Posts in "market like a mofo" Category — Page 5

You’re right, marketing sucks.

You avoid marketing like the plague. You’ve hired out some parts of your business, found ways to make other parts easier, and you have those parts of your business you deeply love. But marketing? Pleh. You spit it out like that time you drank rancid half and half in your coffee.

When you finally manage to make time for marketing, it’s a marathon. You’re either out of cash or out of ways to procrastinate, and you need this to work, so it’s go time. Like, there’s $.73 in the bank go time.

You’re right, marketing this way sucks. It’s an exhausting marathon that sucks big hairy balls.

What if you came up with a different way to tackle the marketing marathon?

Let’s say you’re training for a marathon, and you need to run 14 miles a week. You can run 2 miles a day, or…you know, forget about it and then try running 14 miles in a day.

That same training schedule also means you’ll need to run 56 miles a month. Again, you can run 2 miles a day, or…you know, try for 56 miles in a single day.

I guarantee you’ll hate life after trying to run 56 miles with no daily training. Just like you hate marketing after doing none of it for 30 days and then trying to squeeze a month’s worth into a few hours when the pressure of your bank account is too much to bear.

There’s another way…ready?

Do only those marketing tasks you love, and do them every day.

You have full permission to cancel your Twitter account, to delete your blog, to ignore your e-mail newsletter, and/or to otherwise make sure you don’t do that marketing thing you hate any longer.

Remember two things: you must replace those things you ditch with valid marketing strategies that you do daily, and Facebook alone is not a viable marketing strategy. Ever. Even though it’s tons of fun.

Just as a marathon runner needs a few ways to train — indoors, outdoors, intervals, sprinting, pacing — you need a few ways to market.

Grab a piece of paper and write down all the ways you LOVE to market. And I mean L-O-V-E. Not tolerate, not feel guilty about failing to do, not “should” do, but LOVE.

Here’s a list of 16 ways to help you find ways to market that you heart heart heart.

+ Offer mini-products and guides to build your e-mail list (free with opt-in, like the Fuck Yah Club!)
+ Send regular newsletters via e-mail to keep your peeps in the loop and buying your wares
+ Invite others to guest post on your blog and reciprocate in kind to build your audience
+ Rent a booth at an expo or conference to spread your message and meet potential clients in person
+ Teach 101 classes and invite students to learn more through your website or through additional products
+ Send snail mail to keep your peeps informed of new products and offers
+ Hold free instructional seminars online or in person
+ Call potential clients to follow up instead of e-mailing
+ Blog weekly.
+ Keep an ongoing list of your available spots and openings in your sidebar.
+ Connect with past clients by sending thank you gifts and soliciting referrals.
+ Contact past clients with a limited time offer to make hiring you again easy.
+ Meet with business owners 1-on-1 to brainstorm mutually beneficial events and promotions.
+ Host business owner meet and greets to make friends and talk shop.
+ Offer samples of your work to convert peeps to paying clients.
+ Submit your work to contests, magazines, newspapers, and/or blogs.

From here, it’s simple: do 15 minutes of marketing daily, and do only those marketing activities you adore. If you hate talking to business owners, find a different way. Can’t stand blogging? You don’t have to do it.

There are ways around not doing any one marketing activity you can’t stand, but throwing out ALL marketing activities will lead to a cash-starved business in no time.

From here, work 15 minutes of marketing time into your weekday calendar, and then hold yourself accountable for doing it. Marketing is extraordinarily painful when you try to run the marathon in one day, and you don’t have to do that anymore. You’re ready to train like the marketing marathoner you are — slow and steady.

P.S. How to make a marketing calendar in about 15 minutes.

market like a mofo, sell more of your work

5 reasons your last promotion fell flat.

A while ago you figured out how to create a promotion for your business and mastered the way to hold a sale without breaking your brand, so you hit the ground running. You created a few promotions and pimped the shit out of them. But they fell flat. They didn’t get the response you wanted. They didn’t fill your calendar and put a few grand in your pocket. What went wrong?

You don’t suck, your work isn’t terrible, and your people DO care about you. It’s probably just the way you’re promoting, which is easy enough to fix!

Here are five reasons your last promotion might have fallen flat.

PROMO KILLER #1: Too much time.

