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  • Turning Prospects Into Clients For Offline Consultants

    We have already talked about the importance of doing quality work and turning existing clients into evangelists who will give you a glowing recommendation.

    The fact remains, however, that you cannot rely exclusively on referrals if you want to make consistent income as a consultant. You will need to get out there and find new clients as you build your business.

    This is an area of the business that many new consultants struggle with because they sometimes this cold-calling is the only logical next step. Nothing could be further from the truth. Finding new clients can actually be a very fun and rewarding experience. Like anything else, you will have to get creative and find ways that work best for you. But in this section of the guide, we will share some of the most effective ways to reach out and find new prospective clients for your consulting business:

    Networking – In Section 8, we talked about the power of “schmoozing” potential clients and getting to know people who may require your services. Networking is one of the most important business practices you will ever partake in. Make sure that you make a point of regularly attending networking events where you get the opportunity to connect with other business owners. Don’t sell at these events, just make as many people aware of who you are as possible. You never know who you might get introduced to!

    Online Advertising – Show your prospective buyers that you believe in what you sell. Buying ads on networks like Google and Facebook allow you to create advertisements that are targeted to local companies and make local offers. You can get started with ad campaigns for $20 and be up and running in a few hours. You very well may a potential buyer!

    Offline Advertising – While some of your prospects already spend time on Facebook and Google, many of them are too busy “out in the field” running their business. So online advertising would never reach this crowd. These people do read newspapers and magazines. In smaller cities, a display ad in a newspaper can purchased for a reasonable price. This is a traditional method of marketing but it could very well still work for your consulting business.

    Mail – Traditional direct response mailing (ie postcards) or custom mailing can be a good way to find clients. Your local post office likely has an arrangement in place for sending flyers to local businesses. You might also want to target certain companies and send hand written letters to the primary decision makers in the company. When the letter looks personalized and hand written, there is a very good chance it will be opened and read by the person.

    Email – Cold calling is something that is not even being suggested in this list because there are more effective ways of getting ahold of clients. Sending cold email, however, is something to take note of. With email, you have the ability to research a company ahead of time and do some fact finding. Look for a company where you truly believe you can deliver serious value to. Then put together an email introducing yourself and quickly mentioning some of the potential benefit you see THEM achieving with a better online strategy. Follow up with a phone call a few days later if you do not get an email response.

    Press Release – You can sometimes get free media coverage if you have a story that is of interest to enough people. If you specialize in some kind of consulting service and you have an interesting story that relates to your speciality, try submitting the story to local newspapers. Having a story in print might get an offline company calling you directly as there is perceived credibility attached to your name since you have been published in the paper.

    Craigslist – This may seem like a dated solution but the truth of the matter is Craigslist is still one of the busiest sites online. Many businesses go on Craigslist looking for help with different needs in their business. Make sure you keep your finger on the pulse of what is happening on Craigslist weekly.

    Introductory Service – Consider visiting companies in person but not with the intention of selling. Offer a free flyer for their waiting room with “Social Media Safety Tips” (as an example) or offer to take a photo of their office and use it to create a Twitter account for their company (as another example). Literally make a point of selling nothing but deliver value first. Now they know who you are and will be more receptive to invites/requests in the future.

    Directory Service – Create an online directory or blog that profiles local businesses in the area. Offer a free listing to the companies that you would like to target for your consulting services. Once they see how nice their free listing looks, they will be much more receptive to hearing about what you can offer in terms of your consulting.

  • Getting Free Publicity Through Social Media Engagement

    As the owner of an offline business, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be taking advantage of the incredible marketing power of social media outlets. It’s no secret that millions and millions of people are on social media sites daily – did you know that social media is the second most engaged-in activity on the Internet only behind email checking? And did you know that if Facebook were a country it would be the third most populous in the world?

    What this means to any business – online or off – is that there’s a congregation of potential customers just browsing these sites in their idle hours when they might be bored and have nothing else to do. This is a perfect opportunity to drop a bee in their bonnet about you and your business. Thousands of companies have done this, and thousands have found success.

