networking, it’s all about being social. Spend some time constructing your tweets, updates, and posts in a friendly approachable manner. Make your social interactions less about what your followers can purchase from you, and more about what you can offer them.

Take the time to show what an interesting person you are. Look for a happy medium between promotional and social posts, and allow the people you’re networking with to really get to know you as a person. Your social life and your business will both benefit.

I have also written about specific tips for growing your business using LinkedIN, which I recommend you read if you own a business.

I recently reviewed the book How to Find a Job on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Other Social Networks by Brad Schepp, who had interviewed myself and several others.

Here is an excerpt from the book, offering my tips for using LinkedIN to grow your business, and a few tips that weren’t in the book:

I found clients in the following ways through LinkedIN:

By type of company

When I had a service to offer a particular type of person, industry, or geographical location, I used the advanced search to target the decision makers.

By niche

I joined groups in the targeted area and discussed topics that were “buzz worthy” in that group.

By targeted company

If I had a lead for a particular company, or was blocked by a secretary, I could follow the chain of command by looking at all employees from a particular company and get to the right person right away.

Introduction

I built up an army of contacts, all of whom are very kind and will send an introduction to any of the 7.5 million people I end up getting connected to by 2 degrees away.

Answers

I would answer questions in my niche and display expertise, and often get a follow up message which can be converted into business.

2nd contact

I would often add a contact to linkedIN after my initial discussion with them - within 24 hours to keep my name fresh in their head. Then I would follow up with more information a day or week later.  In a way, the second stepping stone was linkedIN.

Profile optimization

I would add keywords into my profile to get ranked well in google and get the right searchers looking at my profile and getting in touch with me.

Display icons

I place the LinkedIN icon on my blog and other places to make it easy to connect.  Someone reading my content is much more likely to already trust me, and linkedin is an easy way for them to “officially” get in touch.

Show expertise

I bring my blog into linkedin as an application so that any visitor to my LinkedIN profile can instantly see some of my work, and that I’m active on the site.  If users don’t see that, they won’t risk spending time getting in touch with you.

Explain

I explain what I can offer (value-wise) to someone reading my profile, so they are thinking about how they can be helped, instead of just “oh, that’s an interesting person” and then leaving.

I’m sure you have some tips on LinkedIN that have worked for you, please feel free to add your thoughts below!

The 256 page book could not have come out at a better time, given the economy, and the relevance to 9.8% of Americans (and counting).

Taking from the skills undoubtedly sharpened over the last 18 books they wrote, Brad and Debra take a step by step, detailed look into how one can harness the power of social networking specifically to land a job or freelance work.

The book is broken into wisely chosen sections that allow for easy review at a later date, and feature dozens and dozens of snapshots of the interfaces on the various social networks, making it easy for anyone, even tech illiterates, to follow.

Each social networking site covered has the following pieces of information:

• What is the site?
• How do I setup a profile on the site?
• What can the site do for me?
• What niche uses are there for the site?

To provide a bunch of perspectives on that last question, the book integrates a lot more outside advice than you usually find in “how to” books, which I found refreshing.

In addition to the instructive content of the book, Brad and Debra interviewed a dozen or so people who have found success through LinkedIN, Twitter, and so on. I consider myself very fortunate to have been selected among that group, and I offered advice on using LinkedIN to accomplish everything from targeting prospects for sales, all the way to sharing your blog with the 35 million users on the site for massive exposure.

All in all, I think that anyone who has been out of the job search market in a long time, or just got out of college and is looking to start their career will find this book clear, interesting, and encouraging during a time when many people need it!

The OpenOffice.org project is sponsored by Sun Microsystems, which is the primary contributor of source code to the Project. Other major contributors include Novell, RedHat, RedFlag CH2000, IBM, and Google.

Additionally, over 450,000 people from nearly every part of the globe have joined this benevolent Open-Source Project with the idea of creating the best possible office suite that everyone can use.

Cut Costs

In the current economy, the entrepreneurial spirit has been challenged in many new ways. Small businesses simply cannot afford to spend money on highly priced software programs, so out of this struggle and need the open-source software movement has begun.

Am I impressed with the results of this movement?

Yes, and it is because great open-source programs like Open Office allow businesses to harness the power of the suite so that they can work toward their own business goals, in all of its steps. The path of the entrepreneur is demanding and so entrepreneurs need to make wise choices as they grow their businesses.

As a Technical Writer, I see software documentation work its way from Project Management through System Design, Programming, Testing, Implementation and Training. So, all these departments depend upon a quality Business Office Suite that can work with diverse file formats and diverse kinds of documents. Open Office can handle all of this easily.

Do you know the cost of a single user license of Microsoft Word?

Well, let us just say that it is well over $100 per person. So, if you have a company of 50 people, do the math: that comes out to a software investment of $5000 just for word processing. This is way too expensive, especially for entrepreneurs who need to spend their money on product development and marketing.

