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PubCo
offers the ultimate investor relations tool:
The
StockholderSaver™ Member Website System
It's unique - no one
else has it.
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Here
are a few of its major, lasting benefits:
- establish
better and closer relations with shareholders
- find out
who and where your stockholders are
- establish
better relations with stock brokers and financial
institutions
- find out
which stock brokers actually move the company's
shares
- learn
why shareholders bought and why they will keep
or sell the shares
- encourage
longer share retention in shareholders
- encourage
stockholders to buy more shares
- encourage
stockholders to introduce the company to their
friends
- monitor
ebbs and flows in stock ownership
- measure
the effectiveness of stock promotion and awareness
campaign
- save money
in delivering documents to shareholders
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Our
proprietary StockholderSaver™ Member Website
Systemoffers offers the ultimate investor
relations tool.
It is difficult, and expensive, to attract
new shareholders. Why not just keep them?
We show you how.
And it's not expensive.
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Public
Company Solutions (PubCo)
has designed and built the - the world's only
fully integrated technology for offering member websites
to public companies. It offers great functionality,
easy and fast administration, and our customers do not
need to have a
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programmer or database
specialist on staff in order to use it. Our system is
inexpensive yet fully equivalent to a system that database
engineers would charge tens of thousands of dollars
for. Our customers can start with the basic package
and add on modules as they need them. Importantly, we
offer highly sophisticated promotional services that
are also highly cost effective.
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The
Opportunity
For
most small public companies (we call them SmallCo's),
many of their shareholders are invisible, unknown and
completely mysterious. The people and institutions who
buy a SmallCo's stock through the market hold their
shares in street name. The company has little clue who
they are, where they are, how many shares they own,
why they bought and why they will keep or sell the shares
- other than based purely on price. Just as bad, SmallCo's
typically have little clue which brokers sold the shares
to SmallCo shareholders or which financial institutions
(brokerages, hedge funds and others) have an interest
in the company. Institutions might have customers invested
in the stock, might have their own money in the stock,
or might just be watching the company. Who are they
and how can they be found? These are some of the most
important bits of information imaginable about one's
shareholders and critical financial institutions, yet
rare is the SmallCo with answers to any of these questions.
Here
are just some of the opportunities that SmallCo's universally
are missing:
- create a community
of you and your shareholders
- establish
closer and more trusting relations with shareholders
- find out
who the hidden - OBO - stockholders are
- cultivate
stock brokers and financial institutions
- that are
already interested in your company
- that are
already close to your shareholders
- find out
which stock brokers actually move the company's shares
- freeze selling
by your shareholders
- stop the
broker churn
- encourage
longer share retention in shareholders
- encourage
stockholders to buy more shares
- encourage
stockholders to introduce the company to their friends
- monitor ebbs
and flows in stock ownership
- measure the
effectiveness of stock promotion and awareness campaigns
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As Internet usage
has exploded, it has become painfully obvious that SmallCo's
have almost completely missed the grand opportunities
offered by the Internet to forge closer relations with
their shareholders, stock brokers and other institutions,
to make their shareholders feel part of the company's
family, to instill in their shareholders a desire to
continue to be a part of that family, and to provide
a legitimate means to excite others about the company
and its prospects. On the contrary, we have noticed
that public company websites almost universally are
boring and virtually useless from an investor relations
standpoint, even when they are successful at marketing
the company's primary business. In other words, most
websites are "brochure" sites that offer little
for shareholders, brokers, financial institutions and
other persons interested in the public company and its
activities.
We launched our
business in 2002 founded on the in order to provide
member websites to public companies that can help them
accomplish these critical goals and which are reliable
and of the highest quality, yet inexpensive. We are
not techies or graphic designers, neither of whom understand
the dynamics of how public companies relate to their
shareholders. While we have depth in software and website
development, we primarily are experts in investor relations,
with many years' experience in the field. We also have
long experience in operating online businesses through
e-commerce websites. We have learned many classic techniques
that create "stickiness" for websites, which means keeping
customers on the site longer and using it more. However,
there is to our knowledge no other firm in the world
besides us that specializes in helping public companies
use their corporate websites to create "shareholder
stickiness" (a term we invented) - - we are
unique.
Why
should a SmallCo care about shareholder stickiness?
Companies that create
a community with their shareholders find that their
shareholders hold their stock longer, are less likely
to sell the stock off, are more likely to buy even more
of the company's stock, and are more "boosterish" about
the company to friends, family and acquaintances.
