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But who’s growing your business while you’re busy tending to your clients’ needs? What are you doing to attract and maintain a steady stream of qualified, motivated prospects? How do you find and keep interesting clients who pay you what you’re worth? Like most professionals, you may not be able to answer those questions because the answer involves marketing.

Sure, referrals can be a decent source of new clients, but they’re only one approach in a system of balanced strategies for guaranteeing you’ll have many desirable clients for as long as you wish. It doesn’t matter how many referrals you get, if you don’t know how to build and extend the potential relationship that each referral represents.

As a Smart Person, you have lots of options at your disposal for attracting more clients to your firm. And they don’t have to include the expensive things that spring to mind when you say “marketing,” such as slick brochures, advertising, or direct mail.

However, your professional expertise alone will not differentiate you in a crowded marketplace?nor will it bring clients to you. You’ve got to let them know you exist and help them understand why you’re different ? why you are uniquely qualified to address their needs. This is called positioning. It takes some thoughtful, creative work to nail this first, most important step in attracting more clients.

Once you’ve determined your positioning, you have four more major steps that will bring clients to you and your firm: packaging, promotion, persuasion, and performance. Each step requires that you are able to communicate with your target client audience in a variety of ways that they can understand ? in their need-based language, not your expert language.

In a nutshell, here are some of your strategies for each major step to attract more clients:

Positioning: niche, specialty, specialness, reputation, unique competitive advantage, client-centered worldview, saying no, commitment, no Plan B, congruence, self knowledge, re-niche

Packaging: knowledge-sharing, articles, reports, surveys, web sites, slide decks, CDs/cassettes, videos, books, mini-books

Promotion: knowledge-sharing, speaking, writing, networking, referrals, newsletters, e-newsletters, letters, postcards, calls, teleclasses

Persuasion: listening, diagnosis, openness, curiosity, visioning, education, presentations, asking, recommending, assuring, sharing

Performance: competence, solutions, results, keep promises, manage expectations, intelligence, creativity, guarantees, thank you’s, commitment, walking the talk, innovation, persistence, integrity, generosity, alignment inside firm, staying in touch, management competence

Chances are, you’re on a learning curve in one or more of these major steps. Even if you’ve been in business for years and have built a successful firm, taking your practice to the next level means setting new metrics, ensuring your niche hasn’t grown stale, and learning new ways to reach that next stage in your firm’s growth or maturity.

For larger firms, maybe now it’s time to pay attention to how your firm delivers on your brand promise ? do principals, management, and staff really “walk the talk” of what you promise in the marketplace? Or are you, like many professional service firms, a cobbler whose children have no shoes?

Or perhaps you serve “internal clients” inside of a very large organization, and need support or buy-in for the services your department offers. You can put these principles and strategies to work for your work to get noticed, get invited, attract positive attention, and get buy-in.

So what’s a Smart Person to do to attract more clients? Here are some suggestions:

Raise the role of strategic marketing in your practice to a conscious level. Get it on the agenda and apply your smarts to it, just like you do with any other crucial aspect of your business.

Create a niche for your practice ? you cannot be all things to all people. However just because you enjoy working with a particular market or prefer a special approach, it doesn’t mean your target clients will. You need to understand the difference between a good niche and a bad niche, and strategize accordingly. Lynda Falkenstein’s NicheCraft is an excellent source of ideas.

Position yourself to others through their worldview, not yours. Instead of saying, “I’m a strategy consultant,” start with “I help (Fortune 500) companies (increase market share).” Obviously you’d tailor the statement to fit who you help and what problem you address, but you get the idea. For tons of information on how to get this right, Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing is the guru on what he calls creating an “audiologo.”

Develop a system of marketing strategies that both attracts new clients and helps you retain the ones you have. Start with the metrics of what you want to change or improve in your practice and tie the system to driving those metrics.

Develop an action plan that translates your marketing system into specific tasks, with real assignments, deliverables, and deadlines.

Commit to and put a system in place to keep you on track and motivated as you work through your plan. Build non-billable time into your business model dedicated to marketing. A rule of thumb is at least 20% of your firm’s time should be allocated to marketing.

