WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS - Blog

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WOMEN MEAN BUSINESS

Join our brand new Facebook fanpage and you could win a personal Marketing Makeover for your business. Ask me anything you like about Marketing or publicity. I'll review your website, press releases and other marketing materials. I'll identify the three best things you can do right now to boost your business and it won't cost you a penny! We'll talk by phone for a whole hour and you'll even get a recording of the whole call to refer to again as you implement my recommendations.

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To be in with a chance to win, enter by 1st December 2009.

Coaches - Think Like a Business Owner!

The single biggest shift I had to make in order to be successful was to start thinking like a business owner, instead of just thinking like a coach. It’s fantastic when you complete your coach training and celebrate your achievements, but now the real work begins.

How are you going to get your first clients? Coaching is no different to any other business – in order to get clients you need to market your business. The sooner you can make the mindset shift to “business owner,” the easier it will be to get your first clients.

Every coach is advised to go out and offer free trial sessions in order to get clients and I did that too in the beginning. The drawback is that lots of people will take up your offer because they are curious about coaching, not because they are serious about hiring a coach. This method is not likely to give you a high conversion to client rate and every other coach out there will be doing the same thing. Of course it’s a great way to gain practice and confidence in your coaching abilities, but there comes a point when you will need to start charging for your services.

Advertising generally doesn’t work very well to get coaching clients either. The good news is that most of the best ways to market your coaching business are no cost or low cost. I’ll share some of these in up-coming blog posts.

So what does thinking like a business owner mean to you? And what methods are you going to use to get these first few paying clients? Don’t be put off by the fact that you may need to spend a lot of time marketing your business, especially in the early days. Once you figure out how it works, marketing can be fun. I still find it really enjoyable even after more than seven years in business!

So I’ll leave you with this thought for today. Try writing several different endings for this sentence: “As a serious business owner I am willing to market my coaching business by ..........................................................”

(c) Shona Partridge, Women Mean Business www.womenmeanbusiness.co.uk

Marketing 101 - Tip # 7 Have a Networking Plan

Networking is the life blood of many small business marketing plans. In fact - in some small businesses it's the only marketing they do. Don't get me wrong - I love networking and it's one of the ways I built  my own business in the early days.

Make networking part of your marketing plan, but not the whole effort you put in! When you've picked your niche, check out which groups are available  locally  for your target clients. It's better to attend a small number of networking groups regularly than to go to lots of different ones only now and again.

When you're at events ask questions first so you can find out what the person you're talking to really needs. Be a good listener and don't talk about you and your business unless it's specifically focused on the person you're talking to.

I'll talk more about networking  in future posts.

Marketing 101 - Tip # 6 Market the results of your service, not the processes

Beware of having a website or brochure that is too process driven. Market the results and benefits of your service or product – not the features and processes. Coaches especially can fall into this trap. We tell people all about what coaching is and how it happens. It’s much more effective to actually state what changes people can expect from working with you.

Using case studies and testimonials will really help you here – then it’s not just you saying “this is what you’ll get out of working with me “ – you’ll have other people saying it for you which is so much more powerful. Get into the habit of asking your new clients for testimonials and referrals.

Marketing 101 - Tip # 5 Make friends with marketing!

Marketing is absolutely crucial to the success of your business and you avoid it at your peril!  New business owners can think that marketing is quite a complicated process. However, it’s not rocket science and the basics can easily be learned.

It can be very helpful to reframe selling as simply building relationships and having conversations. We can do this by talking to prospects and finding out more about them and what they want before we pitch in with what we can do for them.

Learn as much as you can about marketing. For the small service business there are certain things that you can do that are low cost or even no-cost. So don’t be afraid of it – learn the steps that work for your size and type of business and go for it!

Marketing 101 - Tip # 4 Have a follow up system

Have a follow up system

We all go to networking events and gather handfuls of business cards and we may even get as far as putting them into Outlook or some other contact system, but what do we do after that? I think it’s vital to have some form of “keep in touch” marketing such as a newsletter or blog.

I really cannot overestimate the importance of follow up. By keeping in touch regularly, it means that when someone is ready to buy, your name and business is at the front of their mind because they have heard from you recently.

