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Sandra P. Martini's Articles Display Category|Title|Newest|Oldest 4 Ways to Build Your Ezine List Without Spending a Dime I want to cover the Top 4 ways I built my list. Each of the following items can be done without spending a dime. How Different Personalities Deal With Change The most successful entrepreneurs not only embrace change, they actively seek it out knowing that greater fulfillment, greater success and greater profits come with constant adaptation to the market. RSS and Aggregators: So Easy A Caveman Could Use Them "RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts. Consumers of RSS content use special browsers called "aggregators" to watch for new content in dozens or even hundreds of web feeds. Giving Back Have you ever noticed that people get incredibly happy whenever you unexpectedly think of them or do something for them? 5 Must-Haves for Your Business Retreat The corporate world knows the value of taking time out for a step back, taking time to assess what is going right, what is going wrong and what just plain isn't going anywhere. Are you a "Dynamic Dan", "Opportunistic Oliver" or "Scared Susie"? As a person, your success, or failure, depends in part on how well you adapt to change. 7 Simple Ways to Consistently Build Your Ezine List HOW do I build my ezine list? or How do I get more people to sign up for my ezine list? Where are You in the Hierarchy? There is what I call a "Hierarchy of Connection" - the higher the level of your connection, the more credibility you have and the more likely prospects are to turn into clients and refer others to you - think of this as the "know, like and trust" factor you hear so much about. 3 Steps to Getting The Most Out of Conferences and Workshops Once you return home from a conference or workshop, it's easy to forget all the things you learned and promised yourself you'd implement. After all, you're back in your regular environment: your family needs attention after you've been gone, work tasks have piled up, personal items need handling. How are you to "catch up" and incorporate all the new things as well? What business are you REALLY in? Many businesses spend thousands of dollars branding everything they do to create a familiarity with their prospects and customers and yet, sadly, miss the boat completely when it comes to their service. The Top 5 Ways To Build A Quality Prospect List Every time you turn around these days, people are telling you that you need to have "a big list". Is this true? "Yes. . .and no." Truth is, you must have a list of qualified prospects who relate to you AND who want to purchase the products and services you offer. Do You Suffer From Marketing Overwhelm? It's important to remember that good marketing is about two things: 1/ educating your community (target audience) about what problems you solve and 2/ building a relationship with those in your community. Do You Know YOUR 'Why' For Publishing An Ezine? I received the following question yesterday: "How do I get started publishing and marketing my ezine?" While the question is broad enough to warrant its own seminar, let's discuss the "How do I get started publishing?" question this week and the "marketing" of it next week. Which is Better: Direct Mail, Teleseminars or Webinars? With every new technology, comes groups of users who immediately want to dispense with the old. Now that webinars are becoming mainstream, I've had a few clients ask which is better to use in their business: old-fashioned direct mail, teleseminars or webinars? Are You Client Friendly? There was a teleseminar I was interested in attending last week (promoted in a colleague's e-newsletter) and so I dutifully clicked the "register here" link. That link took me to another web page (after 3 tries), which gave me another description of the same teleseminar and asked me to "register here". So I have to ask you, are you "client friendly" - that is, are you easy to do business with? The Most Common Client Objections and How to Deal With Them "A desire can overcome all objections and obstacles." -- Anonymous Think about the above quote for a second. When you want, I mean REALLY want something, you can almost always rationalize getting it. You find a way to overcome that nagging little voice whose job it is to object and throw up obstacles. I want you to view objections as a good thing. Yes, seriously! Does Your Elevator Speech Pass the Goldfish Test? Hello! How are you? So what do you do? The clock has started. I've just met you and within those first several seconds have formed an opinion of your success, your income, your education, etc. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to get our attention so that we are focused on you and your business. You have between 20 and 30 seconds max. Can you do it? Top 5 Tools For Insuring Your Marketing Plan Attracts Clients In order to insure that your pipeline doesn't dry up as existing clients take vacations or move on, you want to overfill your marketing funnel in order to create a waiting list of people who want to work with you. 5 Success Indicators to Knowing If You Have a Hobby or a Business I'd like you to take a step back, look at your business as an outsider would and ask the question "Is this a hobby or a business?" Put aside the anger that immediately boils to the surface because, after all, you are working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week; eating and non-sleeping this entity known as your business with little financial return and look at it objectively. 