    However, for an offline business attempting to tackle the social media market, you’ll have an easier time of it if you approach it with the proper attitude. While both online and offline businesses will use social media as a way to engage the customer, the online business deals with social media the way that an offline business would have television ads. It’s a straight way to the sale, since a customer visiting an online business’ site is doing the closest thing to physically visiting the business itself.

    If you have an offline business, this is not the case, as the customer is ostensibly at a computer and not at your physical place of business while browsing social networking sites. It’s important to consider this difference and use it to take a different approach to advertising your offline business using social media. While an online business is bringing customers to the storefront, you should be looking to create an impression of your business and try to entice them to come to the physical store.

    While it is definitely advantageous to consider making an online version of your site for ease of purchasing, you want to have the customer come to your physical store. This means creating awareness of your products, brand, content, and expertise – and creating that drive to experience the whole package by going to your store.

    While it’s likely that the most profitable way for offline business to generate customers in terms of long-term revenue is still offline, the virtual market is taking off fast, and it’s likely that the current state of affairs will change over the next five years. Now is a good time to get involved with marketing through social media and figuring out how it can best serve your offline business before it takes off to a whole new level.

  • Why Video Marketing Is Essential

    Video: Brad explains why he thinks it’s important to make video marketing a part of your online business.

  • Establishing Your Credibility As An Offline Consultant

    One of the most efficient ways to convince anybody that you know what you’re talking about, no matter what the situation, is to provide physical proof of expertise. Sure, you can tell everybody under the sun that you play hockey like Wayne Gretzky, but it’s unlikely you’ll get much credibility on that front until you take the National Hockey League by storm. Once you have physical proof of your excellence regarding anything, people are much more willing to accept that you’re a master at whatever it is. This applies to anything from hockey to knitting to offline consulting.

    If you want your clients to take you seriously, whether they’re online or offline, the best thing to do is to show them your own success. Consulting for many people is a career path chosen after finding success in a field. The reasoning behind this is obvious – being a consultant is essentially offering your advice on a particular subject to others who are interested in that advice. For the customer to want your advice, they have to believe that the advice dispensed is worth the time and money they’d need to invest to get that information.

    The best way to prove that you’re the Internet marketing expert for your offline clients is to actually have a track record of success. We’re assuming that you have your own online business if you’re interested in helping others with theirs. In the event that you don’t have your own successful online business – why don’t you? If you can’t point to your own success as a business owner to bolster your consulting endeavors, then why should people trust that you’re the right consultant for them?

    This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to go out and start your own business. In fact, having a track record of helping others with online marketing can also cement your place as a consultant, as it shows that not only do you know how to make yourself successful, but also others.

    In short, if you really want to make it in offline consulting, you’ll need to be able to put your money where your mouth is. If you don’t have experience working with online businesses, then it might help you to assist with some local projects or even spend some time bolstering your own online business before really heading out to try and recruit the offline clients. When you can come in the door with guns blazing and a track record of success, you’re already halfway toward getting those hard to impress offline customers. Being able to show those who don’t have an Internet footprint a track record of success is one of the most important things you can do in this business. In fact, some might say it’s the first vital step toward getting any business as a consultant at all!

  • Simple Steps to Setting Up a WordPress Sidebar

    Video: What you need to know about WordPress sidebars and widgets.

  • Basic Search Engine Optimization For Online Success

    Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the cornerstones to an effective online presence. It is estimated that almost 90% of all web traffic is from a search engine of some sort. A good SEO plan is a great first step in any inbound marketing efforts. If you can consistently rank on the first page of any web searches, you will be positioning your business to be found by eager consumers.

    This short report will cover the most critical items you need to be aware of when it comes to search engine optimization.

    Google Rules: As of today, Google has a stranglehold on the search engine market. They hold about a 70% market share. When you are optimizing for the search engines, it usually means Google. It has the best chance to consistently send you leads.

