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Using Professionals to Help You Market Your Business

Although you can do many of the low-budget marketing activities on your own, it also makes sense to hire someone else to help you in many instances. The most likely people you will want to speak to are a marketing strategist and/or a public relations specialist:

• A marketing strategist looks at your overall marketing plan and recommends ways to improve it. She might suggest how to improve your current marketing efforts (such as making your current web presence more effective) or suggest a venue you aren’t currently using (such as appearing at a special event). She might also suggest ways to bring more focus to your marketing approach and minimize a scattered, trial-and-error strategy. When considering a marketing strategist, look for someone with broad marketing experience and a knack for maintaining focus and organization.

• A public relations specialist works with you to get you noticed by the media. This means suggesting story ideas involving you and your business to television, radio, and newspapers (also called “pitching” a story). When hiring a public relations specialist (or publicist), look for someone with key media ties. He might have actually worked for one or more media outlets. He can also usually help you craft a press release, and if hired, might insist on doing the writing himself (with your input) to achieve the desired result. For both of these professions, they should be able to provide you with a set price for a one or two hour consultation. This allows you to invest a relatively small amount of money while also making sure that each is the right person to undertake more expensive projects.

After the consultation, consider what was suggested and whether you’d like to extend your marketing efforts with the professional or simply act on the advice provided. Also, both of these professions tend to specialize, so ask what industries their clients generally come from – for example, publishing, high-tech, small retail businesses, or some other specialty. Be sure that they have the industry background you desire, while providing sufficient assurances that work on your particular project is not merely a cookie-cutter repeat of what they have done for your competitors.

During or after the initial consultation, each one should be able to tell you what is unique (and marketable) about your business so that the boilerplate approach is avoided or minimized. Other marketing professionals commonly used include

• Image Consultant/Voice Coach. This person might help you appear more professional when you meet people or focus solely on a particular venue – for example, how you look on television or sound on radio. The idea is to get the world to notice you, and not bypass you because of the way you look or sound. Most will offer a set fee for classes, making budgeting easy to do, with the option of more one-on-one consultations if desired. Your publicist should know of someone to refer – or ask friends who appeared on television or radio who they used.

• Marketing Coach. This is someone who acts as a coach with a focus on helping you market your business. This person might offer many of the services provided by a marketing strategist or publicist, but generally do so with an emphasis on providing you with tools, help, and insight to do the work on your own, as opposed to doing it for you. As such, they should be both certified coaches and have a strong background in marketing. Visit the website of the International Coach Federation (coachfederation.org) to find a certified coach specializing in this in your local area. Other coaches specialize in helpful, marketing-related activities, such as public speaking.

How Much Marketing Is Enough?

The suggestions in this article can make marketing sound like a never-ending process. Although it will continue for as long as you own your business, there are several circumstances indicating you might need to take a break:

• When you are tired of talking to strangers (or people, period), give yourself a break. That’s enough for the day. If you still need to do some marketing activity, focus on researching prospective clients or some other activity that doesn’t involve meeting the public. (Just don’t make “research” the only marketing task you perform.)

• When you need all of your time to perform work for clients, go ahead and take a brief marketing pause. (By brief, I mean one to two weeks.) If you are always taking “breaks” from marketing, you might need to look at your schedule and figure out a way to make the marketing process a more natural fit. For instance, you might make Friday night a postcard-labeling-andstamping party, with pizza afterward. When you receive responses from the postcards, schedule the meetings when you would be taking a break from working anyway – perhaps at lunch or over mid-morning or mid-afternoon coffee.

• Longer projects might require your full-time attention. That’s okay – but compare your marketing cycle to the project’s time frame and schedule marketing appropriately. For instance, let’s say that you are working on an intensive project lasting six months. Your marketing cycle (from initial marketing activity to signed contract) generally lasts two months. This means that during month four of your large project (at the latest), you need to gear up and begin marketing again.

Why? You don’t want to come off a large project with nothing to do and no money coming in – you want to have other work to do as soon as the large project ends. At some point, your marketing will downshift. When you have steady work coming in, month after month, you are probably at a point when you don’t need to do special marketing “pushes,” such as postcards or ads.

