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sandy martini tagged articles (0-50 of 582)

  • Are You Special or Just Another...? - When most of us get into business, we look around at what everyone else in our industry is doing. If we're a bookkeeper, we look around at other bookkeepers. If we're a life coach, we look around at other life coaches. If we're a financial planner, we look around at other financial planners. If we're a virtual assistant, we look around at other virtual assistants. And then we do what they do. I recently heard something by Dan Kennedy and he reminded us the dangers of doing what I just outlined.
  • 3 Reasons Your Prospects Aren't Buying From You - You've worked for months to create the perfect ebook. It includes the answer to every possible question your audience could have. You've created a sales page. You even offered a discount and threw in a ton of bonuses. So why aren't they buying?
  • Are You Preventing Sales and Turning Away Customers? - A few days ago, my assistant was looking into toll free number services. After researching the websites of two companies, she called in frustration: - The websites were a jumble of confusing facts and figures. - When she called the companies, she got different answers from different people. I bet you've had this same experience with at least one company. Has anyone had this experience with you?
  • What business are you REALLY in? - Many businesses spend thousands of dollars branding everything they do to create a familiarity with their prospects and customers and yet, sadly, miss the boat completely when it comes to their service. In the last week, I experienced each of the following: 1. A credit card company sent a replacement card -- two months after the original expired. 2.
  • "Where's the cash? 7 SIMPLE and PROVEN steps you can easily take right now to get paid faster" - It's that time again. You send out invoices and sit and wait, and wait, and wait for your clients to pay you. Sometimes it's a matter of cash flow on their end, sometimes they are just too busy and forget and other times it's something little that they are unsure of, but haven't found the time to contact you.
  • Do You Know YOUR *Why* For Publishing An Ezine? - I received the following question yesterday: "How do I get started publishing and marketing my ezine?" While the question is broad enough to warrant its own seminar, let's discuss the "How do I get started publishing?" question this week and the "marketing" of it next week. Before you start publishing an ezine or e-newsletter, you want to know your reason "why". WHY are you going to publish an ezine/e-newsletter? Is it: *to become recognized as an expert in your industry? *to get more clients? *to sell informational products and services? *to spread the word about a great cause? *to stay in touch with your shareholders/investors? *a combination of the above?
  • Do You Suffer From Marketing Overwhelm? - It's Monday and you get an email indicating that writing an ezine is THE way to get new clients. You drop everything and start working on an email newsletter. It's Tuesday and your friend calls and says that he heard the best way to get publicity is pay-per-click. You drop everything and sign up for a Google Adwords account. It's Wednesday and you heard that someone made a million dollars selling info products. Everything else waits while you work on your first million dollar product. I once had a client who would tell me he figured out how to "fix" his business and what he needed to do to succeed. Unfortunately, he did this DAILY. Each day he had a new marketing strategy that he would drop everything else to implement.
  • 7 Steps to Writing Great Articles - As a business owner, do you find yourself needing to write more and more? You've probably heard that you should be writing articles to promote your business (and it is a great, no cost way to promote!), but may be leery of starting. Here are 7 tips to get you writing effective articles. 1. Select a good topic. There's no sense writing an article if no one wants to read it.
  • How to Develop a Professional Image - In this day of technology and the dreaded recordings, insuring that you maintain a professional image is crucial to business success. How you come across on the phone, through your website, on a plane or at a networking event directly impacts how others (read "potential clients") perceive you and your business. Especially if you ARE your business. Here are a few tips for maintaining a professional image in all that you do: 1. Dress for success and act the part. If you need to attend an event or may otherwise come into contact with potential clients, you should dress for success.

  • Autoresponders: What are they and how to use them - Many business owners are confused about what exactly an autoresponder is. . .and what it isn't. An autoresponder is a piece of software -- either standalone or as part of something larger like a shopping cart -- which AUTOMATICALLY sends an email, or a sequence of emails when triggered.
  • Marketing Overwhelm: A Curable Disease - It's Monday and you get an email indicating that writing an ezine is THE way to get new clients. You drop everything and start working on an email newsletter.
