Is your website living up to its potential? Are you reaching as many prospective clients as possible? What are you doing in terms of reaching your non-English speaking customers? These are important questions you need to ask yourself while building your online marketing plan and defining your online target market and goals.

Consider this.

• The U.S. is home to more than 45 million Hispanics, making it the world’s second-largest Spanish-speaking community, only after Mexico and ahead of Colombia, Spain, and Argentina
• Hispanics will count for nearly one out of every five U.S. residents by 2012
• Today, the online Spanish-speaking market represents almost $500 billion in spending power

Hispanics living in the U.S. are hungry for Spanish-language information online. They want to conduct research, find product information, and make purchases online. And they want to do it in their language of choice.

Now consider this:

• Only 1% of English websites are translated into Spanish

That’s not only a problem for Hispanics, but it’s an even larger problem for companies that want Hispanics’ business but only offer English-language websites.

According to recent data from Clientize, a marketing research firm, Hispanics are more likely to take their money and loyalty to companies that have Spanish-language websites.

Survey data also indicates that more than 75 percent of Hispanics would feel valued as a customer if a company’s website were available in Spanish. A whopping 76 percent of respondents said they would visit the Spanish-language version of the site more frequently than the English version. And fully 72 percent said they would purchase products or services from the Spanish site.

The value of having such a site can be tremendous, but in order to expand your business into the Spanish market, it’s not enough to simply translate your website from English to Spanish. So what’s the secret to your organization earning its share of this interest and revenue?

You need to get the language right.

You don’t need to spend time and money creating a completely different “Spanish-centric” site-a site with different colors, design, and content. Research shows that Hispanics want an identical user experience to your English site … but in Spanish. They want the same look, feel and content; they don’t want a diluted version with limited features, functionality or product offerings. But you do need to pay attention to Hispanic cultural nuances. It is not only knowledge of the language; it’s understanding the differences in meaning that are specific to a particular country or region.

Following are some marketing mishaps that were a waste of advertising dollars, often requiring additional investment to “clean up the mess” and start fresh with a whole new campaign to reach this market segment.

• A Miami T-shirt maker targeted the Spanish market with t-shirts commemorating the Pope’s visit. Instead of “I saw the Pope” (el Papa), the t-shirts proudly proclaimed, “I saw the potato” (la papa).

• The famous slogan “Got milk?” was translated as “Are you lactating?”

• Braniff Airlines, trying to promote its new leather seats to Hispanics, translated “fly in leather” as “fly naked.” Not surprisingly, they had plenty of empty seats to South America.

Use a professional translator and make sure this will never happen to you.

Do you think Business? What I mean is when you wake up in the morning and when you go about your day do you think about ways to make money?

There are two types of people in this world, those who think about money and those who actually make money.

What is the difference between the two?

The one who takes their business ideas and actually puts them into practice is the one that makes the money, the other is still thinking about making money. Here are some cutting edge business ideas and questions to help you along your journey.

How Much Will It Cost?

Once you have your idea you must ask yourself how much it is going to cost to startup. A college student once thought of an idea to sell pixels on his homepage for $1 each. He then set up the homepage to have a million pixels to fill. Long story short he sold every pixel on his homepage and created a million dollar homepage and became an instant millionaire.

Home Much Time Will It Take?

You also want to make sure your idea does not get in the way of you making money today in your current job. Also make sure the job can be handed off to someone else or you can hire someone to run your money making idea. This is what business people do, they start a business and hire people to work for them so they don’t have to work.

How Much Can I Make?

There are ways to find out how much money you are going to make but if you are not willing to do the research you may have to find out for yourself. See what others in your industry are you making and charge what they charge of undercut their prices.

Any idea can be turned into a business but the ones that are successful are the ones that have been researched, paid for, and maintained for the long run.

How to market your product?

The best way to market your product is to build a blog for your product. This will get the word out fast to your customers. Also people can subscribe to a blog so when you create updates on your blogs, your readers can see the changes instantly.

With spring moving into summer for most of the country, the opportunity to blow off some steam or make a deal outside the boardroom with a golf club is beckoning. And, marketers who are looking for more “green” should be looking on “the green.”

Prominent figures giving credence to this idea are, of course, President Obama and Tiger Woods. The Associated Press reported this month that the President has recently had four golf outings in five weeks. Mid-June marks the start of the U.S. Open 2009 whose website is featuring Tiger in their Player Bios section. During Black History Month earlier this year, the PGA of America presented a display at the PGA Historical Center honoring four groundbreaking African-American heroes in the sport. The presence of African Americans in the game is noteworthy.

