As a small business owner you know that landscaping is seasonal and that you have to make the most out of the customers that you get. It is important to the success of your business that you try to be prepared for the slow times as well as during the spring summer. Full color direct mail will keep your phone ringing even during the slowest months of the year. By creating flyers, brochures, and special offers, you will be able to target people and convince them to try your services no matter what time of year it is.

You can even add specific seasonal specials onto your flyers that will offer discounted rates or other promotions which will be too good for them to pass up. People love to receive coupons. You can use this to your advantage and include a coupon on your flyer which must be used by a certain date. If you wish, you can offer them a special yearly price if they sign up for your services during a certain season. This is a great way for you to convince people that the slow season is actually the best one for them to call you. This will also generate more cash flow each month.

Landscape direct mail printing is also an easy way for you to make sure that you are getting your name out to the specific areas that you provide your services in. You will find that flyers work very well in bringing you more business. Some people will call you immediately and hire you to take care of their landscaping or renovation projects. Others may take your flyer and put it aside for a time when they need your services. Either way, the flyers will work to promote your business. Another great thing about this form of advertising is that it is more effective and a lot less expensive than other forms of advertising. Every homeowner has a mail box, and every home owner reads the mail.

Most direct mail printing companies can target your local areas by zip code and exclude businesses and apartments that you do not want to target. You can even target homes by value or income levels. Landscaping direct mail may be the right marketing solution for your small business.

The Internet has helped millions of people all over the world find business opportunities to earn money while selling a product they can believe in. There are hundreds of products created each year and very often the only way to purchase them is through network marketers. In our previous article, (MLM Business Model – The Most Well-Known Internet Business Model) we talked about the multi-level marketing (MLM) business model. Although the Internet seemed the perfect vehicle to help businesses grow, it is actually the main reason MLM in intensive care. Thousands of team leaders, who spent their time building networks and training their distributors, have found that their profits have all but disappeared.

They went from having a self-sustaining down line to constantly rebuilding. MLM’s are all about relationships. Successful team leaders mentor their distributors, teach them how to be successful and help them create new distributors of their own. Before the Internet, people understood that it took work, time and patience to be profitable. MLM in intensive care is in part due to the tremendous amounts of information available to the public at large. There is hype about new products every day. Email campaigns are focused on offering the opportunity to get in on the ground floor, to make the big money.

The basis for much of MLM marketing used to be by word of mouth. When the Internet came along, cheap email campaigns were effective. As the public has been deluged with more and more of these emails, they have become jaded. Leads that used to be hot have gone cold. New rules about spamming have prevented the type of mass emails that used to garner results. Now campaigns need to be targeted to a specific audience to be effective. MLM in intensive care came to be because campaigns that used to be effective and inexpensive no longer work and have become very expensive.

Many network marketers are moving away from the MLM and are using funded proposals to create a steady revenue stream while they focus on top tier direct sales. As more people leave established networks, the more MLM in intensive care. With top tier direct sales, people are dependent on themselves to make the sale, not an ineffective down line that may be strong today, but dry up tomorrow. Distributors can still find and sell a product they believe in, but only need to sell a few products a month to be as profitable as they were with a network, selling thousands of products.

With the Winter Olympics and Super Bowl just around the corner and with the World Cup taking center stage this summer, sponsors are taking a new and different approach to advertising their brands. They are scrambling to invest more in social media campaigns and less on expensive TV and print advertisements. Aside from the obvious cost savings, the big question is why social media? The answer is two-fold. Social media is personal and it builds relationships. Advertisers are fast recognizing that to build brand loyalty they need to connect with their consumers in new ways through online direct response marketing. What better way than through sports marketing where fans identify with athletes and their national teams.

Social media is playing a critical part in presenting brands and athletes in a manner that interacts with fans on a worldwide basis. It creates anticipation and excitement for fans that can communicate directly with their favorite athlete and connect with them on a more personal level. Social media is enabling brands to create lasting relationships with people around the globe that isn’t possible with television and print media.

The Crossover to the New Media

NBC, who has exclusive broadcast rights to air the Vancouver Olympics, is making a big play with online marketing as a major part of their promotions to achieve web success. It has partnered with the social media firm The Swarm Collective to produce Olympic Pulse, a place where visitors can look up tweets from athletes, Olympic blogs and top trending stories. The Super Bowl promotions have also been very active in social media on Twitter, Facebook and blogging. Athletes and teams are scrambling to hype the event and gain more followers.

In order to prep for the World Cup in the coming months, the corporate partners of FIFA, football’s world governing body, are moving away from the use of traditional TV and billboard campaigns. Instead they are trying out social networking sites to promote their brands, to sell their pitch and build their business online. Calum MacDougall, director of global marketing partnerships at Sony Ericsson, says 2010 will be the first “social networking World Cup.”

Changing the Way the Game Is Played

What makes social media so attractive to powerhouse companies is the realization that more and more people are resorting to popular social destinations like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to get their daily dose of their favorite brands and athletes. In addition to this, these sites come with major audiences and give brands a huge boost and a way to reach millions of consumers. As an added bonus, these sites give brands the viral, online hype that they’ve been searching for in their audiences and their markets. In addition to this, it’s cheaper than spending millions on TV, billboard and print campaigns, and they can get real-time results in relation to how many people are engaging in these sites and taking advantage of their promotional offers.

The consumer has changed and companies have finally recognized that they need to be where the consumers are most responsive. Is social media the advertising vehicle of the future, replacing more traditional media? Probably not, but it may run an effective second.