Category: Business
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Debt consolidation plans for your debt relief
Debt consolidation is a financial strategy that merges several financial bills into one debt that gets paid off through a management program or loan. Debt consolidation is useful when the debt is of high interest like the credit card. It needs to reduce your monthly repayments by lowering the rate of interest on all your bills, which makes it easy to pay the debt off. The option of debt relief untangles the mess that consumers face each month when they are struggling to keep up with several bills from various card companies and different deadlines. In its place, there is a single payment to one source each month. It also saves money at the end of the day. There exist two primary forms of debt consolidation – signing up for a debt management program or taking up a loan. It is up to you to decide on the method that fits your situation. You can also call this credit consolidation or bill consolidation. Consolidating debt should help get you out of debt very fast and improve your credit score. How does it work? It works by lowering the rate of interest and reducing monthly payments to a price that is affordable on debts that are unsecured like credit cards. The leading step towards debt consolidation plans is calculating the total money you pay for your cards monthly and common interests paid on the cards. It provides a baseline for purposes of comparison. You will then have to look at the budget and add spending on basic utilities like transport, housing, and food. How much money are you left with? For many individuals, there is always enough left to handle the budget and help them pay their debts. However, motivation and effective budgeting are never evident when individuals fall behind on bills. And this is where debt management programs or debt consolidation loans step in. All of them need one payment monthly and gives you time to track the progress of removing debt. Will some calculations and research inform you if a debt management program or loan will be of more help in paying the debt? Using a loan to do Debt Consolidation: The standard method of doing debt consolidation involves getting a loan from the bank, online lenders, or credit unions. The loan has to be large enough to clear the unsecured debt at once. The loan gets paid with monthly installments at the negotiated interest with the lender. The period of repayment is usually five years, but the amount of benefits charged is the crucial element. The lender will take a close look at your credit score while determining the interest rate charged for the loan. In case you are falling behind with your debts, it is likely that the credit score will tumble. In case the debt consolidation interest is not lower than the average benefits you are paying on credit cards, then the loan will not be doing you any good. There are other alternatives to loans like personal loans or equity loans, but none of them will help if the rate you are paying is long and does not make sense. Consolidating Debt without a Loan: There is a possibility of combining debt and reduce installments without another loan. Agencies that do non-profit counseling provide debt consolidation via debt management programs that do not require you to take credit. In that place, the non-profit agencies work with companies of cards to reduce interest rates and lower monthly repayments to a level that is affordable. The consumer will send payments to the counseling agency that then distributes the funds to agreed creditors. The agency may tell the firm to waive over-the-limit and late fees. This solution is not quick. Programs of debt management take up to five years to manage the debt. If you miss one payment, they may revoke the arranged concessions on the monthly fee and interest rates. Read Also: Eight Essential Tips For Getting Out Of Debt Are Debt Consolidation Loans Recommended For Credit Card Consolidation
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Three Essential Techniques To Form Lasting Customer Loyalty
A great product and/or service may be the foundation of a company, but customer loyalty is the key to success. Customers don’t come with a guarantee to stick by you just because they’ve purchased something: loyalty and repeat business must be earned and enticed. The standard adages and techniques apply: put the customer first, reward their continued business, and create a valuable experience beyond your product. How can these things be effectively achieved? Review the following key areas and tailor them to your business. Different Ways To Maintain Customer Loyalty There are multiple ways you can maintain customer loyalty. You have to understand the ways that can work well for you in the best possible manner. Access customer relationship management tools: In the same realm as enterprise resource management tools, there are digital solutions to assist with practically managing and improving relationships and dealings with customers. These systems provide easy, streamlined access to data and customer information anywhere, with cloud capabilities. Manage sales, customer support, marketing, and more. Collect the right data from customers and learn how to utilize it to your advantage. Employees are empowered with accurate reporting tools to manage and forecast effectively. Marketing programs are automated, and campaigns can be tracked, analyzed, and altered. Customers have tools to help themselves in addition to enhanced customer care and satisfaction applications. Expert consultants can offer professional Sage software help to better customize a CRM solution to fit your organization. Go beyond offering incentivizing rewards: Rewards programs, like earning points to spend, or free products based on milestones, are common because they work. Customers are indeed drawn to return to companies that add extra value to their repeat business. But, because these perks are standard, and many businesses offer them, so too do your competitors. You need to go beyond a rewards program. Encourage people to spend time on your site with entertaining and informative content. This could be blog articles that enhance your product or service with tips for usage, getting the most out of their purchases, how to improve their lives in the same general subject area. Videos are another great way to deliver this information and encourage engagement. Promote a sense of community among your customers. Send newsletters that treat everyone like members of a team with common interests and goals. Create social media channels suited to your brand where people can interact and potentially help and add value to each other’s lives. The plan sponsored events and opportunities in the community. Develop a branded app to for additional functionality and connection. Provide authentic customer care: Open communication channels to offer feedback and ask questions. Let customers know they not only have a forum, but that it is being read, considered, and responded to. Allow other members of the community to aid your efforts through offering their assistance and tips on a digital platform like a message board or social media. Allow your loyal customers to help your company make decisions and steer you in new directions. Provide surveys that go beyond asking ‘How Did We Do?’ by asking for and valuing their opinions on new offerings, designs, and customizations. Allowing for multiple aesthetic and functional options to choose from when buying to better personalize your offerings makes your product or service suit the individual better and sets you apart. If customizations aren’t feasible, instead of better inform customers on how to make the most of their purchase with proper instructions, additional materials, and tips. Read Also: Why Your Business Should Care About Social Responsibility
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Are Payday Loans Really as Bad as People Say?