A Profitable Niche Segment for Golf Industry and Luxury Brands
Statistically, the African-American golf community has grown by thirty per cent in the last decade with interest in the game rapidly outpacing that of Asian American and Hispanic Americans. In fact, the National Golf Foundation reports that a full fifteen per cent of golfers – a stunning 5.5 million people – are minorities, and 2.3 million of them are African American.

Since participation is a function of household income, it stands to reason that gaining the attention of this niche segment of golf enthusiasts will help brands more effectively implement their target marketing strategy of reaching the affluent ethnic consumer – especially, the African-American Royaltons TM. Adding 2.3 million people to a list of potential consumers is any marketer’s dream come true.

Participants With Purchasing Power
Based on minority participation reports conducted by the World Golf Foundation and their Golf 20/20 initiative, the industry has been targeting minority groups who are viewed as important to growing interest and participation in the game. African Americans, along with women and Hispanics, are the demographics “with pent up demand” who will help the sport meet its target of having 55 million participants by the year 2020. If Year 2000 census data showed the golf industry having $62 billion in sales – more than the motion picture and sound recording industry and the amusement, gambling and recreation industry – then the currently growing participation of wealthy African-American players offers significant purchasing power to be harnessed. That purchasing power has been estimated to become nearly half (45%) of the projected $1.1 trillion of all African Americans by 2012.

With the proportion of African-American female golf participants found to be above average, another potentially fruitful sub-segment is appearing. Many professional black women are taking to the golf course to capture that lucrative business deal often negotiated on the green. In the Spring 2009 issue of Odyssey Couleur, Pam Swensen, CEO of the Florida-based Executive Women’s Golf Association, stated that she is seeing an increase in membership as more African-American women use golf as a business-building tool.

All any luxury marketing executive has to do to potentially gain new prospects is to let go of some assumptions about who the typical golfer was in the past and choose to step into the future of the golf market.

If you owe $10,000 or more, chances are good that all you can think about is “get me out of debt!”. It is not difficult to get deep into credit card debt fast and before you know it you can barely keep up with minimum payments until one day disaster strikes and you lose your job or you are faced with a medical emergency and all your world comes crumbling down. That’s why getting out of credit card debt is so important. If you owe a lot and you only can afford to make minimum payments, it is going to take you 20 or 30 years to pay it back, providing you don’t charge anything else ever.

That is why it is highly recommended to try to reach a debt settlement deal with your creditors in order to get out of debt fast. You can check out any of the many debt negotiation services available to learn what your options are. You may be surprised to know that you can legally eliminate up to 60 per cent of your debt in 12 to 36 months making a payment that is comfortable and that can allow you to get back on your feet.

After all, your creditors would rather have you negotiating credit card debt instead of filing bankruptcy. This way they get to collect at least a portion of what you owe instead of nothing. They know that you want to do the right thing but that you need help reducing credit card debt and with the help of a credit specialist, you can be debt free sooner than you think.

The Credit Crunch has been a painful time for many, many people. However, for every 100 in pain, there’s one who’s leaping in joy… oh, ok, so statistics are a group of numbers looking for a fight and it might be 1 in 85 or 1 in 54 or 1 in 123… let’s not quibble over trivial details and agree that, despite the ravages of this financial storm, there have been many who have done well from it.

Who Do You Follow?

The BIG question is, of course, what did the winners do that the rest of the herd didn’t… and what can you do right now and when the next crisis hits? Sorry dudes, but there will be another financial crisis and another and another, so the sooner we learn from the last one, the more likely we’ll be in the winning team next time.

What The Losers Do

The first thing to do is look at what the losers did – they followed the other losers. As soon as the stampede starts, they all head off in the direction everyone else is going.

What the Winners Do

What do the winners do? They do the opposite. They stop and look around at what has caused the stampede and, often as not, in buffalo society, it’s no more than a puff of wind that turned dust into the shape of a predator. So stop, look and go nowhere – with the rest gone, there is more grass for you to feed on, right here! Whenever the Titanic sinks, the majority go down with the ship. However, there are always some who immediately pop up, look around and go build a better ship, an aeroplane or something that doesn’t head downward at the first sight of frozen water.

