Free teleclass: 5 Innovative Marketing Strategies for 2011

You missed it live, but you can still listen to the recording!

If you’re like many solo business owners, you’ve probably dipped your toe into the world of online marketing & social media. And there are so many different pieces to online marketing, you may find yourself jumping from one “latest and greatest” tool or fad to another, with no plan, and no results to show for it.

Yes, the world of online marketing IS always changing, but in order to harness its power, you need to know what is working now, and how to apply it to YOUR business.

Register below for the recording to learn

  • One marketing tool that has a 95% open rate for messages to your ideal clients
  • New ideas for integrating social media into your current marketing
  • 3 Ways to figure out what online marketing is working for you, and what isn’t
  • 30 minutes a week to gain local (and national) visibility
  • 4 Tips on finding the right person to help you with implementation, and the important things to communicate to them

So whether you’re a successful solo professional that has decided there’s not enough time in the day to do it all yourself and need to outsource, or are just getting started and want a system to follow yourself, this call is for you!

Sign up for access to this recorded teleseminar

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Happy Holidays from Marketing Geeks!

Happy Holidays from Marketing Geeks! Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year by far – the music, the lights, the food, and the family – I love it all! And as long as we have a white Christmas (which we usually do in the snowbelt of Michigan) I can even handle the cold!    :)

I hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday season, whatever holiday you may celebrate. This time of year is great to take a break and reconnect with the things in our life that are our true priorities, like family and friends.

But with all the holidays sales out there, it’s also a great time to save a few dollars on products and services that will help your business grow in 2011. So in the spirit of holiday sales, we’re offering 25% off our most popular products and services!

Take your pick below, and use the coupon code snowman when you checkout!

Products

* The Social Media Content Creation Kit:  $97  Now $73 Buy Now

Creating a strong social media presence requires content – lots of it! If you always find yourself struggling to publish enough blog posts, articles, tweets, status updates, videos and audios, the Social Media Content Creation Kit is for you. It lays out a simple strategy for generating original content regularly, and gives you tons of ideas for repurposing content, automating your social media, and spending as little time as possible while generating an online presence that screams “Expert”!

* Social Media Assessment & Strategy Call:  $75  Now $57 Buy Now
In this 30 minute call you’ll get a complete assessment of where you are with your current social media profiles, and where improvements can be made.  Then we’ll map out a strategy for you in order to increase your visibility, traffic and sales through social media.

Services

* Project Social Media Done In a Day Intensive:  $897  Now on super-special 60% holiday discount!
This innovative Done In A Day Intensive is a one-day personalized program that gives you direct access to the experienced Project Social Media team and gives your social media marketing efforts the kick in the pants that it needs. Get your strategy and your setup done, all in one day!

* 20 Hour Support Package: $997  Now $748 Buy Now
Our ultimate support package – you get 20 hours of specialized social media, WordPress, 1ShoppingCart and online marketing support! Let us take care of the technical side of your online marketing, and see increased results and more time for you to spend on your business!

* WordPress Blog Site Design: $597  Now $448 Buy Now
Is your site outdated (or worse, nonexistent!) and in need of updates? Tired of waiting for your web designer to make simple changes to your website? Want better search engine findability and social media friendliness for your site? Consider WordPress! Our WordPress Blog Site package gives you a complete website based on WordPress, a user-friendly and search-engine friendly platform that makes updating your site easy, and gives you loads of functionality you probably don’t currently have!

* Social Media Branding Package: $157  Now $118 Buy Now
Having a consistent design across all your social media profiles is a great way to brand your business, provide additional information, and gain visibility. This package gives you a custom Twitter background, a custom welcome tab for your Facebook Fan Page, and a custom YouTube background.

* Press Release Submission:  $67   Now $51 Buy Now
Press Releases help you get the word out about new products, changes in your company or any other news you’d like the world to know about. Our team will create accounts with your bio (and a link back to your site), and distribute one press release out to multiple high-ranking PR sites.

Important questions to ask before a website design/redesign

If you’ve ever gone through the process of designing a website, you probably realized part way through that there were lots of things you had never even thought about when you were planning for your site! And if you never have designed a website, and have been thinking that you need to do that soon, getting a head start on planning will only make the entire process easier and less stressful for you.

I’ve designed quite a few blog sites since I started my business, oh way back when  :), and in the process I’ve developed  a list of important questions to ask the client, or at least have them think about as they’re giving me notes for the new site, or their site redesign.