Get expert help and resources for any of these suggestions, including implementation. For many professional service firms, this requires getting away for a day or two of focused thinking and discussion among key people. When you consider that stakes, it’s well worth the time and effort.

There are actually two more “p’s” in marketing. Intelligent, effective marketing requires a great deal of patience?and the ability to see this not as a series of transactions completed in a few weeks or even months, but as a relationship-building process with your current and future clients over time.

Marketing really is a life-skill and something to learn as one of your core competencies as an educated professional. Now that’s being smart!

References

Argyris, C. “Teaching Smart People How to Learn,” Harvard Business Review, May-June 1991.

Falkenstein, L. NicheCraft. New York: HarperCollins. 1996.

Middleton, R. “InfoGuru Marketing Manual.” Action Plan Marketing. 2002.

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Writing articles can do all of these and more. You can vital get exposure for your web site, or the product / service you are promoting by writing articles.

This will not happen over night, but if you write one article a week the number of links you can build up for your site will grow steadily, and each one of those links helps you
become more visible on the internet, helping your potential customer base find you rather than your competitors.

Why go the all the trouble of writing and submitting an article, well these are some of the benefits of submitting articles

Increased number of back-links to your website
You can targeting different keywords and key phrases
Ge links back to your site from your article content
Authoritative back-links – establish yourself as an authority on your product or service
Increase traffic to your website
Increase your search engine position

Why we need to Write and Submit Articles?

1. Free advertising
Promoting your web site by writing and submitting articles is the best way of creating more visibility for your website, product or service. It is free to do and all it takes is your time to write the article. How often do you get the chance to advertise your business free of charge and at such length?

2. It isn’t hard to write an article about something you know as well as your own business
Writing an article about your business is not that hard, after all you talk to your customers about every time you have a conversation with them, so why not make a few notes about the these conversations and then turn it into an article.

3. Increase the links to your website
Once you have published your article you will immediately gain incoming links to your site making it more visible on the web and in search engines, an article about painting equipment from an artist would be considered to be highly relevant by the search engines.

4. Establish yourself as an expert
Giving your opinion and views, especially when backed up by facts and figures set you up as an expert in your field.

5. Articles last longer than adverts
Article you have published in directories will be around for a long time, so an article you wrote two years ago comparing the qualities of different oil paints will still be driving traffic to your website today.

6. Multiple links from one article
Articles also encourage others to promote you and your website by using your article, including the link to your site, on their web site, or blog, another way to increase traffic to your site

And did I mention that it’s free!

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To make a business endeavor a success the people behind it must be good in communication. It is the idea of what you communicate and how to communicate that matters. Good communication is thus, the link that connects business and clients. It is also the controlling factor that links all types of businesses.

One of the most effective ways to communicate about any business is the use of promotional materials like postcards, business cards, posters, flyers and the likes.

Let us discuss the significance of the first item. Postcards are usually rectangular shaped piece of paper or cardboard with the significant details of the business on it.

Why are they popular to businesses? The ultimate reason is to make a sale. However, before a sale can take place there must first be familiarity with its products and services. With regards to this aspect, postcards can be used. Be sure that postcards have retention value in order for customers to easily recall them. As a result, it will drive them to buying or subscribing of your products or services.

Another reason is to follow up on customers. At first sight, the postcard may not get the goal of the company thus, it needs considerable amount of follow ups. Retention is the key factor to yield forthcoming sales.

Third reason is to update regularly. The details of the business might have change with time and strategies thus, we have to consider these changes and come up with an updated version of rush postcards.

After the updates and the usual hi’s and hello’s to the customers, the next thing to do is to check out its affectivity to the sales world. This phase may be called ‘checking out customers’. Moreover, postcards are needed to be sent in order to refresh the customers of your products and service especially the latest ones.

Postcards are powerful marketing tools that can convey message through its colorful, clear and striking images and crisp texts. Full color postcards are the most effective type of postcard used by businesses. This is because of its enigmatic effect on the eyes and emotions of the viewers. Try to capture it in your postcards as well. All you have to do is place moving pictures and texts that way, you can very well catch and seize your viewers decision so as to be favorable to your business!

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There is probably a major problem lurking on your sales page right now. And it could be hurting your profits.