You’ve probably gone to your computer to research online payday loans in Texas and instead been met with a barrage of negative information regarding payday loans. Most consumer advocates demonize this type of finance, saying it is predatory and that it needs to be banned because it does not help the average consumer. That is not true at all. Repeat Customers: What most detractors of the finance system do is that they focus on the supply side of this business. They don’t look at the demand side, which grows stronger and more demanding every day. What is it that makes borrowers come back for payday loans repeatedly? In order to answer that question, you need to have an intimate understanding of the average borrower that relies on payday loans. This is typically a low to medium income earner whose wages cannot cover surprise expenses such as a broken-down car, medical expenses, or emergency funding for your business. They typically don’t have savings or investments or even the same incentives to save and invest that higher-income earners have. Their real wages have been on the decline since 1972, and so they find it harder every year to make ends meet adequately. Moreover, traditional banks have all but abandoned them and won’t touch them with a 10-foot pole — not since the financial disaster that began sometime in 2007. What recourse is there for such a consumer? What can they do and who should they turn to when their backs are against the wall? Watch Out for Predatory Lending: To be sure, there are some unscrupulous payday lenders that take advantage of borrower’s situations and harass them, making them live in constant discomfort over their loans. They also encourage them to borrow a lot more than they can ever hope to pay back, just so they can roll over the loans or take out other loans to pay the initial ones back and get trapped in a constant cycle of debt. But this isn’t all lenders. To begin with, the lending industry is well regulated with lenders being required to follow strict rules on what they can say or do when trying to recover their money from a borrower. They also aren’t allowed to take borrowers to court in many states. The good lenders are having their name tarnished by a combined team of bad lenders and so-called consumer advocates who don’t quite understand or empathize with the dire situation of the low-income earners who need these loans. These are people who typically have neither good credit nor friends and family from whom they can borrow money or ask for help. The payday loan is their last resort. Would it be fair to take that last resort from them and give them no alternative to replace it? Take Only What You Can Pay Back: There are also many borrowers who take just enough money to meet their emergency needs. They make sure it is something they can pay back with their paycheck, and they pay it all back on time. Just like there are lenders who encourage borrowers to take only what they can reasonably pay back, and do not harass them when they run late on payments. Payday loans are not evil. They are a quick solution to many of the needs of a certain otherwise abandoned section of society. Read Also: How To Save More Money? 9 Vital Options For When You’re Desperate For Money
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5 Important Tools For Pipe Recovery Operations
For well lodging and digging you use many types of equipment like drilling tool, lodging tool, measuring tools and more for perfect well. You can attach these tools with a single string or with group o strings and put them down in the wellbore. However, due to some reasons, either the wireline string breaks or the digging tool gets stuck in downhole formations. Does your drilling string often get set stuck inside the well? If so, then use pipe recovery operations to release the string or to make it free from the blocked position. Pipe recovery services use to make the portion of jammed string free from well formations. These services help you in identifying the location of block pipe, to cut the stuck string and finally to bring back the free portion of the pipe from well. If your pipe gets stuck and you wish to release it then, below are some tools that will help to take out the portion of blocked pipe from downhole or well. Free Point Indicator Tool: This tool is used for pipe recovery services to identify the location of stuck pipe in the wellbore. It works by measuring the torque and pressure of wireline in the downhole to identify the location of blockage in the well due to the stuck pipe. You can also use it to judge the stuck point in all type of tube wells, coiled tubes, and well casing. Back Off Tool: Once you are done with a location check of the stuck point of pipe, you might be thinking on the way to release it. There is a back off a tool that helps you to remove the free portion of the string from the well. It works by applying the torque on a stuck portion of wireline and detonate it. Hence the free string gets separated from stuck string and can be pulled up from the wellbore. Chemical Cutter: It is a good tool for the recovery of electric wireline services and is widely used in operations where no need of any torque to pull up the string. It is capable to cut coiled tube, well casing and drill pipe without providing any harm to other portion of pipe or well. These tools are designed to operate in conditions like extreme pressure and temperature which make it best tool for oilfield well. To make a clean cut and not leave any debris in the hole. Radial Cutting Torch: It is lowered down into the well to cut the stuck string. It uses the mixture of powdered metal that a burn with high temperature on ignites and it melts to become molten plasma. This plasma is then ejects through a nozzle onto the target string and cut. Fishing Tool: You can use this tool to release or remove the stuck pipe and any other suspended material from the wellbore. There are many fishing tools available such as spear, overshoot, junk mill and boost basket that help you to recover the stuck string from the well. A spear is a tool that can fit within the pipe and help to grip the pipe from inside. However, overshoot tool grips the pipe from outside and help to bring it up from the well. Recover the wireline as soon as possible to save the drill time off well. Recovery of the pipe is also a need that protects further damage to the good casing. If you feel that wireline recovery operation is not easy for you then, you may call any pipe recovery service provider. Read Also: Guide To Different Types Of Water Flow Meters
