http://TurnKeyPublisher.com - Business publisher and author, Matthew Chan discusses how to use innovative search-based book marketing techniques for unknown authors.
Duration : 10 min 45 sec
21
Nov
Is it better that one reads a book on the basics of Internet marketing?
by admin Posted in Book Marketing
Will this save them time and money?
Will it help them avoid making costly mistakes?
What are some books you suggest?
Hi Christopher,
I would suggest that you go straight to the source- online!
I have been learning internet marketing for the last 5 months or so, and I looked into buying books, and I was disappointed with the selection- the problem is, the field is continuously evolving!
A book can teach you the very basics, but you’ll end up paying for information you can find for free.
My advice is to follow the experts, the gurus- Do a search for a specific topic you’re interested in, and you’ll get tons of specific blog entries and articles to help you out- the nice thing about internet marketing is how active and growing the community is.
If you already have a site, it’s great because you can experiment as you go and see what suits your needs best. If you’re starting from scratch, consider getting a free blog or other personal site that allows you to manage content personally. Otherwise you may feel lost, and the truth is, you don’t need a textbook- the key to the Internet is, it’s interactive. Textbooks can never compare.
Plus, you’ll often get more actual information per paragraph than most books will offer.
Depending on your goals, there are many ways to market online. You have to start with a site, and you should learn some basics on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) (I wrote a blog entry that offers some resources for beginners, I will add it below) - beyond that you have tons of options.
- Write original articles and submit to article sites (they provide good exposure!)
- Create videos and post them to YouTube and other video sites
- Write a blog and get it out there! (plenty of free sites)
- Make friends in the social network space (i.e. sites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter) that will help you spread the word
- Record a Podcast and publish to different podcasting sites
- Visit other sites, forums, etc and post comments where you think your product or service could benefit the person
- If you’re strictly looking for traffic, don’t be afraid of paid advertising or sponsorships
ClickZ offers a number of columns on every topic in Internet Marketing
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Review of the "Inbound Marketing" book by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah - www.MikeVolpe.com
Duration : 2 min 35 sec
You go on tv and talk about the book you are trying to sell. It can be on a news program or it can be a commercial that you pay for.
You attend Book Fairs across the USA. You introduce the public to the book.
You offer to write a review of the book for the local newspaper.
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Many people find my website while
searching for ways on how market a
book online. Like every other entity
online it's about names and emails.
Today, we're covering one of the
simplest book marketing technique
that's many overlook when marketing and promoting online.
The key to remember is this: "Most people don't make a purchase on the first visit. It takes between one and seven times."
Itâs about providing value. I mentioned this last week!
http://www.MentoringByTheMinute.com
Duration : 1 min 43 sec
The Combined Book Exhibit is one of the most widely recognized and highly respected names in the publishing community. For numerous years, they have been showcasing published works at national and international book shows and expos. The Combined Book Exhibit’s reputation with publishers has helped it grow into one of the biggest - if not the biggest - exhibitor at each show it attends, while it’s reputation with educators and librarians makes it one of the busiest.
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The Combined Book Exhibit is one of the most widely recognized and highly respected names in the publishing community. For numerous years, they have been showcasing published works at national and international book shows and expos. The Combined Book Exhibit’s reputation with publishers has helped it grow into one of the biggest - if not the biggest - exhibitor at each show it attends, while it’s reputation with educators and librarians makes it one of the busiest.
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Professionals in the health and allied industries, including doctors, nurses, psychologists, counsellors, social workers, etc, often work from their own self-employed businesses. In Australia, a considerable section of the industry is self-employed, whilst many other professional counsellors who have not yet become their own bosses, aspire to do so.
In this article, we discuss one the most critical aspects of starting and perpetuating a business: marketing. You will learn how counsellors can gain exposure and build a positive image for their business, whilst developing a good client base â despite their theoretical orientation or experience with self-employment. We hope many of our readers will find this particularly useful to achieve their own business (and personal) New Year resolutions!
Marketing and Counselling
We begin with a basic question: what constitutes marketing? Many counsellors and small to medium business owners believe marketing is simply advertising. This is a HUGE error. Marketing is so much more than just your advertising. Advertising is simply one method, medium or process by which to communicate your product or service to prospective clients.