Here’s one work at home business example:

Let’s say that it is early April. You look at your spreadsheet and see you have work lined up for this month (April), as well as May and early June. In a week or two, work for the rest of June is pretty much lined up. At this point (and assuming your monthly total of all business is sufficient to meet your needs), you can probably avoid huge mailings (for example, mailing postcards and flyers), speaking strictly for marketing reasons, and other marketing activities that seem to take up too much of your time. At this point, you want to shift to “maintenance marketing” – one or two regular activities you do each week that will continue to generate fresh leads, yet take a minimum of time and money. (By the time you get to this stage, you will know precisely which activities those should be, based on what has worked and not worked in your home based business.)

Here’s an example: Several years ago, I “downshifted” to a maintenance marketing schedule. While I might send out a postcard mailing every one to two years, on special occasions, I’m not sending two to four mailings a year, as I used to do when my business was new. Nor do I write as many articles or perform as many speaking engagements solely for the publicity. But every week, I attend BNI (Business Network International), and network with other small business owners for about two hours. This is now my primary marketing activity. If I see a company that would make a particularly good client, I might write the key decision maker a letter introducing myself. For the most part, however, the bulk of the marketing is being done during those two hours per week. (I also meet with BNI colleagues over lunch or coffee, and this might add another hour per week.)

That’s not a lot of time, really – particularly when compared with the early years of my business, when marketing was a 20–30 hour per week commitment. The loss of a client, a project falling through, or other setback might bump up my marketing to 5–10 hours per week, but only for a brief period of time.

Press Release

This is an announcement to all relevant media outlets (radio, television, magazines, newspapers), letting them know that you have news. A lot of these are recycled, particularly if they’re little more than, “Yay! I started my business.” Send one out if you really have something newsworthy to announce – but be sure that it is truly newsworthy. What type of story is the media outlet expected to write or air? Why is the beginning of your business newsworthy? Unless you are doing something no one else has thought of, or you are holding a big event, it probably isn’t. And, after you come up with a newsworthy press release, your work isn’t done.

Plan to spend time calling to follow up on each release sent to each contact. The combination of an extremely newsworthy idea and persistence will work. Anything else will fail. (See Appendix A, “References and Resources,” for press release particulars.) Keep this type of marketing in mind. It isn’t likely to be a good fit when you start your business, but you can certainly build your business to a point when you’re ready to do this—perhaps one to three years down the road.

Marketing on a Budget

I hear you scoffing. ”Radio and TV ads? What, when I win the lottery?” It sounds like the marketing plan for some large, multinational business. And here you are – small, new, feeling poor (or actually poor, or both). There are many ways to market your business without spending five or six figures— or even four. Because the touchstone of good marketing is getting out, meeting people, and telling them about your business, many effective marketing techniques take time, but not much of a direct outlay of cash. You will still spend money, but we’re talking tens or hundreds of dollars, not thousands. So it’s now up to you to get out and meet people – or prepare to do so. Remember that list of ways to market my business I’m asked about? Here are the ones that work for me. (Most don’t cost very much.) Choose one, and do it tomorrow. No clients yet? Phone still quiet? Choose another one, and do it the next day. Still no response? Keep going.

Next we will talk about how much marketing is enough.

Continuing on with more home based business marketing techniques that are useful.

Website

If you’re a service business, your website acts as a sort of virtual brochure. It will be rare that someone contacts you strictly after seeing your website with no other contact. Websites are vital, but they work best in conjunction with other forms of marketing. Although updating your website might be considered part of your marketing work, don’t fixate on your website to the exclusion of meeting real people and connecting.

Cold Calling

I’ve never tried this, and quite frankly, never want to. Before the “do not call” list went into effect, my responses to telemarketers ranged from professional but abrupt to downright nasty (for which I’ve done penance). Because most of us feel the same way, why would you want to market your business in such an annoying way? Can you imagine someone barging into your home any time they feel like it? This is what cold callers are doing – barging in, and unilaterally attempting to change the recipient’s calendar and priorities. Because it’s also time-consuming, draining, and rarely the image you want anyway, you will probably want to avoid it in most instances.

