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Effective marketing is vital to improving your brand image and generating business, but it’s also important that this is done efficiently. Marketing should balance cost with efficacy in a way that most benefits your business and is most relevant to your market. Here are a few basic elements that will help ensure your business is being marketed efficiently and keeping wasted money to a minimum.

Do Your Market Research

Conducting thorough market research is vital to a successful and efficient marketing strategy. You must determine your target market and assess their wants and needs in a way that will help you appeal to them directly. Your market research will also allow you to determine the best platforms on which to deliver your content, and ascertain the “when and where” that will give you the best bang for your marketing buck.

Target Effectively

Once you have pin-pointed your target market you can build your marketing strategy around them. You need to market directly to your target demographic based on how best to reach them and what appeals to them most. If you can tailor your strategy around this target market you’ll be marketing more efficiently.

Avoid Wasted Reach

By keeping your sights on your target market you’ll be helping to avoid wasted reach as well. With thorough market research you’ll be able to avoid putting money into any advertising that will reach people outside of your target market – wasted reach equates directly to wasted money and inefficient marketing.

Deliver a Compelling Message

In order to appeal to your target market, you must catch their attention and leave an impression with a compelling message that’s relevant to them and their needs/desires. This message should be memorable and simple, and contribute positively to your brand image. A truly compelling message should be able to influence audience behaviour and build customer relationships with the brand.

Build Customer Relationships

Use your marketing to promote interaction between the brand and your customers in a way that will build lasting brand relationships and promote trust. Market yourself in a way that creates a positive brand image for the customer to relate with or desire. Deliver meaningful content and make yourself memorable. Social media marketing and content marketing are at the forefront of this customer relationship-based approach.

Track Your Goals and Measure Effectiveness

Your marketing strategy should include goals and milestones to be reached in order to track the effectiveness and efficiency of your approach. Track your progress toward these goals and constantly monitor the market to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing. If you’re not reaching these goals, it’s vital to re-asses your approach and modify if to get back on track. The failure to reach goals means your approach may be wasting money and this could even harm your brand.

The best way to value for your marketing dollars is to enlist the help of a marketing professional who will stay on top of market trends and advertising approaches in a way that’s relevant to the ever-changing marketing environment. Market Smartly, for example, can help with anything from planning to execution to training to support. Having professionals behind you will help keep your strategy efficient and on track to its goals.

With the right planning and attentive execution, you can turn marketing dollars into solid profits.

Many sole traders make the move to limited company status because they believe it will make them more desirable to new clients, or perhaps because they think they can save on tax in the long run. For a small limited company however, understanding how tax works is vital – and tax matters can be extremely confusing! All limited companies, both large and small, need to be up-to-date on current tax matters, as the consequences can – and often are – costly.

Limited companies don’t use the same self assessment tax return system as other businesses and self-employed individuals. All limited companies, both large and small, are subject to annual corporation tax.

This means the company does its own corporation tax self assessment – i.e. it calculates the amount of tax it must pay itself using a company tax return. The methods and deadlines are different to those used elsewhere.

The most common tax issues faced by a small limited company

It’s important to remember that once a company has applied for and been given limited company status, it is now a separate legal entity from its owner, irrespective of how many staff it employs or who is a shareholder. Everyone, even the sole director/shareholder, is an employee and the company the employer. What this means in terms of tax is that all the money the company earns belongs to the company and not its owner: from now on, any money taken out of earnings must be noted (and justified) as salary or expenses, and comes under scrutiny from HMRC.

Many small limited companies end up having to pay excess tax because the owner simply takes money out of the company without understanding the tax implications. The company can pay its director in three ways: as salary, to pay back money borrowed or spent on company costs (expenses), or as dividends on the shares the director holds in the company. Getting the mixture of salary and dividends right can reduce a company’s tax bill; get it wrong and it can go the other way.

All limited companies must pay corporation tax by the 1st of January of the year after the trading year, i.e. on 1/1/2014 for trading between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2013. It must also file a corporation tax return (CT600) each year to HMRC, 12 months after the year end at the latest. Limited companies who fail to file their CT600s or send it too late are subject to hefty fines.

A small piece of legislation known as IR35 has also caused many small limited companies problems since coming into effect. This is when a company takes on a project for a client and takes on the status (however short-term) of an employee. Rather than pay the ’employer’s’ National Insurance on the full cost of what they paid out, the small limited company makes a ‘deemed payment’ to HMRC. This is the opposite of how it works for sole traders.

Where to get advice

Calculating taxes as a limited company is complex and can be both challenging and time-consuming. There are companies that specialise in tax management that small limited companies can turn to for advice in this field, whether a company needs help filling out its corporation tax return or with IR35 forms for employees. An umbrella company can help a small limited company with all aspects of tax and payroll and as qualified experts in all tax matters, can save time and money in the long run.

If you are new to the word of Forex trading, then read on here. First of all, forex trading is a shorthand way of saying foreign currency exchange trading. In the introductory video to forex trading, which you can watch below, you will receive a simple overview of this form of investing. As you will see, a lot of investors do not participate in this form of trading, but maybe they should.

Where’s the Money in Trading Currency?

Maybe the extent of your knowledge about currency stops at the currency exchange, as in “How many shoes can I buy in Britain if the US dollar is trading at 1.52 for every British Pound?” Currency trading is the art of making money on the spread of going between currencies.