Marketing however encapsulates:
Strategy; mindset; planning; capital; branding; products and services; product packaging; positioning; pricing; business location; communication; market drivers; business models; innovation; distribution channels; policies and procedures; guarantees; relationship building; sales processes; goals and objectives; business philosophy; and more.
Marketing encapsulates everything that influences the CHOICES of your prospects and clients. And the choices of your prospects and clients relate to:
- their perception of your business, products and image;
- whether they purchase or not;
- whether they continue using or re-use your service;
- whether they refer your service;
- whether they pay;
- how much they are willing to pay;
- whether or not they endorse;
- and much more.
As you can see, there is a lot more to effective marketing than just running an ad. How effectively a company undertakes marketing is the primary determinant of its level of success. Marketing is WITHOUT DOUBT the most leveragable process in your business. It is also the most overlooked, and hence the reason for the majority of business failures. Being a qualified counsellor with great experience and a well-established practice wonât help unless people know about it!
Networking for Exposure
In the counselling industry, one of the most powerful ways to build your business image is networking. Counselling clients can be derived from varied sources, particularly community networks â it is very important that counsellors recognise that factor in order to get the appropriate exposure which their businesses require.
Following are some suggestions that can be helpful:
Talk to your family Doctor and let him or her know what you are planning (or about your recently established business) as you may have to make referrals to him/her. Many counsellors get referrals from Doctors and this is usually the result of establishing a meaningful trust relationship.
Likewise, discuss your plans with your family Pharmacist as he/she may also be able to help building your professional profile.
Talk to your local Naturopath/ Homoeopath/ Physiotherapist/ etc. and suggest an exchange of business cards. Explain that you would like to have someone specific to make referrals to and maybe he/she may care to reciprocate.
Contact Support Groups and Agencies in your area explaining the service that you offer. Maybe you can offer to help them out from time to time, even on a voluntary basis. Voluntary work is an excellent way to gain experience and create links with both the community and other professional in health care industries. You can offer your voluntary work in places such as hospitals, aged care facilities, community centres, etc.
One of the best ways to promote your business is by word of mouth, and one of the most effective ways to ensure that this happens is to run group activities such as Grief and Loss discussion groups.
Building Your Profile
As a counsellor, recognition of your knowledge, experience, qualifications and competence are very important. How can you effectively build a positive profile within your prospects and current clients? That is a pertinent question in a counsellorâs career.
As weâve cited previously, marketing activities such as networking and volunteering play a major role in building the counsellorâs profile. Primarily, it is a way for the counsellor to validate his/her skills and qualifications throughout working directly with clients and other professionals. Secondarily, maintaining a meaningful trust relationship with other professionals and volunteering will help creating the image of a âcontributor of the communityâ, which is a premise for building trust and rapport with prospective clients (a very important aspect of any counselling relationship).
Another effective strategy to build a professional profile is to educate others. Creating and distributing informational flyers, writing a newsletter or eZine, conducting workshops and attending discussion groups are all good examples of such activities. Through this process, counsellors position themselves as specialists in their area â thus, attracting prospective clients. The cited activities are also useful for professional development and efficient in keeping the counsellor up-to-date with industry developments, counselling theory and practice.
Improving Marketing through Delivery
A very common way service professionals achieve a differential position in the market is the interesting - and potentially risky - art of over-delivering (and under-promising). But what exactly is over-delivering? Over-delivering is providing a level of service over and above that expected or anticipated for the service provided.
Over-delivery is providing a level of service beyond what youâve promised your client in your marketing message. An example of service over-delivery would be to provide your client with a surprise complimentary gift after the first session. The gift may be in the form of a tele-coaching session, a seminar, a book, or perhaps a voucher to the movies or a massage session.
Many astute counsellors actually provide services of other business professionals in order to provide their over-delivery. For example, in the case of a free massage above, you may be able to do a deal with a health spa that is willing to provide a complimentary session to your clients in the anticipation that your client will continue to use their service in the future. This type of arrangement is a powerful win to all parties - You are able to provide your client with an added benefit, the health spa gets a potential long term client for low cost, and your client gets a free massage.