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Why
Shareholder Stickiness
is Vital
The smaller and
less well-known the company, the more important shareholder
stickiness becomes. The large listed and NasdaqNM companies
are widely held; they have heavy institutional ownership,
full analyst coverage and are heavily traded. Shares
of these large public companies trade to a large degree
on news, analyst reports, earnings announcements and
other information eagerly awaited by the market. Their
trading dynamics simply are different than those of
smaller over-the-counter companies. Small OTC companies
are seldom widely held and almost never have real analyst
coverage. Pension funds, mutual funds and other institutions
rarely own SmallCo's, which are traded on Nasdaq Small
Cap (although even some NasdaqNM companies are SmallCo's),
OTC Bulletin Board or the Electronic Pink Sheets. To
the contrary, shareholders of SmallCo's are almost exclusively
individual investors.
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Anyone
who has run a small OTC company knows how painfully
difficult, and expensive, it is to get the public to
buy its stock. Not many people will.
However, every cloud
has a silver lining, and having a shareholder base almost
exclusively composed of "mom and pop" investors actually
gives the small OTC public company a unique advantage
over larger companies that can be exploited. These
individual shareholders, unlike the traders and institutions
that unemotionally trade in and out of larger companies,
frequently are willing to become part of a community
- an online family - centered on the SmallCo. Related
to properly through a member website, these shareholders
will to a surprising degree consider themselves virtually
as family members in the "company family." Properly
approached and educated, they are more willing to let
the SmallCo breathe, grow and develop. This is how shareholder
stickiness occurs; it is no accident.
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Why
You Need a Member
Website
For public companies
that need, or even truly care about, effective investor
relations and want to build shareholder stickiness,
a member website is absolutely essential. Why?
Because it is absolutely the only way a public company
can create a community of itself and its shareholders.
A member site is one on which shareholders and others
can register and join as members and interact electronically
with the company. Consider just some of the many possible
benefits of membership for your shareholders:
- receive a gorgeous
company newsletter
- get alerts of
upcoming webcasts and conference calls
- receive notice
of corporate events
- receive letters
to shareholders electronically
- receive press
releases electronically
- receive email
alerts of SEC filings by the company and its executives
- receive SEC filings
electronically
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This
is all well and good, but does a member website offer
any direct or indirect benefits
to the SmallCo beyond simply pleasing its shareholders?
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What's
in It for You?
Yes! If you are
a SmallCo, you need our . Here are just a few
of its benefits to the SmallCo:
- establish closer
relations with shareholders, who are then more likely
to hold onto their shares
- find out what
your shareholders want and expect out of their investment
and their relationship with your company - then give
it to them
- shareholders
who already like and trust the company are far more
likely to invest in a new private or public offering;
rights offerings work better
- learn who and
where your stockholders are
- learn the identity
of many of the OBO (hidden) shareholders
- learn which financial
institutions have an interest in your company
- find out which
stock brokers actually move your company's shares
and establish closer relations with them
- learn why shareholders
bought and why they will keep or sell the shares
- encourage stockholders
to buy more shares and to refer their friends and
family to also buy shares
- monitor how well
stock promotion campaigns are working
These are powerful
reasons to build a member website that will pull your
shareholders and critical brokers and financial institutions
into
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the
company's orbit. To the extent it can be controlled,
the SmallCo should seek to control the process of being
public; otherwise the advantages of being public become
fleeting, or evaporate entirely.
No
company has a divine right to its shareholders. You
will only keep them if you take the necessary steps
to keep them.
Too many SmallCo's
are stuck in a horrible rut: low stock price
and low trading volume. And what is the traditional
remedy to this double whammy afflicting so many small
companies? Stock promotion. Yet stock promotion all
too often is not effective. If the promoters (who are
richly paid in tradeable stock and often cash as well)
actually produce real market buying in the SmallCo's
stock, the SmallCo is lucky. If the promotion actually
yields a lasting increase in trading volume and market
price, the SmallCo is very, very lucky. More typically,
the stock promoters accomplish no meaningful increase
- and frequently, produce no results whatever except
to sell off their promotional shares and wreck what
little market the SmallCo has. Ask yourself: how many
stock promotions have you seen that worked and produced
lasting results?
Stock
promotion frequently does no lasting good for the small
public company.
Why spend money getting shareholders if you don't keep
them?
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The
Benefits are Long Lasting
Many of the above
issues are best addressed over the long term by adroit
use of a member website - one in which shareholders,
brokers and financial institutions can interact with
the company in meaningful ways. We have found that shareholders
(particularly individual shareholders) more easily
feel a part of a community when the company is smaller
and the interaction feels more intimate. It is a proven
fact that people who are comfortable being members of
a family more are more likely to want to continue being
part of it. This is a facet of human nature that most
all public companies - and almost all investor relations
firms - don't understand and never exploit. Your shareholders
want to be part of your corporate family and view your
stock as a long-term investment, but only if you give
them a reason to feel that way.