Experts agree that one of the most important factors in a successful website is credibility. This frequently translates into the credibility of the site owner. People are more likely to buy from somebody they believe in.

Is your website as credible as it could be?

People judge credibility by many subtle factors. Does the design of the site look professional? Is the site well written? Are there typos and grammar errors strewn throughout the site? Is the author believable? Does the author have experience in this market or with this product? These are all important factors.

We also know that a strong guarantee is a key part of a successful sales page. Taken one step further, the reader needs to believe he will actually get a refund if requested. And herein often lies a major inconsistency.

Look at your sales page and ask yourself: Who is standing behind the product? What do you provide for contact information?

If there is only an e-mail address, or worse yet, no contact information at all, then you do not have a believable guarantee.

If you want someone to believe that you stand behind your product you need to be reachable. Put your complete contact information on your web site. I’m not just talking about an e-mail address. Consider adding your snail mail address and even, dare I say, your phone number.

At first, I worried about using this approach. I feared getting calls at all hours of the night. I worried about getting overwhelmed. But, I reasoned, I could always remove the phone number if it became a problem.

Turns out, having my phone number on the site is a blessing. I have made dozens of sales because I have been available to answer one or two simple questions from a prospect. I now look at each telephone call as an opportunity to help someone solve their problem and, frequently, earn their business.

I have received numerous comments from customers saying that one of the reasons they purchased is because they can tell there is a “real person” standing behind this business. The fact it is, I only get about one or two phone calls a day. And my sites have thousands of visitors every day.

In summary, take a look at your own sales page or contact page with a critical eye. Do you look like just another anonymous web site? Or is there a person there; ready, willing and able to help. The answer to these questions may have a lot to do with your conversion rates.

At the very least, test putting your phone number on your web site. Even if your web business is part time, with a good voice mail system you will sound professional and you can return phone calls when you are able. Try this credibility improvement. And see if it doesn’t improve your sales.

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Writing is a passion. It is a profession. It is a craft. It can be a hobby. It can also be a marketing tool. How? If you have a business and your aim is to get the word out about you, one way to go about such task online is through article marketing.

Marketing Strategies
If you own a business, whether it is a startup or a big company, you would always think of ways to promote your stuff. This is the main reason why creating web sites are popular these days. More and more people are getting hooked with how the cyber world works wonders.

If you own a web site, the next thing that you will think about is how to drive traffic to it. Just like how you do it offline, you have to reach out to your target market and lead them into clicking your URL.

Article Submission Sites

With the advent of many credible article submission sites on the web come entrepreneurs who are seeing opportunities open for them to speak out and pique the interests of their potential clients.

And how do you go about this?

1. You create good contents. What does this mean? For example, you are a printing company who caters to business people and professionals. You offer postcards, business cards, brochures, newsletters and the likes. When you write the articles, you will not only think about ways to design your postcards, you will go and direct the material to your target market. You can write an article about ways to design your postcards to help your food business.

This way, you already are capturing a niche market. These people will be interested with the products that you are offering. They will be more interested if they will get a view of how they would be able to utilize such tools. And the perfect avenue for you to do so is through the good and functional contents that you make available for these people.

2. Take time to fill out your Resource Box

When you submit articles to directories, they allow you a space to have your author’s biography. No, this doesn’t mean that you have to brag that you are a good looking, 40 something, with bank savings. You are not looking for a partner. You are looking for clients.

To do this right, include your name, your web site address, a tag line or your business’ unique selling proposition and a call to action for your readers. This is the venue where you will promote your own stuff and lure them to click on your links.

Now do you understand why it is important to create quality contents for this purpose? People must trust that you can deliver what you have promised. They don’t know you. But in establishing your name as an expert in the field where they need help, they will learn to appreciate you and may later become interested as to what you are offering them. You cannot achieve that with crappy articles.

If you don’t have the knack for it, you can always hire freelancers to do the job for you. This way, you will be able to provide article marketing to submission sites while you reap the benefits of such move through time.

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When you are trying to make money through promoting articles and affiliate links, you will need a good, simple, and easy to navigate website to put them on. There are two ways that you can accomplish this: you can try to do it yourself if you have any web design skills or you can hire someone.

