Purpose Driven Spending

The most common view of a commercial painting project is simple maintenance and facilities up-keep. Justifying painting and coating projects as preventative maintenance is relatively easy because the surface treatment can prevent damages to the underlying structure. If the budget separates preventative maintenance funds from operating costs, you could package and combine the painting project according to its true purpose to get the funding from your management team.

However, painting and coating can be a lot more than simple up-keep. In a retail setting, the appearance of a structure can a have a direct impact on the amount of business the facility is able to attract. If the current maintenance budget cannot support a painting project, perhaps the marketing budget could.

Changing the Contracting Process

As a commercial painting budget solution, changing the contracting process may seem like using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. However, the savings from a new way of administering contracts can be significant, especially if your facility does a lot of outsourcing.

Many large organizations adapt a job order contracting system (JOC ) to handle their contracting process. A JOC system is a type of indefinite demand and indefinite quantity contracting system which relies of pre-defined base prices for services. Contractors bid by multiplying the base prices by a selected co-efficient.

JOC systems are often used by schools, government agencies and other organizations to streamline their contracting process. The real savings come from reduced advertising costs, reduced administrative needs, and a quicker RFP to finished project time. According to a white paper published by Centennial Contractors Enterprise, Inc., the savings associated with a JOC system can be up to 21 percent of standard costs.

The advantage of a JOC system is that once in place to cover a painting project, the system is equally applicable to virtually every other outsourced aspect of facilities budgeting. However, if you are not currently using a JOC system, you should strongly consider hiring an expert consultant to help you implement the program.

Final Words

Facility budgets are not likely to increase anytime soon, so creative solutions are a must to find room in the budget for commercial painting, construction and maintenance projects. In the end, whether your company chooses purpose driven spending or changing the contracting process, the ability to establish a companywide logical decision-making process and get management buy-in is critical to the company's success in managing your commercial painting budget.

Steve Parker, Sr. Estimator. Raider Painting Inc,. www.raiderpainting.com is the leading provider

of commercial and industrial painting services, with over 1000 Fortune 500 customers. Our services include interior and exterior painting, deck

and machinery coatings for large and small projects. Call 877-724-3371 for more information about our services. Read our daily Raider Painting

Blog and get informed.

Options abound for how to incorporate personalized magazine covers into your ceremony and party. You can make up a bunch of specialized covers (featuring in jokes, memorable pictures, and clever/sentimental thoughts) for your bridesmaids or groomsmen and present these along with the traditional initialized flasks or purses. Alternatively, you could create a fun fake magazine cover of you and your fiance and put these keepsakes on every table, perhaps raffling them off at some point during the ceremony.

If you want to get super fancy and involved, you can further tailor the magazine covers at your tables by incorporating pictures of the people sitting at your tables into the design layout. For instance, let's say that at table 12, you've seated Grandma Estelle and Uncle Ernie. Your magazine centerpiece could feature a picture of you and your fiance on the front and then have fun pictures of you with your Grandma Estelle and Uncle Ernie on the back along with some cute quotations and captions.

Of course, this kind of detail work can be exhausting - particularly if you're in the rough and tumble of planning your own wedding. That said, this unique centerpiece idea is fun to put together and, most importantly, very cost effective. You can put together your personalized wedding favors and centerpieces online over the course of an hour or two, place your order, and get top quality results delivered quickly.

Best of all, unlike other seemingly personalized wedding favors (such as home-burned CDs of the special couple's favorite songs), your personalized magazine cover can distill the essence of your relationship in a fun, warm, and really humorous way. Include "headlines" teasing the greatest romantic moments in your relationship, or create a top-20 list cataloging your and your fiance's idiosyncrasies. No doubt everyone at the wedding party will love it, and you'll have a keepsake to last a lifetime.

Ease the burden of planning out your favors and centerpieces today - visit YourCover.com for details on how to get started with your magazine cover adventure.