    It’s All In The Keyword: The strength of SEO is that you can attempt to rank for whichever keywords you want. Keywords are the terms users search for on a search engine. The strongest SEO campaigns will begin with properly researched keywords. The basic cycle is to brainstorm a list of words you think people would search to find your business or offering. Then you plug this list into online tools like the Google Keyword Tool, and you will be given even more options. You can also view the competition and the amount the keywords are searched. This way you can figure out which keywords are worth ranking for.

    Think Local & Long-tail: Quite often ranking for a location based keyword is easier than just the keyword itself. Similarly, ranking for keywords that are 3-4 words long is also easier than one word queries. For example, ranking on the top of Google for “Bakery” would probably be very hard. If you add a local flair to it, it becomes much more likely. Ranking for “Tallahassee Bakery” will be a lot easier. Even easier than that would be a long-tail term like “Tallahassee Wedding Cake Bakery”. Each of those keyword terms are progressively easier to rank for, but the trade off is they are searched less. Counter that by trying to rank for as many related long-tail terms as possible.

    Your Web Platform Matters: While any type of website can rank in the search engines (so breathe easy if you already have a website built), the platform you build it with can speed up the SEO process. The single most powerful platform I have used is WordPress. Google seems to love it…and for good reason. WordPress was initially a blogging platform, so it makes it very easy to add new content. Google loves new content (more on that later), so WordPress is favored since it likely includes fresh content. WordPress also includes many free plugins that are designed to boost your SEO rankings. The navigational set up of WordPress is also more inline with the type of interlinking Google values. They want to send people to sites that are easy to navigate. If you are choosing one platform to build your website with, seriously consider WordPress.

    On-Page and Off-Page: Once you have your website platform chosen and list of keywords you can begin to optimize your website. The two major ways are on-page and off-page. It is a widely held belief that you should spend 20% of your time on-page optimization and 80% off page.

    On-page optimization is making your site search engine friendly. One of the major concerns you want to address are the title tags on every page. Each page should have it’s own title and include a different keyword term. This way each of your websites pages can rank for a different search engine term. If you use WordPress you can install plugins like All in One SEO to help with this. You will also want to make sure your keywords show up in your site’s content but do not stuff them in. They have to be used moderately and naturally. Other on-page concerns include cleaning up any broken links on your site, including a sitemap, a privacy policy and proper working navigation.

    Off-page optimization comes down to almost purely link building. One of the best ways to get your website into the search engines is if lot’s of people link back to your site. Actively building backlinks can be a grueling process but it works. For best results you will want your keyword to be the actual text of the link. Whatever words form the actual link are known as “anchor text”. You want your anchor text to be your chosen keywords! To get started add your website link to any online profiles you may have.

    Consistent Content: This is one of the best ways to properly optimize your site for the search engines. You must be creating and posting content on your site regularly. It doesn’t have to be daily (although that would rock!) but I think weekly is a great goal. If you can’t do that yourself, you can get an employee to take that on, or find cheap outsourcing solutions.

    Content is the lifeblood of your website. It is why people come to it and why people stay. Creating content also gives you more chances to rank in the search engines. If you are posting helpful articles to your site, make sure to get some keywords in the title so they can show up in the search engines. This is why WordPress is so powerful, it makes adding content easy.

    Google loves fresh content as well. Sites that have fresh updated content are more relevant by their very nature in Google’s eyes. Commit to creating content consistently and you will see your search engine rank grow along with your traffic and revenue.

    Search Engine Optimization is one of the best advertising opportunities online today. Start your SEO efforts today, and soon you won’t have to worry about cold calls because your customers will be finding you.

  • Call People Into Action Today

    Let’s start with a clear understanding of what a call to action actually is. A call to action is an element or that entices a reader or viewer to take note or make a decision based upon it. Relating this directly to the Internet and websites, a website call to action could be something like “Add to Shopping Cart”, “Buy Now” or “Subscribe to Newsletter”. The main goal of a call to action is to persuade the visitor to click on or interact further with your website, hopefully ending in the visitor buying a product or service or another conversion goal. It is often seen that blue underlined text is clicked on more by website visitors when given a choice because these have been the default standard for many years. It is also believed that the blue text is associated with calming and trust so it more likely to be clicked.