Doing it yourself, unless you were a pro to begin with, can be difficult for some. You will need to read many tutorials and it may take some time to get going. You could also risk having a site that looks very badly made and thrown together. It is also important (for visitors and search engines) that your site is easy to navigate, which may be a problem if you do not know what you are doing.

Making a Do It Yourself website can be hard, but if you accomplish your goal, maybe you will learn so much that you can write a few articles on it to add to a new DIY niche site!

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Nowadays everybody wants to earn in the most convenient manner. Everyone seems to be looking for the easiest way to get the extra bucks they would need to fill in their increasing expenses. A lot of us are asking how can we earn extra easily and quickly. The answer is as simple as 2 words. Affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing came about in the early stages of the 20th century. It was like a little spec when it started and it proved itself to be effective therefore it expanded and now everybody seems to be enjoying the benefits of affiliate marketing.

If you are just new to the industry you might be asking yourself: What is affiliate marketing? Well, derived from the word itself ? affiliate marketing is an affiliation between you and a certain company that has this product or service they would like the public to know about through the power of online advertisement or promotion. Companies will gladly pay certain individuals that could actually showcase their goods online through blogs, articles or in any manner that their products will be exposed.

Having this said, so what do you need in order to plunge in to the world of affiliate marketing? To tell you frankly, you might be surprised to know that it really doesn’t require much. Aside from a decent computer, you would just need an internet connection and of course a bit of your time to this chosen online business.

Where to start? Companies will gladly pay certain individuals that could actually showcase their goods online through blogs, articles or in any manner that their products will be exposed. That being said, it is obvious that you should have at least a website online. The more traffic you have on that website ? the better.

Since affiliate marketing is an affiliation between you and a certain company, their product or service must be known to the public through online advertisement or promotion. Let’s say you have at least 5,000 visits a day in your website ? that will have a corresponding equivalent to your affiliate marketing capability.

That being said, it is obvious that you should have at least a website online. The more traffic you have on that website ? the better. Since affiliate marketing is an affiliation between you and a certain company, their product or service must be known to the public through online advertisement or promotion. Having this said, so what do you need in order to plunge in to the world of affiliate marketing?

To tell you frankly, you might be surprised to know that it really doesn’t require much. Aside from a decent computer, you would just need an internet connection and of course a bit of your time to this chosen online business. Companies will gladly pay certain individuals that could actually showcase their goods online through blogs, articles or in any manner that their products will be exposed. That being said, it is obvious that you should have at least a website online.

The more traffic you have on that website ? the better. Since affiliate marketing is an affiliation between you and a certain company, their product or service must be known to the public through online advertisements or promotion. So if you want your affiliate marketing to be successful, you need to have an established website first then the rest will follow.

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Article marketing is a very cost efficient way of getting people to visit your site in the hopes that they will your product or service. In fact, there are many sites these days where you can post your articles and this is how things work.

Keep in mind that most websites have already posted what topics they are looking for. So before you submit your article, check if your work is relevant to what is being asked for.

Most websites set guidelines as to the kind of articles that can be submitted. This may include a maximum number of words, that the article is original and not copied from someone else’s work, must have proper English grammar and so forth. Again, read the fine print before you submit your articles.

Some sites that you submit may reserve the right to edit your content while others don’t. If this is their prerogative, there may be some changes to what you wrote and there is nothing you can do about it.

You don’t get paid for any of the articles you post on the website because article marketing in essence is a free form of advertising and exposure. The best thing you can get from submitting articles is that people will know about you and the product you are selling as you have a resource box at the bottom of the page which people can click after reading the article. The resource box includes your name, website address, contact number and email.

If the article you wrote is no longer relevant, this may be pulled out so there is space for other writers to post their own articles. This is the reason why you should review your articles regularly so you can add new information to keep up with the times.

So how do you publish an article? Most websites will require you to sign up and become a member. Don’t worry because this is free and you are simply filling up the form to create an account with them.

For writers who are just starting out, you will probably be allowed to submit 10 articles first. Your article will then be reviewed by their panel of writers to check if the articles’ authenticity. This may take a day or two but not longer than a week.

