MAKE a note of October 6, 2011 – for it’s a date which strikes fear into many small and medium law firms.
Now just a few months away, the Legal Services Act is about to change the way the public can access legal services and, undoubtedly, the way that traditional law firms do business with the public.
This change, and the creation of alternative business structures, will enable supermarkets, banks and other high street names to enter the market and provide certain legal services to their customers. The Act has forced many law firms to think differently about how they market themselves.
Through our consultancy work over the last year, we have found three dominant attitudes regarding marketing in legal practices . . .
1. “Let’s collaborate, strength in numbers”. Firms centralising resources and the creation of umbrella brands with a higher collective profile than the individual constituents;
2. “Let’s ac
Iberiabank Corp. — The Louisiana bank that became one of Southwest Florida’s largest after buying the failed Century Bank and Orion Bank in 2009 posted a 12.6 percent increase in first-quarter profit. For the January-through-March period, Iberiabank earned $14.6 million, or 54 cents per share, compared with year-ago earnings in the first quarter of $13 million, or 59 cents per share. The latest quarter included a 4-cent-per-share impact for acquisition expenses. A year ago, that cost totaled 7 cents per share. In addition to acquiring failed banks with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. guaranteeing large portions of any loan failures, Iberiabank has two acquisitions in the works: Lake Charles, La.-based Cameron Bancshares Inc. in a stock-for-stock deal valued at $133 million and a $40 million deal to buy Metairie, La.-based Omni Bancshares Inc. that will expand Iberiabank in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans areas. D Read more…
Is your business in a position to survive and thrive without you?
Are you building a sellable business?
According to John Warrillow author of Built to Sell, the number one mistake entrepreneurs make is to build a business that relies too heavily on them. So when it comes time to sell, buyers aren’t confident that the company can stand on its own.
Recently, I had the privilege to speak with John and asked him some key questions about creating a business that can be sold.
Q. How far in advance should a business owner start to prepare his or her business to be sold?
A. I think business owners should build their business to sell from day one. That way, they’ll have all of their options open: run the business forever without the stress of dealing with the details, install a manager and become a shareholder, or—if the price is right—sell it.
Q. What is t
VIRAL advertising has had a chequered history, but with the social networking boom, there’s no doubt it has become an established and effective advertising form.
It is a low-cost alternative to TV and other traditional advertising, while offering the implicit strengths of an online campaign, such as data capture, engaging the right audiences and driving sales.
A well-executed viral marketing campaign will have success far beyond its expected reach and audience.
Take Pepsi – its video of David Beckham on a beach holding a can of the soft drink, while performing tricks, went viral within minutes. It was viewed 2m times in less than a week. It sparked worldwide media interest and online discussions as debates over its authenticity raged. All
Today marks the first time the Federal Reserve will hold a press conference to go along with it’s decision on whether to change interest rates. Most observers expect the Fed to leave interest rates unchanged (basically at zero percent), so the real action will be in the details that emerge from the press conference where questions about how the economy is doing, what the Fed is doing, and how long they think those things will last, will take center stage.
In another change, the Federal Open Market Committee will also release the quarterly growth and inflation estimates that is uses to make its rate decisions today. U
As a small business owner, you certainly have experienced high peaks in sales, as well as the Grand Canyon sized troughs of low demand. At certain times of the year, your sales are going well, and you think you might be able to take a nice vacation. Other times, your customers seem to have disappeared in a fog, leaving you scratching your head wondering what happened.
When times are lean and you are waiting for the sun to come out once more, there are strategies you can implement to entice customers to your place of business. The key is your approach. Here are a few tips:
Buck the Temptation to Slash Prices
Many small business owners take the approach that when sales are slim, the only way to get customers back in is to cut prices on everything. Certainly you’ve witnessed the business with a sign twirler on the street advertising “50% of EVERYTHING!” However, this could result in even fewer sales and an even thinner profit margin.
It’s been less than three years — July 17, 2008, to be exact — since local prices hit the all-time average high of $4.06 per gallon for regular unleaded.
Prices have shot up nearly 30 cents in the past month — 75 cents so far this year — and analysts say they could soon top $4 in Southwest Florida.
“It is likely at some point this summer we will hit that $4 mark and probably go beyond it, but to what point is unknown,” said Jessica Brady, a spokeswoman with AAA Auto Club South.
Those higher gas prices already are affecting the Florida economy and slowing the pace of the recovery, said Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities, who has tracked Florida for more than 20 years.
“If prices continue to rise, we could actually see the recovery begin to sputter out later this year,” Vitner said.
The price for regular grade gas averaged $3.84 per gallon Thursday in the Bradenton-Sarasota-Venice market, up from $3.56 a month ago and $2.88 a year ago, AAA reported.