  • The 3 Biggest Pricing Mistakes and How To Avoid Them - I was recently on a forum where several "time for money" service professionals and business owners were discussing their "rates". I immediately noticed that these smart, savvy business owners were falling into some pricing myth traps. Here are the three biggest pricing mistakes that I see being made by "time for money" small business owners: 1. Matching/Undercutting. Many small business owners look around at what everyone else is doing and they do the same thing -- or worse, they lower their rate thinking it makes them more appealing to prospective clients. It doesn't, it makes you look like a bargain and sets you up to be treated as one would treat a bargain. I challenge you to separate yourself from others in your industry. You want to be exclusive. You want to be known as the Mercedes or the BMW -- not as the Daewoo.
  • 3 Processes to Put Your Business on Automatic Pilot - I often talk about implementing systems in your business to keep everything running smoothly. Lots of people talk about systems and processes, but very few actually explain what that means. Last week, I was *out* of the office for 5-6 days recovering from surgery. During that time, systems which I instituted months ago kept things running so smoothly that most of my team didn't know about the surgery until after I was home from the hospital (where I spent 3 days). Here's an example of something you can, and should, institute in your own business -- no matter your industry: 1. Place a buffer between you and prospective clients.
  • Top 5 Tools For Insuring Your Marketing Plan Attracts Clients - In order to insure that your pipeline doesn't dry up as existing clients take vacations or move on, you want to overfill your marketing funnel in order to create a waiting list of people who want to work with you. Before we discuss which strategies should have a prominent place in your marketing action plan, you'll want to have a few items in your marketing toolkit: 1. Write out your USP. Your Unique Selling Proposition tells prospects what makes you different. Why should they hire you as opposed to Joe?
  • 4 Ways to Build Your Ezine List Without Spending a Dime - There are thousands of ways to build your ezine, subscriber, mailing list. . .some expensive and many not. Today I want to cover the Top 4 ways I built my list. Each of the following items can be done without spending a dime. 1. Public Speaking Public speaking is the quickest and easiest way for you to quickly build a list of raving fans. Contact your local Chamber of Commerce or BNI chapter (or any other organization which makes sense for your industry) and offer to give a 30 minute talk on your industry. This is NOT a sales pitch! It's an educational talk - your only goal is to educate.
  • How To Handle Your Newsletter Unsubscribes - In the beginning, when you're writing your newsletter and repurposing your articles in order to continuously grow your list, things are great. You go to bed, wake up and find you have new ezine subscribers.
  • Are You Client Friendly? - There was a teleseminar I was interested in attending last week (promoted in a colleague's e-newsletter) and so I dutifully clicked the "register here" link. That link took me to another web page (after 3 tries), which gave me another description of the same teleseminar and asked me to "register here".
  • What have you done? - Do you remember the day you worked for a company -- large or small, it doesn't matter -- and dreamed of owning your own business? "I will be *the boss*", you thought. "I will come and go as I please and make my own hours", you thought. "I will be able to spend more time with my friends and family", you thought. "I will have plenty of money to do what I want", you thought. And then you started your own business. My, my how things have changed.
  • Article Marketing Repurposing Strategy - Creating Information Products - We all know the importance of keeping in touch with our ideal clients and prospects via frequent AND informative content. But that doesn't mean your articles, a.k.a. "informative content", should be relegated to your hard drive forevermore. Article Marketing Strategy: Creating Information Products When you're getting ready to create your first information product or, if you're feeling a little stuck, I recommend you start with something simple. . . mini-guides!
  • 7 Simple Ways to Consistently Build Your Ezine List - One of the most popular questions I'm asked is "HOW do I build my ezine list?" or "How do I get more people to sign up for my ezine list?" There is NO magic pill to building your ezine list! Please read the above sentence again. Trust me, if a magic pill did exist, I would have found it. :-) There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways you can build your ezine list.
