Resource of Marketing & Advertising

How many of you made as much money as you wanted to last year? Don’t be shy; raise your hands. Hmm, I don’t see too many hands out there. What would you say is the cause of this gap between your goals and your earnings?

While you could certainly name the economy or inadequate marketing as the culprit, I’d like to suggest a third alternative. It may be the constraints of the billable hours model that keep you from your financial goals.

Let’s face it, there are only so many hours you can actually bill to clients. For example, the national average for consultants is 22 billable hours per week. You can only raise your rates so high and still find enough customers. And if you spend more time on marketing, that’s less time you have available to bill.

But there’s a way out of this trap. No matter what type of business you’re in, you can use intellectual property to crack the billable hours ceiling. Here are just some of the ways to start tapping into this resource today:

Package your process. What if every time you began work with a new client, they paid an up-front fee before you spent even one hour with them? If you sell a process rather than your time, clients will pay for access to your previously developed materials. Examples are workbooks, forms, assessments, surveys, games, self-paced programs, and train-the-trainer packages.

Give a class. When you assemble a group of people to learn together, you can earn more per hour than working with them separately. Classes can be given at your office, at a rented (or borrowed) facility, on the phone, or on the web. Your market for classes is not just your clients, think about what you could teach your colleagues as well.

Record a tape, CD, or video. The simplest way to make recordings is to capture your live classes or speaking engagements on audio or video. Make your unedited recordings available immediately on the web or by phone. More polished recordings can be made with the help of a local studio or editor, or you can learn to do this yourself with the right equipment.

Write a white paper, workbook, or booklet. Short publications like these are easily within your reach, even if you don’t consider yourself a writer. A simple 20-page booklet might have as few as 4000 words in it. If you’ve written four articles to promote your business, you’ve probably already written this much. These are perfect formats for e-books, which cost you nothing to print.

Author a book. This might seem an impossible task, but if you write one page a day, five days a week, at the end of a year you’ll have a full-length book. If writing isn’t your strong point, find an editor, ghost writer, or even a co-author who has the skills you lack. You don’t have to wait until your book is finished to start selling excerpts as articles and white papers.

Market other people’s products. If you don’t yet have your own product, don’t let it stop you. You can begin earning passive income by selling other people’s books and tapes, becoming a re-seller for software or assessment tools, licensing someone else’s process, or joining affiliate programs.

Any of these products can be marketed in conversations with prospects and clients, in your standard marketing kit, in mailings or newsletters, on your outgoing voice mail message, and on your web site.

If you’ve been counting on hourly fees for your entire income, you may be surprised at the impact developing your intellectual property will have. It will add not only to your revenue, but also your professional credibility. And in poor economic times, you will find that prospects who hesitate to pay for personal service will still purchase classes and information products.

Speak to almost any self employed professional and most of them will say that they love their job but don’t care much for selling their services. Here’s some advice to help all those reluctant professionals who need to sell to clients.

We have identified 9 basic selling skills that will help you to sell your product or service. Ensure that you and your sales team master these skills and you will be successful at selling.

Research shows that fear of selling is one of the greatest barriers to business success and, often, professionals are the worst of all. But whether you are an accountant, advertising excec or business coach you still have to sell to keep the business coming in.

We have found a few ideas that will help you to become successful at selling yourself. The main idea is to know your product, know your client and be prepared and professional. The following tips will greatly enhance your ability to sell. Read More »

Quest for new clients shouldn’t ignore those who pay the bills

Acquisition. It’s a big word in small business marketing. Companies are constantly looking at ways to draw new people to the business and generate new streams of revenue. In this quest, some small businesses make the mistake of focusing too much on new customer acquisition, only to find that their existing customers have been lured away by a competitor.

