The Marketing Mix | official blog of the Marketing Mentor community

First-hand guide to getting web design projects galore

Most of the marketing stuff out there is meant for corporations which makes it hard to implement for small business web designers. Kenn Schroder’s guide, Web Design Clients Galore, is very personable and easy to read with the nuts and bolts of building for succeeding in your practice.

One key point in his book that I love is the advice on specialization. Designers have got to realize that you can't be everything to everything to everyone and the sooner you focus, the sooner you'll be successful.

In Kenn's new guide, he offers freelance web designers, developers, and site-building professionals the tools to get a constant supply of high-paying web design projects through his own, first-hand experience. He says:

It was simply flipping things around. All I did was approach my business from the client’s point of view. I created services that were based on client’s needs.

• I spoke about what I did in terms they wanted.
• I stopped talking about web design, HTML, graphics, etc.
• I figured out what keywords to focus my SEO on.

These are things I show you how to implement in the book. And as a result, I now enjoy:

• feeling secure that there’s income coming in the future.
• more time from less proposal and contract writing.
• less annoying administrative, accounting, and invoicing tasks.
• decreasing my marketing work to a few hours per month.
• getting all my clients from the Web. No in-person meetings.

Find out more: http://getwebdesignclients.com/web-design-clients-galore-guide

Managing unruly employees? Read this.

If you’d need to motivate even the most unruly employee—Anne Loehr and Marketing Mentor client, Jezra Kaye, have the answers in their new book, Managing the Unmanageable.

They provide practical tips, proven techniques, and a flexible framework to help you:

 Understand what’s driving your unmanageable employee
 Evaluate the costs and benefits of turning him around
 Enroll her in that effort, and help her become a valued member of your team
 Guide all your employees to greater innovation, cooperation and effectiveness
 Communicate with each of the three generations in the workplace

Read more & buy here: http://unmanageableemployee.com/

Need better ideas, faster?

Todd Henry’s new book, The Accidental Creative, shares strategies to unleash your creative potential. Here’s an overview:

It isn't enough to just do your job anymore. In order to thrive in today's marketplace, all of us, regardless of our role, have to be ready to generate brilliant ideas on demand.

Business creativity expert Todd Henry explains how to establish effective practices that unleash your creative potential. Born out of his consultancy and his popular podcast, Henry has created a practical method for discovering your personal creative rhythm. He focuses on five key elements:

* Focus: Begin with your end goal in mind. 
* Relationships: Build stimulating relationships and ideas will follow.
* Energy: Manage it as your most valuable resource.
* Stimuli: Structure the right "inputs" to maximize creative output.
* Hours: Focus on effectiveness, not efficiency.

This is a guide for staying inspired and experiencing greater creative productivity than you ever imagined possible.

Get this book here.

Learn to be a consulting master

I’m very happy to be featured in Michael Zipursky’s Masters of Consulting Interviews. In this digital book, Michael interviews 9 leading consultants to teach other consultants how to build and grow a profitable consulting business. Here’s an overview:

Dear Consultant,

Have you ever wished you could sit down and spend an hour asking your toughest questions to the most successful business people in your field?

Imagine what it would be like if you could sit down for an hour with one of the top consultants in the world and ask them exactly what they did to become so successful…

Answers to Your Toughest Questions

You would probably want to ask them questions like: How they make so much money from consulting? What marketing techniques they used to grow their business and what they recommend that you should do right now to land more clients? And, how they have dealt with client issues and challenges while staying motivated and focused throughout?

Well, now you can. With the Masters of Consulting Interviews, you get to learn from not one, but nine, of the world’s top consultants. And not only do they answer every single one of those questions…they share much, much more!

More here.

Business beach reads

If you’re enjoying the sun this summer, beachside or poolside, why not add a few idea-sparking business reads? All week, we’re going to share some new books that will inform and inspire you. Here we go:

Does your website have Cobbler’s Children Syndrome?

For months people right and left had been referencing Newfangled when talking to me about web sites. “Newfangled says this” and “Newfangled says that.” Truthfully, I had no idea what “Newfangled” was and was not inspired to look. I should have looked right away.

Luckily, Newfangled found me before I could go look. Last month at the HOW Design Conference, I ran into Mark O’Brien, President of Newfangled, in the hallway at the Hyatt Regency and he immediately walked me into the MyDesignShop on-site bookstore and presented me with a copy of his newly released his book, A Website that Works: How Marketing Agencies Can Create Business Generating Websites, from David Baker’s Rockbench Publishing. This book was literally hot off the presses – it had just arrived from the printer and had not been on sale before that day!

I got to chat with Mark later that day about web sites and I suddenly realized why people were so often referencing Newfangled: we share similar views about what makes a lead-generating site. One difference, however, is that Mark has written it all down in a book, complete with a 9-step process that makes so much sense, I wish I’d thought of it.

In this interivew, he and Chris Butler discuss the book. They talk about the three main issues Mark sees marketing agencies struggle with—with their own websites, including: The Cobbler’s Children Syndrome, Misguided Creativity, Content Matters.

