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assistant who is in tune with their coaching clients and customizes solutions based upon their individual needs and goals 2. differs from a general virtual assistant as they only partner with members of the coaching industry [syn: 
Archive for Marketing Offline
How to Sell Your Ebook
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Planning, writing and creating an e-book can be a labor of love. At the very least you want your efforts to result in good sales however with a few steps your labor of love can rise above good sales and achieve bestselling status. Your eBook can have great sales, here’s how:
1. Make sure your e-book provides a benefit. The very first step, and often the step that takes the longest is the research phase where you analyze your audience and potential book topics. In addition to your book needing to provide a benefit to your audience, a bestseller provides a benefit that is in high demand, even though sometimes people don’t know they want it until they see your book.
For example, “how to win friends and influence people,” was a bestseller because it provided a very clear benefit – the ability to be liked. Make sure your book topic provides a clear benefit to your target market.
2. Make sure it has an attention grabbing, benefit promising book title. Your book title needs to accomplish many things because it is the first thing people will look at when visiting your website or considering a purchase. Your headline needs to appeal to emotions, provide a benefit, and grab their attention. Chicken Soup for the Soul is an example of a book title that tapped into emotions and aroused enough curiosity to get people to look further into the book to see what it’s about.
3. Make sure you have credibility. Credibility can be on the back cover, on the inside flap, on the cover with your name. It’s demonstrated in many ways. For example, if you have a forward by someone highly respected in your industry, several positive reviews, or even a short bio explaining your knowledge and experience, they all lend to your credibility and help prospects make a decision to become customers.
4. Find the right promotion strategy for your audience. Simply publishing a book won’t make it sell. You have to promote it. Here are just a few ways to promote your eBook:
- Reviews
- Social networking
- Advertising – including banners, text, ezines and pay per click
- Affiliates
- Joint Venture
- Word of mouth
- Selling via retail sites like ClickBank, eBay and Amazon.com
All of these marketing strategies may or may not work for you. Create a plan, set goals, and test and track your tactics for success.
5. Work hard to get some press! Press publicity are one of the best ways to grow a book’s sales into bestseller status. Submit press releases to local news outlets and online. Contact the media, get interviewed and connect with people online to help you promote your book.
When it comes to making your e-book a bestseller, putting together a great package is the first step. It has to be a book people will review well, one that looks professional and keeps its promise. Once that’s accomplished, it’s up to you to get the word out about your book. Create a marketing and promotion strategy and follow it through.
10 Design Tips to Improve Your Direct Mail Advertising
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Direct mail and advertising are two extremely powerful marketing tools when they’re done correctly. And there are key steps you can take to ensure not only that you’re getting the best conversion rate, but that you’re maximizing your response. These keys rest in the design of your piece. Let’s take a look at ten design tips to improve your advertising and direct mail.
1 – Make sure any graphics you use assist the sale rather than detract from it. Graphics in your advertising piece or direct mail piece serve two main purposes, they are there to elicit an emotional response and they’re there to pull your reader into the copy. If the graphics distract, get rid of them!
2 – Make sure the fonts are easy to read. Body copy generally should be a serif font and the headlines and subheadings should be a bold serif or a sans serif. Make sure the font color you choose is easy to read on the background you’ve chosen as well. A white font on a light gray background is going to be clicked away from almost immediately. People don’t want to strain their eyes to read your ad.
Test for colors in your headlines too. For example, it’s often found that red headlines draw more conversions. That may or may not be the case for your audience; test it.
3 – Use special handwriting and formatting to draw the reader’s attention to certain aspects of your letter. Many copywriters have found that a personalized signature help the reader feel connected. Additionally, rather than using standard bullets in your direct mail piece, what about stars, checkmarks or other unique symbols.
4 – Photographs can really boost conversions. What photos do you use? Photos of people who represent your audience are the best bet. It helps the message connect to your reader. For example, if you’re marketing to moms, then you could include a picture of a mom with her child.
5 – Who is your audience? If they’re an older generation then they’re probably not going to relate to or appreciate a piece that’s graphically heavy. However, if you’re marketing to a younger crowd then they do appreciate lots of graphics.
6 – Show the product. If you’re marketing a product, by all means show it. That includes digital information products. Have a cover designed and use it in your sales copy.
7 – Use real stamps instead of a postage meter. They’re less inclined to dismiss it as junk mail if you use a real stamp.
8 – Address your envelope personally, or at least make it look like it’s addressed personally so they don’t dismiss your direct mail piece as junk mail.
9 – Place a teaser on the outside of the envelope. A teaser is a bit of tantalizing copy that makes your direct mail piece irresistible.