Give people two weeks to decide and they’ll need three. The more time you give clients to make a decision, the less likely they are to actually make it. This is why short windows for sales and promos work best. 24 hours, the weekend, 72 hours. Those short, sweet time frames force decisions to happen.

Promo Rx: A perfectly good offer can be ruined by going on and on for a whole month. The most effective offers are short and force people to act quickly. They use the marketing principle of urgency to make magic happen.

PROMO KILLER #2: Unlimited quantities.

People who think a quantity of something is unlimited will be less likely to go bonkers for buying it than those who think an item is in short supply. If your last promo didn’t list a specific number of services available, you’ve fallen into this “unlimited” trap.

Promo Rx: If you’re a service provider, your quantities are automatically limited by your time. If you can complete just 8 portrait sessions or 12 massages or 22 consultations per month, SAY SO. This automatically switches your readers into being more likely to buy or schedule. You’ve just activated the marketing principle of scarcity.

PROMO KILLER #3: Too many choices.

I’ve seen promo ads that resemble a big box weekly flyer more than a single offer! While it might seem that more and more choices will help your clients get exactly what they need, it might just confuse the shit out of them. (For example, offering a sale on prints or canvases or portrait sessions or fine art prints will result in selling none of the above.)

Promo Rx: A single offer — take it or leave it — is generally much more effective than a “choose your own” sale of any kind.

PROMO KILLER #4: Lack of reach.

Without an e-mail list and regular blogging, you’re just posting promos to Facebook and hoping for the best. Use this article to get your e-mail list up and running, then start to build your reach.

Promo Rx: Quantity counts! If a reader hears of a promo six different ways, they’re more likely to buy than if they hear of it just once. Life happens. They forget. They “mean to” buy and don’t. What feels like relentless promotion on your part will only just break through the noise of ads on their part.

PROMO KILLER #5: Teeny discount.

Following the great financial collapse of the past few years, we consumers have gotten better at bargain spotting. We snub our noses at 20% discounts and don’t really care about 30% off. It’s only by spotting a deep discount that we begin to pay attention to what’s being offered.

Promo Rx: If you’re holding a straight-up sale, consider holding a steeper sale for a short period of time. The temptation is to offer 20% off for a few weeks — try 40% off for 48 hours. Those are savings your clients just won’t be able to pass up.

P.S. This is part of Introverts at Work, my book about marketing for Quiet-with-a-capital-Q entrepreneurs! It’s pay-what-you-can priced right here.

market like a mofo, sell more of your work

How to sell more of absolutely anything.

I had a dream the other night in which you all were watching me write a sales page over my shoulder. I figured it’s time I tell you how to sell more of absolutely anything. (And if you don’t like this article, just pretend it’s a bad dream.)

To start selling more, take a look at the website or blog pages where you have products available right now. Photographers — I’m looking at you! Your sales pages tend to suck nuts because you treat them as something vague like “info” and you don’t talk about the products that will be coming out of the experience. (Products are tangible. People like tangible. The end.)

When you write about your products or your services, you are creating a sales page. There is a right and a wrong way to write a sales page, and these tips will point you in the direction of “right.”

Sell more tenet #1: assume we know nothing about who you are or what you do.

You are not Jillian Michaels trying to sell workouts or Beyonce trying to sell music. You are you, and you are lovely — but we’re going to need some details about what you’re selling.

To make buying as easy as possible for your customers, give them the “why” of the product, as well as the relevant details.

Tell them why a particular product came to be and what it can do for them as well as describing its dimensions and other qualities. Don’t assume we know a massage lasts for sixty minutes or that it’s okay to keep your panties on for the duration. Don’t hope we know hiring an interior designer to remake a room completely will be a three to six month process. Don’t think that because we like photography, we know what an archival album is or what “proof set” means or how many hours of coverage we want from our wedding. (Some? Enough? We have no idea.)

Walk your customers through what you’re selling, what it can do for them, and what’s going to happen next when they hire you or buy from you.

Sell more tenet #2: make it so clear a three-year-old can understand it.

Yes, a three-year-old! Those kiddos have short attention spans, so make your paragraphs short and clear. Include photos on your sales page to show off what you’re selling.

Sell more tenet #3: include testimonials.

We instinctively trust the word of other people more than the person selling an item, so load your sales page up with testimonials wherever possible. A few paragraphs about a product — testimonial. A few images of a product — testimonial. Keep positive words flowing in and around and through information about your product.