Compatibility

If the same company downloads copies of Open Office for each employee or contractor, they will save big money, pure and simple. Also, Sun Microsystems and its collaborators have done their very best to ensure compatibility of Open Office with both Linux and Windows Operating Systems.

Full Suite of Options

Open Office has all programs that comprise the Microsoft Office Suite: Word Processing (Writer), Spreadsheets (Calc), Database Management (BASE), and Presentations (Impress). It also comes with a simple program for graphics call Draw. So, whether the entrepreneur at hand is developing specification documents, financial spreadsheets, or a critical presentation for financiers, he or she can rest assured that Open Office will come through and meet his or her expectations for Business Productivity software that really shines and that is free and backed by those who are dedicated to the Open-Source software movement.

Entrepreneurship need not be a scary word, especially if the entrepreneur is aware of the range of possibilities that exist out there in the marketplace that will enable him or her to grow a business, and able to rely on quality software programs backed by developers with integrity.

This has been a Guest Post by my good friend and expert technical writer:

Keith Johnson, M.S. Education
Technical Writer & Documentation Specialist
Great Documents Dot Net

When President Obama unveiled Cash For Clunkers, a government program to trade in old inefficient cars at dealerships in exchange for new efficient models, many people applauded the effort for its laudable goals:

• Lowering pollution in the air by having newer, cleaner emission cars taking the place of older cars with worse emissions
• Jump-starting the American auto industry, which had been selling so few cars that dealers, factories, and suppliers were shutting their doors.
• Keeping millions of people working on the factory lines, at the car dealerships (over 1 million employees across the U.S.), and lowering the unemployment rate, a key indicator of the economy. The NADA estimates that 14.1% of all retail sales done in the USA are done by new car dealerships.
• Reducing our dependence on Foreign Oil by having more efficient cars on the road that use less oil.

As with any large program which sways supply and demand in an open market, it is interesting to look at the impact of the program to see if the results actually match the goals, as well as find out if the hidden unintended consequences of the program outweigh the advertised benefits of it. Let’s go through this by focusing on the various players in the show:

New Car Dealers

Cash For Clunkers came to a close a few weeks ago, after almost 700,000 old cars were taken out of the commission.  Dealers submitted rebate applications for $2.88 billion, which fell just shy of the $3 billion congress allotted for the program.

While dealers reported heavy foot traffic in their stores, they also weren’t getting their rebates from the Department of Transportation right away. This means that dealers, who already have significant cash-flow issues in this economy due to high payrolls, large leases, big mortgages, and floor-plan financing could now add one more item onto that list: being out $3,500 - $4,500 per Cash For Clunkers trade-in until the government pays them back (which has been a slow tedious process).

Indeed, some dealers were so concerned with the slow process of reimbursement that they stopped offering Cash For Clunkers trade-ins early. Ask yourself, if this program was so successful for New Car Dealers, why in the world would a dealership stop before being forced to stop?

Government

How much money was spent advertising and administering the Cash For Clunkers program? Over 2,000 Department of Transportation workers have spent time going through rebate applications. What about all the other costs?And, equally as important - how much oil was going to be saved by the success of this program?

Environment

Some of the media has already started looking closer at the supposed benefit of trashing the clunkers, and weighing it against the environmental goal. For example, the Las Vegas Review Journal notes that

If the clunker would have stayed on the road another four years, sending it to the junk yard now saves 10.8 tons of carbon dioxide. That translates to more than $400 per ton, if the deal for a new car involved a $4,500 taxpayer-financed rebate.

Under so-called industrial “cap-and-trade” programs in Europe and proposed in the United States — where carbon becomes a commodity that can be traded if a cap is set on the total amount of carbon dioxide emissions — then the price of a credit for reducing a ton of carbon or preventing that much emission is $20 and $28, respectively.

Even if Cash for Clunkers took vehicles off the road that could have been driven for 10 additional years, the carbon price is still more than $200 per ton, Knittel noted.

The National Center for Policy Analysis found that the rebate program cost the government $3 billion and failed to accomplish the program goals except for possibly improving urban air quality.

“There is evidence that removing older cars from the road will cut air pollution, but the numbers indicate that any reduction in carbon dioxide emissions or oil consumption will be minimal — and expensive,” according to the group.

As evidenced above, it isn’t “in the bag” that Cash For Clunkers will make a difference to the environment.

Used Car Dealers

Used car dealers employ many workers as well, and yet there doesn’t appear to have been much thought as to the impact of Cash For Clunkers on them.  Government interference in the market did two things:

• Created an advantage in the battle between used and new car dealers by advertising the Cash For Clunkers program (which only allows you to buy a new car, not a used one).  This means many people who may have purchased a used car now had a government subsidized reason for going to the new car dealer instead.
• Due to the economy, prices of used cars have been going up, as more shoppers can only afford used cars.  This created an inflated demand for the same supply of cars. Cash For Clunkers stipulates that the old car traded in must be destroyed, not resold.The net effect of that means that even fewer used cars will be on the open market, raising high prices on used cars even further - at a time when customers have trouble finding financing and paying for the financing even if they are lucky enough to get approved for it.