  • Giving Back - Have you ever noticed that people get incredibly happy whenever you unexpectedly think of them or do something for them? It doesn't matter if it's related to your business or personal life. Take Oprah Winfrey for example.
  • Article Marketing Repurposing Strategy -- and it's NOT posting articles online - Repurposing - the art of doing something once and using it in other ways - is one of the most effective and efficient systems you can create within your business. Before your eyes glaze over with the thought that this is yet another article telling you to market your newsletter articles online, read on. In addition to marketing to article directories, you can repurpose your articles by using one of my favorite marketing strategies: Article Marketing Strategy: Teleseminars Take any article and turn it into a 60-minute teleseminar -- simply add a "welcome" and "introduction to the topic", go through your main points, add a "closing" and leaving some time for Q&A.
  • Does Your Elevator Speech Pass the Goldfish Test? - Hello! How are you? So what do you do? The clock has started. I've just met you and within those first several seconds have formed an opinion of your success, your income, your education, etc. Studies show that the average American has a nine second attention span (about the same as a goldfish) and, in reality, doesn't care what you do or who you are. It's not that we're horrible people, we just don't have the time. We're too busy thinking about everything we need to do: our jobs, the bills piling up on the kitchen table, our parents' health, what's for dinner, who's picking the children up after school, the holidays are coming, etc. But since we're polite, we ask and we try to listen.
  • 4 Keys to Manifesting Your Reality - "Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve." -- Napoleon Hill People generally fail at achieving their goals and completing their projects for one of three reasons: poor systems, not clearly defining their goal/project or self sabotage (conscious or unconscious). We're going to focus on how to get out of your own way in order to overcome obstacles. Remember the Law of Attraction? Your predominant thoughts determine your level of "vibration" and the level you vibrate at determines what you attract to yourself. Since science has determined that, at the fundamental level, everything is vibrating, the question becomes: What level are you vibrating at? Are your thoughts generally positive or negative? While we all rush to say "Positive!", it's actually easy to tell. . .just take a look at your results.
  • 7 Tips to Writing Great Articles Which Showcase Your Expertise - As a business owner, do you find yourself needing to write more and more? You've probably heard that you should be writing articles to promote your business (and it is a great, no cost way to showcase your expertise), but may be leery of starting. Here are 7 tips to get you writing effective articles. 1. Select a good topic. There's no sense writing an article if no one wants to read it.
  • What EXACTLY are "processes and systems"? - Several years ago, I purchased a "system" geared towards getting new clients -- it was very comprehensive and well-written. Until I got to the last chapter on setting up processes and systems for marketing. There was a chapter title page, followed by blank drawings asking you to fill in what YOUR processes and systems were.
  • The Most Common Client Objections and How to Deal With Them - "A desire can overcome all objections and obstacles." -- Anonymous Think about the above quote for a second. When you want, I mean REALLY want something, you can almost always rationalize getting it. You find a way to overcome that nagging little voice whose job it is to object and throw up obstacles. I want you to view objections as a good thing. Yes, seriously! If your prospects have objections, it means they are considering hiring you or purchasing your product.
  • Which is Better: Direct Mail, Teleseminars or Webinars? - With every new technology, comes groups of users who immediately want to dispense with the old. Now that webinars are becoming mainstream, I've had a few clients ask which is better to use in their business: old-fashioned direct mail, teleseminars or webinars? Before I answer the question, let's first discuss the definition of each: Direct Mail consist of postcards, flyers, mailings done to your prospects -- anything they receive in their mailbox. Teleseminars are conference calls where you can have as few as two or as many as 2,000 (and more) people on a call at the same time.
  • 5 Simple and Easy Ways to Use Facebook to Market Your Business - Facebook is another in a long list of social networking sites. There's MySpace, LinkedIn, Ryze, etc. Certainly too many to join and keep up with AND run your business at the same time. So what's a busy entrepreneur to do? I spent some time playing around on Facebook this weekend and wanted to share some of high impact, low effort ways you can easily market your business using it -- without a lot of time or effort: 1. Include your website/blog link on your Facebook profile page.
