Special April 7 Marketing Workshop

In today's fragile and challenging economy, having an effective marketing plan is essential to business survival.

This special Marketing Workshop is aimed at owners of existing businesses, start-up businesses or anyone thinking about creating a business.

SCORE's new marketing workshop helps you:

- decide on the right budget
- choose the best strategies for maximizing your return on investment
- build your plan for continuing profit and growth.

Carol Aubtiz, President of Excelsior Marketing, leads the session. For more than thirty-five years Carol has created marketing plans and designed successful strategies for a wide range of businesses, from small family operations to giant international corporations. She has helped clients through four recessionary periods, from the 1970s through the post 9/11 crisis. She writes the weekly marketing e-mail newsletter, The Monday Morning Muse, and is author of the book, "The Entrepreneur's Guide to Marketing."

Workshop participants will learn:

. How to set goals to generate leads and sales
. Best ways to define and prioritize customers to achieve maximum profits
. How to establish the right-sized marketing budget
. Methods to evaluate media and media choices
. How to adjust a plan for seasonality, cycles and market changes
. Ways to integrate marketing with media
. Developing predictive models for market results
. How to measure and evaluate marketing effectiveness

This SCORE workshop is presented on Tuesday, April 7 -- 6:30-9:00 p.m. at the SCORE Learning Center, Liberty Place, 313 Liberty Street, Room 231, Lancaster, PA.

REGISTER NOW!

It's All About Workshops

This SCORE Lancaster Blogspot resource is shifting its focus away from timely small business news in order to emphasize the many workshops that SCORE Lancaster offers to help aspiring Lancaster County entrepreneurs.

We are planning on making this site a one stop center for people interested in learning more about starting and growing small business.

Stay tuned.

Visit us at http://scorelancaster.wordpress.com for timely small business news that affects Lancaster.

Facts About Federal Grants

SCORE Lancaster is frequently asked how to get government grants. Many people contact us after viewing late night infomercials which advertise “millions in free money.” They are hoping SCORE can put them in touch with that “free money.”

The reality is that the infomercials are hype designed to get unsuspecting people to pay money to buy a “grant information package” or sign up for some grant application software package.

It is true that there are many grants shown on the federal government’s website www.grants.gov. It is equally true that very few of them are available to individuals and NONE of them are available for personal financial assistance or business start-up help.

A grant from a federal agency is an award of financial assistance that will enable the recipient to carry out a public purpose of support or stimulation that is authorized by a law of the United States.

In all, there are 26 federal agencies offering over 1,000 grant programs annually in various categories.

There are many groups and organizations eligible to apply for government grants. Typically, most grantee organizations are government entities (state, local, city, township or special public authorities), educational institutions (school districts, colleges and universities) and not-for-profit organizations. In certain instances small business grants may be awarded to companies that meet U.S. Small Business Administration size standards.

The most common size standards are as follows:

• under 500 employees for most manufacturing and mining industries
• under 100 employees for all wholesale trade industries
• less than $6 million for most retail and service industries
• below $28.5 million for most general & heavy construction industries
• under $12 million for all special trade contractors
• less than $750,000 for most agricultural businesses

With few exceptions, all federal agencies, and many state and local governments, use these size standards established by SBA. You can search for further information about small business loan opportunities on the Small Business Administration’s website.

You can also explore other government sponsored loan opportunities at http://www.govloans.gov .

To find a complete alphabetical listing of governmental assistance for individual citizens, visit USA.gov website’s Government Benefits, Grants, and Financial Aid page.

If you are a business or a non-profit and would like more information and answers about government grants that might be available for your situation, contact SCORE Lancaster at (717) 397-3092. The office is open weekdays from 10AM to 2PM.

Visit our new Blog at http://scorelancaster.wordpress.com

Score Lancaster Blog Moves to Wordpress

The Score Lancaster Blog is migrating to Wordpress.com because the Wordpress blogging application has features that gives Score Lancaster more flexibility in presenting news and information to you.

Please visit us at http://scorelancaster.wordpress.com