Ironic, isn’t it? The very tactics you use to drive new customers to your business are the same ones that your competitors can use to take them away from you. Losing sight of your existing customer base is truly an example of not seeing the forest for the trees. Did you know that on average, it costs a small business 10 times as much to attract a new client as it does to retain an existing one? Think about that the next time you are planning an acquisition marketing campaign, then use these three tips to ensure that your customers don’t fall prey to your competitor’s acquisition efforts:

One of the simplest and most cost effective retention initiatives I’ve seen involved sending your customers a brief letter and tossing in a gift certificate for a free coffee at a local coffee shop (if you’re a local business), or a national coffee chain (if you operate in a broader area.) It will only cost you about one dollar for each of your customers plus mailing costs, and you’ll accomplish two things. Firstly, they’ll be reminded of your company name and services thanks to your brief letter, and secondly, they’ll enjoy a hot cup of coffee and feel good about you gesture. That free coffee can go a long way towards client retention.

Get Them a Deal: Who are your customers? Are they small businesspeople operating in your area? Are they pet owners? Are they car lovers? The product you sell will dictate what your clients are interested in. If you have even a few dozen clients, you could approach another local business that sells a car related product (let’s say a new tire polish) and offer them a deal. You’ll send a letter to all of your customers and offer them a great deal on the tire polish of 40% off the retail price. The company you approach should be willing to do this, as they have the potential to make a number of sales at one time, and your customers receive something of value from you, making them remember your company name and feel good about your offer.

Take it one step further and reciprocate the offer. The tire polish company can tell all of their clients about your car wax, and you’ll offer them a 40% as well since you now have the chance to sell some of your product. Client loyalty and new business too, a total solution! Just make sure that what you offer to your clients is actually valuable and not just a hollow sales pitch. Your reputation may be hurt by partnering with businesses that do not invest as much in client satisfaction as you do.

Acquiring customers is important, but retaining customers is critical to the ongoing success of your business. Small gestures often go a long way towards thwarting the acquisition efforts of your competition, and ensuring that your customers remain aware of your company and interested in your services.

When you’re branding a company with a name, a colour scheme and a logo the logo is often not given enough care and attention. It should follow the chosen colour scheme and reflect the business that your company is in. Too often, particularly on the WWW logos are seen as a way to show off the design talents of the author. To create a free logo I have created this easy to follow step by step guide.

Planning

Your logo should reflect the company it represents. Create a list of all the services or products the company supplies and try to find some common ground.

Sit down and choose the colours you will be using. This is best achieved by studying the corporate colours and maybe adding a few more shades of these colours. You should aim for a maximum of 12 but ideally you will want only one or two colours. Avoid very dark colours unless it is relevant to your company. If you send out a letter on headed notepaper to a client you will want your logo to jump off the desk at them to remind them who you are.

Remember that your design may have to be very small (a business card) or very large (the side of a van) so whatever you come up with must be scaleable. Try imagining your logo as a tiny image and then as a large image. If your using lettering will it must be readable at a very small size. Will the font appear correctly in a user browser on the internet?

Consider every place your logo might appear and work out what you will need to design for. A company that deals with older people does not to be bright and modern, something a little more sedate would be more appropriate.

Until you know the answers to all the questions above don’t move on to the next section.

Creating

Keep it simple. Look at any major company in the world and see how simple their logos are. Nothing fancy for the experts so why should you have a fancy design?

Look at what the competion are doing. DO NOT COPY somebody else’s work. Sometimes I get me best inspiration from studying other people ideas and coming up with a really original one based on a concept they have used. As long as it’s not a copy of somebody else’s work your not infringing copyright.

A tip for doing this is to use Googles Image Search. Type in some key word and select the image search with the word logo. For example if you were selling cars search for “cars + logo”. You will be presented with a selection of rival logos for other sites.

Use this to see what works and what does not. You will be drawn to the good designs and you will recognise what represents a company that sells cars. This search brings up the Alpha Romeo logo in the first few entries. This logo is slightly more complicated than you will want but works perfectly for a company producing cars.

Now start sketching some designs on paper. Keep all of the designs you make to hand as you never know when you might decide that the picture you drew before could be the one. When you have an idea don’t over develop it. You should aim to have at least 15 to 20 rough ideas before choosing 2 or 3 to work on further.