At the beginning of the year, a lot of people start thinking about their goals for their business, and the things they’d like to get accomplished that year, and often times, a new website or a website redesign end up on that list. But unfortunately, the process can get overwhelming and so the project gets put off.

But I can’t just let you sit around with a bad site, or worse, no site at all! So today, I’ve decided that it might be helpful to share those questions with you.

If you’re even thinking about redesigning your website or getting a new one done, check out the Web Design Questions pdf here. And if you have any questions about the web design/redesign process, comment here or email us at info@marketinggeeksintl.com!

Free teleclass: Crafting your online marketing strategy into an easy-to-delegate system!

Announcing our next free teleclass on Tuesday, August 10th at 3pm Eastern

If you’re like many solo business owners, you’ve probably dipped your toe into the world of online marketing & social media. As you may have found, though, if you don’t have a strategic plan for social media, it can be time-consuming, and not always produce the results you’re looking for.

And there are so many different pieces to online marketing, you may find yourself jumping from one “latest and greatest” tool or fad to another, with no plan, and no results to show for it.

Wouldn’t you love to be shown an easy way to decide on a complete online marketing & social media strategy, set up the tools and systems to get it done quickly and efficiently (instead of spending all day on it!), and even have the entire system to give to a social media manager, virtual assistant (or even your teenager) so this marketing plan can work for you, while you have time to work on your own genius ideas?!

Join us on this free teleseminar on Tuesday, August 10th at 3pm Eastern to learn

  • A simple way to create a social media strategy that can be easily communicated to your assistant
  • 3 handy tools to run (almost) all your social media marketing
  • Guidelines for things your assistant should not do when managing your social networks
  • 5 Tips on finding the right person to help, and the important things to communicate to them
  • And one easy-to-follow system to streamline all the pieces into a recurring Online Marketing calendar, so you & your assistant always know what’s coming up, and what’s expected (an easy way to avoid the stress and hassle of marketing tasks falling through the cracks!)

As a bonus, you’ll receive a copy of our Social Media Strategy File to use for yourself, and a sample Marketing Calendar to ensure you see just how easy this can be to put into place.

So whether you’re a successful solo professional that has decided there’s not enough time in the day to do it all yourself and need to outsource, or are just getting started and want a system to follow yourself, this call is for you!

Register Your FREE Seat on this Teleseminar NOW!
Tuesday, August 10th at 3pm EST

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Can’t make the call live? No worries! Be sure to register, and we’ll send you a copy of the recording.

A spring cleaning challenge for your marketing – part 1

This is it, only mine is white!

This is it, only mine is white!

This past weekend, I got super excited when I happened to find the absolutely perfect kitchen “island cart” at one of my favorite stores. My kitchen is on the smaller side, and we don’t have a ton of cabinet space, so I’ve been looking for “just the right” piece of furniture for my kitchen for a long time. So when I found one that was just perfect, you know I snatched it up and raced home with it! I then spent a good portion of my weekend (which was rainy and cold, by the way – spring has left Michigan for the moment!) completely reorganizing my kitchen.

While I didn’t see this particular episode as spring cleaning (it was more excitement!), I think that spring still gets a lot of us in a mood to clean things up and refresh our surroundings.

And if now is a good time to get rid of old winter clothes that no longer fit, it’s also a great time to freshen up your website, your online presence and your marketing.

Just like clothes in your closet, there are probably tasks in your marketing plan that no longer fit and serve your business. And at the same time, there might be a buried treasure hiding under all the junk – something you’ve forgotten about or didn’t know you had in the first place!

You may be spending lots of time on a social networking site that no longer has the audience you’re wanting to connect with. Or maybe your business has evolved, and you’re still getting traffic to your website, but have never checked to see where it’s coming from. And if you don’t know where you’re getting interested visitors from, how in the world can you go out and get more?

So here is a little Spring Cleaning Challenge for you:

Item 1:

Go through your website carefully, and make sure it’s up to date. While things like copyrights, email addresses and phone numbers may seem obvious (and please get at least those right!), look at things like

  • Is your pricing current?
  • Do you have events listed that are way old?
  • For those events that are over, do you have recordings? If so, are they available? If not, now’s a great time to make those available for download – either free or paid. Look, we just created a fresh new freebie or product!
  • Do your newsletter/autoresponder signups and website contact forms work?
  • Is your bio current? Check your website, as well as your social media profiles, article directory sites, and anywhere else you have yourself listed.

On Monday, I’ll give you part 2. But over the weekend, take a look at your website and get that current!

Internship opp

We are seeking a web-savvy, sales and social media-loving online marketing intern to support our expanding online presence, and supporting our clients in building theirs.