    Having described what a call to action is it should be clear that every good business website have at least one call to action on every single page within the website. Given the nature of websites it is often important to give a couple of call to action options to users. When a visitor progresses through your website, you should be able to follow the path your website visitors have made along the path of persuasion towards your conversion goal. Ideally this would give you a clear idea on what calls to action are working and what ones aren’t along the desired flow of your conversion process. A good website will be laid out in such a way that when a visitor wants to make a slight detour to find out more information correctly placed and worded calls to action are there to guide them back on your conversion path.

    So, why do you need a call to action on your website? Many studies have shown that if a website visitor does not find what they are looking for within 3 seconds they will exit your website. Many SEO experts will only focus on getting a website into the top few results but there should also be focus on the overall online marketing strategy. Any good SEO and Online Marketing company will be able to guide you in a complete online marketing strategy. It is important to know that selling the websites product or service and using calls to action to get visitors through your conversion path is of equal importance to the overall SEO plan.

    A well thought out call to action in an overall online marketing campaign will provide you with more sales, lead generation and constant predictable results.

    When choosing an SEO and Online Marketing company it is important to take some time and do your own research. The simplest form of research is to search in Google for SEO or Online Marketing and see how good the SEO firm is at selling their own products and services. If they are positioned well for their own services then they are likely to be able to successfully market your products and services online.

  • What NOT to Put in Your Social Network Profile

    Your social networking profile is important when it comes to meeting other Internet users. This is because, in most cases, Internet users are looking to chat with someone who has the same goals, views, beliefs, and interests as they do. Without a personal profile, it would be difficult or impossible to tell what your interests are. That is why social networking profiles are not only important, but they are needed.

    When it comes to social networking profiles, a lot of focus has been placed on what you should include in your profile or display on your profile page. It has been said that pictures produce the best responses, as well as detailed personal information. Although a picture and detailed personal information may help to increase your page views, you may be getting views that you do not necessarily want. Despite what you may believe, most social networking websites do not have restrictions on who can view your personal profile. In fact, Internet users, even those that do not belong to your online community, can easily see profile.

    Since anyone, literally anyone, can see your social networking profile, on most social networking websites, you are advised to be cautious. Essentially, this means that instead of focusing on what you should put in your online profile, you should be focusing on what not to put. This is one the best ways to protect your safety, both on and offline.

    Pictures (again!) are often recommended with social networking websites. If you are interested in posting a personal picture of yourself in your online profile you can do so, but you are advised to carefully choose that picture. While you will want to look your best, you are advised against posting a picture that is too revealing or seductive in nature. Most Internet users can look at these types of pictures without feeling a thing, but for others these types of pictures spell danger.

    If you make the decision to post a picture of yourself in your social networking website profile, you need to be careful about the rest of the information that you post. Although you may not necessarily think about it, a picture is just a picture, but combined with your name and address, it could be a deadly combination. You are advised to only post your first name in your profile. This will make it more difficult for anyone to try and contact you off of the Internet.

    It is also advised that you carefully choose your location. A large number of online social networking sites require that you select a city, as well as a state. If it is allowed, you may only wish to list your state and not the city. If you are required to list the city and the state that you live in, you may want to think about using a nearby city or town, especially if you live in a small town. If an Internet predator wanted to contact you and you lived in a small town, it could be fairly easy for them to find you. That is why it is advised that you carefully select the answer to the location question.

    In addition to the above precautionary measures, it is advised that you do not post detailed information on your children, the location of your home, your income, or when you will be leaving for vacation! By keeping these and the above mentioned points in mind, you should be able to enjoy online social networking without having to always look behind your back.

  • Free Tools To Grow Your Online Biz

    Best things in life are free, as many would say. This especially holds true with efforts in advertising one’s products or services. With free Internet marketing services, one can save a lot. Instead of shelling out for the marketing aspect of your product or services, that chunk of money could be put to other important elements of your business since many information websites now offer knowledge regarding Internet marketing services that comes with no price tag at all.