Taxpayers

Was this a good deal for taxpayers? They footed a $3 billion bill. Anytime you purchase something, you want to look at the efficiency of the purchase.  How much of an impact is this having?

Under the program, almost 700,000 cars were traded in.  The average MPG of Cash For Clunkers traded in was 16 MPG, and the average MPG of new cars purchased under Cash For Clunkers was  25 MPG. Assuming an average of 12,000 annual miles being put on each car, this would mean saving 270 gallons per year, per car.  Multiply that by 750,000 Cash For Clinkers traded in and you get about 202,500,000 gallons.  Then divide that by 42 gallons per barrel of oil and you get about 4,821,428 barrels or roughly .063% of our yearly oil consumption (since the US uses 20.8 million barrels a day).

Even when you calculate out the value of all the oil we’ll save, it still only reaches $361,607,100 (assuming a $75/barrel cost)…which is just barely 12% of the cost of this whole program.

Others will say that this program was good for the U.S. automotive sector, but looking at the best-sellers under the Cash For Clunkers, only 2 were American owned:

Top 10 cash for clunkers purchases

1. Toyota Corolla
2. Honda Civic
3. Ford Focus
4. Toyota Camry
5. Hyundai Elantra
6. Toyota Prius
7. Nissan Versa
8. Ford Escape FWD
9. Honda Fit
10. Honda CR-V AWD

Consumers

Let’s face it. Salaries haven’t been going up, and most Americans have debt. Almost 700,000 used cars have been taken off the road.  Assuming they were truly all in working order (although bearing in mind the Cash For Clunkers incentive is greatest for someone to game the Cash For Clunkers system in order to make the most “profit” they can by giving in the most useless, valueless car, and getting the most rebate for it), we now have 700,000 people who could have kept driving cheap used cars (lower cost to fix, lower insurance, no taxes on transaction) who have spent at least an additional $10,000 to buy a new one (either through financing or cash they had).

In addition to that cost, they immediately got a tax bill on the purchase, which in my state (New Jersey) would amount to $700-2,000.  Next, add in the higher cost of insuring a new car, and you are quickly seeing that there are many hidden costs in the transaction.

Now, you might say that they are saving money because of the more fuel efficient cars.  The fact remains that the average driver in America drives 12,000 miles, and even switching from an inefficient car to a new efficient car on the top ten Cash For Clunkers list would only yield about $675 in savings in the first year (assuming a $2.50/gallon cost of gas).

Next, you might say “it will pay off in subsequent years”, but right now the cash value for the cash strapped customer is more important. That cash can serve to invest in an appreciating item (as opposed to most new cars, which lose 40-50% of their value within 2-3 years), or that cash can be held in case of an emergency, like the loss of the person’s job.

Consumers tend to delay large purchases during bad economies until they can delay no longer, and Cash For Clunkers moved up a lot of purchasing decisions, no doubt.  We can expect lower car sales in the coming months, all things being equal, since some of the future months demand for new cars was “stolen” and used during this program.

Additionally, other large purchases, such as home appliances, home improvement, large furniture (already markets in trouble), are likely to see a decline in sales in the coming months due to fewer consumers being able to afford them while paying off their recent new car purchases.

Could It Have Been Planned Better?

I think a better Cash For Clunkers would have worked like this:

If you had a very old clunker, you would be able to trade it in for a more efficient used car, one which was a financially sound purchase for you, given the economy.  Someone who has, say, a 2004 model, can trade in for a brand new more efficient model, and still do it responsibly from a financial point of view.

The old cars traded in would not be scrapped, but rather keep getting traded in by someone with a less efficient car.

The net effect of this program would be:

• that more cars could be traded in than under the current Cash For Clunkers
• we wouldn’t be wasting tons of energy and trashing the environment by scrapping old cars that still worked
• everyone could participate in this program, whereas in Cash For Clunkers only cars deemed by the EPA to have 18MPG efficiency or lower could be traded in for the rebate.
• the used car market supply wouldn’t be artificially whittled down, preventing used cars from costing more.
• other big purchase industries (appliances, home improvements, etc.) wouldn’t get hurt nearly as much, since customers wouldn’t have to spend huge amounts of cash to trade up just one step higher.
• Americans wouldn’t be placed into worse financial condition by being forced to buy a $14,000-$20,000 car just to redeem a rebate.

What do you think?

Conclusion

The really important lesson here, that I think should be taken away, is to challenge proposed ideas for these types of programs to look for the unintended consequences in advance, and have an open discussion about them.  While I don’t expect us to always or even frequently predict them accurately, I do think that just ignoring them is a guaranteed way to fail in looking at the outcome of such a program on the country as a whole.