As a Web Intern, you will participate in a variety of marketing projects in a creative and self-driven environment. Working directly with the marketing team the intern will be given a unique opportunity to learn hands-on transferable skills within a diverse array of website, marketing and sales disciplines.

List of Duties:

1. Write/ prepare/ distribute press releases, articles and marketing pieces including blog posts.

2. Implementation of Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube) and Search Engine Optimization.

3. Making minor edits to websites and blogs (HTML/CSS skills appreciated, but not required).

4. Building relationships with prospective clients and generating leads for “free consultations” which will require your marketing expertise. You will be driving marketing and new business for the company, and will have the chance to participate in the launching of a new product/branch of the company.

The benefits of this position are:
-Chance to earn income during unpaid internship through lead generation and sales activities. Commission is 15% of new client service packages.
-Resume builder: You will be able show success through the process of creating and implementing a marketing plan, and increasing business sales.
-Potential future career opportunities, either part-time while in school, or full-time.
-Flexible hours: You will have a hand in making your own schedule. The work week would be 10 – 20 hours per week
-Credits, at some schools.

Schedule: 10 – 20 hours per week.

Feel free to explore this site – it gives you a very good sense of the types of services we provide to our clients, and the types of skills we’d really like to see in our intern. If you feel you are, or could be, a very good fit (i.e. savvy with the internet and social media, understand the development and implementation of a marketing plan, and will be passionate about the power of online marketing while speaking with potential leads on the phone), we’d love to hear from you! Please email careers@marketinggeeksintl.com with your school and career experience, and reasons for wanting this internship opportunity.

4 Easy Ways to Integrate List Building Into Your Current Online Marketing

how to build a list with social mediaIf you’ve spent much time marketing anything online, you’ve probably heard the mantra “The money is in the list”. And that’s usually true, especially if you’re consciously building a list of targeted subscribers – people who want and need the types of services or products you provide.

One thing clients often say is “How can I be sure my list is targeted? I can’t control who signs up!”

So before we get into the ways to integrate your list building efforts, here are a few tips to ensure that all those new signups are really targeted to what you offer:

- First and foremost, do you have a freebie? If not, you should! That is, by far, the easiest way to get people to actually sign up. Most people do NOT want any more emails in their inbox than absolutely necessary, and generally won’t sign up to get a newsletter if there’s not anything else in it for them. So create a freebie that hits a nerve for them, and makes them “gotta have it”. You can get ideas from questions that clients ask you over and over again, or by polling clients or even your network on Facebook and Twitter to find out what their burning questions are.

-Use language that excludes people that aren’t right for you. So if you’re a coach for single parents, mention single parents in your freebie title. As an example, my freebie is “11 Easy & Effective Steps to Creating a Search Engine and Social Media Friendly Business Blog“. If someone stumbles across my website, but doesn’t have a business blog, or they don’t care about search engine and social media traffic, that freebie won’t speak to them. They won’t care about that info, and so they won’t signup. This ensures that the people that sign up want the kind of expert advice that you’re providing.

Take a good hard look at your current freebie or newsletter signup. Is it speaking right to your ideal clients? Is it compelling – something that will help them solve a problem they’re currently having?

You may decide it’s time to change things up a bit, and now’s the time to do it!

Once you’re confident that what you’re offering speaks right to your ideal client, here are the 4 Easy Ways to Integrate List Building Into Your Current Online Marketing:

1. Your Website or Blog – this may seem basic, but do you have your freebie and signup displayed prominently on your site? All to often I see clients wondering why nobody is signing up for their list, but when I check out their site, it’s very hard to find their signup. It’s at the bottom of the page, or on one page but not another. You want to display your freebie & signup consistently on every page, as close to the top as you can get it. Ask a friend or family member to sign up for your newsletter, and you’ll get a much more honest picture of how easy-to-spot and compelling your offer is. If the text blends into the rest of the page, or the page is too busy, you might consider having an ebook cover designed – this gives more pizzazz to your offer, and also increases the perceived value.

2. Your Resource Box on Article Directories – are you using article marketing for your business? If so, do you mention your freebie (with a link to sign up) in your Resource Box? Why not? That is a great place to encourage signups. They’ve read your article and hopefully have found it of value, but they’re not on your site! If they leave now, they won’t have any idea that you offer a great freebie related to that exact topic!

3. Your Social Media Profiles – if you’re active on social media, you probably have your website listed. Hopefully, you have a well crafted business description that speaks to your ideal client, and tells them exactly how you can help them. But did you know that you can actually provide a way for them to sign up right from within Facebook? You can use the Profile HTML app or the Static FBML app to display html code right on the sidebar of your personal profile or on your Fan Page.

