Center for Applied Technology-Small Business Center

Cherokee County Center for Applied Technology

Marble, NC 28905

This course is about the craft of creating a plan for your business. The business plan is the essential document used to raise money for a business and communicate your business vision and strategy to your management team, suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders. This ten-part course walks you through the details and tactics of creating a comprehensive plan while helping you avoid the critical planning mistakes that plague most business plans. As an added bonus, this course comes with Activeplans Business Planning Software which helps you create a plan narrative and financial projections through a simple step-by-step approach--a $40.00 value by itself!

Speaker: Small Biz U

Creating Buzz is one of the most comprehensive courses on how marketing is actually executed in a small business. Your marketing agenda as an entrepreneur is vastly different than that of a member of the Fortune 500. Some of the principles may be the same, but the details are different. The theory of creating buzz is that your primary investments should be time, energy, and imagination. In other words, you are shooting for a high return on imagination as opposed to return on investment. But buzz just doesn't happen by itself. Instead, it must be carefully cultivated and strategically crafted with an underlying architecture. Most of today's marketing still focuses on how to use advertising and other tools to influence each customer individually, ignoring the fact that purchasing is part of a social process. The most expensive marketing expenditure for any organization usually comes in educating your market-in placing your message into the targeted group of consumers you have chosen. Yet, your customers have already self-organized themselves into networks at the micro level. By tapping into these self-organized networks you can inject your message directly into the bloodstream of your targeted market. What you are really trying to do when you are marketing a concept is to have it spread in much the same way as an epidemic does through a network. Networks have properties, hidden in their construction, that limit or enhance our ability to do things with them. Creating Buzz details exactly how customer networks operate and how to select and leverage your marketing weapons to best turn your message into action. Creating Buzz is packed-full of hundreds of strategies, checklists, and tips across the realms of network theory, positioning, advertising media, word-of-mouth campaigns, publicity, and public relations. From informal, easy-to-do tactics to full-fledged formal marketing plans, the lessons taught in this course are paramount to anyone growing an organization.

Speaker: Small Biz U

This course presents a media-by-media discussion of the tips and tricks used by marketing professionals when advertising a product or service. Learn how to set an advertising budget, learn why it's better to run two smaller ads than one larger one, learn how to correctly position your product and how to best design an effective marketing message, and learn what you need to know about selecting media for an ad campaign. This course also presents an overview of public relations tactics and internet marketing practices. At its conclusion, this course details specific measures how to assess the success of your results.

Speaker: Small Biz U

HP Learning Initiative for Entrepreneurs (HP LIFE) is a global program that offers aspiring entrepreneurs and small business-owners valuable business skills. HP LIFE offers participants a path to realizing their business dreams. The NC Small Business Center Network, in partnership with the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE), is pleased to offer this innovative program to NC entrepreneurs and small business owners free of charge! This program is self-paced, making it possible for more aspiring entrepreneurs to participate. All you have to do is register to start.

Speaker: Various