Member websites
allow SmallCo's to create true interactivity,
an honest two-way flow of information, and ultimately
to achieve that sense of community, of family,
of belonging, and of confidence in knowing what your
company is about and where it is going in the future.
Mailing letters, much less full-color materials or larger
publications, to shareholders accomplishes none of those
highly desirable objectives, and is terribly expensive
and wasteful. Only a member website can accomplish these
objectives at reasonable cost.
Ask
yourself, how many small companies send a copy of every
press release to shareholders and interested
institutions?
Almost none.
How
many small companies send a newsletter, or at
least one letter to shareholders and institutions each
month?
Almost none.
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How
many small companies alert their shareholders to every
SEC filing made by the company and its
officers and directors?
Almost none.
How
many small companies regularly send their shareholders
and institutions updated information packages
on the company?
Almost none.
The
answers to these questions all would all be "none"
except for the fact that PubCo
clients in fact do these things, and do them regularly.
And they do them for the cost of emails… virtually nothing.
HOW?
The member website cures all these limitations.
A handsome, exciting newsletter can be created and sent
out as often as weekly, and it can be full of color,
pictures and other exciting images. Press releases,
with company commentary, can be emailed to members instantaneously
after hitting the wire. Letters to shareholders likewise
can go out in the blink of an eye. A senior officer
can announce a conference call or chat room appearance
for shareholders a day or two before it happens. The
company can survey or poll its shareholders regularly.
SEC filings can be sent to verified shareholders (who
consent to receive them electronically) in the blink
of an eye, without print or mail cost. Updated information
packages, business plans or press kits can be blasted
out to members in an instant with no printing or mailing
costs. These are just some of the ways the member site
can be used. And all these communications are virtually
free and be done as OFTEN as the public company wishes.
That is power.
That is how a small public company takes control
of the process of being public. And that is why we invented
our proprietary - because you need
it.
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Find
and Communicate with Critical Brokers
and Institutions
One of the strongest
selling points of our
system is that it asks members to identify themselves
as stock brokers, brokerage firms or other financial
institutions. This is some of the most powerful information
any public company can have! These persons and firms
have taken the time to register and have identified
themselves, which indicates a clear interest. SmallCo's
are in a position to use this information to their advantage
and to contact such persons in a timely and effective
manner.
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Our
registration form also asks each member for the name
and phone number of his or her personal stock broker.
The information is voluntary, but because a good explanation
of the request is provided, we have found that members
typically will provide it. Think about the power of
this information: a stock broker sold his customer stock
in your company. Don't you want to make the acquaintance
of this broker? Buy him dinner? Perhaps get more information
in his hands and sell him on your company's prospects?
Without a member website, there is no cost-effective
way to get this information. Some shareholders will
enter the name of their online stock brokerage, which
is also valuable information: it means the shareholder
decided on his own to buy your stock.
Think about it.
That is power.
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The
Wrong Way to Handle
Investor Relations
Small public companies
have traditionally used ineffective methods to relate
to shareholders or to induce the public to buy their
stock. Sometimes the methods used backfire, or are illegal…
or both. They buy publicity on "public relations" websites,
induce brokerage firms to sell the company's shares
to customers, buy spam email campaigns, pay for-hire
financial analysts to write puff stories about the company,
and use similar tactics. Sometimes these campaigns work,
but just as often, they don't. There are many websites
that promote small public companies for pay and blast
promotional emails out to their subscribers. Does anyone
really think these methods are effective anymore? They
generally aren't. And they become less effective
every year.
When
a stock is promoted, the promoters convince their followers
to sell another stock to buy yours.
Then
when they promote the next company's stock, guess what
happens to yours?
Think we're wrong?
Consider spam email and banner advertisements. Both
were fabulously effective when first used. But
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today
their effectiveness is almost non-existent, and response
rates are just a tiny fraction of a percent. We belong
to many of these Wall Street-type "stock promoter" websites,
because we like to keep up with how they work. They
mostly publish hype-ish reports on their client companies
and incessantly mail breathless reports on these clients
to their own members. Guess what? There are many, many
traders out there who specialize in shorting small OTC
companies, and they belong to many of these stock promoter
websites.
For most small public
companies, investor relations means no more than having
someone shareholders can call with questions, or to
get more information on the company. Or, investor relations
means using the kinds of frequently ineffective tactics
described above. Listen, we aren't knocking public relations,
traditional investor relations, or stock promotion campaigns.
They can be effective for their intended purpose.