  • RSS and Aggregators: So Easy A Caveman Could Use Them - According to Wikipedia, "RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts. Consumers of RSS content use special browsers called "aggregators" to watch for new content in dozens or even hundreds of web feeds. The initials "RSS" are variously used to refer to the following standards: ~ Really Simple Syndication ~ Rich Site Summary ~ RDF Site Summary" RSS allows publishers such as myself to automatically syndicate updates to my website and blog by publishing a feed link (see "Subscribe to My Website" section in the margin of my site). You can subscribe to it by registering with an aggregator (also called a "feed reader" or a "news reader").
  • Time and Productivity Management -- Sandy Style - There are hundreds, if not thousands, of books on time and productivity management and most of them appear to have been written by dedicated individuals who work in a vacuum -- they certainly aren't entrepreneurs building businesses from home offices with all the distractions that environment can bring.
  • Are you a "Dynamic Dan", "Opportunistic Oliver" or "Scared Susie"? - The book "Who Moved My Cheese" by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard is a 98-page look at the various ways that we react to change. In the book, there are two mice and two mice-size humans and we see how each reacts when their cheese has been moved -- not just moved, but no longer in sight.
  • MySpace -- 5 Reasons It's Not Just for Teenagers Anymore - It was not so long ago when I was watching my nephews eagerly upload their MySpace pictures and create their profiles. All the rave with teenagers and music bands, MySpace has become so much more!
  • Where are You in the Hierarchy? - There is what I call a "Hierarchy of Connection" - the higher the level of your connection, the more credibility you have and the more likely prospects are to turn into clients and refer others to you - think of this as the "know, like and trust" factor you hear so much about. Each experience of you creates a different level of connection as described below: 1. NO Name Recognition -- People have never heard of you/have no idea who you are or what results you provide. 2. Vague Recollection -- People hear your name and have a vague recollection of having heard it somewhere before, but are fuzzy about the details. 3.
  • How Different Personalities Deal With Change - The book "Who Moved My Cheese" by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard is a 98-page look at the various ways that we react to change.
  • 4 Unconventional Ways to Market Your Ezine - There are hundreds of ways to market your ezine. Some are good, some are expensive and many are both. We've all heard of: * article marketing (effective if done right) * ezine advertising (can work) * Google Adwords (can be expensive) * purchasing lists (I don't recommend) * hosting teleseminars (very effective if marketed well) But have you considered any of the following: 1. Networking Meetings/Conferences.
  • The Top 5 Ways To Build A Quality Prospect List - Every time you turn around these days, people are telling you that you need to have "a big list". Is this true? "Yes. . .and no." Truth is, you must have a list of qualified prospects who relate to you AND who want to purchase the products and services you offer. Let's break that down. *"qualified prospects" = Individuals in your target market who look forward to hearing from you and for whom you provide valuable information. If you are sending bookkeeping tips to gardeners, for example, they are likely to unsubscribe as the information is not valuable *to them*. *"who relate to you" = You want to build a relationship through your writing so your readers come to know, like and trust you.
  • Are You A Good Client? - You often see people (including me) writing about customer service, successful vendor practices and the like, very rarely, however, do you see someone ask you to review your own actions and determine if you are a good client for someone else. And that's what today's article is about -- if you dare.
  • What Do You Do When It All Goes Wrong? - You know the type of week. * Your book is back from the printer, you have some newspaper interviews lined up, your attending a meeting with your target audience. . .you are entering one of the biggest publicity weeks of your business and your website crashes (sound familiar?). * You've worked hard and are gearing up to launch a new product when a vendor calls and says that he can't get the new website up on deadline which is "okay" because the graphic artist's computer crashed and your product picture isn't ready anyway. They'll get back to you. * Taxes are due and, in some previous insanity, you agreed to do them for friends and family. But you still need information and the tax deadline looms.
  • 5 Success Indicators to Knowing If You Have a Hobby or a Business - I'd like you to take a step back, look at your business as an outsider would and ask the question "Is this a hobby or a business?" Put aside the anger that immediately boils to the surface because, after all, you are working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week; eating and non-sleeping this entity known as your business with little financial return and look at it objectively.
