Many forms and agreements templates can be found online doing a simple google search.  Whatever  templates you uncover, it is always best to have an attorney review the documents as they apply to your business or company.

Here are some resources to help you:

Free Legal Advice Resources

A new year is also a great time to step back from your Las Vegas business and assess all of your current online and offline marketing materials. Have you added products and services? Is it time to refresh your brochure, business cards or logos? Is your website up to date?

This is a great time to readjust things that might not have worked for your business in 2009. Consider polishing your corporate identity and developing new marketing materials. Consider advertising online to promote your website. Consider building partnerships with companies that offer complimentary products and services.

This is a good time to commit yourself to getting out into the Las Vegas community and meeting other business professionals in Las Vegas. You’ll have the time to hear about other companies and businesses and perhaps learn from what they are doing and what has worked for them. It’s also an opportunity to promote your own businesses products and services.

Any way you look at it, you should take the time this week to write down 10 new marketing and business goals and execute one each month of the new year! 2010 should become your year to grow!

What is Cross-Selling?

Cross-selling is the strategy of selling or pushing additional products and services to a new or existing customers. Cross-selling is designed to grow your customer’s reliance on your company and decrease the chance that your customer will go to a competitor in the future. I’m certainly not advocating that you sell products and services that your client doesn’t need or won’t benefit your client’s marketing and business goals, however, even if you think that your clients are aware of all of your company’s products and services, they probably don’t.

For example, let’s say you run a computer IT company and you have a prospective client that is interested in having their laptop repaired. You might go over the potential client’s issues and recommend a solution for that one laptop. With a few more questions, you might discover that he or she also has a PC that hasn’t worked for the past few weeks, or that lead might have a small business with an entire computer network that is being services by an unreliable vendor. Furthermore, they might have no virus protection in place or are having issues with email as well.

So you have addressed a client’s immediate issue and discovered many more issues that you can help resolve for that client.

While cross-selling may make things more convenient for the customer, it also enables you as a business or company owner to sell more products and services!

Many Las Vegas companies may decide to follow a shortcut method of planning their marketing communications strategy. Whether you’re an individual business or a company, skipping this step of business development will hinder your sales growth long term. It is important to recognize the focus on advancement by those that take the time to develop an effective marketing communications strategy. You will definitely spend several hours putting this together, but you will know that it’s useful because a marketing strategy provides you with a plan of how to handle projected successes and when it’s completed, you will have gained valuable intelligence about your target customers, brand strengths and weaknesses, competitive landscape, and finally the marketing objectives that will lead you to the top.

Start with what you know.

Take a few moments and capture your thoughts on the ideal target customer for your business. Write it down. Your final notes will give you the detail you need to formalize your Marcom strategy. Consider who you are and what you represent. What image would you like to project in the marketplace? What’s most appealing to your customer? This should be your perspective when putting a marketing communications plan together. Question everything from the customer’s point of view. Note common themes that come to mind – industries, trade associations, demographics, or anything else you notice.

Next, decide where you want to go.

Brainstorm ideas of how you can promote yourself to gain awareness of your brand as you advance through this process. Evaluate your brand’s strengths and weaknesses. Follow the basic marketing S.W.O.T. (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) formula by developing several bullet-point statements to define each section of the analysis. Create a list of competitors in your industry, region, or specialty. You may even wish to complete S.W.O.T.s for your top, three competitors as well. It’s good practice to spend the time getting to know your competitors and this will make you much, much smarter in the end. Everything you do should be viewed through your customer’s eyes. If you have more than one, majority-type of customer, include each perspective throughout your strategy.

Now map it out.

Now that you’re fully armed with detailed knowledge of your customer base, company goals, and strengths you are in a perfect position to map out the marketing venues that will lead you to success. Begin this process with what I call a ‘zero budget.’ Author your dream list. There are no monetary blocks here and this encourages you to consider all possibilities. Explore advertising paths, customer events, trade shows, associations and chambers of commerce. Refine this list with a dose of reality then put it into action. Remember to design your ad promos from the customer’s perspective. 

Try to have fun with this process and take some time to review these web sites for great tips and tricks:

More on marketing intelligence and considerations:
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newSTR_94.htm

Great tips for individuals looking to market:
http://self-employed-marketing.suite101.com/article.cfm/create_a_marketing_strategy

Marketing strategy formats with templates:
http://www.businessballs.com/freebusinessplansandmarketingtemplates.htm

For professional Las Vegas Marketing Communications consulting, contact Perkolate at 702.341.0085 or visit our website at www.perkolate.com.

Let’s start with an overview of why a marketing plan is important (some online resources for your review):

• Why you need a marketing plan to achieve ultimate success
• Yes, you REALLY need a marketing plan
• Do you really need a marketing plan?
• Why do we need a marketing plan anyways?

When looking for a free web host for your Las Vegas website, it may be difficult to find a good web host although they do exist out there. But through all the hosts which are listed in the search engine it can be difficult to sort the good services from the bad services unless you can find sources which have used most of the services in the past and can inform you where to avoid and where to look. That is what this blog post is here to help you with.

What is free web hosting?

Free web hosting is typically provided by companies as a sample to their services, or a reward to loyal customers who purchase domain names, or transfer domain names to their plans from another service provider. Free hosting does not give full control of servers or the page layout (ususally the hosting company will show their ads on your free website hosted page or website). Typically a free host will provide space on a shared server of between 100 mega bytes to 1,500 mega bytes on average. The actual bandwidth for visitors is often between 500 to 5,000 mega bytes. You can either purchase or use your own domain name on a free plan, or use a provided sub domain if the option is available.

Where can I find free web hosting and what kinds are available?

Free web hosting is available all over the internet in different forms. The most common form of web hosting is a shared host with advertisements. Although there are free hosts which do not force ads onto the free websites but the service is less reliable, and the providers may be at risk of disappearing or going out of business from loss of profits to afford to keep the service running.

Some free services also provide ad free services on a post to host basis, and provide the option to upgrade to a paid service once your website reaches the limitations of space and bandwidth. One example of this service is meek host. Meek host provides 1,500 megabytes of space along with 1,500 megabytes of bandwidth if you successfully manage to continually post 15 posts in their host forum every month before the date limit. Once the date limit is exceeded they will suspend your account and allow you approximately 1 month to redeem your posts to get your services back, or delete your entire account.

Some companies that offer free website hosting in one form or another:

• 000webhost.com - Free Web Hosting with PHP, MySQL and cPanel, No Ads
• Bravenet - Web Hosting, Free Web Hosting and Web Tools
• Free Web Hosting from Doteasy.com
• 110mb.com - Free Website Hosting Provider

What are the downsides of free hosting?

With free hosting you should never launch a website that is entirely important to keep live with NO downtime. Free hosts come and go often due to lack of supporting funds costing the users of the free hosting their websites. Also free hosts tend to have more limitations and also much more downtime than a paid hosting plan.

Professional Hosting Options for your Las Vegas Website

If you aren’t interested in launching a website on a free hosting plan and require the most professional solution from the start (and if you have the modest budget), you should consider a professional Las Vegas website hosting company like www.lasvegaswebhostingonline.com. They are backed by professional performance and excellent customer service.

If you have any further questions about hosting your Las Vegas website, feel free to contact me at michael@marketinginlasvegas.com or call me at 702.341.0085, I’d be happy to help!