For most business owners the key to success lies in a solid marketing plan with strong marketing tactics.A marketing plan is a blueprint that outlines a company’ overall marketing efforts.There are a ton of plan templates readily available on the internet.Taking advantage of these plan templates and marketing calendars can help determine the success or failure of your business in 2015Now, what happens when a marketing plan comes together?1. You will discover who your best most important audience is and what your clients want from youHopefully you are creating and offering products and services with a specific target audience in mind.However, you may find that clients, customers and patients other than your targeted audience will also been able to benefit from what you have to offer.Understanding who your audience is a key component in marketing, sales and improving your services and/or products.2. Increases awareness of your companyMost people won’t pay any attention to your company, unless they need you. They only care about themselves, it human nature.A marketing plan enables you to formulate a way to help future clients see the benefits of using your product or service. When done right, this establishes your credibility in the marketplace and hopefully solidifies your business as a reliable source.3. You will be prepared. When you have a good marketing strategy you’ll be surprised at how fast your company will be able to respond to unexpected marketing and developments from your competition.A well-written plan that covers all bases will include a projection on possible threats and detailed ways you can respond or capitalize off them. 4. Obtaining FinanceCompanies, including small businesses often need to acquire extra financing.A well-thought out business plan along with detailed marketing is evidence of good planning which could be extremely helpful in obtaining loans.Without a solid business plan and marketing strategy, even the most profitable business would have a difficult time getting financing. Free sample marketing plans are readily available online, they can serve as good examples while saving you time creating your documents.5. Save MoneyOne of the biggest benefits of a marketing strategy that your business is more likely to save money.The average marketing plan includes a set budget that will be used in your marketing efforts for the year.Yes, by outline your marketing plans, and specifying how much money is going to be used to support various marketing efforts it helps your company save a lot of money on unplanned marketing campaigns.If you and your team hasn’t sat down to develop a marketing plan for the year, it’s time to do so now.Start off with a marketing template to help outline your company’s marketing strategies the expand from there.There are so many benefits from having a marketing plan that it would be insane to start 2015 without one.
Red Flags When Buying Online Health Insurance
In the past, without the Internet, everything is done via the telephone or person-to-person meeting. If you need to buy an accessory for your car, you will have to drive to the car accessories store and make the purchase. If you are hungry you need to go to the restaurant or fast food chain to order and get your food. If you need to meet with a client overseas, you will have to book a flight to go to that country.That was in the past. Today, many thanks to the Internet, everything is done online. For anything you need, an online store is offering and you don’t have to get up from your chair to do that. All it takes is a click of the button on your computer screen. Even buying health insurance plan for yourself or your family can be done online. The information available online is enormous and there are hundreds of that offer online health insurance. But buying health insurance cannot be compared to other products offered online; it is a serious matter and as such it requires providing some personal information through the website to facilitate the processing of your request for quote or application.While buying online health insurance can be convenient and fast, there are some things you need to watch out for. You should be able to detect red-flag signs before you get to the stage of finally making the purchase. Check the list below:1. Be doubtful about the reputation of any website that does not post their physical address and contact details. With such information posted on their site, you can physically inspect the office or address instead of just calling the phone. Sites that don’t provide these details should be avoided.2. All selling agents – whether online or offline will be required by law to employ registered insurance agents to sell these services in whichever manner. If an insurer’s agent declines to give their full details, it’s a warning bell. With their full details you will be able to check with the licensing department if he or she is indeed a licensed agent.3. Any website should be able to provide you with full details on the coverage and what are not covered by the plan that you are planning to buy. If the insurer cannot provide you with such details, end the transaction.4. Reputable online insurance providers will enforce strict confidentiality with respect to any personal information or detail you are providing them relevant to your application. It is important that you read their privacy policy to see their procedures and protocols upon receipt of the confidential information. Any website that does not have the icon (lock symbol) or other indicators of security on their webpage should be avoided. They should place high priority on the security of information passed to them.5. You should receive the original insurance policy and not just the printed form even if you have purchased an online health insurance. The Internet is just a tool used for the initial sales transactions. All the legal documents that need to be signed should be original and carries the insurer’s company seal with the company’s authorized signature. Be sure to check all the documents carefully to make sure they are legitimate documents from the insurer.It may be daunting and a little intimidating when you shop for health insurance online but it’s the easiest and fastest way for you to collect the information, assistance and selection you need. You just need to be observant and extra careful when dealing with just the screen of your desktop.