    This is not to tell you that better focus on plain Internet marketing. It still will do your business a lot good if you mix traditional advertisement efforts such as traditional and new marketing media.

    Here are few of the free methods that you could employ to make your products and services be in their most visible, thus saleable, form.

    1. Promote your business through free search engine submission and optimization.

    Submit your website to various search engines monthly. This will make many more people know that your website actually exists. Aiming for the top search engines will help a lot in this endeavor.

    2. Improve your articles.

    Remember that information on articles with good content as traffic-bringer of websites? This time it’s about making these articles serve your website better by using keyword suggestion tools that are offered for free. Update your web site’s content by regularly checking the standing of your keywords with the current market.

    3. Acquire free content.

    If you have no time to increase the SEO or search engine optimization-friendliness of your articles, you can look for free content from article directories. All you need to do is retain the resource box of those write-ups.

    4. Avail of free comprehensive web traffic analyzers.

    These are tools that you can make use of without costing you a cent. Your website’s hits statistics will be produced by this kind of Internet marketing tool for your own analysis.

    5. Learn to manipulate web design templates.

    You don’t have to be too techie-geeky to be able to design your web site. Oftentimes, web design templates or custom-made layouts are available for the Internet marketer to use.

    6. Monitor your website’s visibility.

    Tools such as search engine position trackers may be used to see your website’s standing.

    These processes are very convenient to use as long as you keep in mind that you use and try to master their use for your own benefit. Just don’t get obsessed with your achievements when you finally learn how to use them and incorporate them in your Internet marketing feat.

  • 3 Secrets to Knocking Out Big Competitors

    Nobody likes a bully… especially small business marketers. If you’ve ever felt like the little guy taking punches from a heavyweight champion, you know what I’m talking about. Big business has donned its gloves, and is waiting to put small business down for the count.

    I’ve got good news!

    Sometimes the little guy wins. Heck, it isn’t easy and sometimes it’s a close call, but little guys do win and when they do… victory is sweet!

    What can you do when you’re being threatened by the bully down the street?

    1. Take a careful look at the Competition

    Every business has its strengths and weaknesses. You need to be aware of both… your competitors strong points, and the places where room for improvement is quite obvious.

    2. Be Flexible

    Don’t expect your competitor to broadcast his next move so that you can be prepared to block it. You’ve got to think a step ahead, and be ready to outsmart his next maneuver.

    3. Use a little Judo

    You don’t have to be big and brawny to successfully use Judo. Why? It’s an art that uses your opponent’s momentum to trip him up. So what if you don’t have thousands of dollars to invest in a campaign.

    When you’re competition has invested his tens of thousands in one, you’ll be able to make a quick about turn and counteract quickly with a smaller campaign of your own.

    He’ll either forfeit his investment or continue through, but loose steam.

    I’m going to let you in on a little secret about your competitors that might encourage you. Although big businesses often have a wide variety of products filling their shelves, they often don’t have depth.

    Think about it this way.

    You may run to your local department store and find everything ranging from make-up to camping equipment. The problem with that? …chances are they don’t have an extremely wide assortment of their products.

    This means that if you’re an avid outdoorsman, you probably wouldn’t be satisfied choosing between two cheap brands of tents when there is an amazing variety on the market. An outdoor related store could get one over on the big department store by offering the widest variety of fewer products in a focused field.

    Another asset about being the small guy, is that it’s easier to make a quick turn. Hey, how many managers do you have to get okays from to make a quick decision? Think of the weeks it takes for a local department store to send a request from a customer for a certain product to the regional or national management? Yeah, too long!

    As a small business, you can have a new product on your shelves within a week. If I were a customer wanting a new tent, I’d prefer to not wait until summer was half over to get it.

    There are a lot of benefits to being the small guy. Don’t take bullying lying down. You have what it takes to get the best end of the stick and come out a winner.