  • Website Not Performing As It Should? Ask These 7 Questions To Find Out Why - In preparing to design and write my new website, I visited hundreds of other sites to get a feel for what I did/did not want. For example, "squeeze pages" are all the rage these days. You know, those pages which require you to enter your name and email just to get a peek at the actual website (or you can check the always-too-tiny "enter site" button to skip the squeeze page).
  • How to Use Email as a Marketing Strategy - Email. We use it for everything from chatting with our friends and family to corresponding with clients and sending business inquiries to helping others in online discussion forums. It's arguably become *the* mode of modern-day communication - more so than the telephone, certainly more so than letter writing. There's a limited amount of real estate in every email that you send.
  • 7 Tried and True Ways to Get More Subscribers - You've made the decision to start your own ezine or newsletter. You've formatted your newsletter, written an article or tip or two and sent it to your parents, siblings and friends. Great! Now what? The question I'm asked most from new ezine/newsletter publishers is how to get more subscribers on their list. Here are 7 simple ways for you to grow your ezine list - - with integrity and authenticity!
  • 5 Strategies To Getting Your Money's Worth At Seminars & Workshops - You open your email to find a notice about an upcoming seminar or workshop on a topic you desperately want to learn more about. Later that day, you get the mail and there's a postcard inviting you to the same workshop. "Should I go?" you think.
  • Online Success Simplified: 5 Must-Have Tools for a 6-Figure and Beyond Business - In building and growing an online business, or one with a strong online component, there are several must-have tools which will allow you to not only have passive revenue, but to enjoy multiple streams of it. Here's a quick rundown of the most basic tools (there are other, more advanced tools which will be covered in a separate article): 1. A Shopping Cart. An online shopping cart allows you to sell digital products, have them automatically delivered to your clients and automate the follow-up so you're not sending emails all day and night. I use and highly recommend KickStart Cart as an all-in-one shopping cart and autoresponder service. The Pro Version is $99.00/month (U.S.).
  • 5 Must-Haves for Your Business Retreat - Do you spend so much time working in your business that you never work on your business?
  • 9 "Low Cost/No Cost" Marketing Tips & Techniques - Do you need to get more clients? Are you trying to get your first client? Is your marketing budget equivalent to the cost of a Happy Meal? The following tips and techniques are not hidden secrets by any means, but they are some of the most overlooked ways to market a small business today. 1. Know your target audience. As silly as it sounds, many small business owners kick off a marketing campaign without regard to whom they want to target.
  • Common Courtesy as a Client Magnet - I recently needed to contact a vendor regarding a delivery question. Without naming names, I can tell you that the vendor is a small business and I do a not-insignificant amount of business with them. The person who answered the phone (not the owner) sounded as if my call were an interruption in her day (ever have this happen to you?). She was not pleasant and wanted to get me off the phone as quickly as possible. She was able to answer my question and off I went - not feeling appreciated and not feeling valued. So be it.
  • Do You Have An Iron Cage Around Your Customers? - You ordered a glass of wine and two bottles of water. The bill came to US $40 Are you shocked? Horrified? I recently came across a receipt from my trip to Italy last year and, rather than cringe in pain when seeing that receipt again, I smiled at the instant memory of the experience which it generated. It was one of the few nice days we had and I was sitting with my uncle and mother at an outside table in the center of Piazza Navona (Navona Square) in Rome watching local artists selling their works and people milling about. Why did I smile rather than cringe? It was the "experience".
  • Sandy Key Perdido Attractions Off The Sand - Sandy Key Perdido is famous for its miles of beautiful beaches and stunning ocean vistas. But did you know that there are also lots of things that you can do ' for free or nearly free ' just off the coastline? So when the kids are tired of the sand, your sunburn is feeling a little tender or you're just ready for a change of pace, try out these area attractions and enjoy a different side of Sandy Key Perdido.

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