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A Little on the Side…Or Not? Your Guide to Supplemental Insurance
Have you ever experienced something you didn't expect? It might have been something good, like bumping into an old friend on vacation or being taken to a surprise party. Or it could have been something not so favorable: a car accident, the loss of a job, a sudden illness… The world is an unpredictable place. Each new day brings its own surprises - both good and bad. We can't plan for those surprises, but we can protect ourselves. In 2017, Americans spent $1.2 trillion on health insurance premiums. Having a good health insurance plan can protect you in the event of an unforeseen injury or illness. But it's not always enough. Some people go to make a claim only to find that it isn't covered. Others can afford to make their monthly premiums, but when they need medical assistance, they can't afford to pay their copays. Even with health insurance, medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US. Supplemental insurance may help cover those costs so you don't need to add a financial emergency along to your medical emergency. What Is Supplemental Insurance? As the name might suggest, supplemental insurance is a type of insurance that supplements your existing healthcare coverage. There is a wide variety of health insurance plans, but most plans give you a choice between a low monthly premium and a high deductible or a high monthly payment with a low deductible. Most people choose to go with a low monthly premium-especially if they're generally in good health. But since 61% of Americans don't have enough savings to cover a $1,000 emergency, that high deductible could ruin them. Supplemental insurance is a separate health insurance policy that can be used to cover additional expenses that you may be unable to cover on your own. You might use it to pay for a deductible, copays, or care that your regular insurance does not cover. Some supplemental insurance companies will even cover lost wages for time off due to illness. Supplemental insurance carries its own monthly premium. However, this premium is often lower than the difference between your current insurance plan and a plan that would cover everything else you need. Types of Supplemental Insurance: Just like every health insurance plan is different, there are several different kinds of supplemental insurance. You can mix and match these plans as needed. Dental Insurance: It's likely that you already have supplemental insurance without realizing it. Most health insurance plans do not cover dental work. And since regular visits to the dentist are an important way to fight dental problems, that could leave you on the hook for expensive out of pocket costs. To cover your dental care costs, you must have a supplemental plan. This supplemental is often provided in your benefits package from your employer without you even realizing it. If you manage your own insurance, your primary insurance provider may offer a separate plan to cover these. Vision Insurance: Like dental insurance, vision care is not typically covered by most health insurance policies. And that's bad news considering that 75% of Americans need some kind of vision correction. While you could always see an optician at the cheap eye clinic in the strip mall, that's a poor substitute for regular appointments with an optometrist or ophthalmologist. An optician can also miss other serious problems that an optometrist or ophthalmologist would catch. Supplementing your medical insurance with vision insurance can keep your vision care expenses from running through the roof. Medigap: Medicare is a state-run insurance program that covers citizens over 65 or certain individuals with disabilities. It is funded through taxes, so recipients do not pay a monthly premium. Many people depend on Medicare to cover the cost of their ongoing healthcare. But it doesn't cover everything. Medigap plans can help cover out-of-pocket expenses or necessary care that is not covered by Medicare. Travel Insurance: If you're traveling away from home and you are injured or become ill, you may not be able to find any healthcare providers within your network. Purchasing supplemental travel insurance before you travel is a good way you can stay covered if the worst should happen. Critical Illness Insurance: While insurance exists to cover unforeseen costs that you cannot afford, every insurance plan has an annual limit or a cap on how much they will cover. If you reach that cap, you must pay for any costs beyond that. If you become seriously ill, it can be easy to reach the cap in a hurry. Supplemental critical illness insurance is used to cover expenses beyond your insurance policy's annual limit. Do I Need It? You might be reading this thinking, "this is all well and good, but do I actually need supplemental insurance?" Can you afford to pay your entire deductible? Can you pay for out-of-pocket expenses like copays and prescriptions? Can you afford to pay for additional care out of pocket? Are you at risk of reaching your policy's annual limit? If you answered "yes" to most of those questions, then you might not need supplemental insurance. If you have a savings account that you can dip into to cover extra costs, you can skip it and pay less per month. However, if you do not have a lot saved up, paying a few dollars more per month for supplemental insurance could save you if you suffer a health crisis. Take a look at your financial situation, your current health insurance, and your overall health and make an informed decision. Protect Yourself: Supplemental insurance is a great way to protect yourself from uncovered medical expenses. But as the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You can help prevent runaway medical costs by taking care of your health. For more articles about how you can stay healthy, visit the health & fitness section of our blog! Read Also: How To Get Low-Cost Life Insurance For Seniors Small Business Guide To Private Health Insurance Exchanges
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How to Protect Your Property as a First Time Landlord?