A Guide to Commercial Lighting Fixtures
Although incandescent lamps are more frequently used in residential lighting applications, some commercial lighting fixtures also used this technology. Incandescent lamps pass current through a filament, which causes the filament to give off light. Because they are relatively short lived, incandescents are used mostly as decorative commercial lighting fixtures. Their ability to render warm colors effectively without ballast makes them well suited to this application, and the enormous variety of bulb designs make them highly soft after source of any type of accent lighting or decorum based commercial lighting design.Fluorescent Lighting Fixtures
Fluorescent lamps are used extensively in commercial lighting fixtures for a number of reasons. First and foremost of these reasons is their ability to use less power than other commercial lighting fixtures, making them very cost effective from an energy conservation perspective. Fluorescent bulbs also produce a very bright light that is evenly distributed, making them ideal commercial warehouse lighting fixtures, canopy lights, security lights, in interior retail lights in discount stores where high levels of general lighting help psychologically motivate larger bulk purchases of discount merchandise.Fluorescent bulbs produce light by activating phosphors on the interior of the bulb using ultraviolet energy generated by a mercury arc. Ballast helps start and operate the fluorescent lamps by regulating electron flow through the gaseous arc. Trends in fluorescent technology have made them more compact, increasing lumens per watt efficiency as high as 100 lumens per watt, and reducing the amount of toxic mercury within the bulbs interior. Fluorescent commercial lighting fixtures are best deployed underneath building eaves (as in the case of canopy lights), near loading docks, in wall packs on the sides of buildings, or as large grocery store or warehouse lights. Placing them too far out into open spaces tends to diffuse their light output and diminish their intensity.High Intensity Discharge (HID) Commercial Lighting Fixtures
HID stands for High Intensity Discharge. It refers to a technology where light is produced by a gaseous arc discharge using a variety of elements. Typical elements include mercury vapor, metal halide, and high pressure sodium. The arc tube within an HID lamp will contain one or more of such elements, and when current passes between the electrodes at either end of the tube, the current creates an arc that generates visible light.HID lamps feature the highest efficiency in lumens per watt output and also feature a greater level of lighting control. They also last longer than other commercial lighting fixtures, making them a wise investment for a company on a Spartan budget that cannot afford to continually replace equipment. High intensity discharge sources include mercury vapor, metal halide, and high pressure sodium (HPS) lamps. Light is produced in HID and low pressure sodium (LPS) sources through a gaseous arc discharge using a variety of elements. Each HID lamp consists of an arc tube which contains certain elements or mixtures of elements which, when an arc is created between the electrodes at each end, gasify and generate visible radiation.Light Sources and Lamp CharacteristicsMercury Vapor (MV) Lighting Fixtures
Mercury vapor lights were the first HID commercial lighting fixtures developed. They were designed originally to meet a rising demand for a very compact, high output, and energy efficient source of light. They are used extensively in a number of landscape lighting applications, being commonly deployed as tree lights in high-end commercial outdoor lighting systems. In other applications they have proven somewhat less effective duo to their inferior color rendering abilities, although this has improved to a certain extent over the years by phosphor coated interior bulb walls.The life of mercury vapor lamps is good, averaging 24,000 hours for larger wattage lamps. However, because the output diminishes so greatly over time, economical operational life is often much shorter. Efficacy ranges from 30 to 60 lumens per watt, with the higher wattages being more efficacious than the lower wattages.As with other HID lamps, the starting of a mercury vapor lamp is not immediate. Starting time is short, though, taking 4-7 minutes to achieve maximum output depending upon the ambient temperature.High Pressure Sodium (HPS) Light Fixtures
High Pressure Sodium (HPS) commercial lighting fixtures gained huge popularity in the 1970s to meet the needs of a powerful, yet super efficient, source of HID lighting. Lumens per watt output in an HPS lamp can be as high as 140 lumens per watt, approximately 7 times the luminance as incandescent lamps and twice that of MV or Fluorescent. They also last for approximately 24,000 hours—the longest lamp light on the market.The problem with HPS commercial lighting fixtures has always been the quality of light they create. HPS lamps give off a yellowish or orange-tinted color and are not acceptable light sources for situations where illuminating a brand, architectural keynote, or any type of ornate exterior landscaping requires a high level of color rendering. For the most part, they are used in applications such as commercial parking garage lighting, warehouse lighting, and certain outdoor applications such as security flood lighting.Metal Halide (MH Lighting Fixtures
Metal Halide (MH) commercial lighting fixtures are fast becoming the preferred source of HID lighting in most commercial environments. This is because they produce a very bright white light that nearly equivalent to daylight in its color rendering ability. The variety of applications is significant as a result, ranging from decorative street lighting, commercial parking lot lighting, car lot lighting, outdoor landscape lighting, architectural lighting, security lighting, and general site lighting. Traditionally, their biggest drawback has been their short lamp life, only 7,500 hours on the average.Newer designs in Metal Halide commercial lighting fixtures include pulse start technology and ceramic metal halide design. These improvements have increased lumens per watt efficiency, control of the light itself through superior dimmability, better stability of color rendering, longer lamp life, and shorter start time.Unfortunately, recent legislation has called for the phase out of certain standard forms of MH commercial lighting fixtures due to their use of incendiary elements that fall under the classification of greenhouse gas sources. This in turn paves the way for the most sophisticated lighting ever developed on our world, and quite possibly, the singular source of lighting used both commercially and residentially in the very near future: LED commercial lighting fixtures.LED Commercial Lighting Fixtures
As technology improves, the ability to create truly white LED light continues to evolve. LED commercial lighting fixtures are featuring higher lumens per watt efficiencies than their initial prototypes initially offered. This has opened the door for a number of architectural lighting and site lighting applications that were previously the exclusive domain of HID commercial lighting fixtures.We are also seeing an upsurge in the use of led commercial lighting fixtures in street and roadway lighting, where a number of municipalities in the United States and Europe have reported some very promising findings in regards to both power cost reduction and the overall quality of street lighting itself.Look for quarterly leaps and bounds in the engineering gains made by LED commercial lighting fixture manufacturers.