But
these promotional efforts are not enough.
Besides being expensive,
stock promotion efforts only address some of the overall
concerns of a public company. And by their nature, they
are short-term efforts in almost all cases and don't
provide lasting benefits. The public company that wants
truly effective, consistent and lasting
investor relations needs a member website.
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The
Member Website is the Answer
There is no way
around it: the only way to build and cement shareholder
loyalty, to increase their shareholdings, and to convert
website "lurkers" to shareholders, is to build a community
between the public company and website members. The
member website will accomplish the small
OTC company's goals if worked properly. It actually
will build shareholder stickiness, and
does it the right way - without hype, without paying
brokers or analysts, and without spamming the public.
Unfortunately, there is no shortcut. Building this community
takes time and effort. But even a half-hearted effort
will over the long run be far superior to the types
of stock promotion efforts described above. And once
the public company begins the process or building the
community through the member website, it just gets easier
and easier, and it works better and better.
But you ask, is
a member website really necessary? After all,
you heard of a guy with a public company website who
added free discussion boards, then he added a free chat
room. Then he added a simple utility that allowed people
to sign up for press release and other alerts. Isn't
that just as good as our StockholderSaver™ system?
The answer is no.
First
of all, there is no database of shareholders or other
members, so there is no way to know who they are.
Are these users shareholders, competitors, brokers,
or who, exactly? Don't you want to know?
Second,
since there is no database, every utility (discussion
board members, chat members, press release alert subscribers,
etc.) is a separate one that does not interact with
any of the others. So for example, it would not be
possible to assign a username and password to a user
for one utility that could be used on any other utility.
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Such a system
is clumsy and requires manual comparison of lists.
Worsed, if you had no password protection, you would
have no idea who is using the discussion boards and
other utilities.
Third,
even to get all these odds and ends of code together
just to get the utilities to work, you'd better have
a good programmer on staff.
Fourth,
such a pieced-together system does not create a community
because it is one-way from company to users. Being
able to send emails to an unidentified user group
is not interactivity.
Fifth,
to the extent these users are shareholders, you have
no idea why they bought the stock or what their expectations
are. You would have no idea who their brokers are.
We could go on and on.
Trying
to accomplish member-website goals with an ordinary,
non-interactive website
is like entering a Model T Ford in a Formula 1 race;
it's not going to work.
The keys to the
power of a member website are interactivity and
community. Anything less than a member website
will not allow a small public company to realize the
many benefits described above.
Will a member website
make up for poor financial performance, unjustified
hype, broken promises or being in the wrong industry
at the wrong time? No. But a member website can cushion
the blow of shareholder sell offs and dramatically increase
the loyalty of shareholders to the company. There is
no method - we repeat - no method of reaching shareholders
that works as well as the member website. We can show
you the way.
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The
Cost is Unbelievably Low
To have a full membership
website designed from scratch with the features our
websites offer would be fabulously expensive. To have
a web design firm build from scratch a software system
equivalent to our system would cost $40,000 and up.
But that's not
all. To build your own member website system
would require you to have high-salaried software experts
on staff - like programmers and database engineers -
to keep your system
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running.
Or you would have to pay outrageous fees to outsource
these services when you need technical assistance, which
is a lot more often than you think. But when you make
use of our proprietary
system, you don't need any of those tech professionals;
they are on our payroll.
When
you consider our prices, you will be stunned by how
incredibly cost effective
our StockholderSaver™system package really is.
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You
Don't Have to Start
Over
Public companies
that already have websites can install our
system and transform their site into a virtual member
website in a single day. In order to make use of our
system, you don't have to design or build a new website,
because our system works with the website you already
have. Once you are approved for installation, you
simply download
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the
gateway code that connects your website and our servers.
Once this process is complete, your new members can
begin signing up. The sign-up process is so seamless,
most members will never realize that the registration
page is not on your website! And that is the beauty
of the
system: it is transparent to the members. If you don't
have a website, one will have to be built before you
can take advantage of the
system.
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We
Even Help You Do the Seeding
When your member
website is first launched, there are no members. So
how do you obtain members? It is a lot easier than you
think! Your shareholders already own stock in your company,
so of course they will flock to sign up. But you want
to get them signing up fast. Several techniques are
used, and we can be a big help to you with our Membership
Promotion Service, which really explodes
your signup results. In fact, several techniques can
be used, many of which you can easily and cheaply do
yourself:
First,
you issue a special press release that we write at
no cost to you, announcing the website and
its membership benefits, urging shareholders, brokers
and other interested persons to join. The signup process
goes faster if you offer some sort of promotional
incentive for them to join, such as a free cap or
tee-shirt, but an incentive usually is not necessary.