No matter what route you take to the rental market, you’re making an exciting step in life. Many people believe that becoming a landlord is fail-proof. However, although the process can be both financially and mentally rewarding, there are downsides and potential pitfalls. Renting out a second property is ideally an investment and, as such, several risks come with it. As a result, you need to protect your investment and mitigate against risk. Here’s how you can do just that to make sure that you are getting returns for your investment. 1. Take Out Insurance Being The Landlord: Traditional insurance doesn’t usually cover rental properties. As a result, you should take out specialist landlord insurance. As well as protecting your home in the same way traditional home insurance would, landlord insurance can protect you against other problems, such as unpaid rent or a tenant injuring themselves at your property. Get a company that offers the best insurance deals to landlords and insure your property with them. 2. Draw Up the Correct Contract: The correct tenancy agreement can help you in case you need to evict a tenant or take action against them. The vast majority of rental agreements come to an amicable end, but there may be times when you need to evict your tenant. A correct tenancy agreement will provide you with the framework to issue either a Section 21 notice (giving them two months’ notice) or a Section 8 notice, which allows the person to seek possession under particular grounds such as rent regions and anti-social behaviour (more information on both of these notices can be found here). Make sure that the tenancy agreement that you craft will protect you under all circumstances. 3. Take A Security Deposit: Taking a security deposit or a damage deposit (usually a month’s rent) allows you to protect you and your property against any breakages or damages. It is important to put these measures in place if you want to be sure that you are on the safe side. You must place the deposit in a concern that is regulated by a government deposit scheme, such as the Deposit Protection Service, MyDeposits or the Tenancy Deposit Scheme. The deposit is then returned to the tenant at the end of the tenancy unless they fail to meet the terms of a tenancy agreement, cause damage to the property or fail to pay rent and bills. 4. Ensure There’s an Inventory: Before your tenant moves in, you should complete an inventory of everything currently in the property. As well as listing everything currently in the property, you should also list its current state, including any dents, scratches or stains. Once this is complete, you should have a walk around the property with the tenant. Then you can both confirm everything listed is present and the condition described is accurate. When this process has been completed, you should both sign and date the inventory. 5. Have a Financial Buffer: Finally, you should ensure you have a financial buffer, in case you have to pay for running repairs. The costs for running a rental property can quickly stack up. Although you could take out an installment loan to finance any major payments, it’s advisable to have a pot of savings before you begin, in case you need to finance any running repairs. Read Also: Is Property Investment Still A Good Way To Make Money? 6 Expert Tips For Finding The Right Home To Buy
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How to Protect Your Finances While in a Nursing Home
It is usually the case that very few seniors know what rights they have when it comes to long-term care, as well as their options when it comes to their finances. Many people will either avoid thinking and planning about the issue or develop a faith that they won’t need senior care when they grow older. The statistics point out that nearly 70 percent of Americans age 65 and older will need some kind of long-term care for their sunset years. Nursing Home bills can be expensive if you are not aware of it. When it comes to payment for nursing home costs, you will typically use a combination of Medicaid, long-term care insurance, assuming you took out a policy and have been faithful with the premiums and money out of your own pocket. Paying for it out of your own pocket or some form of insurance will take a lot of planning beforehand and savings as well. Because most people don’t do this, they instead turn to Medicaid. A Look in Medicaid Of Nursing Home: Medicaid isn’t like Medicare, which doesn’t cover long-term care. Medicaid is a means-tested system which means that you can only qualify if you have a low income, own a small amount of money or assets or both. It is usually the case that seniors will want to preserve their money, either to pass it on to their families or simply because they want to preserve it. The problem is that Medicaid has strict requirements that do not allow for this. Medicaid requires Americans to spend money out of their pockets before the program steps in. If a senior American gives their assets away to their families, then Medicaid has a 60-month look-back period where they will look for this inheritance and hit the senior with a penalty period where they will be disqualified from Medicaid. There are, however, various legal strategies you can use to protect your finances, according to The National Association of Nursing Home Attorneys. Put Your Money in an Asset Protection Trust: These trusts, as you might imagine, are designed to protect your wealth. You can, however, use it to protect your money in other instances as well. When you pass your assets along to a properly designed trust, then that property no longer belongs to you. It is therefore not within reach of any creditors or even Medicaid. Make sure you make the transfer more than five years before you need long-term care because it could still come within the look-back period of Medicaid. Put