How do you get the attention of that ideal client who is a business? If you can’t find a personal connection, send a marketing package (cover letter and brochure minimum – press clippings if you have them) to the key decision maker. Make a follow-up call one week later, asking if he received the package, and does he have any questions. But even here, be prepared for a low return – many decision makers have gatekeepers, and/or routinely discard unsolicited mail. Avoid any “pseudo-cold-calling” strategies. In other words, don’t call strangers and say that you’re conducting a survey, providing information only, or any other strategy used to weasel out of saying that you’re cold calling.

With the Do Not Call registry in place, calling consumers (for example, private individuals) can be a costly mistake. Businesses are not covered by this registry, however, and some exceptions for calling consumers include calls from charities and calls from political organizations. If you’d still like to make cold calls, particularly to private households, be sure to check out the Federal Trade Commission’s Do Not Call website, ftc.gov/donotcall/. Contact a lawyer if you are uncertain whether the specific calling you are doing is prohibited.

Tried and True Marketing Techniques

The following sections describe some traditional and low-cost marketing techniques available to home businesses. You probably won’t want to use all of them, but almost any business can benefit from some variation of these types of marketing.

Display Advertising This is advertising that is displayed, usually in a newspaper, magazine, phone book, and so on. (Website ads are discussed in the next section.) If you are a retail organization, display advertising needs to be part of your marketing plan. If you are not a retail business, however, display advertising might just be an expensive exercise in frustration and expense. So, before you hire a graphic artist and start calling for ad kits,

• Do your homework, and do it well. Display advertising really needs to be researched thoroughly if you are going to do it at all. Which venue? Your local newspaper or the national magazine? (There’s a huge difference in price, believe me.) Can you handle the response if the ad works as projected? Will you get inappropriate calls? What is your break-even point? How many clients or how much business will you need in order to make more than the cost of the ad? Can you handle that much work?

• Understand why you want the ad. Display ads might be a prudent move for other reasons than a direct line to potential customers. If it is important that you or your company be well-established (for example, a building contractor), it might be a good idea to invest in display ads. The impression that your company can spend the money for a large display ad, repeatedly, can make a customer choose to do business with you because he knows that you didn’t just arrive in the community yesterday. Also, many of these ads appear in nonprofit venues, such as theater programs and school sports calendars. So, you might be placing the advertisement more as a way to show community support. It’s a great way to build what’s known as “goodwill,” but you might not see a direct return in dollars and cents in the near future.

• For a service business, display ads might backfire. Let’s say that you need a good mechanic. Which would you rather use: Your friend’s recommendation or someone from an ad? That’s right; you’re going to go with your friend’s recommendation if at all possible. So if you’re the mechanic, and you’ve placed a display ad, who is going to call? People who can’t reach their friends in time, are new to the community, or don’t like their friends’ answers. In other words, clients who are more likely to be both desperate and a bit picky (or downright difficult). It’s a great way to reach people new to the community (or perhaps new to having the need you’re addressing, such as folks who just purchased a used car). But you will also have to screen prospective clients more closely, and the percentage of callers who just aren’t a good fit will be higher. (You can mitigate this by choosing your venue carefully – perhaps a display ad in the Welcome Wagon package targets the newcomers you want, while avoiding less desirable customers.)

Writing Your Letter Your letter should include four short paragraphs:

• A brief opening paragraph announcing that you are now in business. Specify what kind of business you are in, and whether you will be limited by geographic boundaries.

• In the second paragraph, let them know what you hope to provide that your competitors do not. Keep this brief—no more than three sentences.

• In the third paragraph, ask for their help in soliciting business. Ask them to let you know if they are interested in your services and to refer you to anyone who might be interested in your services. Give them one or more examples of people who might use your services.

• Close the letter. Thank them for their attention/support. Let them know that you appreciate the warm relationship you have with them. Let them know how to reach you at your business (sometimes as simple as “I can be reached at the phone number below if you have any questions.”)