What One Winner Did

That’s the theory. Let’s look at what one company in Norway did, for a practical lesson:

Started by Mr Nordheim-Larsen, NLI started life as an engineering workshop for the lumber industry in 1936 in the little town of Tønsberg. For many years it hummed along happily and then, in the 1970’s, a slump in the worldwide forestry industry hit. NLI watched as their competitors crashed, one by one. This was not a good scene and Mr Nordheim-Larsen could have panicked, shut up shop and opened Starbuck’s first Norwegian franchise… anything but the beleaguered forestry engineering industry. He didn’t. He sat back and saw not problems but opportunities.

• After every financial crisis there is a financial recovery.
• With every engineering shop collapse there is a cheap business to buy.
• With every industry failing, there is always another on the rise.

He looked around and saw that the oil industry was suddenly interested in Norway and he was suddenly interested in the oil industry. Mr Nordheim-Larsen was not only a calm visionary, he was a courageous warrior – he acted. He bought up failing competitor after failing competitor, as long as they had synergies with NLI’s regrouping and retooling for the oil industry. His vision and courage were rewarded.Then, by the early 2000’s, many of Norway’s traditional engineering workshops were feeling the bite of another economic downturn. Though the market was low, Mr Nordheim-Larsen not only saw the potential but also dared to act and acquired companies with their own technologies – technologies that complemented NLI’s. Again, Mr Nordheim-Larsen knew the hard economic times would not last. His company started acquiring struggling businesses that were in line with both the NLI expertise and the oil and gas industry market. In the last 10 years NLI has continued to grow both organically and by acquisition.

NLI’s turnover for 2007 was 900 million NOK and for 2009 it was 1.5.billion NOK. And, no, 2010 does not promise to be a great year. In fact, it could be a bad year. However, what NLI have done is anticipated the credit crunch over a year before most people knew it was here, made their staff reductions, cut back on plant and material orders, restructured loans and now they’re ready to ride the next (rough) year with more finesse that most… and they’re already picking up failing businesses that will enhance their stable of technologies into the next financial upturn.

Mr Tor-Martin Roed, Chief Operational Officer Marketing for NLI, says that, besides vision and courage to act, there are two other factors to their success:

1. Firstly, they concentrate on what their particular skills are and they develop those with total focus. It is always tempting to leap into other markets or acquisitions that show promise but, unless they have synergies with NLI’s core competencies, they are rejected. They look closely at where their skills are and continue to develop those further.
2. Secondly, they have a high focus on developing their people. Because the company has a large percentage of highly skilled and educated people, the continuing training and development of everyone, from management on down, is a top priority.

What Can We Learn?

So, whether you’re an international engineer to the oil industry, a cafe or an individual, what can we learn from this? Four things:

1. Vision – rather than follow the hoi polloi, the herd, stop and look around. Things are never as they seem and all things must pass… even credit crunches.
2. Courage – back your hunches, take action. Do something to tell your grandchildren about.
3. Stick to your knitting, boys and girls – what do you do best? Do it better, differently, with more creativity, with more panache. However you do it, make it the thing you’re best at.
4. People your life with people – none of us is an island and the more we connect with people – especially successful people – the more we can all help each other.

Filing bankruptcy is not a solution to pending loans or creditor’s harassing calls. You have an option to write off your loan legally. But make sure that you reach out to a genuine company which is backed by government authorities or any other government bodies so that you are safe and are carrying out all the procedures legally.

What do you mean by a write off of debts?

If you have mortgage dues and are unable to pay back your lender, you can see if your creditor’s agreement signed between you and the lender has any loopholes. If your loan was approved with out any proper documentation, you can prove it to be an ‘unenforceable agreement’. In other words this creditor’s agreement is invalid and no lender can claim any loan amount due. This agreement will be cancelled and the creditor is free from the clutches of the lender.

Who can help?

It is important to reach out to the right company which can help you prove that your agreement is unenforceable. Only if there was no proper documentation it can be proved as being unenforceable, not other wise. This company will see if there is any such loop hole. They should be backed by a Government authority.

What kind of finances can be covered under this?

Construction loan, car finance, insurance, unsecured loan, secured loan and consolidation loan and credit card debt etc can be covered and written off easily. This has come into practice due to the application of Consumer Credit Act 1974.

Soon after, your company has proved this loophole, the agreement between you and the lender no more exists. It becomes nullified and no lender can claim back the money from you.