Your Money in an Income Trust: You have to deal with income limits when you apply for Medicaid. If your income exceeds that limit, it will be considered as excess. To avoid this situation, you can put your money in either a pooled income trust or a Qualified Income Trust. Qualified income trusts are designed to hold any of your excess income. It is an irrevocable income trust. A pooled income trust, on the other hand, is used to hold excess income for disabled individuals. The income from many such individuals is pooled together managed by a not-for-profit organization. Caregiver Agreements: This can prove to be a useful strategy in some situations. It is useful when the individual would like to access extra services that Medicaid does not cover. You can get a friend or family member that has taken some time off from work to provide you with these services and pay them an income for it. It is an excellent way to ensure you are cared for by someone you trust and also to reduce your countable resources from Medicaid’s perspective. Read Also: Everything You Need To Know About Term Insurance Plan Premium How To Choose The Best Auto Insurance Company?
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Five Reasons Your Business Needs Incident Management Software
There are all kinds of ingredients that go into making a business successful. You have the obvious things such as providing products and services that customers/clients want and need, you need both online and offline marketing tools, a strong business plan and, of course, cash flow. Then there are those things that don’t always get talked about as much, but that can help to streamline processes, provide a better customer experience, save the company money, and just make things more efficient overall. One of those less talked about tools in ensuring that your business reaches its maximum level of success is IT incident management software. Now, this may not be something your company currently has, nor are you convinced you need it. Here we’ll take a look at the top reasons your business does, in fact, need the software, and why it’s time you went ahead and invested in it. It's All About Efficiency: When it comes down to it, efficiency in a business can either make it or break it. If a company has found ways to be efficient in all different aspects and levels of the company, then its odds of being successful are much better. IT incident management software is a great way to improve efficiency. Sure, your IT staff are important, and they probably do a great job, but they also need the right tools at their disposal. This kind of software allows them to elevate their degree of effectiveness in your company. Take, for example, theSysAid ITIL incident management software, which allows users to log, manage, process, and then report on any and all IT issues that arise. It’s a streamlined approach that ensures all incidents are caught and made note of, so they can be corrected. Make It Possible for Employees to Work Remotely: Today there is a real push for employees to be able to work remotely, but that also means they need the right tools at their fingertips. With incident management software, they will be able to access it no matter where they are, which means they won’t miss a beat. Put in Place Standardized Procedures: With dedicated IT management software, there will also be a standardized process that is put in place. This means all staff will need to follow a specific list of procedures and steps, which means everyone is on the same page and nothing slips through the cracks. It helps to eliminate questions regarding what each person is expected to do when an incident pops up. Enjoy Cost Savings: By using incident management software, you and the company can also enjoy reduced costs. This type of software is designed to save money and time, which helps the bottom line. Prioritize the Workload: Another way this software can help us to prioritize the workload and tickets. Let's face it, not all issues are urgent; some can stand to wait a bit. A Wise Investment for Businesses: When looking for ways to streamline your business and make things more efficient, IT incident management software could be the solution to all your problems, thanks to the many benefits it provides. Read Also: Tips To Choose The Best Inventory Management Software
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Car Battery Maintenance 101
Here’s a fact to get the ball rolling; Did you know? Majority of car breakdowns are due to a simple battery failure. Car Battery Maintenance can reduce the chances of your car breaking down. That’s right! Batteries, an invention of the 1800s still very much useful today. Power windows, music system, headlights, auxiliaries and what not, car batteries are an essential part of an automobile. A car battery has a limited lifespan, a well-maintained car battery should last you around 3-5 years, But many find that they have to replace their car battery every 1 to 2 years. A poorly maintained battery loses its capacity to hold a charge and eventually fails. So, if you want to avoid the inconvenience of an unexpected breakdown simultaneously ensuring a prolonged battery life, we are here with 5 simple tips on car battery maintenance. 1. Always keep the battery terminals corrosion-free: One of the most recurrent problems with battery is corrosion build-up on the negative and positive terminals. Corrosion acts as a barrier between the battery and the vehicle thereby breaking the connection. A simple fix for this can be a light scrubbing with an abrasive pad to dislodge the crud build-up from the terminals. Car battery maintenance can minimize the chances of corrosion. Top Tip: add a dab of vaseline to the terminals to prevent further corrosion 2. Do not operate any electronics during startup: When the engine is running, the car alternator generates electricity and charges the car battery, but when the engine is off, the car relies on battery power only. So, it is important to limit the use of any electronics just before or while starting the car to avoid unnecessary load on the battery. Top Tip: switch off the AC and the music system before cranking the car to avoid damage to the battery. 