Tag Archives: marketing

Marketing

Is your email signature a lean, mean, marketing machine?

March 27, 2012 – 10:54 am

If you are running a business, I’m sure you will have taken the time to create yourself an email signature that goes at the bottom of each and every email that you send out – perhaps it looks something like this standard one here below:

Now this is perfectly fine – all pertinent contact details are there but there is so much more that you could do to maximise this little ‘shop window’ for your business, to give it extra reach and impact simply by making a few tweaks here and there. Email signatures are easy to do and of course let’s not forget, they are also free!
I’ve just given my email signature a bit of a makeover and it currently looks like this:

Let’s look at each part in a bit more detail:

  • logo and tag line – it’s not essential to have either but using consistent images and messages right across your website, business cards, right through to your email signature helps to build your brand.
  • all my contact details are there – I’m happy for clients to use any of these but think carefully before adding something like your home telephone number for example.
  • connecting with people via social media is key for me, so I’ve included clickable links to my 3 main social media profiles  – again, think carefully about which profiles you want your clients to see, especially if they tend to be more personal than business!
  • and there’s also an invitation to my sign-up offer with a link

Now even if the recipient of my email doesn’t want to take action on any of those items, my email signature still gives them lots of information about me for future reference.

There’s a whole lot more that you might like to consider adding to your email signature to give it some extra marketing punch:

  • include a client testimonial – a short testimonial is a great thing to include in your signature, but just make sure you don’t keep the same one on there for too long – mix them up a bit!
  • add links to your blog or YouTube video
  • promote an upcoming event or a workshop and add links to current ‘special offers’ but again, be sure to remove them once they’ve ended!
  • make specific requests such as ‘participate in this survey’
  • if you’ve attended a big event, won an award or had a recent mention in the newspaper, add an ‘as seen at…’,  ‘winner of….’ or an ‘as mentioned in…’ footnote!

This is by no means a definitive list and you certainly wouldn’t want to put every single thing on your email signature but I hope this gives you plenty of ideas to choose from. It’s certainly not ‘just’ an email signature  – it’s an important, easy to implement part of your marketing that you can ‘set and forget’ and will keep working for you in every email you write.

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Marketing

Marketing. Love It Or Loathe It?

November 28, 2011 – 11:08 am

Let me start by asking you a pretty important question: WHY are you in business? Is it to follow your passion? To make a difference in the world? To help people? To earn money doing what you’re good at and what you enjoy doing?

All the above? Three out of four? Great! (Less than 3 see me after class!)  But I’ll bet you’re not so keen on the fact that in order to do those things that you want your business to do, you also have to do this other thing – MARKETING! I’ll also bet that you sit closer to the ‘loathe it’ end than the ‘love it’ end of the marketing spectrum.

  • Do you feel your shoulders tensing at the very thought of marketing?
  • Does it fill your head with images of you of standing on a street corner shouting ‘roll up, roll up….’?
  • Does the idea of – sharp intake of breath here – ‘selling’ your services and products make you feel decidedly uncomfortable?
  • Does the word ‘manipulation’ spring to mind?

If we feel like this, it’s little wonder many of us have a half-hearted, begrudging attitude to business marketing is it? And ‘half-hearted’ and ‘begrudging’ is not really the best way to approach anything, least of all the success of our business.  So you can see, learning to understand, embrace and enjoy marketing… (yes, that’s right I said ‘enjoy’ marketing!) is something that we businesses owners need to get to grips with PDQ!

I find that many of my clients have an inbuilt resistance based on preconceived notions of what marketing really means and because they still believe in the following marketing myths. Fortunately they are just that – myths. Once you understand the reality, THEN you can start to have fun and actually enjoy marketing!

Myth 1: Marketing is really just ‘selling’ and I’m not a sales person
Don’t think of marketing as “selling” your services, it isn’t! Marketing is about building and developing relationships with others. It’s about understanding and sharing how you can add value to their life or business and in doing so, making yourself attractive to potential clients. See, absolutely NO sales skills required, just a genuine interest in other people.

Myth 2: Marketing takes up far too much time
You may well be busy and yes, of course marketing activities take up time… but think of it this way – if you don’t make time for marketing, you may soon have too much time on your hands because you no longer have enough clients!  Marketing needs to be regular and consistent rather than time consuming. What 15 minute activity could you do on a daily basis? What half day activity could you do on a monthly basis?

Myth 3: I don’t need to do any marketing – my work speaks for itself
You can have the best product or service on earth… you can have an all-singing, all-dancing website but it’s not enough to just sit and wait for clients to come to you. Marketing is not about being coercive, it’s about helping people find you so that you can help them.

Myth 4: I’m not an extravert and don’t feel comfortable doing the selling through networking thing
The aim of networking is to build genuine relationships with people who you get to know, like and trust and they in turn will get to know, like and trust you. Fear not introverts, it’s as much about listening as it is talking. A simple ‘tell me all about you’ type question is usually sufficient to get the conversation flowing!

And if you feel uncomfortable in large group settings, have no fear — effective networking can be done one-on-one! In fact, one-on-one networking is particularly effective, so set up one-on-one meetings, lunches, or coffees.

And one final thought. There are people out there right now, looking for what you have to offer. If you believe in your business, your product or your cause, then you owe it to the people you can help to bring your offering into the light so they can find you.

 

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