The Marketing Mix | official blog of the Marketing Mentor community

Do your prospects think you're too small for their job?

In one of my Advanced Marketing Group conference calls recently, we had a fabulous and generous guest, Heathere Evans-Keenan, of KeenanPr.com, speak to the group on how to position yourself and your services as a virtual team so you don't miss out on the larger projects.

Julia Reich, of Julia Reich Design, wrote up a summary of what she learned on that call. Here's an excerpt:

We invited Heathere to join us to discuss the notion of running a virtual agency, whereby teams of high-level talent are custom-assembled for each client and project, teams that may be geographically remote from the team leader, the client, and each other – and how to unabashedly and eloquently introduce and explain the clear benefits of this concept to our clients, prospects, and referral partners.

Read the rest here.

And I have 2 spots open in the Advanced Marketing Group that starts next week (Wed. Oct 6), so if you wonder if it's for you, check out details here or fill out this form and we'll see.

 

Create a Newsletter Subscribers Value

We hear all the time that people "just don't know what to write about" in their e-newsletters. Well, thanks to Karen, here is a source of very good ideas.

Giving value is essential in today’s marketplace, regardless of what industry you’re in.  Today I’m going to share one way I give value to my newsletter subscribers.

First it may help you to know who my target audience is: People who work at charities and professional membership associations responsible for getting donations, raising funds, and for acquiring members.  By the way, charities and associations are both nonprofit organizations.

Because I’m a copywriter and marketing advisor, my newsletter content centers around these two topics as they relate to my target audience.  I publish twice a month.  Oh, and my subscribers include clients and prospects.

Each issue contains a main article plus three to five short tidbits of information.  I refer to these as “Hot Tips” and they’re the focus of this post. 

Why? Because many subscribers have told me these Hot Tips are very helpful to their work, and that they’re a big time saver for them.  Subscribers love them.

What’s in these tips?  Examples include:

• Upcoming conferences, workshops, webinars.
• News articles related to marketing and fundraising for nonprofits.  There’s a sentence or two of teaser copy with a link to the online news article.  
• Bits of advice and recommendations on how to write better copy – or market themselves better – to help the nonprofits reach their goals. 
• Another idea that compliments or builds upon the topic of the main article.
• Updates on what the U.S. Postal Service is doing and how it impacts nonprofits.
• Other funding sources such as grant resources, contests where the nonprofit winner receives cash or a gift-in-kind (i.e., professional services), award programs for nonprofits, etc.
• Creative examples of what other nonprofits are doing to help spark the creativity of my subscribers.  Examples come from direct mail, email, social media, mobile, and anywhere.

I hope that gives you a few ideas on what you might also share with your readers. 

Newsletters are a powerful marketing tool.  But they require content that your readers find valuable.  And the content they value isn’t always what’s most valuable to you.

Karen Zapp is a freelance copywriter and marketing advisor.  Clients include charities and professional membership associations.  Karen publishes a newsletter (ZAPP Nonprofit Leader), and a blog (ZAPP Nonprofit Blog).  She is also the co-author of “Mobile for Nonprofits: Connecting Donors Through the Power of Mobile.”

Show your love

Hi, I'm Deidre. In my posts, I talk about my voyage down the road of self-employment as a website copywriter, my achievements and roadblocks along the way, and what I’m learning as I go (with Marketing Mentor as my guide).

By the time you’re reading this, I’ll be a married woman (if he says yes!) – hopefully sipping limoncello while Mediterranean breezes gently whisper love songs (pardon gaggy love-induced optimism). But don’t worry – the fun here on the Marketing Mix doesn’t stop – as a matter of fact, it’s just getting started! My running off to get married spurred an outreach for guest posts, and we sure got some goodies.

So while I’m on honeymoon, there will plenty of goodness to make you swoon, too.

A little preview…

We have the amazing Karen Zapp, sharing tips for what to write about in your e-newsletter when you’re stumped, and also, tips on how to make your website super-usable.

If you’ve ever told someone what you do, and the person said, “Huh?” you’ll get a kick out of Alan Kravitz’s post, Copywriter: What’s That? (If anyone has a good way to describe what a copywriter is to someone who doesn’t know, make sure you post a comment! I defer to, “I write words the words that go on websites.”)

Pam Saxon will be sharing tales of trading services, (does barter “bite the big one”?), and in “No More One Night Stands,” she’ll be talking about… well, I’ll just leave that to your imagination for now.

Plus, the talented, tell-it-like-it-is Laurel Black will be sharing a few tricks she has learned for replying to vague questioning like, “How much is a logo?”

So, read up, and show your love to the guest posters (with comments!).

See you soon!

 

Search a wealth of business information - by keyword

What if you could have the answers to your creative business questions at your fingertips? With our favorite resource, Creative Business, you can.

You may already know that we offer a partner subscription to the Creative Business Newsletter (that includes Free e-mail and phone advice!), but we are also happy to offer the Creative Business CD-ROM – a virtual business library for design and creative service organizations.

Fifty-three Creative Business newsletter issues (complete years 2005 to 2009 and January to August 2010), along with some thirty forms and ninety separate articles, are on each CD. Hundreds of subjects, ratios, management benchmarks, and subscriber questions/advice are covered, and all can be searched by keyword.

Special Offer: A trial subscription to the PDF edition of the Creative Business newsletter for the balance of 2010 issues is included.

Buy the CD-ROM today with the $10 Marketing Mentor partner discount, or order your subscription to the Creative Business Newsletter (with the $20 MM discount).

How can you identify & connect with your ideal prospects?

Not every prospect is a good, let alone an ideal one.