3. Full charge your car battery at least once every month: Did you know? Your car draws power from the battery even when the car is off. This is required for the anti-theft system to function. Make a habit of charging your car battery every month or two to avoid a dead battery situation. This will also help the battery maintain a healthy charge density and prolong its life. Invest in a good battery charger for your vehicle if you don't wish to visit a garage every month. 4. Check your car’s alternator for car battery maintenance: An Alternator is a very crucial component responsible for charging the car battery when the engine is running. So, it becomes very important to ensure a functional alternator for a healthy battery life. Get the alternator checked every time you visit a garage. Telltale signs of a failing alternator include; battery warning light on the dashboard, flickering headlights, engine cranking issues, and other electronic failures. 5. Do not overload your car battery with accessories: Auxiliary fog lamps, high power music system, novelty lighting. These are all power hungry accessories draining the life out of your car battery. Every car battery has a load limit and can take only much before failing. Car battery maintenance can make your car move faster. So, go easy with those fancy lights you’ve just bought off Amazon, and check if your battery is capable of taking the increased loads. Bonus Tip: Always top-up car battery with distilled water ONLY: In this day and age of “No-Maintenance” batteries, you don’t have to periodically refill the batteries with water anymore. But still, all car batteries require a specific level of distilled water to function optimally. Distilled water is required for the proper flow of electricity in the battery. Using normal tap water which contains metal ions can permanently damage the electrodes causing a degradation in charging capacity of a battery. Low water level can damage the cells inside the battery causing a failure. Visit your nearest hardware store for a litre of distilled battery water. Read Also: Car Insurance For Electric Vehicles Explained Important Tips To Maintain Your Luxury Car
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5 Traditional Marketing Techniques That Still Work
It is the age of digital marketing but that doesn’t mean businesses should abandon traditional methods of promoting their products or services. While many people seem permanently attached to their smartphones, some people choose not to be constantly connected. Since these people may still be interested in what you have to offer, you will need to reach them through traditional marketing techniques. Digital and traditional strategies can work well together. Let’s discuss some of the old-school techniques which continue to bring in business. 5 Traditional Marketing Techniques That Still Work: 1. Neon Signs: Signage is still an excellent form of promotion and neon signs are still impactful. They are vibrant and highly visible even from a distance, yet inexpensive. This is especially helpful for small or new businesses that need lots of exposure but don’t have a huge marketing budget. Neon signs can be made in almost any shape and size so they can be used for logos, words, or anything else you may have in mind. These signs are easy to set up and they last a long time. They are great for bars, gaming lounges, tattoo parlors, and other fun, edgy businesses. 2. Billboards: Billboards are another convenient way to get your message across using visuals. The 2017 Nielsen Poster Advertising Study provides evidence that customers still respond to this traditional marketing technique. They are perfect for communicating evergreen content to large numbers of potential customers over an extended period of time. People driving along the highway or other busy streets can’t help but notice a large compelling image or carefully crafted word. Since many people take the same route every day, they will see your message frequently. If you have a product with mass appeal, billboards should be used in conjunction with your digital marketing efforts. 3. Direct Mail: Email marketing is a key part of many digital marketing strategies but you shouldn’t neglect traditional direct mail. In fact, it’s making a comeback, so you may want to prepare hard copies of your catalogs. Emails often end up in the spam folder or get ignored or deleted because people get so many of them. Direct mail is on the decline so recipients are more likely to open an envelope that comes to their home. It also seems more personal than email and is more likely to get a response. Direct Mailing Services may also bring a greater return on investment. If you're interested in direct mailing, you should take a look at this EDDM guide. 5. Flyers and Brochures: If you have a brick-and-mortar business like a store or a restaurant, don’t underestimate the power of handing out flyers and brochures. Brochures help you to share lots of information about your products or services in a tangible form. Flyers, on the other hand, are an excellent way to notify people about sales or offer special discounts. These handouts also allow representatives of your business to interact with potential customers and answer their questions. 6. Telemarketing: Don’t dismiss the idea of cold-calling in the 21st century. Research suggests calls have conversion rates of between 30 to 50%, making them one of the most effective marketing solutions. Calls were found to last almost 16 times longer than a website interaction so this traditional marketing technique should not be dismissed. Telemarketing is especially helpful in the B2B sector where you can properly segment your markets. It’s also great if you’re looking to upsell current customers or clients. Random calls will not have high conversion rates so you need to do your research and have a strategy before you pick up the phone. It’s easy to think that you should focus solely on digital marketing. However, some of the best promotion strategies involve both modern and traditional marketing efforts. Neon signs, billboards, direct mail, flyers and brochures, and telemarketing can all work well depending on your locale and target market. Read Also: Signs Your Traditional Marketing Campaign Is Working Digital Marketing: Utilize Facebook To Support Your Hospitality Business Why Every Business Needs Digital Marketing