Developing

When you have chosen your two or three best ideas ask some friends what they think. Use your friends and family to test your logo. Everybody loves to give their opinion on everything so use that to your own advantage. Listen to what people have to say about your designs and you may learn something. Little things that you have not seen can be very obvious to someone that has never seen it before. Take a note of all the comments and go back to the drawing board. Look over what was said about every design and then, based on your own feelings and the comments you have collected, decide which idea you are going to develop more.

Create a slightly more refined drawing, or if you have some computer skills, make up an approximate design using a graphics program (don’t worry if you can’t do this as the next step will take care of that anyway.)

Unless you’re either a graphic designer or a printer, employ a professional to finish the work to a high standard. Your logo will appear on every bit of literature your company will ever produce and if it does not look professional then you don’t look professional. You will have saved a lot of money by developing the logo yourself so it is now time to ask a professional to finish the work.

Well done. You have just created an effective and attractive logo for your company. Be proud of your work and display it everywhere.

1. Pick 4 or more articles you’ve written that have a common theme and put them in an autoresponder series. Announce it on your site as an e-mail course on the go.

2. If you have a page for related links, create a related links file and put it on autoresponder. This can be a one-page e-mail containing 15-50 links that are of interest to your visitors. Put your own promotional texts or blurbs at the top, middle and bottom of the e-mail.

3. Create a fun or trivia quiz, put it up on your site and put the answers in an autoresponder that your visitors can request. This way, you’ll know the people who took your quiz.

4. Write reviews of books, music, e-books, sites, software or anything you can think of and put each review (or related reviews) in an autoresponder. If what you are reviewing have affiliate programs, use your affiliate links in the autoresponder.

5. Run a contest on your site or e-zine, then have your visitors or subscribers send their responses to your autoresponder. This way, you won’t have to worry about manually sending them a confirmation receipt.

6. Create a frequently updated autoresponder and let your visitors and/or subscribers know about it. You can put in weekly tips or links to useful resources in the autoresponder and a reminder to the people who request it that you update it every week or on a regular basis (e.g. tell them to request for the same autoresponder again a week from now). You can use this method instead of using autoresponders with limited follow up messages.

7. If you’ve written 20 or more articles and you have them on separate autoresponder accounts, create a master list for your articles. In this master list, list the titles of your articles, their autoresponder addresses and their short descriptions. You can then just promote this master list.

8. Put excerpts or free chapters of your e-book, book or paid e-mail courses in an autoresponder series, then include your follow up sales letters at the end.

9. If you’re selling your own products, put your testimonials on autoresponder, along with the description of your products, an excerpt or a free chapter. This will increase your credibility.

10. Keep track of people who download your free e-book, e-report, or free software by putting their download links in an autoresponder. When you promote your free product, you can just promote the autoresponder address.

11. Put links to your hidden pages on autoresponder. A hidden page could be the affiliate page where you have all the graphics, text links, promotional articles that interested affiliates can use. Let people know they can have free access to your affiliate page by requesting the autoresponder. This way, you can have a list of people who are interested in becoming your affiliates.

1. Use your autoresponder to publish an ezine.

Autoresponders with a broadcast feature are a low cost way to create mailing lists that your visitors can subscribe to including your own ezine that you can use to effectively market your products.

Concentrate on making your ezine a source of valuable information for your subscribers and you’ll be able to create an ezine that your subscribers look forward to reading and that increases your sales.

2. Make a sample issue(s) of your ezine available by autoresponder.

Your sample issue(s) will help you to increase the number of visitors that subscribe to your publication by showing them firsthand the valuable content that they can expect from subscribing to your ezine.

In addition, many ezine directories allow you to submit an autoresponder address where their visitors can obtain a sample issue of your ezine.

Making a sample issue available to their visitors can help you to increase the number of their visitors that subscribe to your ezine by setting your ezine apart from the other publications. Read More »

Is networking helping you bring in the new clients you want? If you are like most independent professionals and small business owners, you put hard work into getting your name out there and distribute your business card wherever you go. You may even attend a weekly or monthly networking group or occasional business conference where people share leads. And like most people, your time and effort isn’t generating a steady stream of new business.