7 Tried and True Ways to Get More Subscribers You've made the decision to start your own ezine or newsletter. You've formatted your newsletter, written an article or tip or two and sent it to your parents, siblings and friends. Great! Now what? The question I'm asked most from new ezine/newsletter publishers is how to get more subscribers on their list. Here are 7 simple ways for you to grow your ezine list - - with integrity and authenticity! 7 Tips to Writing Great Articles Which Showcase Your Expertise As a business owner, do you find yourself needing to write more and more? You've probably heard that you should be writing articles to promote your business (and it is a great, no cost way to showcase your expertise), but may be leery of starting. Here are 7 tips to get you writing effective articles. 4 Unconventional Ways to Market Your Ezine There are hundreds of ways to market your ezine. Some are good, some are expensive and many are both. We've all heard of: * article marketing (effective if done right) * ezine advertising (can work) * Google Adwords (can be expensive) * purchasing lists (I don't recommend) * hosting teleseminars (very effective if marketed well) But have you considered. . . 5 Simple and Easy Ways to Use Facebook to Market Your Business Facebook is another in a long list of social networking sites. There's MySpace, LinkedIn, Ryze, etc. Certainly too many to join and keep up with AND run your business at the same time. Are these sites just a place to hang out and avoid work or do they have a place in the busy entrepreneur's life? 5 Steps For Getting Clients Quickly I received an email from a struggling business owner the other day. She’s good at what she does, but is in danger of closing her doors after being in business for over 3 years due to a lack of long term clients. The problem? There are actually two... Is Your Business in a Slump? Business tends to slow down during certain times of year. If you are experiencing one of those "slumps", it's a good time to take a look at your marketing materials and *freshen* them up a bit to insure that they are doing their job. 4 Requirements for a Successful Teleseminar Teleseminars -- presentations via telephone -- are the fastest way to build your ezine list as you share knowledge with those in your target audience. Before we jump into the "how", let's discuss the different types of teleseminars and why each is a valuable service you can offer. 3 Common Mistakes That Could Lose You Ezine Subscribers We all get ezines, we all read *some* of them -- I just went through a "decluttering" process where I unsubscribed from about 10 ezines. All because they failed to meet my expectations. Unsubscribes typically occur as a result of one of the below; these are easy to correct and well worth the time involved. How Do You Know It's Time to Fire a Client? As a business owner, you're no longer sitting in your too-small cubicle waiting to be called to HR for yet another downsizing in yet another company. No more being told when you can take lunch, make a personal call or, heavens forbid, go to the bathroom. Owning your own business comes with lots of perks. One of them that is frequently overlooked however is that you now have the ability to fire a client. Proven Time Management & Productivity Techniques for Entrepreneurs -- Part II The following techniques work incredibly well for me. You should read and adapt them for your own personality and work style. Techniques 1 and 2 were in last week’s article and can be found at Proven Productivity and Time Management Techniques for Entrepreneurs – Part I. Proven Time Management & Productivity Techniques for Entrepreneurs My friends are always amazed at how much I accomplish and frequently ask "How do you get so much done?". I normally just shrug it off, but the question has been coming so much lately that I decided to share my top productivity techniques. My top two are included here and the remainder will come in next week's article. How to Develop a Professional Image -- Even If You Work Virtually In this day of technology and the dreaded recordings, insuring that you maintain a professional image is crucial to business success. How you come across on the phone, through your website, on a plane or at a networking event directly impacts how others (read "potential clients") perceive you and your business. Especially if you ARE your business. Do You 'Make a Sale' or 'Provide an Experience'? You ordered a glass of wine and two bottles of water. The bill came to US $40. Are you shocked? Horrified? I smiled. Why did I smile rather than cringe? It was the "experience". I was immediately brought back to the people, the chatting, the smells, the feel of the warm sun on a winter's day, the sound of the Fountain of Four Rivers -- all of it, generated off a receipt for wine and bottled water. December 31, 2007: Where Will Your Business Be? You create your list, you write your plan, you dream your dreams and, before you know it, another year has passed and you're no closer to achieving them. Are you thinking "been there, done that"? If so, I'd like you to repeat after me... New Year's Resolutions, "The Word" and a Small Business Retreat Do you spend so much time working IN your business that you never work ON your business? The corporate world knows the value of taking time out to assess what is going right, what is going wrong and what just plain isn’t going anywhere. It is critical to take time out to plan for the upcoming time period, be it a year, or even a long-term goal. Otherwise, how can you get where you want to be if you don’t know where that is? Podcasting: What is it and how can it help your small business? Our world has gotten increasingly "grab and go" and podcasting allows the customer/client to subscribe to a podcaster (read "entrepreneur") that he likes and automatically get all the latest information from that person via audio files which he can listen to in his car, take to the gym, listen to on a plane, take on a walk. . .you get the idea. As such, it makes sense for the small business owner to jump on the podcasting bandwagon. What is a Blog and how can one help your small business? To put it simply, a blog is an online journal and can be about any topic that you want to write on: from marketing to gardening to weight loss to new business techniques. In the business world, blogs are a great way to market your business by generating traffic to your website. 