Currently you have to register every five years or your name and phone number comes off the do-not-call list. You must register by June 2008 and most people don’t know this.

Congressman Mike Doyle has introduced H.R.4341 to try and make registration permanent. The FTC opposes because they believe that when phone numbers are reassigned by the phone company they should not automatically be on the list.

If this bill is not passed many names will immediately come off the list and telemarketers will have an unexpected window of opportunity.

Google, inc, has successfully settled a lawsuit brought by American Blinds & Wallpaper Factory Inc. over the search engines policy of selling trademarked terms as “key words” enabling competition to appear in the search results alongside the company, product or name the consumer was searching.

The settlement agreement was to allow Google to continue it’s current policies.

American Blinds dropped the suit for financial reasons.

The judge in the case had hinted to the parties’ two points. 1. There was enough evidence of the likelihood of confusion caused by Google for the case to go to trial but 2. American Blinds trademarks were merely descriptive terms and unenforceable as trademarks.

Commentary: Another case, American Airlines vs. Google is still forthcoming. However, it appears courts are leaning to the view that the use of trademarked key words is similar to use of a competitors name in comparative advertising (such as the yellow pages), which is allowed.

The Federal Trade Commission has charged Kevin Trudeau with violating numerous court infractions by allegedly making misleading claims in infomercials marketing his book, The Weight Loss Cure “They” Don’t Want You to Know About.

The problem centers around continuing problems between the FTC and Trudeau and previous agreements based on civil injunctions. The FTC claims Mr. Trudeau violated the injunction by making new infomercials. The ban had a very narrow exception that allowed Tredeau to make infomercials featuring informative publications such as books as long as the commercials did not represent the content of the publications.

The case brings forth many interesting points for info-marketers. First is a reaffirmation that books and certain publications have strong freedom of speech protections. However, infomercials, commercials and other advertising are not so protected and information in the advertising can not misrepresent what is in the book.

Labor Day is just around the corner so it is time to plan your “seasonal tie-in” marketing strategy.

It has been proven that customers are more in tune to promotions when they relate to a holiday or special event and while Labor Day is not as special as it used to be, it would be a mistake not to use it as a tie in to your promotions.

Since Labor Day doesn’t usually have emotional ties to it you can use humor in the promotion as well .People don’t usually like humor with serious holidays like Christmas but you’re safe with Labor Day. Humor also increases interest and since there is not a great deal of chance someone will get mad at you for making a little fun of Labor Day, mixing the “tie- in” tool and humor can work well.

Humor for labor day could be in the form of a picture …maybe you sitting back in a lounge chair talking about how hard you are working on Labor day and are offering a special on your web site to all those who are having a little extra free time. Another possibility is just to point out you don’t know why they call it Labor day since no one works and then go on to offer your customers a special.

Now that you know I am not very funny, just remember that you don’t have to be either. What you do have to do is to keep staying in touch with your customer and offering them fun friendly ways to do business with you. Do that often and you will be rewarded with business. It seems simple but we often forget.

Now I think I will take a little Labor break…

When you are fishing and they aren’t biting you have two basic choices. You can keep doing what you are doing and likely get the same results or you can start making changes to your fishing and see what works.

There are several things you can do to “test” what might work. You can change your bait, change locations or as my father always said, “change the way you hold your mouth.” The one thing you shouldn’t do is change everything all at once. If you do, you might catch more fish but you won’t have learned anything worthwhile that you can use again.

Marketing, in this case, is a lot like fishing. If you have a product or service and the marketing you are doing isn’t working then you need to start testing different techniques to see what works to make the sales you need to be successful. In fact, if the truth be told, the people that make the most money with the sale of a product are the ones that test the most.

You can test:

1) Media
2) Sales Presentation
3) Headlines
4) Specific Offers
5) Bonus
6) Price

Of course there are more areas than just the ones listed above that you can test and each new test gives you more information about your target market, what they want and how much they are willing to pay. Once you find a specific marketing formula that works, and is profitable by the standards you set, you have a working “control product.” At that point, as long as your profit ratio numbers hold, you rollout the marketing spending as much money as you can and as fast as you can

What else can you do?