But it's the "ideal" ones who need our services, and are willing to pay for them. They are the ones who we should be spending our time finding and building relationships with -- because after all -- it's the ideal prospects who contribute to the life of our business.

Want to know more? Listen to this interview I did with Jim Blasingame of Small Business Advocate, where we look at how to identify the perfect prospect.

Some feel the recession...and some don't at all!

I sent out one of my Quick Tips this morning (read it here) about what I'm hearing from folks (mostly around the U.S.) -- some are really feeling the recession that supposedly ended more than a year ago (!), while others are having their best year ever.

Frankly, I'm not sure how to explain it. I can't make generalizations, but I can say that the people who are positioned well, who are diligently marketing and who know exactly who to go after and what to say to them -- they're the ones getting work.

For example, here's how Marc Posch from Marc Posch Design replied:

Recession? Depression? Our business is up big time. We can hardly feed the demand. What is interesting, though, we are dealing more now with companies doing business in China and Russia since this is where the money is. I know it's sad news for the US. But funding in general is very tight. US banks are sitting on 1.7 Trillion and just running pretty ads.

We have so many innovative folks here, dreaming the next big energy/recycling/entertainment thing, but they can't get it off the ground due to lack of funding. China is much more receptive right now - and 11% economic growth right now speaks for that. Same with India (7%), or Brazil...they are all on steroids right now and try to extract whatever technology they can get from here - solar panels, waste recycling, publishing, cars.... the list is endless.

What about you?

LinkedIn wasn't designed for the self-employed, but...

If you're like most creative professionals, you have a LinkedIn profile for yourself and/or your company, but are you "using it" as well as you could?

I think LinkedIn is one of the best social networking tools for business so I recommend spending the bulk of your time there, researching your prospects, reaching out to them and participating in discussions.

But one of the problems with LinkedIn is that it is designed for the job market, not self employed professionals running their own business and looking for clients. That’s why the profile itself resembles a resume.

I’ve come up with a couple of workarounds, which I’ll be teaching in my new Advanced Marketing Group (which starts next Wed. Sept 29.) Here’s one: where it asks for “experience” and “add position” is where you can list some of your best clients, with a short description of what you did for them. To see how I did that on my profile, check it out here.

Any workarounds you've found?

To Whom Are You Accountable?

If you knew that, next Wednesday, there would be 5 other creative professionals waiting to hear how many people you reached out to on LinkedIn or what kind of response you got to the discussion you initiated, wouldn’t you be more likely to do it?

Well, that is the foundation of the new Advanced Marketing Groups. In it, we focus on Advanced Marketing Tools, such as proposals and RFPS, thought leadership and LinkedIn (more about those later this week). But the real takeaway, the real value in the group is actually, the group itself. The relationships you develop with people like you, people who need you as much as you need them, to help them build their business.

So if you’re ready to be accountable and to hold others accountable, fill out this form or email me (ilise at marketing-mentor dot com) for details. First one starts Sept. 29 at 2 PM Eastern and there are 3 spots open.

I've been cheating on you...

This isn’t the only place I’ve been blogging. I’ve also been posting almost every day on the Creative Freelancer Blog, which began as a companion to the Creative Freelancer Conference in 2008.

Then, in June, while “netwalking” at the 3rd annual conference in Denver, Bryn Mooth, my excellent working partner and editor of HOW Magazine, and I cooked up an idea to expand the blog. We loved the energy of the conference so much that we thought we could bring that, or something close to it, online to be a real community.

So over the summer, we gave the blog a makeover. The new tagline sums it up: Business Advice and Inspiration for the Creatively Self Employed. We have enlisted a gaggle of bloggers, mostly creative freelancers—writers, designers, photographers and artists—working in the trenches, struggling with their finances, trying to find their target market, desperately seeking their ideal clients (and dealing with nasty clients), losing their favorite clients, and sometimes eating a frog or two.

So check it out, bookmark it, add it to your “RSS feed” and help us spread the word through Facebook, Twitter and any other medium of your choice.

This isn’t the only place I’ve been blogging. Since 2008, I’ve also been the posting almost every day on the Creative Freelancer Blog, which began as a companion to the Creative Freelancer Conference.

Then, in June, while “netwalking” at the 3^rd annual conference in Denver (link), Bryn Mooth and I cooked up an idea to expand the blog beyond just us and the occasional guest post. We loved the energy of the conference so much and thought we could bring that, or something close to it, online to be a real community (link to BM post).

So over the summer, we gave it a makeover. The new tagline sums it up: Business Advice and Inspiration for the Creatively Self Employed. You’ll hear from a gaggle of bloggers, mostly other creative freelancers—writers, designers, photographers and artists—working in the trenches, struggling with their finances, trying to find their target market, desperately seeking their ideal clients (and sometimes dealing with nasty clients), sometimes even losing their favorite clients (alias). And sometimes, eating a frog or two (dyana).

So check it out, bookmark it, add it to your “RSS feed” and help us spread the word through Facebook, Twitter and any other medium of your choice.

Want Them to Love Reading Your Emails?

This week, we shared Ana Carini’s accomplishments in the Marketing Group, and I just wanted to say one more thing…

Ana just shared with me a wonderful note she received about her newsletter, The Little Black Box. It said:

Ana, I love reading your email blasts! They are done so well and are both brief and interesting. Just wanted to share!

If you’re ready to create email newsletters that people “love reading,” and so much more, there are two spots open in the Beginner Marketing Group starting Thurs. Sept 30 at 2 PM Eastern.

If you’re interested, click here -- and if you’ve never done the free mentoring session with me -- sign up today. We’ll find out if the group might be right for you.