Marketing 101 - Tip # 3 Get clear on your niche

Get clear on your niche and your marketing  becomes so much easier, cheaper and more effective.

Some businesses will automatically fall into a niche and this makes marketing easier. For instance if you are an English Literature Tutor for high school age young people, then that's pretty clear when it comes to your marketing. Maybe you're a divorce lawyer or you're a make up artist specialising in weddings.

In professions like Coaching and Consulting, however, it's a different story. If you want to stand out in a crowded market you absolutely must pick a niche. This is something I wish I had sorted out much earlier in my self employed career.

I'll be writing more about this topic but do get started thinking about what your niche might be if you don't already have one. Here's a useful tip - your ideal clients can often be found by looking in your own mirror! Your niche could be people very like you.

Marketing 101 - Tip # 2 Create "Client Free Days"

One of the most important decisions I ever made in my business was to only see clients 3 days a week!

I decided to ring fence times where I did not see clients or even do a lot of client  work. Nowadays, I don't see clients on Mondays or Fridays and  I limit any client work I do on these days.

My key days for seeing clients and doing client work are Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. This means I have two days a week to concentrate on other things. Maybe it's marketing and PR, writing, creating new programmes,reading or learning new skills or maybe just taking some time out to re-charge my batteries.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this decision changed my life. Instead of rushing around at the whim of my clients, I took control of my time and my commitments. My clients benefit too because they know when I'm available for them.

Trust me - this one decision will repay huge dividends in extra time, energy and a feeling of control.

One of the most important decisions I ever made in my business was to only see clients 3 days a week!

I decided to ring fence times where I did not see clients or even do a lot of client  work. Nowadays, I don't see clients on Mondays or Fridays and  I limit any client work I do on these days.

My key days for seeing clients and doing client work are Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. This means I have two days a week to concentrate on other things. Maybe it's marketing and PR, writing, creating new programmes,reading or learning new skills or maybe just taking some time out to re-charge my batteries.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this decision changed my life. Instead of rushing around at the whim of my clients, I took control of my time and my commitments. My clients benefit too because they know when I'm available for them.

Trust me - this one decision will repay huge dividends in extra time, energy and a feeling of control.

Entrepreneurial insomnia!

Had to get out of bed at 4.00 am this morning as I was having so many ideas I had to get up and write them all down! Sometimes I'm so buzzing with ideas I can't get to sleep. But this time I'd already been asleep and woke up full of ideas. An inconvenient side effect of running your own business! I knew I wouldn't get back to sleep unless I wrote the ideas down, and besides, I might have forgotten most of them by the morning.

Marketing 101 # 1 Make Time For Marketing

Marketing is vital for the success of your business so it's crucial that you set aside regular time for it.

Whether it 's an hour every day or a day every week, make a marketing appointment with yourself and stick with it like you would keep a client appointment. Don't push marketing onto the back burner, no matter how busy you get. In future posts we'll look at what marketing tasks you can concentrate on, but this is the key foundation step that will make all  the difference.

MARKETING 101 - # 1 Make Time For Marketing

(c) Shona Partridge 2009, Women Mean Business. www.womenmeanbusiness.co.uk

Marketing is vital for the success of your business so it's crucial that you set aside regular time for it.

Whether it 's an hour every day or a day every week, make a marketing appointment with yourself and stick with it like you would keep a client appointment. Don't push marketing onto the back burner, no matter how busy you get. In future posts we'll look at what marketing tasks you can concentrate on, but this is the key foundation step that will make all  the difference.

MARKETING 101 - # 1 Make Time For Marketing

(c) Shona Partridge 2009, Women Mean Business. www.womenmeanbusiness.co.uk

Marketing 101 - top tips for your small business

I'm running a  blog series starting today, with 101 marketing and PR tips for solo professionals.  These will be very short and easy to digest and posted every day or two.

Keep an eye on these postings and start to include one or two in your own marketing.

I'm running a  blog series starting today, with 101 marketing and PR tips for solo professionals.  These will be very short and easy to digest and posted every day or two.

Keep an eye on these postings and start to include one or two in your own marketing.