Keep testing. Just like the fisherman that keeps one line out with different bait than the rest of his poles, you as a marketer should keep testing against your control. At some point something may change and work even better than your main plan and at that point you have a new control to use.

Bottom line… keep fishing… keep testing…. and keep making money!

It drives me nuts when I go into a business and I have a chance to look around for more than 5 minutes without someone noticing me or asking how they can help. I usually laugh, leave and chalk it up to stupidity. But you know what drives me REALLY nuts?! When a business serves me, but they do it just like everyone else.

When you go to the store and buy something, what happens next? I’ll tell you. 99% of the time the answer is NOTHING. You can buy a television, groceries, a car, or anything else you so desire and 99% of the time they let you walk out without thinking twice and if you’re lucky you may get a half hearted “thank you please come again.”

So, you can imagine how I felt when I got a thank you note in the mail at my house from a high end shoe store about 3 days after I bought a pair of shoes. I’ll tell you how I felt, I couldn’t wait to go back and buy another pair of shoes! (and I actually did just that.)

You see, some smart salesperson thought about the fact that sending a simple 4 or 5 line thank you note, was enough to make that sales person stand out in a crowd over the hundreds of other salespeople I’ve bought shoes from in the past. And even though it is a very small gesture, it shocked me so much that I now look forward to going to buy shoes from this store. I now have a mental “sweet spot” when I think about this brand of shoes!

Can you imagine how much one of the big companies would pay to have this little sweet spot in my head? And do you think any of them thought that they could have it for a 41 cent stamp and a couple of hand written lines? I doubt it.

Is your business just like every other business? Are you doing anything to set yourself apart? If you’re not, you should be.

While this sounds like common sense, it just amazes me how many people don’t think this way when forming a company.

All too often I hear, “oh yeah, my accountant filed my LLC for me,” or “yeah I filed it online myself.” I used to get excited when someone told me this, because they had done a little research and taken the initiative to take a great first step towards running their business the right way. HOWEVER, when I ask the follow-up questions, “great, can I see your Organization Meeting Minutes, Operating Agreement, Issued Shares, Company Seal and Corporate book?”....I just get this blank stare and I hear crickets chirping.

And this is the troubling part.

Without the above documents, the protection of your personal assets, (which is one of the key reasons you would form a corporation) may not be protected at all. These documents are the very foundation, the ground floor, of your company. You want to have these from the beginning! Not when someone makes a mistake, or an accident happens, or you get behind on a bill and someone wants to come after you to collect.

This just makes no sense to me because these documents are not very expensive and they can save you a whole lot of grief. Why would someone try to save a couple of bucks only to put themselves in a position to lose hundreds of thousands or even millions of personal dollars in a lawsuit? Usually because they are just not educated on the subject.

Well, now there is no excuse for you! You’ve read this blog post. So, the moral of the story is, make sure that whoever forms your corporation for you, also advises you on how to prepare the aforementioned documents. If you ask them a question about these documents and they give you the blank stare....its time to call someone else.

While we are all inclined to say that “our business can help anyone” is that really the smartest path for your business? Lets look at a simple commonplace example.

If you are having knee problems, do you go to a family practice doctor, or do you go to an orthopedic specialist? Well, I go to the orthopedic specialist and I would guess most of the rest of America does too. And you (or your insurance company) usually pays more for a visit to the specialist. This is just one example of many that I could discuss, but you get the point.

You see, we’ve been taught in today’s society to go see experts. And we’ve also been preconditioned to pay these experts more for their services. This is a perfect example of Niche-ing. While you may be tempted to be a generalist so you don’t turn clients away, I challenge you to look at your business to see if there are any segments of your business that are causing you problems, and get rid of them. Narrow down your expertise and serve a niche. You will be surprised to find, like many of our clients have, that when you focus on a specific niche, business is actually easier to find.

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