The problem is that most people think that networking consists of telling as many people as possible what they do, and handing out as many business cards as they can. They waste the few precious moments they have with new and existing contacts by focusing on themselves.

It’s possible to meet someone in the airport, hand them your card after a brief conversation, and have them call you to request your services, but this random approach is like playing the lottery. You can’t count on it to produce results. It is a Push and Pray technique: you push your information out to others and pray that they respond.

It rarely works. Your contact loses your card or simply forgets about you, or the timing wasn’t right, or, in spite of the connection you thought you’d made, a single conversation usually isn’t enough to launch a client relationship. Read More »

A few months ago, I wrote a guide entitled: 101 Writing Tips for Successful Email Marketing. In fact, many COPY TIPS subscribers have a copy. Since that time, I have worked on dozens of successful projects and have discovered some additional tips for boosting response.

1. Ask a question in the Subject line. This almost always gets the email opened. I suspect this is because questions are so much a part of everyday email between friends and colleagues. It’s a natural way to begin a conversation. Just be sure your question is honest and straightforward not cryptic, hyped, or suspicious.

2. Write a letter, not an ad. With the growing use of graphics in email, a lot of marketers are experimenting with formats that look more like an ad than a personal message. The fact is, an “email ad” is more likely to be deleted on sight than one that appears to be a personal message – even if that message is obviously promotional.

3. Don’t be afraid to go long. In the early days of email marketing, short copy was the rule. But this is changing. For some offers at least, longer copy that tells a more complete story is doing better. This is especially true when a transaction is involved, such as a subscription or sign up.

4. Beginning, middle, and end. Most click-thru responses will come from the hyperlink at the top, bottom, and middle of your email message, in that order. A lot of marketers forget the middle hyperlink. Don’t. Your response rates will suffer.

5. Show a picture. For graphics-enhanced email, consider including a picture of your product. This will tend to lift response. Of course, if your product is intangible, you’ll have to think of an interesting way to present it as an image. But, trust me, it’s worth the effort.

6. Link the images. If your email contains pictures and other graphics, be sure to hyperlink them. You’ll be surprised how many prospects will click on these to respond.

7. Drop-text images. A drop-text is a text message that appears when your curser hovers over a graphic. This is common on web pages. In email, this technique works like a picture caption or sidebar that displays as your prospect interacts. Very powerful.

8. Bribes work well. An offer of free shipping, a discount, an invitation, or a free gift is extremely effective in email marketing. For my money (and my clients’) information premiums white papers, guides, checklists, downloads, work best.

9. Add a toll free number. Most prospects will click thru and respond to your offer online. But some prefer to call and speak with someone live. A toll free number will often boost response.

You may have heard the term Marketing Mix used in connection with marketing planning.

Marketing Mix means the combination of promotions, products, places (distribution channels), and prices you chose for your business. Including both short term and long term strategies in the marketing mix can make for a more profitable business.

Long term strategies build brand/company awareness and give sales revenue a permanent, gradual boost. Short term strategies create a temporary, immediate revenue boost by giving buyers an incentive to purchase.

By implementing both long and short term strategies, you can attend to immediate sales goals while building your business reputation and goodwill. Some examples of both types of strategies are below. Read More »

Have you ever found yourself having to scramble to organize a meeting at the last minute? Wouldn’t it be nice that if and when this daunting situation arose, you were well prepared with all necessary information ready at your fingertips? That’s why I’ve developed the following seven survival strategies to help you plan for the inevitable, because you know as well as I, it’s going to happen ‘someaday.’

Survival Strategy #1. Question the meeting need.

Before you jump into automatic pilot to start your last minute meeting organization, challenge the request. Since deciding to hold a meeting demands serious consideration because of the costs involved, both direct and indirect, double-check the rationale for holding the meeting. Develop a few pertinent questions to ask and find out if a meeting alternative, such as a teleconference would achieve the same results. Read More »