10 – Consider the envelope itself. One of the most successful envelopes is a standard white #10 envelope. However, be sure to test the success rate. You may want to change the color of the envelope, use a window envelope or change the size of the envelope depending on your market.
Direct mail and advertising is as much a science as it is an art. There are tried and true methods for reaching an audience and converting them, however, your audience might be unique. Track and test what works until you have a proven recipe for success.
Is Your Marketing Getting You Noticed?
Posted by: | CommentsIf your marketing campaign just isn’t working, or you’re just getting started, take a long look at what you’re trying to do. Is it exciting? Is it eye catching? Is it unique? If not, you’re campaign is likely too bland to get anywhere.
It used to be that simply advertising your business could get you more than enough customers, but this is normally no longer the case. Look around you. There are advertisements EVERYWHERE.
There are commercials, print ads, billboards…your mind is overrun with images every day. And if you run the same old marketing campaign, you’re just going to blend in with everyone else. If you want to get business, you need to get noticed, which means you need to stand out from the crowd. And just being good at what you do is probably not enough to get that done.
The trick to getting noticed is being creative. It may be how you advertise, what your ads look like, or the deal or gimmick you’re offering. Whatever it is, something has to stand out if you want to get noticed. Coming up with a great idea doesn’t always happen in an instant. It takes thinking, research, and lots of brainstorming. Whether it’s taking a few days to work on it, or simply setting aside some time at the end of every day, you have to put some oomph behind it if you want to get results.
Believe it or not, while it may take some creativity and crazy thinking, you may find that the crazy thinking has already been done for you.
An example? Instead of sending out a boring old mailer, there are companies that make unique mailers like messages in a bottle and coconuts. Sure, other people have access to buy this stuff and use it too, but if you’re doing a mailing campaign, what are the changes you’re competing in the same market with someone who uses the same product? Slim to none.
Plus, if you get two coconuts in the mail, are you really going to read what’s inside one and ignore the other?
When it comes to marketing, flashy isn’t always better. Sure, you don’t want to be boring and blend in, but the key to standing out isn’t different fonts, bright colors, or making claims you can’t back up or keep.
The real key is being unique and different. Often a simple eye-drawing headline is enough to get people to notice your ad, catching their attention without blinding the customer. People want to do business with someone they can trust, not just someone who can yell the loudest.
While it may take effort and some amount of investment, if you come up with a good marketing campaign, the end results will likely be more than worth the effort.
Intellectual Property: What You Should Know
Posted by: | CommentsModern technology has made it so much easier to get your materials out there. You can share ideas and pictures with the whole world and connect with the world at large. But just as it’s easier to share, it’s also easier to steal. That’s why it’s important to know the laws and protect yourself.
Before we talk about the laws behind intellectual property, we should probably talk about what intellectual property is. Intellectual property is anything that comes out of your head, whether an idea, writing, art, or a picture.
Just because someone can reproduce what you make doesn’t mean it’s legal for them to do so. Intellectual property can usually be divided into four categories: patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets.
While you’re likely heard all these terms, here’s a quick breakdown of exactly what they mean.
- Copyright. This protects items that are produced by the imagination, but are tangible, like books and songs. To be protected, you must apply for a copyright, which requires you to fill out forms, pay a fee, and provide a copy. You may be protected through the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). You can learn more about it on Wikipedia or here. A current copyright lasts 78 years after the author’s death. Courts can impose severe financial penalties if a copyright is violated.
- Trademark. This protects names and logos that identify a specific brand. They keep people from getting confused between two products. While many things can be trademarked, general terms and images cannot. You can apply for local trademark protection through your state, but you can get better protection federally.
- Patent. These are used to protect inventions and processes that someone creates. The idea is that they reveal how to make the product, and the government prevents other people from making it in exchange. A patent lasts generally 20 years, but it can also take a long time to get one. The application process is more extensive than the others and should include a detailed description of how to make the item. A patent also gives you the ability to sell the right to produce the item you’ve patented.
- Trade Secrets. These are things a business uses that it needs to keep secret in order to succeed. It might be a secret recipe or how a product is made. Whether or not something can be protected as a trade secret is decided in court and is based on a variety of factors, but most importantly, whether something is public knowledge or not. There isn’t a time limit to this kind of protection, but it can be voided if information is revealed to others.
Just because something fits into one category, doesn’t mean it can’t fit into another. They often overlap, which can make it more difficult to protect yourself.
Just because a law exists, doesn’t mean that there won’t be people out there who will not break them. Unfortunately, the lines can get even more blurred when your business is online. Knowing your rights is the first step and then taking appropriate measures to protect your content will lead you in the right direction.