If this was original, then you will be notified by email that your article has been accepted. Should the allotted time pass and you haven’t received any word from there whether the article was approved or not, send them an email to follow up the status of your pending article.

If you are able to submit 10 articles and want to submit more, you have to express your intent to do and once approved, you will be able to send as many as you want as long as you continue to follow the guidelines that were set.

How things work in article marketing is very simple. You write an article based on a topic of your interest and then post it in a site that wants information pertaining to it. You may not be compensated for the hard work you put into writing the article but you can be rewarded in other ways especially if this creates more traffic to your site.

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Let others use your articles, along with your byline which will tell visitors who wrote it and how they can contact you, on their website. This will help to promote your own website and bring you in traffic through the search engine optimization and promotional efforts of others. For you this means absolutely free marketing just for writing a quick article about a subject that you are already familiar with. The more people who use your article as content as their website, the more potential traffic you will receive. These webmasters will probably be using SEO techniques, banner exchanges, and possibly even a Pay-Per-Click campaign to get visitors to their affiliate site. These are advertising methods that either take a lot of time or a lot of money and they will be absolutely free for you just because you placed your articles where others could use them. There are many places on the Internet that offer to post your article so that others may view and/or use it. My advice is to place your articles on every single one of these sites so that you can reach as many webmasters as possible.

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That’s NOT the Way to Promote Your Affiliate Products

The great sales pitch can be a bit overrated, seeing that majority of the most seasoned affiliate marketing customers and prospective members tend to be skeptical and jaded. When giving out free reports to promote your affiliate products, enthusiasm can cause you to produce a sales pitchy report, something that could be taken the wrong way by your prospects. If you want to make a good impression, writing a free report that smacks of too much sales pitch is just NOT the way to get people to purchase your affiliate products.

Why sales pitchy free reports are ineffective

There are several reasons why sales pitchy free reports are not recommended for promoting your affiliate products. For one, they sound rather suspect, are usually too colorful to be believable and, if they are especially badly written, are peppered by punctuation marks and bold letters that shouldn’t be where they are.

They also sound too desperate to be credible, sounding as if they were written with the sole purpose of making a quick sale. Furthermore, they usually do not present the whole picture to the reader, focusing instead on promoting a product profusely without considering how it can be useful or relevant to potential customers. Sales pitchy free reports usually lack the declaration that states its true value to its readers.

If you’ve read sales pitchy free reports before, you probably know exactly why you treated them with disbelief. If you’ve thrown away or deleted a sales pitchy free report you didn’t even bother to finish reading, you will understand why that’s NOT the way to promote your affiliate products.

Writing the right free reports without being sales pitchy

When you write free reports, consider them as part of your sales campaign. This means that they are essentially advertising and as such, should be able to gently push prospective customers into performing certain desired actions. Here are some very important things you have to remember when using free reports to promote your affiliate products:

Free reports should make a good first impression

A well-written title is an excellent technique to ensure that you get a hold of your readers’ attention and encourage them to read further. If the title is bland, your readers will either skim through the report and miss the good points or give up altogether.

Free reports should avoid the ‘general public’

A common mistake among marketers who write free reports to promote their affiliate products is that they tend to write for just about everyone. Remember that your affiliate products have specific market demographics. Find out what these are and write directly to them.

Free reports should include details

Words such as ‘excellent’, ‘good’, ‘amazing’ and ‘incredible’ always find their way into free reports. While there is nothing wrong about using them, they tend to be too generic and ultimately, sales pitchy.

Instead of using these words or their synonyms again and again, try to use details and specifics instead. Review that free report you have written and check out generic words. Instead of saying that the affiliate product is ‘an excellent deal’, say ‘you get 25% off your purchase’. Instead of merely saying that the purchase is ‘risk-free’, say instead that you offer a ‘100% money-back guarantee’.

There has to be a sense of urgency

A good, non-sales pitchy free report should include a statement regarding the effectivity date of the promotion. When promoting your affiliate products, state in clear terms when the product will be sold for the special price and for how long. By restricting the product’s availability, you will be able to gently persuade your readers and turn them into real paying customers.

So are you still writing those embarrassing sales pitchy free reports?