Lending Institutions and hedge funds have dried up. Scams like shelf corporations and platform based funding are on the rise so where can an entrepreneur turn to raise capital? It’s sad to be faced with the reality that legitimate fund raising methods have fallen into a minority position in today’s depressed economy.

Business owners still need expansion capital, start-up companies need seed capital, how can the owners of these companies bypass the learning curve set in place by the online scammers and find the legitimate ways of raising capital? There are two solid ways of raising capital that are supported by the SEC and can have you raising capital without the drawbacks of dealing with people that just want to take your money and run, Private Placement Memorandums and OTCBB.

1st, Private Placement Memorandums allow the business to raise capital under the umbrella of three Regulation D rule exemptions: 504, 505 and 506. Also referred to as a PPM or Offering Memorandum, a Private Placement Memorandum allows you to raise capital, legitimately with an SEC supported and approve process that uses the laws pivoting off of the’33 Securities Act that helps entrepreneurs raise capital legitimately and safely. All are protected with a well written PPM.

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Are you a business owner raising capital with a Regulation D Rule exemption (504, 505 or 506) also referred to as a Private Placement Memorandum, PPM or Offering Memorandum? If you are using this mechanism to raise capital then you’ll, no doubt, have to have a solid comprehension of the most distinct and important part of the Private Placement Memorandum referred to as the ‘Offering Circular’.

When your consultant or attorney is asking you for details on everything from business location to management, from dividends to risk details, you need to make sure that this information is complete and accurate. You’ll need to audit the documents after they are completed. A solid Offering Circular has kept countless companies from being sued by investors that didn’t get the investment return they were anticipating.

While the business plan is meant to grab the initial attention of the investor or funding source, the Offering Memorandum is meant to spell out the down and dirty details of the venture so that you are protected from lawsuits down the road, while simultaneously exposing the various ins and outs of your venture to give a ‘reality check’ to the investor before they hand over the cash.

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Hey you! Yeah you! Do you want to fine tune your publicity marketing plan. Publicity without tapping into the emotions of the individual is just a blur of words and sounds in a language that no one can understand. Publicity that plays the strings of human emotion suddenly becomes the sirens song that brings the masses to your doorstep. Publicity with an aim of tugging at the heart, getting to the root of human desire and the call to action as the solution to all their emotional, spiritual and greedy needs transforms a simple branding message into a ‘come to Jesus’ message at the end of a televangelists tent meeting where the mind and heart have been softened and the masses come clamoring to the front to be saved.

Reaching into the emotions of the public must be done in a stealthy manner. The publicist or marketing professional must place the media in such a way where the future client is constantly bouncing into the brand message each day.

An extremely powerful way to do this is by understanding the subconscious mind of the client so that their online web search habits can be predicted and patterned so that in every direction they are being politely bombarded with your brand message as the be all and end all solution for whatever ails them.

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I laugh when I turn on the television to see an author on a talk show telling the audience about their book or flip on the radio in my car and hear the morning DJ interviewing a self proclaimed expert of some new weight loss program where you can lose 500 pounds in 48 hours.

I’m not laughing because of the content but because I know how much they had to pay a publicist to get that interview. I know that all the questions are predetermined and that the publicist who convinced this individual that TV and radio were the only way to get in front of the public is living in the’70′s and can’t seem to adjust to the new concepts of massive publicity for pennies and the young, hip publicists that have transformed the process of ga

I don’t mean to offend any publicists out there but I’m going to tell the public a little secret. If you are seeking massive explosions of publicity for your business, book, musical act or future celebrity, there is a process that will blast your ‘brand’ to 10,000,000′s overnight. There is a process that will put your brand in front of your target market in hours, not weeks. There is no waiting on approval from a television network or radio channel.

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With all the free article submission sites online, there is no shortage of self proclaimed Publicity Marketing gurus out there. Pathetically most of these businesses are fly by nights seeking quick profits without the true experience and ability to actually perform the task they were hired for.

It is important to realize that most of these publicity marketing firms are simply affiliates and resellers for multiple vendors as well as back link and submission sites. The problem is, with a service that is 100% outsourced the company you’re hiring doesn’t have a real understanding of how to put a solid, long-term plan together that will reap fast and ongoing results that will raise name awareness, increase website traffic and brand you as an industry expert.

Before one hires a publicity marketing group, prequalify this company by asking the following questions: First, What genres of online publicity marketing do they cover? Here is the information you need.

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The process of bringing in huge amounts of powerful publicity to increase brand awareness and client conversion rate while simultaneously increasing client satisfaction can easily be achieved in just a few steps.

To start off you need to understand that publicity and marketing are actually the same thing because the former, if done properly, achieves both branding and client conversion. A business that is trying to raise awareness of a particular brand or product must first realize the cynical mind of today’s buyer.

Before you can prompt a client to buy you must first gain legitimacy. Legitimacy can be achieved via online methods such as web commercial uploads to video hosting sites, helpful article submissions, social and news bookmarking that answers questions for potential customers as well as video and audio pod-casting.

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With the plummet of the economy and banks holding on to the bailout money they were supposed to be lending that was meant to stimulate the economy, the entrepreneurs are once again, thrown to the wolves.

Now there are wanna be consultants popping up on the web who are reselling private placement memorandum authoring services. It’s unbelievable to think that a company will spend $5,000 to $20,000 with an absolute amateur who doesn’t know the first thing about a PPM or the legalities of this document that can lead to the client getting sued by investors down the road.

Who is looking out for the client? Sadly, no one seems to be looking past the almighty dollar and actually trying to help the entrepreneur succeed in raising the capital they need to grow their business which will lead to job creation and stimulating the economy. If you’re a business that’s trying to raise capital here is some advice on how to prequalify a Private Memorandum service to find out if they are truly the author of your document or if they are simply using a template that will get you burned down the road or if they are simply taking your money and outsourcing the service to another group that has no real compression of this intricate document.

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