Business Guide Land

A mascot can contribute to promote a brand. Moreover, it is helpful for marketing as well. Using a mascot for any company or to introduce a new brand is part of a marketing strategy and policy to further interact with your customers, clients and consumers. If truth be told, it is one of the greatest ways to gain more customers or new consumers by using a mascot, for your company, as a medium for physical and psychological communication with the different types of community.

You should be using a mascot in order to further distinguish your brand or trademark by having a profit-making character for your business. A mascot is not only used to interact with the different persons near your stores but also you are able to market it to further brand your business by creating different games (such as flash games, computer games, console games), a number of special commercials, various advertisements (both offline and online), new toys and some cartoons. In a nutshell, you can say a mascot is the corridor to further revive your brand.

On the other hand, the output you achieve from getting a mascot can be gigantic because nowadays mascots are not only just used for sports but also it is used for business companies in any event. As a result, with a very little time your company becomes familiar to the people who watch that event. Thus you can promote your brand or marketing easily with a mascot.

The making of a mascot is not too tough. You can make a marketable mascot easily with the help of some mascot making companies. They help to make you a mascot as your personal requirements. To know more about mascot and the companies you may search in the net.

One of the officials of Yahoo said, the company is likely to announce more job cuts when it would present its third-quarter profits next week. Yahoo! Inc. was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January in the year of 1994 and was incorporated on 1, March, 1995.

It is a Worldwide American public corporation. It headquarters is located in Sunnyvale, California in Silicon Valley, USA. The international network of Yahoo! websites receives 3.4 billion page visitors each day on average. It is the second most visited website over the U.S.A.; additionally, the most visited website around the world. To maintain worldwide service it has roughly 14,300 workers. But some people who familiar with the industry said Saturday, the worldwide Internet portal giant, yahoo, is likely to lay off at least as many workforces as it did in January, 2008, when it sacked 1,000 employees.

On the other hand, top online auction and shopping website eBay announced earlier this month to lay off 10% of its 16,000 employees, while leading search engine giant Google Inc, an American public corporation, apparently has been silently trimming its contractor employees though the authority declined to reveal how many contractors it has let go. It has total employees of approximately 30,000 people such as about 10,000 contractors and 19,604 full-time employees; as of 30, June 2008.

Some economist and industry analysts said that the Internet companies, which usually have large overhead, staff numbers, and high maintenance cost are bracing themselves for a tough economic and financial situation in fears of a worldwide recession so that they do not have to face any financial threat and achieve their highest earnings.

Analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of a business is a well-established tool that is widely used by academics, consultants, and advisors. Although it is a simple concept, business owners often struggle when trying to use it because it is so broad. It is difficult to determine where to start, what questions to ask, and where to focus. The obvious problems get attention while many other important issues get overlooked. SWOT analysis is a great tool, but its effective use requires additional structure.

Strengths and weaknesses relate to internal factors, while opportunities and threats cover external ones. The internal factors can be divided into five categories: management, workforce, sales and marketing, operations, and financial. The external factors are also divided into five categories: threat of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of customers, threat of rivalry from competitors, and threat of substitution.

To approach the analysis in a structured way, prepare a checklist using the categories mentioned above. Identify factors within each category that are important to your business. Under management for example, a major weakness for virtually every small business is relying too heavily on the owner. What would happen to the business if something happened to the owner? In the workforce category a factor could be employee turnover and the availability of new hires. The threat of new entrants might include the possibility of a big box retailer opening near your business. The bargaining power of suppliers and customers categories should consider the possibility of losing a major supplier or customer. Come up with several factors for each category to complete the checklist. It is important that you do not try to rate or solve each issue as you identify them. If you do, you will get bogged down on each factor and never complete the analysis.

Once the checklist is complete, you should rate each factor based on its importance to your business. Use an alphabetical scale from A to E, where A = very important, B = important, C = some importance, D = little importance, and E = not important. Next rate each factor based on proficiency (internal) or vulnerability (external). Use a numerical scale from 1 to 5, where 1 = very proficient or not vulnerable, 2 = proficient or little vulnerability, 3 = average proficiency or some vulnerability, 4 = poor proficiency or vulnerable, and 5 = deficient or very vulnerable.

The factors with the lowest letter and highest number (A5) are the biggest weaknesses or threats. The ones with the lowest letter and lowest number (A1) are the biggest strengths or opportunities.

Using this structured approach makes a SWOT analysis possible and practical for any small business. To make this process worthwhile you must use this information to take action. Work to fix the worst problems first, prepare for the biggest risks, take advantage of the best opportunities, and build your secondary strengths.