3 Simple Steps to Insure Your Clients Pay You You’ve done the marketing, you’ve filled your funnel and the phone starts ringing – you’ve got a new client! Now what? Whether you are a consultant, coach, virtual assistant or other type of service provider, it’s important to insure you start off your client relationship properly. What To Do When Clients Don't Pay -- 6 Strategies to Get Your Money You love the people, you’re really enjoying the work, things are going great. Everything proceeds along smoothly for several months until that fateful month where you submit a large invoice and payment isn’t immediate. “No problem” you think. “Things are a little tight. It will be paid a little late.” What are your options when a client doesn’t – or can’t – pay you? Email Marketing: A Simple, Free and Overlooked Way to Market Your Business There’s a limited amount of real estate in every email that you send. How you use it determines, in part, how effective your emails are and how well you are marketing yourself. Given how often emails are forwarded around, a well-crafted email signature can get you calls/emails from prospects you never knew even existed, new ezine subscribers and, in the best cases, a new client – this is a great return on free marketing. How To Reach Your Clients Without Publishing An Ezine Are you thinking that you need to send some type of ezine or newsletter to your customers and clients, but afraid that you don’t have the time or the content to publish on an ongoing basis? If that’s the case, you may want to consider one of these alternatives. They will help you stay in touch with your clients, capture email addresses on your website and establish your credibility without requiring you to come up with new content each week. How to Easily Make Your Customers Always Think of You Have you ever noticed that people get incredibly happy whenever you unexpectedly think of them or do something for them? Gifts and goodies are an inexpensive way to help with client and customer retention – remember it’s much less expensive to keep an existing customer than it is to get a new one. This is a great and simple way to stay at the forefront of your customers’ minds. 5 Survival Tactics for When Everything Goes Wrong You know the type of week. * You’ve worked hard and are gearing up to launch a new product when a vendor calls and says that he can’t get the new website up on deadline which is “okay” because the graphic artist’s computer crashed and your product picture isn’t ready anyway. They’ll get back to you. What do you do when it all goes wrong? Are YOU Ready for Lightning to Strike? As you pull into the driveway, you notice that the kitchen light is off. “Hmm, thought I left that on,” you think. Once you get in, you realize that all the clocks are flashing “12:00” and that you had lost power. It’s no big deal until you go to turn on your computer and smell something burning. It’s your worst nightmare – your computer and everything on it is FRIED! 7 Tips To Working Successfully In Your Home Office Remember the commercial of the woman in a business suit top, pajama bottoms and bunny slippers while on a conference call? Way back when, I used to think that symbolized home office life. Ahhh, the joy of it. Once I started running my business from home, however, reality set in very quickly! How To Make Procrastination Work For You and Your Business I'm guessing that right now there are several tasks you've been putting off and that when you look at your “to do” list, you see some items day after day – perhaps even week after week. Maybe it’s redoing your website, figuring our your books, having a difficult conversation with a client, or kicking your marketing plan into high gear. What’s stopping you? How Do YOU Handle Change and What Does It Mean for Your Business? As a person, your success, or failure, depends in part on how well you adapt to change. Do you run screaming like a banshee towards it, ready to conquer? Or do you go sit in a closet, close your eyes and wait for it to go away, hoping that everything will return to “normal”? Who's Watching YOUR Money? 7 Tips for Hiring the Right Bookkeeper Hate bookkeeping? You're not alone! However, before you run out and hire the first person who claims to be a bookkeeper, be sure to follow these 7 tips. You can't afford to hire the wrong person to manage your finances. Want to be a Client Magnet? Try This Little Used Technique Do you want to learn a low cost, often overlooked method for keeping and attracting clients? In today's world of rushing to get everything done, this basic practice will keep clients coming to you over and over. So You Want to be Rich? 7 Wealth Attraction Tips for Entrepreneurs So, you want to be rich? We all hear it. We all say it. Everyone wants to be rich but, short of picking the lucky numbers or winning the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, most people go don’t know how to amass the wealth they dream about. Read on to learn the top tactics of successful (wealthy) entrepreneurs. Does Your Marketing Plan Fit? Ask small business owners what they are afraid of most in their businesses and you typically get one of two responses: marketing and bookkeeping. We’re going to tackle just the marketing side today and leave bookkeeping for another day. 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