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What’s new in soil stabilization
With increasing urbanization, population growth and the need for reliable infrastructure, it’s not surprising that the need for a diverse set of soil stabilization techniques suitable for a variety of soil and project conditions has seen matching growth. In 2017, the global soil stabilization market reached a massive US $22 Billion, and is expected to reach US $29 billion by 2023. Here we take a look at some of the soil stabilization techniques leading the field in innovation and market growth. Chemical stabilization through the addition of Lime: The addition of lime, lime kiln dust or quicklime is a popular form of soil modification and stabilization for all types of soft soils, especially wet, fine-grained and clay soils. Essentially it reacts with clay molecules, which hardens and dries out the soil with which it is mixed, improving stability and soil compressibility. Lime is the oldest soil stabilization technique still in use today and can be greatly advantageous for particularly muddy construction sites which make accessing the site difficult, and it’s also cheap. It does, however, have several disadvantages too. The production process is very energy intensive, resulting in large CO2 emissions, as high as 1.2 tons of CO2 per ton of lime produced. Achieving homogenous application is tricky, there is risk of environmental toxicity, and application over very soft soil is problematic due to the heavy earth-mixing equipment required for application. Mechanical soil stabilization through the use of Geocell engineering: Although geocells have been around since the 1970’s, the increasing global demand for more environmentally sustainable and cost-effective construction techniques has seen renewed interest in their use. Geocells – a type of geosynthetic – are constructed from strips of a novel polymeric alloy called Neoloy, which are welded together to form a honeycomb-like grid when stretched out on site. They are then filled in with local granular materials that are readily available, such as sandy soils or even recycled asphalt paving (RAP). The main environmental benefits include the ability to utilize local granular materials for infill rather than hauling in high-quality aggregates from quarries, a reduction in the required pavement thickness, improved durability of projects, and the ongoing cost benefit of reduced maintenance requirements. While awareness of this technology remains its biggest challenge, it is gaining a reputation as a good option for projects with poor soil or challenging environmental conditions. One prime example of this was the construction of an all-weather access road for MEG Energy in the Muskeg peat bog, which made use of geocell engineering in Canada. Some of the challenges facing the engineers on site included moving vehicles and materials around on the saturated, acidic soil, as well as subzero winter temperatures, extremely poor drainage and heavy rains which meant much of the site was essentially a swamp – described, in fact, as an ‘engineering nightmare’. An example of the less than ideal working conditions – geocell layer visible in back Because the peat bog soil was too deep and poorly drained for soil replacement, it soon became clear that the use of heavy-duty Neoloy geocells was the only feasible solution. Local geocell experts designed a reinforced road using one to three layers of Neoloy geocells, depending on the saturation level of the area in question. Once in place, the geocells were filled in with sand from locally available borrow pits and then compacted. The geocell layers formed a semi-rigid mattress, or a ‘floating road’ over the swampy soil. The benefits of geocell mechanical soil stabilization include: reducing stress by distributing vertical loads and extending the life of the road – meaning that even heavy rigs and construction equipment could now traverse the peat bog on a regular basis. Compaction grouting for sinkhole remediation: Building much-needed apartment housing is one thing but doing so on an area of land which is essentially one giant sinkhole is another matter altogether! This was the challenge facing contractors trying to put up a new five story complex in King of Prussia in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Understandably, no work on the apartment building could begin until the underlying dolomite subsoil was stabilized. The solution they arrived at was the use of compaction grouting, which involves drilling columns in a grid-like pattern, and then injecting a low-mobility soil-cement grout into the holes at high pressures. This process compacts coarse-grained soils and displaces fine-grained soils, allowing the construction site to withstand higher bearing pressures and reduce settlement – both very important in an area to prone to sinkholes. Under normal conditions, a soil profile increases in strength with depth – but on this site, the dense clays were on the surface, with weaker soils above the bedrock – hence the tendency for sinkholes to form. Drilling down to reach the unstable layer was therefore the best solution in this scenario. To complete the stabilization, the contractor - Compaction Grouting Services, Inc. or CGS - needed to drill 626 separate holes, and pump in 820 cubic yards of grout at an average pressure of 300 psi. And despite a number of challenges, including snow, rain and muddy conditions as well as a small sinkhole which opened up in an area which hadn’t been grouted – they managed to finish a day ahead of schedule. Read Also: Proper Waste Disposal And Recycling: Things To Remember Edmonton Landscape Maintenance Tips
