This month's issue of IT Informer includes the following articles:

• Happy Holidays from Skoda Minotti!
• The Tablet Revolution and Why it Matters to Your Small Business's Technology Plan
• Five Common Ways Your Employees Put Your Company's Data at Risk Using Mobile Devices
• We've Expanded Our Helpdesk to Support Your Technology Needs
• Skoda Minotti's Brian Rosenfelt Listed as COSE Mindspring Expert
• 3CX Phone System Case Study

Happy Holidays from Skoda Minotti! 

We would like to wish you and your family...

Click here if you missed part one of “Developing a Marketing Budget for 2012.”

How much should I budget for marketing?

This is the big question and one we get a lot. Typically marketing budgets are measured as a percentage of sales. The percentage will vary by industry. Both the Counselors to America's Small Business (SCORE) and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) define the variable for a proper marketing budget to be between 2% and 10% of sales, noting that for B2C, retail and...

Have you put together your 2012 marketing plan? There is still time.

The Coming Year

Moody’s, Goldman Sachs, the Economist and other sources point to 2012 as another year of stagnate growth for the U.S. economy. Most of these sources point to less than 2% growth in GDP. As you know, anything can happen but it appears to be another tough year to grow your business. You need to plan for more of the same and hope for better. 

Part of this planning should include developing your marketing programs and...

If business owners were asked on a marketing exam: Who is the target audience of your branding efforts? My guess is 9 out of 10 would answer “Our customers.”

That answer would garner only one-third partial credit. 

While it’s a given that brands are developed with the customer in mind, you would be selling yourself short (by about 66%) if your branding efforts stopped there. Your brand does more than just attract customers. It also attracts valuable employees and business partners.

Think about...

Remember the old fable about the ant and the grasshopper? The ant labors all summer long storing up food for the long winter ahead, while the grasshopper spends the warm summer months singing, dancing and playing. Then when the winter arrives, the grasshopper finds itself dying of hunger while the ant is taking inventory of all the food it had stored. The story concludes with the grasshopper, ill prepared for the hardships of winter, struggling for survival and ultimately starving to death.  

Sur...

In my 20+ years of assisting companies with marketing, I am continually surprised by the general misconception of what defines marketing.  I also don’t think managers truly see what marketing can do for their business. 

In the purest sense, marketing is the mix of activities required to get a product or service from conception to the end user.  These activities are typically described by marketers as the four P’s of marketing:  Product, Price, Physical distribution and Promotion.  Unfortunately...

CLEVELAND – Skoda Minotti Strategic Marketing Group was recently recognized by the Association for Accounting Marketing for outstanding achievements in the areas of accounting marketing and communications. At the Association for Accounting Marketing – Marketing Achievement Awards (AAM-MAA) ceremony in Chicago, Ill., the Cleveland-based marketing services group was honored for its 2010 holiday greeting e-card entry.

Skoda Minotti’s holiday greeting e-card allowed the firm to significantly decrease...

As you are probably aware, there is no shortage of individual website developers and web design agencies. They come in all sizes, areas of expertise and price points.  They typically arrive armed with great looking portfolios, making it even more difficult to identify who’s the right fit for you. 

So how do you evaluate a good web developer from a bad one?  For my money, it’s all in the strategic approach.  Great looking websites that are easy to navigate are a given.  Hiring someone based on...

This issue of the Real Estate Monitor includes the following articles:

• Understanding the Energy Efficient Tax Deduction
• New Requirements for Asbestos Surveys from the Ohio Department of Health
• Housing: Affordability of Home Ownership
• Deductions: Passive Losses
• Mortgage Loans: New Rules
• Housing: Residential Ground Leases
• Securities: No Liability Under Securities Exchange Act
• Cleveland Market Overview

Understanding the Energy Efficient Tax Deduction

Skoda Minotti, along with CLS Facility Services, invites...

According to Nielsen, social networking has overtaken e-mail as the most popular Internet activity.  Nearly two-thirds of the world’s Internet users visited a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace in 2008 and almost 10% of all time spent on the Internet was spent on social media sites, with Facebook being the most popular of these.

This time isn’t just being spent posting pictures and SuperPoking people.  Businesses are creating fan pages and using them to communicate with current...