Is your 2012 marketing plan done? If not, you’re late!

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All businesses need a marketing plan, not only Internet-based ones. But sometimes, social entrepreneurs or solopreneurs think that a marketing plan isn’t necessary. You might be thinking one of these thoughts:

  • I’m not really trying to sell; I’m trying to educate. (Wake up!)
  • I’m too small for a marketing plan. (Do you want to get larger?)

Recently, a reader asked me for help with a marketing plan, so I wanted to share the process I went through to create my marketing plan and some tips you can use for your own.

Note: There’s a free download at the end, so read the entire post!

Step I: Decide on your goals

You start with your goals. They should be feasible and measurable, but challenging. Here are a couple of mine:

  1. Have 3 1-on-1 coaching clients all the time
  2. Increase PowerPoint list to 13,000 and AutoCAD list to 8,000

As you can see, in a year from now, I’ll be able to know if I’ve achieved these goals, so they are measurable. I think they are feasible (I’m close to having 3 1-on-1 coaching clients now and my lists are 10,000 and 6,800 now.)

Include goals for all your streams of income. For example, 4 of my streams of income are:

  • Corporate/faculty/conference/webinar training
  • Coaching
  • Online sales (ebooks/webinars)
  • Ads

Step II: State your desired annual income Read More

by Ellen Finkelstein

Selling: How often is too much?

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internet-marketing-balance-info-salesAs a social entrepreneur or solopreneur, you need to develop a relationship with your subscribers and readers.

As a customer, you are more likely to buy from people you know and trust. As a marketer, you need to let people get to know you by providing them with valuable information. Over time, they will trust you.

But sometimes, you want to sell your products and services. So, what is the ideal ratio of information to sales, both for posts and emails?

It depends on your niche. If your topic is Internet Marketing, people assume you will market to them. As Internet marketers themselves, they are accepting of marketing.

If your niche is presentation skills (one of my niches), you can’t sell as much. Most of your potential clients are business people or educators and they aren’t as tolerant of marketing.

So you’ll need to feel your way to a solution. Here are some guidelines:

  • When you start out, provide more information. This gives people a chance to get to know you and discover what you know. This applies to blog posts, social media, and emails. Especially make sure that your emails are not mostly for marketing purposes. What is the ratio of information to sales for your last 10 emails?
  • When you become more known, introduce your first product and see what the result is. If it goes over well, you know you’re on the right track.
  • Give your customers special deals. Always treat them very well. After all, they bought from you!
  • When you do sell, use an approach of helping your readers solve a problem. This eases the sales edge. After all, that’s what social entrepreneurs and solopreneurs do — they help people!

Eventually, you’ll come up with a comfortable ratio of information to sales.

by Ellen Finkelstein

Can you succeed without SEO? Surprisingly, yes!

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In my article, “Search Engine Optimization — What is it, do you need it and how do you do it?” I made the case for SEO.

But, there are people who don’t use SEO! This might be a little controversial, but I want you to know all the ways of marketing online.

SEO works when you want to provide people with information as a way of making sales. And social entrepreneurs often want to educate people and give away knowledge. When your site has a lot of content, if you use SEO well, more people will find your website.

But there are other ways to attract people to your cause — and website.

Video — and YouTubeSEO-social-media

Remember that SEO is search engine optimization. It’s purpose is to get people to your website when they search. Did you know that YouTube is the number 2 search engine, after Google? (And it’s owned by Google.) That’s right, people go to YouTube and search for topics of interest to them. You may have done that yourself.

So, you can put your content on YouTube in the form of video. Of course, be sure to use the tag feature to tag your videos. In truth, that’s a form of SEO. And the first text in the description box should be your URL.

Social media marketing

Instead of using your website, you can use social media to get out the word about your cause and website.

  • Twitter: You can use Twitter as a quick way to get out your content. As you probably know, the content has to be 140 characters or less. You can include a link (usually shortened) to bring people to a page on your website.
  • Facebook: If the people you want to attract frequent Facebook (almost any audience except business people), set up a Facebook page and link frequently to your website. But be warned, a Facebook page is not that different from a website and you’ll need to add content to it frequently and interact with your readers.
  • LinkedIn: If your market is business people, I recommend setting up a group in LinkedIn and frequenting existing groups. LinkedIn has many other tools, as well to connect you with your target market.

Each of these topics is huge, so I’ll write separate posts on how to use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to connect with like-minded people.

For more information on social media marketing, see my post, “Overview of social media marketing.”

How the no-SEO method of Internet marketing works

Let’s get back to the topic of SEO. If you don’t want to create a large body of content, you can create a smaller website with a clear and compelling call to action. Then, you can use video on YouTube and social media to drive people to your site.

What do you think? Which method — SEO or not — do you think would work best for you? Or,, which method have you used? Perhaps both? Leave a comment!

by Ellen Finkelstein

How to move from offline to online

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A reader asked,

I have a website. I have a Facebook page and I’m on Twitter, but most of the business I get is face to face. How do I get the people online to take notice?”

Many people start a local business, or one based on meeting people in person at conferences and trade fairs. But they have difficulty expanding online.

Of course, a main purpose of going online is to be able to expand your reach beyond face-to-face opportunities.

Your approach will depend on your business, but I’m assuming that you offer a product or service that you could deliver online, without face-to-face contact.

Here are some basic techniques that will help you get people to notice you online.

Get noticed

internet-marketing-expand-listYou need to get visitors to your website and Facebook page. You also need email and Twitter subscribers. That’s how you reach people who are online and not local to your area. Here are some ways to reach people that aren’t local:

  1. Start small. Ask your friends, relatives, colleagues, as well as current and past customers to subscribe to your email newsletter. In your newsletter, ask  subscribers to tell their friends and include a link to subscribe on your website.
  2. Offer a free report and tell people about it. Require them to subscribe to your newsletter to get the free report. Some people say you should offer a free report without requiring sign-up, but I think that works only in certain situations. Remember that you’ll be offering free information in your blog posts.
  3. Build up content. Write, write and write. You do this by creating blog posts. The more you have, the more people will come to your site. That’s because when you have focused content, you’re automatically optimizing your website for the search engines. See my blog post on Search Engine Optimization. Read More
by Ellen Finkelstein

How can you sell if you’re giving away so much information for free?

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Many marketers recommend giving away free content. In fact, a lot of free content. For example, Jim Cochrum says, “Step 1. Give away great content and grow your email list.

Although there is disagreement about whether or not to require an email address for free content to new visitors (such as a free report), almost all experts agree on the concept of giving away free information in a blog or email newsletter.

But, will people just come for the free stufonline salesf and never buy anything?

The truth is that some will, perhaps most. But some will buy from you when they respect your knowledge. And respect comes over time.

But do offer products and services to subscribers and readers. Do it regularly without being annoying. When interspersed between high-quality, free content, people won’t find you too salesy and some will find your offers valuable.

by Ellen Finkelstein