The intention of service over-delivery is to build goodwill with your clients. Itâs intended that this goodwill will translate into business benefits for you. Those benefits may be longer client contracts, increased referral and stronger product endorsement.
Generally your perceived gain from over-delivering your service would be greater than your cost to provide the additional benefit to your client. (In the above example your cost is actually zero). Clearly itâs very important that you take into consideration the cost of over-delivery in your financial planning. When engaging in this process, you must be aware of the cost/benefit relationship that will arise from it, ensuring that for every cost involved, there is a mutual benefit.
However, every investment requires a systematic approach in order to be successful - and over-delivering is not different. Youâll need to establish goals in order to measure the outcomes of your efforts, and also to avoid having financial problems due to an ill planned promotion. You can include the following points in your over-delivery strategy:
Establish primary objectives
List each advantage of over-delivering in a priority order. Referrals, networking and partnership possibilities are all reasons for this type of promotion. Your primary objectives will also be parallel to your current position in the market: whether you have just started your business, included a new service, found a new niche, etc.
Find a target market
The main objective of over-delivering is to provide more satisfaction to customers. For this reason, look for groups that can offer a great deal of options for your business, such as networking possibilities. Once youâve established the right target, youâll be able to refine your promotion and possibly calculate the most likely outcomes of each interaction.
Choose your gift
Now that youâve decided what your target market is, you need to decide on what you are going to offer. You may provide extra services of your own, or negotiate with a local service provider to exchange vouchers for referrals. There are many options to choose from, but the most important thing is to ensure that whatever the gift is, it will have some value to the client.
Create protocols
You are going to face a constant trade-off between the amount of extra time you are going to spend with âgive-awaysâ and how much you can actually spend. Creating protocols will help you to balance this equation and ensure youâll neither go too far on over-delivering, nor too low. It will also give you enough flexibility to deal with various opportunities that may arise throughout the process.
It is important for the counsellor to realize that marketing is an ongoing process â and to ensure that the service delivered is of the highest possible quality. With the appropriate training, the passion to help people and the dedication to get a business practice on its way â your career is likely to become a success!
Pedro Gondim
http://www.articlesbase.com/small-business-articles/marketing-in-counselling-tips-for-a-successful-practice-139870.html
As you know, my business name incorporates the two words “Action Plan.” It’s not an accident. I want to use today’s eZine to explain how incredibly important marketing action plans are to the success of your business.
Everyone is looking for the perfect marketing plan. You know, the one you apply that brings in as much business as you can possibly handle. (Like that one magic email sent to the right list!)
I wish there was one such plan!
But every marketing plan can be supercharged and help you yield a much better results every time you use it, if you understand that marketing action plans are much like recipes.
Action Planning is like creating a perfect meal that consists of several delicious dishes. You need to assemble the ingredients, mix them in the right proportions, and then cook at the correct temperature for a specified time. If you follow the recipe to the letter, your dish will turn out perfectly.
But is that how we implement marketing plans? I wish!
No, we do it in a haphazard way, throwing together random ingredients and, more often than not, under or over cooking it. What comes out of the oven tastes terrible. And then we blame the recipe (which we didn’t follow).
The thing about a marketing plan is that it takes a few more ingredients, a little more time, some specialized knowledge, and a dash of patience for the recipe to come out successfully.
For instance, let me give you the basic recipe for getting new clients from speaking engagements (delivered to professional groups). I built my business on this recipe. I know it works. And you can make it work too (if you follow it faithfully).
The “Speaking for Clients” Recipe
- Decide on a topic for your talk and create a title.
- Do a write-up for your talk that explains the benefits.
- Include a bio and information on your business for the “speaker’s package.”
- Create a contact sheet to track your campaign.
- Do research on organizations that would be good audiences for your talk.
- Determine who the Program Directors are for these organizations.
- Develop and practice your calls to the Program Directors.
- Call the Program Directors and pitch your talk.
- If they are interested in knowing more, send your speaker’s package.
- Follow up in few days to answer any questions they may have.
- Implement a keep-in-touch phone and email campaign until you book some talks.
- Put together a detailed write-up to promote the presentation.
- Coordinate with the organization to make sure you’re on track.
- Prepare you talk. You’ll need an outline and handouts.