Second,
you briefly mention the member website in every subsequent
press release.
Third,
you register the website with the major search engines.
There are a few other things our clients can do, but
the first goal should be to target your existing shareholders.
We
offer a Membership Promotion service package
that really explodes
your signup resultsand sends your shareholders in
droves to the website to sign up. They bring with them
to the registration
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form
lots of valuable information that you want and need.
We do this Membership Promotion through two simple postcard
mailings to your shareholders urging them to join the
site. The mailing goes to all shareholders, not just
shareholders of record - even the ones in street name.
We take your
record shareholder list and a NOBO list (non-objecting
beneficial owners), which is a list of persons who own
stock of your company in street name and will allow
you to ascertain their identities. We load all these
record and NOBO names and addresses into a database.
We then assign a unique code to every single shareholder,
even those with OBO status, which are the objecting
shareholders in street name who do not allow their brokerage
firms to reveal their identities. The postcard mailer
goes out to all shareholders, with the shareholder code
prominently on the label. When shareholders sign up,
they are asked to voluntarily enter the shareholder
code, which verifies that they are shareholders, and
are asked for other information valuable to you. This
allows you to verify who your shareholders are and,
more importantly, learn the identities of many of your
OBO shareholders!
No one else can
offer this combination of services. Period. Only
PubCo.
Still
think this process is expensive? It's a bargain.
Small
public companies routinely pay $5,000 monthly for investor
relations or stock promotion services; sometimes much
more. By contrast, using our
system is so frugal, that it is a dream come true.
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Here's
How It Works
We
have developed a suite of integrated software called
the , which will turn your
ordinary brochure website into a powerful and very sophisticated
Member Website, with full member and administrative
functionality. Once you sign up with us and install
our simple gateway, your site becomes a member website,
just as good and just as powerful as if you had spend
tens of thousands of dollars having it built to your
custom specifications.
From
day one, your member website will allow shareholders,
brokers, financial institutions and others to join as
members and input their personal data and preferences,
change their personal information and preferences, or
cancel their membership. This member data will be maintained
in a database designed and built by us. This is the
member database - your member database. You will
have full administrative access to the member database
on a 24/7 basis. Look at the flexibility and power our
member website system gives you:
- Turns your
website into a full member website
- Functional
member database that allows members to sign up and
cancel
- Members can
change their personal preferences and information
- You have full
control over the member database through administrative
utilities:
o Add or delete Guest members administratively
o Change Guest member information and
preferences
o View the member database
o Create tables out of the database by
data fields
o Print out or download the database or
table
- Database
queries will reveal when shareholders signed up and
shareholdings
- Database
will contain the names of many members' personal stock
brokers
- Database
will also contain the names of interested financial
institutions
- Helps you
measure effectiveness of stock promotion campaigns
- Allows cheap
and instant bulk emails to members:
- all members
or members by preference or personal information
- Send press
release alerts, SEC filings alerts and newsletters
to subscribers
- Send letters
to shareholders by email
- Send entire
press releases to members
- Send SEC
filings to consenting, verified shareholders by
email
- Quickly and
cheaply answer questions from shareholders and institutions
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You've
noticed many member websites on the Internet. Ebay and
CBS MarketWatch are two good examples. Each has a "public"
part of the website that anyone can visit, and each
has a separate "members" section that only registered
members can access. One good strategy for inducing shareholders
to become website members is to password protect selected
pages of your website as the "members' pages" of
the website. Creating a Members Site also creates highly
desirable exclusivity. A highly successful tactic is
to make desirable parts of your website part of the
member website.
We
also offer great advice on what to put in a newsletter
and other ways to make use of your new member website.
We offer some
specific
advice on how to divide your site among members'
and public pages. We also offer great
tips on how to actually make effective use your
new member website.
Shareholders,
stock brokers and financial institutions want to become
members of your new member website! It's that
simple. Thoughtful
companies will always be finding new ways to relate
to and cajole shareholders. Our
simply
automates the process and makes it cheap and effective
to accomplish feats of shareholder communication and
investor relations that you as a public company simply
cannot do at this time, even at exorbitant cost.
Not
Convinced?
We have prepared
a page that explains in succinct detail the many
benefits of our
for
our public company clients.
Our
Commitment to You
We stand behind
our work 100%. This means that we guarantee to
honor our commitments to our clients and to provide
software that works and is appropriate for the use intended.
We guarantee to maintain and administer your member
database to the highest professional standards. However,
we will not be responsible for any problems caused by
a client's website, nor for any configuration or programming
work done by, or damages caused by the actions of, your
employees or agents.
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