Basically, currency is factored out to the fourth decimal place. That is where most of the gains and losses will appear. In that fourth decimal space is the one-one-hundredth of a percent, also called pips. Now you know what a pip is.

As with any securities and commodities trading, currency trading has no guarantees. It is all about learning a new way of investing while making sure you can afford to lose the money you put out for trading purposes. There is an interesting term used to describe gains or losses that is unique to forex trading.

Starting Small in Forex Trading

Plenty of big fish are in forex trading, which mostly consists of larger banks. As an individual investor it may feel both exciting and intimidating to start out as an investor. Did you know that large banks aid businesses who need to make exchanges of goods across international borders in their conversion of value from one currency to another?

Anyhow, the reason for mentioning this is that even the professional traders have a tough job. They do not all make money all the time. This is one piece of information to keep you going, especially as you are just starting out here. Instead, take time to learn the nuances of technical analysis. Learn to read charts, what they may indicate and how that might impact your present investment strategy.

From there, be sure to master the trading platforms and systems that are available to you as an individual forex investor, because it maximizes these tools. Learn to read graphs and determine pips to chart progress, click here to learn more about moving averages and reading graphs.

My name is Caroline Stevens and I am a computer programmer. Several years ago I decided that I needed to make some extra money and a relative suggested I trade currencies. Till then, I had dabbled in the stock market and I knew very little about currencies or the world of Forex.

So with some advice from a friend who I thought had plenty of experience in Forex trading, I opened an account with a Forex broker and plunked down some money. Of course, I lost the funds within days and was about to give up on the whole thing. But I am not a quitter by nature and I looked around me and saw that there were traders who were actually making money trading Forex. So I took it upon myself to stay with it but to approach it in an entirely different manner.

Before entering another trade, I started to delve deeper into what Forex was all about. I consulted with seasoned traders, read books on the subject and took several online tutorials. I also carefully observed how the market behaved, its price movement and reactions.

I learned how do use technical and fundamental analyses to pinpoint correct price movements and to better understand price fluctuations. Then I opened a demo account with another Forex broker and practiced my moves. See more on OptionFair.

It took close to a year till I felt confident to do my own analysis and to choose which strategies I would need to end up with some profits. I practiced my trades and slowly but surely, I ended each month in with some profits.

Time is Money

I came to the realization, however, that in order to really make money in Forex trading, I had to devote a lot more time to watching the markets and focusing in on the opportunities that present themselves. These opportunities are always there but I knew I had to watch for them with a keen eye.

The problem was I really didn’t have the time to sit at the computer all day and watch for signals. I had a full time career and family that took up most of my day. So I set my mind to developing a program which did most of the work for me. I ended up creating artificial intelligent software which gathered information about the Forex markets and implemented my strategy even while I was off doing other things.

It worked fantastically. It analyzed the available fundamental and technical data and generated its own Forex signals which were then sent automatically to my broker’s platform where they were immediately executed. What more could I want?

Forex trading is not easy. Those traders that succeed in this business must work hard and put in the time necessary to come out profitable. Traders should have the confidence to make the right moves. They should also be prepared to lose some money since not everyone can come out ahead with each trade.

My advice to a novice trader is always do the proper preparation before placing your first trade, move slowly and cautiously and take your time building up your own unique trading style and strategies. More important than anything: When trading, have fun and enjoy the ride.

You are often required to have a deep working knowledge of the Binary Options trading environment when you sign up to some trading sites, whilst some sites do tend to have overly complicated trading interfaces and platforms installed on their sites, it can often lead to some newer traders being confused or even making incorrect trades when using some of these sites.

Should you be relatively new to the world of Binary Options Trading then you will need to pick and choose just which Binary Brokers and Traders sites you sign up to as many of those you will come across allow you to make one click trades which is the only way you should be looking to make Binary Option trades online. Click here to view list of Binary options brokers if you are from UK.

With a one click does everything type of Binary Options Trading platform then you are not going to make mistakes with your trades, and will be able to quickly and very easily select the asset you wish to trade and then make those trades accordingly.
So one of your requisites for choosing any Binary Broker will be to ensure the one you are thinking of utilizing the services has a straight forward and simple to use trading platform. The more complicated the platform becomes then the more likely you are to making often expensive trading errors.

Another couple of features that ant Binary Broker or Binary Options Trading site should offer are both a fully functional Mobile Trading Platform which will of course enable you to make your trades when out and about, plus a reliable telephone support service, which in case of any live trading problems will always respond timely whilst at the same time enable you to phone in any trades you wish to make on the spot.

We are seeing more and more people now turning to trading in Forex Options, this is always popular during and in the run up to the holiday season as this is when traders are looking to lock in value from their spending money on their up and coming holidays and vacations.

This has led to many Binary Option Trading sites pairing up some of the lesser traded currencies of the world and as such you are the able to seamlessly trade your home currency with the value and market swings of the currency of which the country you are visiting has in place.

You will be wanting to lock in value and as such there are more and more Binary Option Trading sites and brokers who are quite prepared to offer you a sign up bonus when you start to use their trading options and trading interfaces for the very first time, and this is where you can not only lock in value but by combining your trades on both new accounts and existing accounts you hold at other sites, you can often guarantee a profitable winning trade by hedging one off against the other with the added trading cash given away by these bonus offers!