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Business potential of stock broking agencies in India
Over the last few years, quite a few stock brokers have been forced to shut shop due to weak business. This is true not only of broking but also of other businesses where automation has been taking its toll. To survive and thrive in the stock broking business you need to be able to extrapolate the key trends in stock broking and position yourself accordingly. How do you differentiate yourself as a stock broker? That is the only way you can realize the full potential of stock broking. Remember, each year Indian investors are investing more than $25 billion into equities either in direct equities or via equity and ELSS funds. That is a lot of money. How do you grab the most of this potential? There are five things that you need to be aware of. The industry is getting divided into two segments: In the broking industry, you either need to run with the hares or hunt with the hounds. The broking industry as a whole is getting stratified into the zero brokerage discount brokers and the full-service brokers. The room for the in-between brokers is increasingly reducing. If you want to be a discount broker then focus on an efficient offering at a very low cost. Alternatively, if you want to be at the full-service end then you need to be prepared to invest in research and technology. In the past, there was room for the median brokers who were somewhere between the full-service brokers and the discount brokers. With both these categories of brokers pushing their boundaries, the gap in between is getting squeezed. First, be clear on your positioning and your strategy should follow after that. Be clear on the value proposition: This is a logical corollary to the first point. What is your value proposition? Are you offering the lowest brokerage in the market? That is an advantage that is hard to sustain over longer periods of time and the model is always vulnerable to sudden changes in the market undertone. Secondly, are you offering the best advisory services in the business? This called multi-level skills in portfolio design, need understanding, portfolio customization, portfolio review etc. This is quite complicated and any advisory is always open to an opinion about success and failure. In a competitive market, this can work both ways. Lastly, is technology your USP? In the past, technology was just a tool, but that has changed. Today it is possible to look at broking as a software company and offering a robust trading model that is super efficient and intelligent. Automate and employ technology intelligently: If you look at how brokers are adding value to their customers, most of the value addition in the last few years is coming through technology. Thanks to broadband and the use of smartphones, it is possible to trade on the fly using your mobile app. Brokers are also employing artificial intelligence and machine learning to make machines increasingly think and strategize like humans. And then there is the all-powerful call to action. Here the customer is guided seamlessly through research, screening, and execution without really realizing that they are different parts of the trading system. Engage the customer continuously through financial planning: Broking is increasingly commoditized. That is more the case when you try to offer broking as a solution rather than as a service. For an investor, the solution is the creation of wealth in the long term. The solution could also be managing risk. The solution could also entail profiting from short-term trends. Most often brokers tend to confuse between the product and the solution. Focus on the solution in this industry. When you are in the financial services industry you always start with the financial goal in mind. Help the client identify long-term goals and then prepare a plan to reach these goals. As a broker you will find out how easily equity, mutual funds, and even bond sit prettily into this scheme of things. That is the best way to increase your customer engagement and improve your ROI per customer. It is just that in this case, the ROI flows naturally. Provide a delivery platform that simple, elegant and actionable: One of the critical success factors in the broking industry will be the variety and robustness of the delivery platform that you offer. If you offer more platforms like online, offline, mobile, call-n-trade, SMS trading, non-market trades etc, then your chances of engaging the customer meaningfully is much higher. Your delivery platform should also be seamless such that the movement between research ideas; advise, screening and execution should be smooth and with minimum clicks. That is when the clients can actually experience the value proposition. The key issue here is that the opportunity in the broking industry is still huge. It is just that the nature of the opportunity is changing. As a broker, you need to position yourself in the bracket that reflects your core strengths the best. The rest will follow! Read Also: How To Become A Sub-Broker? How Businesses Can Use Stock Trading
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