- Practice your talk (out loud) until you feel comfortable.
- Practice the call-to-action at the end of the talk.
- Print out your handouts (make sure they’re professional).
- Dress and groom yourself appropriately for the talk.
- Give the talk and deliver your call-to-action at the end.
- Gather the cards (with email addresses) of participants.
- Follow-up by email or phone (as you promised) after the talk.
- Set up appointments with qualified prospects.
- Turn the prospects into clients when you meet with them.
OK, that’s twenty three steps in this marketing recipe.
But don’t get overwhelmed by all the steps. This is something you can do - one step at a time. Like assembling the ingredients for a recipe, the sources and techniques are out there - in books, articles and courses. Even if you’re new to this, with focus, you can get a favorable result the very first time.
If you miss any of these steps or do them poorly, you won’t get optimal results from your marketing plan. However, once you’ve booked and delivered a few talks, the process becomes simple. You’ll start to get results and you’ll be able to tweak and fine-tune your recipe until every talk generates new clients.
You don’t need to master fifty marketing recipes for success. Mastering one may be all you need.
I implemented the basic speaking recipe above in 1995. In six months (26 weeks) I had used it successfully to attract 26 new clients. That created the marketing foundation for my business, and things have been in a state of momentum ever since.
My main marketing recipe since then? You’re reading it. I was determined to create an effective eZine and send it out weekly. I’m now somewhere into my 500th week. One tactic, one recipe implemented consistently, can produce more results than you can imagine.
So what’s your marketing recipe (action plan) going to be?
Robert Middleton
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/marketing-recipes-140185.html
If you are someone who is always continuously learning and looking to improve your financial intelligence, you would have heard of the world famous author Robert Kiyosaki, the mastermind behind the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series of financial books and the board game Cashflow.
As Kiyosaki himself puts it, when he first heard about network marketing, he was against it. However after opening his mind, he began to see advantages that few other business opportunities offer. He now talks about network marketing as one of the most perfect business models on the planet.
You might wonder then as to why Kiyosaki terms network marketing as a perfect business when he has never been involved in this industry. In order to understand this, you need to understand that Kiyosakiâs conclusions are based on his years of experience and observations as well as his âcashflow quadrantâ.
In his book The Cashflow Quadrant, Kiyosaki discusses about the four different types of people who make up the world of business. The employees (E), self-employed (S), business owners (B) and investors (I), commonly referred to as the E, S, B, I quadrant.
E stands for employee where the employee trades time for money and is often stuck in a rat race and has no escape as he or she is forever diligently going to work to pay off various expenses including the government and numerous taxes. According to Kiyosaki, the average American today works five to six months for the government before they make enough to cover their taxes.
S stands for small business and the solo businessman is well aware that in order to have things done right, he has to do it himself. Rarely will the small businessman be able to leverage on others as they have to shoulder a heavier burden on their shoulders by taking on the responsibilities of the business owner as well as taking over the employeeâs role of customer service, sales and even delivery personnel.
B stands for business owners and Kiyosaki firmly believes that in order to be a successful big-business owner, he or she needs to have an important personal skill which is leadership. Kiyosaki places a network marketing business in the B-quadrant as you are able to leverage on people âunderâ you.
Last, but not least, the I-quadrant is where big smart business investors use their money to make more money.
Kiyosaki loves the network marketing business model for the fact that a true network marketing business is the exact opposite of a traditional business model. The network marketing business is designed to bring you to the top and not keep you at the bottom.
Various other points that make network marketing a perfect business model include the low cost investment to start the business, increase of tax breaks due to the fact that a person with a part-time business can take more tax deductions, meeting with like-minded people and being able to leverage on a system that is already in place.
At the same time, the network marketing company will invest in you, for as long as you are willing to put in the time, for your personal development. You will learn various soft skills such as people management to help you brush up on your business skills. At the same time, you will also have the guidance and coaching of your upline.
Thus, after opening his closed mind, Kiyosaki finally sees the unique benefits of the network marketing industry and believes it is the perfect business.
Veronica Tan BK
http://www.articlesbase.com/affiliate-programs-articles/network-marketing-robert-kiyosakis-perfect-business-750446.html