He also shares why he left “inspiration” out of his 9-step process in the book:

I left “inspire” out of the 9-step planning process that I cover in the book because I don’t think agencies need much help with that. I created this process as a vehicle for agencies to get over the stumbling blocks they encounter when trying to create a site for their firm. Judging from the many agency sites I've seen over the years, they have no trouble with the inspire part of the equation. Conversely, I know they really struggle with the inform side of things, so I devoted quite a large portion of the book to helping agencies figure out how to make their sites very effective at attracting and engaging prospects through a thought-leadership based content strategy. It of course wasn’t my intention to undermine the inspirational role of the agency website, I just don’t think agencies need to read a book on how to do it.

Read the rest of the interview.

Order the book.

Sign up for the Newfangled newsletter.

Ready to create your website this summer? Check out Website in a Week, and you’ll have a marketing-smart website come August!

 

Quick, easy to read, and “one of the best books”?

Creative pros are busy—and they don’t have all day to learn about bettering their business. They need to maximize. That’s why I love hearing that my latest book, The Creative Professional’s Guide to Money is a quick, easy read. 

Here’s some proof:

When Alisa Bonsignore, from Clarifying Complex Ideas, passed through Hoboken early Monday morning on her way back to California, I gave her a copy of the book. She read it on the plane and already wrote a review on her blog – exactly 48 hours later! (Granted, Alisa is pretty amazing and ultra-productive, but still…) Here is Alisa’s review:

Creative professionals are in a strange, unique and interesting position. We’re not plumbers or electricians who show up with parts and tools to fix your emergency. Nobody has a design or content emergency (not that they know of, anyway).

How do you price a service with intangible value? What is your personal philosophy about money, and how does it affect your business? How do you have “the money talk” without your throat closing from sheer panic?

The Creative Professional’s Guide to Money: How to Think About It, How to Talk About It, How to Manage It comes with much of the same tone and wisdom that its author, Ilise Benun, brings to the annual Creative Freelancer Conference. You need to know this stuff, but she’s not going to make you feel like a schmuck for not doing it (yet).

Read the rest on Alisa's blog.
 
Recently, Lee Silber called it one of the best books he’s read (rather than skimmed) in a long time. I’m thrilled because people seem to be really enjoying the book, and getting great value from it.  See more reviews here.

He’s done it again – Bob Bly’s new book -- buy it today

If you've been following this blog recently, you may know that I have been working diligently on my 7th book, "The Creative Professional’s Guide to Money," which I just finished and will be released in Spring 2011 (see the rest here in the meantime), and I thought I was doing pretty well.

But I must humble myself in relation to my long time client (and very prolific writer), Bob Bly, who just finished his 77th!  It’s called “Write and Sell Simple Information for Fun and Profit,” and it includes excellent insight into how to make money writing and publishing books, e-books, articles, special reports, audio programs and more.

Buy it today here.
  

Help me: By setting your goals

The deadline for my new book, The Creative Professional’s Guide to Money, is rapidly approaching, and I am sizing up some new worksheets for possible inclusion. 

This is the first of 3 worksheets, and I’d love your feedback on it. Of course, if you do the worksheet, in addition to helping me, you might be helping yourself too!

Amazing as it may seem, putting your goals in writing gets you halfway to achieving them. You don’t need a big fat plan. All you need is to think through the details of what you want to do and the steps you can take to get there.

This form is intended to spur that thinking process —one goal at a time.

Download it here.

Please share your feedback. What works? What would make the worksheet stronger?

Kindly email me with your thoughts and ideas, by Friday, August 13th. I appreciate your help!

There's nothing like a classic

Need a new book to read this summer?

Unfortunately, my new book, "The Creative Professional's Guide to Money," won't be out ‘til Spring 2011. In the meantime, why not consider an old classic instead? You might be surprised at the new perspective you’ll gain.

Bob Bly, copywriter and marketing pioneer suggests 10 classic marketing books you should read, and we also have a list of favorites on our website.

How to get your work published in beautiful design books

My new book, Designing for the Greater Good: The Best in Cause-Related Marketing and Nonprofit Design, co-authored by Jonathan Cleveland, showcases the work of more than 400 talented designers helping to make the world a better place, often in the face of low budgets, tight schedules, and other tough challenges.

Getting your work featured in a design book is easier than you may think, and can be a powerful part of your marketing machine. In my latest edition of Biz Bits, I share a few reasons to consider regularly submitting your work to publishers:

• Design books are beautiful. They’re hardcover, full color, use high-quality printing techniques, and make your work look great.
• Each book showcases a small amount of work from a very large number of entries. Designing for the Greater Good had close to 4,000 submissions but we used only about 400. Demonstrating that your work can stand out against tough competition builds your credibility as an expert designer. And clients love to see that work you did for them was well-received by other design experts.
• Books like this give you global exposure. Many copies are purchased by buyers outside the United States, helping you build a diverse, international client base.
• The book publication of your work creates a great opportunity to do a little PR bragging to your contacts, using press releases, social media, your web site and elsewhere.

So how do you get published in these books? Start with the books you love that are already out there. Find out who the publishers are and sign up to be on their email lists. They’ll send you announcements and calls for entries on every book they do; they need people to enter good work to provide content.