On Twitter you can have a custom Twitter background created that gives visitors more info about you, and directs them where to go to sign up for your freebie.

On your YouTube videos, add the signup link to the description box, or use the annotation feature to add the web address right onto the video itself.

If you’re already using social media regularly, then let it work double-time and help you with your list building efforts!

4. Your Offline Marketing Materials – just because list building is thought of as an online tool, there’s no reason you can’t promote your freebie on all your offline marketing materials as well! Create a short, compelling description of your freebie, and add that to your business cards, postcards, invoices, proposals, or any other offline correspondance. This will give you leverage to build your list with people that may not be as active online, but are still a good fit for you.

Ready to ramp up those Resolutions again? Check out the Post Resolution Hangover Remedy

It’s a one-of-a-kind event … yet couldn’t be more timely!

Whether you admit it or not, the word resolution goes hand in hand with the start of a new year.  Whether you make your resolutions in the form of business goals and priorities, or actual resolutions …. By mid to late January, you’re likely tired of forcing yourself to follow-through on what you set out just a few weeks ago.

In comes Terri Z at Solo-E, a virtual learning resource for solo entrepreneurs, with the Post Resolution Hangover Giveaway. This isn’t your typical giveaway…each item is a true gift, not available anywhere else for free! The value of each item is the price at which it sells today. How cool is that?! And I’m so honored to be a part of the giveaway!

The gifts include ebooks, audios, home-study packages and more, on topics including: 101 Ways to Attract Clients, 7 Things You Must Do to Get More Clients, The Facebook Fan Page Intensive, The Online Video Playbook, 5 Psychological Triggers to Turn Prospects Into Clients, Abundance in Business, The Finding Time Quick-Start Guide, and my very own, brand new Social Media Content Creation Kit!

Solo-E has partnered with me and 19 other solo-entrepreneur experts to offer these incredible resources for online based business owners.  For 12 days only – January 25 to February 5, you can download all these gifts at absolutely no cost (and no strings). That’s right…you don’t even have to give up your email address!

There’s an incredible group of Experts participating in the Post Resolution Hangover Giveaway, including:

Alicia Forest, Ann Ronan, Loren Fogelman, Tracey Lawton, Allison Babb, Tina Forsyth, Rebecca Zwar, Christine Gallagher, Lou Bortone, Heather Dominic, Laurie Weiss, Laurie Mandato, Zahra Efan, Hazel Palache, Laura West, Eva Gregory, Alicia Smith, Michele PW, Nina East and Paula Eder

Take a few minutes to see what all the fuss is about, and cure your Resolution Hangover! You’ll get access to fantastic resources that you can download and review at your convenience.  Visit http://www.solo-e.com/PostHolidayHangoverRemedy

Outsource And Be Rich: The Little-Applied Secret ALL Wealthy Entrepreneurs Use

Article Reprint from Fabienne Fredrickson

Let me share a big secret with you that all wealthy solo-entrepreneurs know: If you want to have an ideal business, work less and make a whole lot more, I can assure you that you CANNOT do it by yourself. You must outsource!

You know how I know this? Because for years, I tried! For years, I tried to do everything in my business by myself, like the good “lone ranger” that I thought I was. You know what? It didn’t work. In fact, a few years ago, I remember getting on the phone with my coach and crying for the first 8 minutes of our coaching call. He listened patiently as I sobbed and then said just one thing to me:

“Fabienne, Frank Sinatra didn’t move his own pianos.”

Silence on the phone. I stopped crying and it was like The Truth had been spoken. It may seem like a “duh” moment to you, but when I heard this for the first time, it felt like the skies had parted and the answer to all my problems were streaming down from the sky. I realized that I had been trying to “move my own piano”, instead of focusing on my brilliance and my “genius” work – the stuff that I’m good at and that only *I* can do in my business.

The minute he said those words to me, a surge of energy went up my entire spine. I realized right then and there that I was trying to do the impossible by doing it all myself and that I would never be able to grow my business further if I didn’t change the way I did things.

So I changed my whole way of doing business and I started DELEGATING different aspects of my business to others. And I’m deliriously happy to report that my business, my bank account (and my sanity) have never looked better!

Fact is, you cannot do it all on your own either. No matter how much you like to think that you can do it better, faster and more efficiently than anyone else, the fact remains that you will eventually burn out. In his book “No B.S. Business Success”, Dan Kennedy talks about the worst number in ANY business is the number 1. Meaning, you never want to be the only one working in your business.