Need three easy ways to capture kind words from past clients? Click here.

Sell more tenet #4: offer a sample.

If I walk into your bakery and don’t know which muffin I want to buy but you’re sampling Banana Supreme, odds are that I’ll buy a Banana Supreme. If I walk into your brewery and have no idea which beer I’d like to drink, I can ask for a taste or get a flight of sample sizes to try out the latest brews on tap.

Samples make the buying process easier for everyone involved.

Where possible, offer trial, mini, or free samples of your products and services. I realize that in some industries that’s nearly impossible — take photography as an example — but you don’t get to throw your hands up in despair, here!

You could hold an event in which you’re offering teaser-length sessions of some kind. Maybe you call that a mini session, maybe you get business owners in to shoot headshots for Facebook one after the other, maybe you hold a boudoir party and give each woman eight minutes behind the camera. These are shortened versions of a full session that allow people to, in effect, sample your work.

Want a sample of the books I write? BOOM here’s a copy of Go Your Own Way: free yourself from business as usual.

Details, clarity, testimonials, samples. Easier selling is just around the corner when you put ’em to use!

P.S. 5 reasons your last promotion fell flat.

market like a mofo, sell more of your work

5 money mindsets that keep you from making bank.

As an entrepreneur, you’re faced with money on a daily basis. You have to earn it, spend it, move it, use it, collect it, and otherwise manipulate it every single day.

There’s just no getting away from money. That means there’s also no getting away from your attitudes about money.

While some money mindsets serve you well, there are others that could be sabotaging your business.

Let’s tackle five common saboteurs that I see in play often — and let’s talk about the one I struggle with most.

No money mindset #1: “Someday…when I win the lottery…”

In a recent survey of my peeps, lots of ’em joked about this. They said the only thing stopping them from pursuing a world-changing project was winning the lottery. It was said in jest, I know. But that mentality allows you to play the victim. It’s as if you’re not responsible for what you do with your money — rather, the universe is playing you for a victim because you haven’t won the lottery yet.

Baby steps. To get to the bottom of this, consider what you really want from winning the lottery. Do you want to breathe easier about money? Do you want to travel the world for a month? Do you want to feel like something can go wrong without your family ending up on the street? Do you just want to make your mother-in-law jealous?

When you figure out what it is you REALLY want the lottery to bring, you can start working toward that single goal instead of hoping for more cash.

Related: money is your friend.

No money mindset #2: “That’s overpriced.”

As a business owner, you might think this cheaper-than-dirt mentality would be good for you, right? It means you get bargains, you use coupons, and you’re willing to negotiate for better rates at the drop of a hat.

Frugality can do wonders for your business, but it can also hurt you. How? Take a look at your recent clients. Are they trying to get bargains or use coupons? Are they trying to negotiate for better rates? Their attitudes are a direct result of your attitudes. When you’re willing to pay the full value of the items around you, their attitude will start to shift as well.

Baby steps. Refrain from complaining about pricing or using coupons for a week. I’m not trying to throw your budget off track, I’m trying to get you out of the habit of judging everything as “too expensive” or “overpriced” to keep your clients from doing the same to you. I bet you’ll be surprised at how quickly your new attitude bears fruit. Goodbye, penny pinchers!

No money mindset #3: “I can do that myself!”

When you see a photograph or find a craft project or try a recipe, you immediately think, “I can do that!” This is true of the DIY culture, and I’ll bet you have an amazing home and workspace! This attitude falls down when you’re in business by yourself. Because you’re so used to doing everything yourself, you’re unwilling to hire or to outsource when the time comes.

Baby steps. Outsource a single item you despise this week — and only for a week, if it makes you nervous. When you come home to a clean house, download your perfectly-edited photos, or reduce your e-mail workload by 80% because you’ve hired a virtual assistant, you might just reconsider your DIY ways.

No money mindset #4: “It’s so bad…that I’ll ignore it.”

When you’re going through a tough spot, it’s easy to become an ostrich and bury your head in the sand. Maybe the bills will disappear? The rent will pay itself? Your fairy godmother will descend from her magical perch with a cold six-pack and a check for ten grand?

I’ve been there — I once had over $20,000 in credit card debt — and I know how hard it can be to face the music. Thing is, the only way for this situation to get better is for you to…you know, face the music.

