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Category Archive for 'marketing budget'

While meeting with a client the other day the conversation turned to their growth plans. The client softly explained that their growth plans were pretty conservative considering the economy and how much their board of directors enjoyed their dividend checks. We both chuckled knowing that growth needs to be funded by profit and would cut [...]

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Regular readers of SPURspectives know that Spur Communications provides marketing services for financial services and community benefit organizations. We are routinely asked to help with brand development. So, we spend a lot of time asking why — Why do you exist? Why do you matter? Why should someone care? As you can imagine, our nonprofit [...]

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The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an unprecedented tragedy. The extent of damage to the ecosystem, economy and lives of countless people is staggering. But it has also been enlightening. Our always on connectivity, social networks and the instantaneous spread of news by citizen journalists has shown this crisis to be [...]

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The previous post on SPURspectives opened a conversation about three ways to repair the current economic downturn proposing greater cooperation, improved social norms and shared values between the financial services sector and their clients. Granted, this is a very high altitude look at a broad idea. But I think it is important to have a [...]

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Over the last several years the economy has taken an alarming toll on the community benefit sector. For many organizations and foundations income is down 20% to 40% and sometimes more. No business can contract that much without suffering tremendous pain. While the markets have shown signs of rebounding over the last several weeks, other [...]

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Social media is just making its way to the financial services sector. A recent research report by American Century Investments found only 14% of financial advisory firms reporting that social media is producing tangible value for their firms. That’s pretty damning evidence until you see that only 19% reported using social media daily or more [...]

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Yesterday’s SPURspectives post talked about sowing the seeds for the future of your business so that you’re moving in a positive direction as the economy picks up. One way to do that is to look at your crop of existing employees and the crop of resumes crossing your desk. If you’ve been doing a good [...]

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Shell shocked by the current recession, some businesses are resorting to extremes. Several large businesses recently told me that they are simply doing no marketing at all this year. They’d like to be called in November so that we can plan for 2011. Seriously, call me next year? Other businesses are seeing the downturn as [...]

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A few weeks ago I wrote a series of posts that explored using nonprofit planning tools as a new lens for examining the financial services sector. This post is about a firm that did just that. The Bendigo and Adelaide Bank in Australia has created an online social community site for their customers and everyone [...]

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Around the corner from my house is a lovely pre-Civil War era house, the Alexander Majors house. It’s a historic landmark in Kansas City. Alexander Majors helped open the west by leading the first wagon train from Westport (Kansas City) to Santa Fe and then made a fortune along the Santa Fe and California trails. [...]

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