Michele Kolier, Director, Marketing YourCover Magazine Covers -

leading provider of personalized magazine covers. Ideal for birthdays,

graduation and important occasions. Try our Magazine Cover Demo.

Call 877-972-6837 to learn more.

At first blush, it doesn't seem like personalized magazine covers would make great First Communion gifts. But remember what First Communion is all about - defining one's personal relationship with God. A customized magazine cover offers the gift giver a chance to reflect the child's personality in a fun, dynamic way.

If you get stuck choosing your cover's theme, here are some ideas to go to town with. Spoof on teen glam magazines by casting the young man or woman of the day as the star of high fashion action. For sports fan, cast the communion taker as his or her favorite basketball, hockey, baseball, or football hero in a "Sports Illustrated-esque" magazine mock-up. You can also include messages from friends and family in the form of "headlines", funny tidbits about the day, religious poems, family photos, or other special remembrances.

Unlike other First Communion gifts, your magazine cover will likely live on for decades as a fun and ebullient reminder - not only of the day in all its meaningful religious undertones - but also as a snapshot of a very special time of change in the life of someone you care about.

Discover the magic of crafting your own personalized magazine covers online at YourCover.com today.

Michele Kolier, Director of Marketing YourCover Magazine Covers - leading provider of personalized, commemorative magazine covers. Ideal for birthdays, graduation and important occasions. Try our Magazine Cover Demo.Call 877-972-6837 to learn more.

SwedishAmerican decided to add Amcom's Smart Speech Software to their existing Amcom call center solution. By integrating Smart Speech into the Amcom suite, SwedishAmerican decreased call volume to operators and made the system much easier for customers to use. The auto-attendant feature ensures that each call is answered professionally via pre-recorded greetings in the attendant's voice and makes the whole system user friendly. Swedish American was able to decrease call abandonment rates and hold times by 50!

An initial pilot program was so successful that SwedishAmerican decided to fast track the roll out of its call center solution to the entire network of clinics. The effects were dramatic. Switchboard traffic dropped so fast that operators wondered whether someone had turned off the phones.

Over the long term, SwedishAmerican's move to Smart Speech from Amcom paved the way for other substantive service gains for their paying clients. Operators can also dedicate more of their time and energies to handling patient and emergency calls - the true soul of the company's business. What's more, they estimate that Smart Speech will pay for itself in less than a year.

Is Smart Speech the right call center solution for your health care business? Find out at AmcomSoftware.com.

Bryan Mitchell, Business Solutions Advisor Amcom Software - leading provider of mission-critical communication software, with over 1000 customers in healthcare, hospitality, F1000 and education. Call 1-800-852-8935 or Contact Sales for more information about our call center solutions.

Mother's Day is rolling around again, and you're in a panic. Sure, you could spring for one of the usual humdrum presents - a bouquet of flowers, a box of gourmet chocolates, a gift certificate to a store, etc. But why settle for the generic when there's an amazing, low cost, super fun Mother's Day gift idea that you can customize yourself - right on the internet?

What is this greatest of great Mother's Day gift ideas? The answer is simple yet surprising: a personalized magazine cover. Using a free internet template, you can showcase your inner copy editor, layout artist, and photo editor in a spirited display of love for your mom. Directly upload photos you have of your mom -. include special dates, inside jokes, nicknames, or other fun bon mots as "headlines." You can add special facts about your mother, lyrics to a poem about her, extra photos, or even a personalized top ten list.

Best of all, unlike other great Mother's Day gift ideas, you don't have to spend a fortune on gimmicks or waste hours of your time engineering an elaborate custom designed idea. And your treasured fun memento will last decades. Your mom can display the finished framed cover on the mantel, place it on her coffee table for guests, or even mass print the cover for use as a display centerpiece at a house party.

Sure, there are tons of great Mother's Day gift ideas out there - but most of these offer few chances to be personal, heartfelt, and creative without veering into territory that's overly cheesy. This time - why not consider something both spectacular and memorable?

For your Mother's Day personalized magazine covers, check out YourCover.com, the internet's one-stop shop for awesome free online magazine cover design.

