Maximize Your Marketing Dollar
by Chris Brown

Are you in need of a marketing budget?  Do you know how to get started? Do you know how to cut costs in your budget and still get results?

Chris Brown, founder of Marketing Resources & Results, offers these helpful tips on how to start and then trim a budget while continuing to have strong results.

To start your budget:

o Review your marketing plan.  What are you trying to accomplish?

o Gather quotes from your resources.  What does it cost to write, copy and mail a press release to the media?  What about running an ad in your target market trade journal?

o Put your budget in writing. This will help you to keep organized and it also allows you to have a visual of the budget.

o Use an ad to sales ratio.  If you don't know what to budget, many companies start with and advertising to sales ratio.  It is a good idea to start at 5% of your revenues for the year.  If, you feel that this is too high, then start at 2.5% or if you feel that it is too low then start higher.  To support growth, you have to invest in marketing. Depending upon your business, I often recommend allocating 5% of your sales to marketing.

o Find out what your competitors are doing!  Do research by browsing the internet, newspapers, magazines, and business journals. Look for information you can find to compare and contrast your budget with other companies going after the same customers.

o Itemize your Budget.  What should you include in your budget?

-  Press releases-postage, mailing lists
-  Events/grand opening- food, promotion
-  Sales materials-brochures, postcards
-  Website-development, hosting
-  Promotions
-  Focus groups, surveys and other research
-  Printing
-  Writing
-  Graphic Design

What happens when you add up your budget and it is too much? How do you "tighten the belt" and still get the same results?  Try these ideas to stretch your promotional budget and still get strong results from your marketing efforts.

How to Trim:

-- Make a trade!  Trade a brochure for a postcard.  They cost less to print, mail and don't even need an envelope!
-- Partner up!  Plan an event with a non-competing "business partner." This would be a company who is seeking a similar customer.  This could give you half the costs with twice the results!
-- No stamps needed!  Send press releases via email to save on postage.  Be sure to send them in the body of the email and not as an attachment.  Also, make sure you have a strong subject line that will get your reader's attention.

?© 2004 Chris Brown, president of Marketing Resources & Results, a full-service marketing firm located between Cleveland and Akron. They help businesses introduce new products and build brands by providing innovative, cost-effective marketing solutions. To find out more, visit http://www.resources-results.com/ .

Submitted by Terry Tribe Johnson in the 'Holiday Recipes Contest 2005' held at http://www.celebrating-christmas.com

KNOW YOUR COMPUTER

When Windows Won't Boot Take These Steps

When Windows fails to boot it is normally caused by you installing a program or device and it has caused a conflict with one or more other programs. This will no doubt give you plenty of heartache if you're not certain which program caused Windows to not boot up.

If you recently installed a program or application and know where it was installed, you may be in much better shape as for as correcting the error. Here are common ways to correct the problem of your computer not completely booting up or not booting up at all.

If your computer will not boot-up at all, hopefully you have made a good emergency boot disk. You can always make a windows startup disk by creating one from another computer running Windows 98 or ME. Perform the following if your computer........


Won't Boot-Up At All

FIRST
Put your boot floppy disk in the floppy drive and turn on the PC. On some computers, you may have to access the bios and select the Boot priority to your A: drive.  Save any changes and select "Start Computer without CDROM support" and press Enter.  Once you are at the A> prompt,  type dir c: and press enter.

If your programs and other files are present,  try restoring your system Registry by following the steps below.  This may repair Windows,  the Config. Sys and autoexec.bat files to where the PC may boot up normally. When the files are present, it's a good indication of a good hard drive.

SECOND
To correct the problem of your computer not booting up, type in "fdisk /mbr" and press Enter to restore your master boot record. Type "Scandisk C:" to check the hard drive for errors that have occurred. You can also type "Sys C:" to hopefully restore files needed to boot up your computer.

THIRD
If the above procedures fail to repair your computer, you can repeat the first part of step one above and select "Start Computer With CDROM Support" re-install Windows.

Making A Windows XP Bootable Floppy
Windows XP users should create a boot disk now by placing a formatted blank diskette in the A: drive, open Windows Explorer to the C:,select Tools,  Folder Options, show Hidden files and folders, then View Tab.

Now you uncheck "Hide Protected Operating System Files (recommended). You will see a warning and click Yes and click OK. Copy the files ntldr,ntdetect.com and boot.ini onto the disk. Remove the disk and label it the Windows XP Boot Disk.

After making your boot disk, recheck "Hide protected operating system files and folders (recommended)" in the Folder Options dialog box.

To use the disk when Windows XP won't boot, place the disk in the drive, and unto re-booting, the computer, Windows simply bypass the basic boot files on the hard drive and continue to boot up.

If The PC Won't Boot Pass Windows

FIRST
If your Operating System is Windows Millennium, turn on the computer and immediately press and hold down the CTRL key. Once the startup options appear, release the CTRL key.

Select Safe Mode and press Enter. You are now in Windows limited version. If you know what caused your computer not to boot, you can now either change or delete that program.

SECOND
Repair your Registry by selecting Start, Run and typing "scanregw /fix" and press enter. This will fix any damage done to the Registry.

You can also restore your registry which replaces your current registry with an earlier copy that was backed up by your computer. Click on Start, Run and type "scanregw /restore" and press Enter.

To repair your Windows 98 Registry, hold down the CTRL key as you start the PC and select "Command Prompt Only". Type "scanreg /fix" and press Enter and "scanreg/restore" to restore a previously saved copy of the Registry.

If you have Windows XP, press F8 after rebooting the PC should Windows freeze while booting up. You can select "Last Known Good Configuration" after rebooting to allow the computer to boot the last backed up files. And you can choose "Safe Mode" to remove any files you know caused the operating system to hang up.

Be prepared when your operating fails to boot. It would be a great idea to go over this article a few times and print it. Make yourself s notebook and place this and all related articles there.

If your computer fails to boot or begins to become unstable, you can refer to these articles to make corrections that are needed. Learn these steps from your television set with the PC Super Pack.

Be sure to note any changes you make to your Registry and if you're not sure, its best to find a friend that's pc savvy first. Above all, be certain you back up your registry before making any changes and know how to restore as well.

?© 2004 Otis F. Coope, author of the award winning PC Super Pack, the Computer Training By Video course. Learn how to make your computer work for you. Read more about repairing your PC and register to receive Ultimate Repair Tips ezine now. Visit http://www.ultimatepcrepair.com

ELKE'S WEEKLY MAKEUP TIP

OOPS. Okay, you look like a clown, wrong color, too much........now what? Easy! With a clean dry sponge, pick up a light layer of loose powder and 'erase' as much off as possible. Too bright or too dark? Take a slightly dampened sponge and clean off as much as you can. The water will pick up and 'dilute' the color.........it just may be enough to fix it and look ok. ----

'The Dot Com Woman' Ezine is published by Lata Tokhi, Editor & Contributing Author.

You can send your feedback to feedback@dotcomwomen.com. Send in your short (yes! I mean that!) articles, tips etc. at lata@dotcomwomen.com

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