Baby steps. Open the bills and figure out exactly what you owe and to whom. I know this is hard — my bills were once stacked a foot high — but this first step allows change to happen. When you have a solid number to work with, you can begin to work backwards and devise a plan for paying off debt.

If you’re too afraid to look, ask a trusted friend or loved one to bust out the calculator and help with this task. Sometimes a bit of support is all you need.

Related: Connie Vanderzanden addresses this exact problem during our interview!

No money mindset #5: “There’s more where that came from.”

This is where I fall down. My bank account can be sky-high one month and nearly empty the next. Because my income is highly variable, I tend to spend like it’s been a good month all the time. This leads to anxiety about covering expenses and self-loathing like you wouldn’t believe.

Baby steps. A basic budget can help to keep spending in check, while saving apps that are fun help to keep money around for when it’s truly needed. I accidentally saved over $1,700 for a trip to the beach using saving apps last year!

Knowing your Enough Number can also help to keep wild spending in check.

P.S. What if you stopped resenting money?

market like a mofo

3 simple steps to less writing angst

While I absolutely love writing, I realize that many of you find it stressful and avoid putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) like the plague. Today, let’s get rid of that writing angst and make your experience of writing for your business – whether headlines, newsletters, e-mails, blog posts, or website copy – less painful and more productive.

1. Figure out your genius time.

Everybody has a time in which they work optimally, and it will be harder than it has to be to get work done if you are aren’t taking advantage of your genius time. For me, between 8 am and about Noon is my genius time.

For those four hours, I can just bang stuff out and it’s easy. The minute my genius time passes, there’s a shift in my body. I can’t explain it clearly, but after Noon I enter into this crazy world where it’s hard to write, it’s hard to produce, and it’s hard to edit.

I’ve built my schedule around this idiosyncrasy, and my genius time is protected. After genius time, I can do social media or e-mail — any work that doesn’t require all of my brainpower.

When you’re writing, try to write during your genius time. If your genius zone is at 8 am and you’re writing at midnight, your efforts aren’t going to be nearly as effective. Writing is going to feel hard — much harder than it should be.

The same thing is going to apply if you’re perfect at 2 pm and you’re trying to write at 7 am; we need to acknowledge that our brains have cycles that they love to work in.

2. Time yourself.

Set a timer during your genius time to make writing happen. Give yourself 20 minutes and that’s it. Whatever it is that comes out, that’s what’s going to go onto the blog or the e-mail or the website.

I guarantee that you’ll be motivated and you’ll become much clearer in what you want to say. You have 20 minutes, make it work.

I call this The Tim Gunn Approach to blogging. It’s effective because you have no choice. You have 20 minutes and at the end of that, you’re going to have a blog post.

If twenty minutes isn’t enough or if you’re like, “This is so good that I’m going to start to work on a series,” that’s great. Set the timer for another 20 minutes. So long as you’re conscious of the timer, you’re really working. You’re not wasting any time up in your head telling yourself how terrible you are or muttering obscenities to yourself.

The time restriction helps you get in the zone – and, just like a workout, whether you are feeling it or not, you’re done after twenty minutes.

3. Save your moments of genius, no matter when they happen.

For example, let’s say you’re riding down the street and you see the most perfect vintage shop in the whole world. And that inspires you. It’s like, “Oh I want to do a post about shopping for vintage clothing for my portrait sessions.” Fantastic!

This is when having a smartphone works for you. This is when pulling over to the side of the road with a pen and paper works for you. This is when having a napkin from McDonalds works for you, if it has to come to that.

Make sure you record the moment of genius when it happens. Because thinking, “Oh yeah, I’ll remember that” doesn’t work.

You said that about that invention you dreamed about last month, and you said that about the promotion you thought of between yoga class and the grocery store. Heck, you said when you thought of the perfect thing to make for dinner tonight.

You won’t remember and you will be frustrated. Just make a note. I have those moments all the time in the shower, so it’s like I’m just prepared that I’m going to have to hold the thought until I get out of the shower and then I write it down.

Because I have notes, I’m also prepared to write during my twenty minutes instead of spending time thinking, “Holy hell, I have NOTHING to write about.”

I’ve Got Nothing To Write About Land is a tough place to be, and there’s no reason to linger there if you’re taking notes throughout your week as part of your routine.

There you go — less writing angst for all!

If you’d like to keep reading, I suggest 5 writing prompts to gather support for any project.