Michele Kolier, Director of Marketing YourCover Magazine Covers - leading provider of personalized, commemorative magazine covers. Ideal for birthdays, graduation and important occasions. Try our Magazine Cover Demo.Call 877-972-6837 to learn more.

DO:

1. Target your SEO marketing geographically. By focusing on niche or local markets, you can actually beat the “big dogs” – even on popular keywords

2. Link build with relevant sites and blogs. Two ways to speed up this process: 1) create info-rich content and an easy interface to attract traffic naturally. 2) Garner “reciprocal links” by reaching out to other great sites in your niche community.

3. Update your SEO content regularly. The search engines LOVE fresh, relevant copy.

4. Test your online marketing search engine optimization ideas early and often. Be brutal. Find the flaws before you “go public.”

5. Use web analytics to track how users respond to your site and how/when leads convert. The more data you have, the more finely-tooled your SEO marketing strategy can be.

DON’T:

1. Duplicate website copy to “fool” search engines like Google and Yahoo into thinking you have more relevant information on your site than you actually do. Search engine spiders use powerful algorithms to “sniff out” bogus or duplicated content, and they will actually punish you by lowering your rankings.

2. Choose your keywords willy-nilly. If you aim too broadly with your keywords, you will burn money unnecessarily by going up against irrelevant competitors, and you’ll reduce the percentage of leads to your website who are likely to convert. If you aim too narrowly, you will overlook segments of your consumer base, and you’ll yield a bad ratio of dollars-spent to visitors-attracted.

3. Switch domains frequently. Search engines typically reward sites for longevity by giving them a ranking boost.

4. “Borrow” copyrighted materials or content from other sites without permission. The search engines and/or the pillaged sites will find out, and your reputation (online and offline) could suffer.

If you’d like instant feedback on your SEO keyword strategy, get a free keyword ranking report through www.SEARCHmar.com, the Bay Area’s leading provider of online marketing solutions since 2001.

Debbie Everson, CEO of SearchMar, Inc. - SearchMar is the leading provider of search engine optimization & marketing services, with customers of all types and sizes. Learn about the SearchMar SEO services by visiting http://www.searchmar.com or call 1-866-885-6263.

Before you and your accounting team pull out your calculators and Excel spreadsheets, you MUST organize your strategic marketing goals. If you don’t spell out these goals explicitly – and harmonize them with your vision for your company – you will burn up your investment and fast. Think of building a budget for SEO like designing a house. Unless and until you select the right neighborhood and style of house (vision) and map out the architectural skeleton (strategy), you will be hammering nails (budgeting tactics) essentially at random. And this will inevitably lead to a big mess.

That said, let’s get down into the nitty gritty and discuss SEO budgeting tactics that work.

Three ways to gauge a project’s budget:

• base your numbers on a (successful) past campaign that’s similar to yours.

• designate a target percentage of total sales you wish to achieve though SEO marketing and work backwards to make this figure a reality.

• aim to capture a specific share of your SEO market, and work backwards (based on figures published by competitors) to determine what SEO resources to deploy and where.

What percentage of your total marketing budget should go into SEO internet marketing:

• if you’re selling pharmaceuticals or herbal products, you may want to go as high as 25, but this figure will likely grow as SEO gains prominence as a marketing tool.

• If you advertise primarily in the brick-and-mortar realm and/or have an unusual online demographic, your percentage could dip to 2 of all business traffic generated from Google, Yahoo, and the other search engines comes from organic listings.

• every month, nearly 6 billion search engine queries are made.

• The top three search returns generate over 91 percent of traffic.

Unlock your SEO budget with the help of SearchMar.com, a full-spectrum website analytics company with enormous B2B experience.

Debbie Everson, CEO of SearchMar, Inc. - SearchMar is the leading provider of search engine optimization & marketing services, with customers of all types and sizes. Learn about the SearchMar SEO services by visiting http://www.searchmar.com or call 1-866-885-6263.