You MUST leverage your time and resources if you are serious about running a successful business,getting clients and finally making a good 1ncome being self-employed. There’s just no way around it. And getting it ALL done means you have to eventually start outsourcing and delegating.

Thing is, you can wait like I did until you nearly crumble into a state of near exhaustion where things are falling through the cracks left and right OR you can come from a Full Practice Mentality and start getting assistance NOW, before you ever get to that place.

Proper outsourcing means delegating specific things to someone who’s happy to do them for you:

  • Stuff you’re not good at
  • Stuff you don’t know how to do
  • Stuff you don’t have time to do
  • Anything outside of your brilliance/genius (meaning, everything other than the stuff only you can do in your business)

Delegating allows you to strengthen your strengths, instead of trying to “better” your weaknesses. It means only working on your core competencies and focusing on your brilliance and genius work. In turn, you’ll get more done, you’ll make more money, and you’ll enjoy more time off for the important things in life (like your family, your friends, you know, the important stuff.)

It’s the ULTIMATE leverage!

Now, I have a team of 7 virtual assistants and one in-person assistant helping me on a part-time basis. On top of that, I get help from bookkeepers, attorneys, accountants, fulfillment houses, etc., so I can focus on doing what I do best: speak, write, coach and create products. Oh, and marketing too. Don’t forget that. And because of it, I’m personally able to PRODUCE so much more than I’ve ever been able to.

But I know what you might be thinking. “That’s fine for you, Fabienne, but I’m not in a place where I can bring on a whole staff of people.” Well, believe me, I know about that because I used to be there too! This wasn’t an overnight thing. It’s taken me a few years to get to this point. But the good news is, you can start slowly and ramp up from there, like I did.

Here’s what I want you to do:

  • Calculate what you’re worth per hour when you’re doing your Brilliance/Genius work; that which only you can do
  • Make a list of all the things you do each day
  • Attach a dollar value to what you could pay someone to outsource this to

Example: Let’s assume you’re worth $200 per billable hour. Ideally you should be generating $200 or more for EACH hour you work. However, I’ll guess you’re doing DOZENS of things each day that someone charges less for (and is happy to do for $15, $25, $45, $75, etc.) These are the things you want to outsource, so you can make $200 every hour you DO work. It’s all about working smarter and more efficiently.

To justify this, REPLACE the time you’ve saved with doing your Brilliance/Genius work and working on your Client Attraction assignments. Why? Because marketing = more clients = more dollars. Enough said. (That doesn’t mean you can go goof off. That’s NOT the point, at least not at the beginning.)

Makes sense?

If budget is an issue, just start small. Focus first on tasks that will immediately make you money (stuff you’re not doing now, stuff you don’t know how to do) and set a maximum hour cap per month. Then, as revenue comes in, you can grow from there.

Within months of my taking the leap and doing this, outsourcing helped bring in so much more money, I was able to increase the hours I could delegate and outsource some more and I eventually doubled my revenues in ONE year.

You can too. It’s really easy.

Your Assignment:

So, take out a sheet of paper and do the following:

  • Calculate what you’re worth per hour when you’re doing your Brilliance/Genius work; that which only you can do
  • Make a list of all the things you do each day that don’t fall within the category of your Brilliance/Genius work
  • Attach a dollar value to what you could pay someone to outsource this to
  • Begin to outsource and delegate, little by little

I guarantee that you too will catapult your income as you focus more and more on business development and Client Attraction, as well as your genius work. You won’t believe you ever did it any other way.

Need some resources on how to clear the decks and make Client Attraction a priority by outsourcing? Then get a copy of the Client Attraction Home Study System™. I’ve outlined every Client Attraction technique in detail, including outsourcing, and it’s all there so you can start using it right away to get similar results. It’s all step-by-step, not a big mishmash of things. So, you do step one of the system, and when you’re done with that, you move on to step two, and so on. SO easy. That’s why my clients have gotten such great results from it. All the tools, scripts, templates, and examples are handed to you on a silver platter. You can get yours at TheClientAttractionSystem.com.

©2009 Client Attraction LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Fabienne Fredrickson, The Client Attraction Mentor, is founder of the Client Attraction System®, the proven step-by-step program that shows you exactly how to attract more clients, in record time…guaranteed. To get your F.R.E.E. Audio CD by mail and receive her weekly marketing & success mindset articles on attracting more high-paying clients and dramatically increasing your income, visit www.ClientAttraction.com.