• Don’t do a simple “mail merge.” Personalize the letter, so the recipient knows you took the time to think of him directly. That means addressing him as you normally would (for example, as “Sam,” not “Mr. Jones” if that is how you address him) and perhaps including a sentence or two unique to his letter. (“If you have questions, I’d be happy to answer them when we work out Monday morning.”) Be sure to sign each letter in blue ink (which is friendlier, and makes sure that the reader knows you really did sign it, as opposed to having your scanner and printer do it for you).

Here’s an example of an introductory letter used to announce the opening of a writing business:

January 12, 2005 Ms. Jane Smith 123 Profit Lane Friendly, CA 94702 Dear Jane,

I just want to let you know that I have opened my own writing business. Focusing solely on nonfiction, I am offering to write articles, reports, press releases, and other business and marketing documents. As part of my business, I am also offering writing instruction so that clients have the option of learning to write better themselves. You probably know a lot of other writers, but my business stands out in several important ways.

First, I offer writing instruction as well as writing services – I’m not insistent on doing the writing myself because I know many small business owners would rather do their own work. In addition, my background includes a broad base of journalism, technical writing, and marketing. This is rare, as most writers specialize to an extreme. With my varied background and business focus, anyone you refer to me will get the professional writing services they want – not overly specialized experience they don’t need. My clips and references confirm this. (See my website at www.[your site here].com, where I’ve included testimonials from several happy clients.)

Several of my business cards are enclosed, along with a full list of the writing services I offer. If you know of someone who has a writing deadline looming, and can’t quite get to it, please mention my name and offer one of my cards. I would be more than happy to meet with them and see if I can help. Most importantly, however, I want to thank you for all of your inspiration. My conversations with you after Job Club really helped me to focus on what I want to do, and what I do well. With this business, I have both. If you would like more information, please don’t hesitate to contact me at the phone number below.

Sincerely,

[your name and business name here]

Home Business To do list
- Approach local media regarding articles and interviews.
- Set up a time and date to perform regular marketing activities. Pick out which ones you will do ahead of time, so you are prepared.
- Obtain quotes from service providers (as needed) such as printers, marketers, and mail houses.
- Research networking and speaking opportunities.

Announcing Your Home Based Business is Key

So, here’s one basic marketing exercise to get you started. Go through your Rolodex (or contact manager or address book). Write a letter announcing your business to almost everyone you know – anyone who might conceivably use your business or recommend it to someone who might use it. Put the letter on your new letterhead. Why send a letter to almost everyone you know? Everyone who knows you, and might refer people to you in a positive manner, should be aware of the opportunity to do so. One of the most overlooked chances to get new clients is failing to mention the business – or failing to directly ask for referrals. Why write a letter? A letter provides the recipient with a visual reminder, written information about your business, and (because you will tuck business cards inside this), cards to hand out to referrals they meet. Well crafted, this letter should provide the recipient with key words and (if room) suggestions of people to look for (for example, “Do you know anyone who…”).

Choosing the Right Recipients for Your Work At Home Business

Because I said ”almost” everyone you know, there are, obviously, a few exceptions. You might not want to send the letter to

• People who know you but don’t like you. Stick to people who respect and admire you.

• People who simply are not in a position to refer your business to others, such as those who are seriously ill or in prison (unless those groups are part of a key target audience for your business).

• What about people you know who are students or unemployed? These are judgment calls. Generally, students are not good referral sources unless they are in graduate studies or working as interns. Unemployed people are likely to be so stressed over their job search that they won’t think to refer you to someone—and it might even be awkward. (“Well, because I blew that interview and you won’t hire me, how about using a friend of mine? He just started his home business.”)

• In general, the closer a person might be to your potential clients, the more likely you should send him a letter. So, a retiree who stays in touch with the corporate office is worth the letter. But a retiree who is out on the water jet skiing, having eschewed contact with former colleagues, should probably be skipped. Although your list can be winnowed, don’t overlook people simply because of how you know them. Yes, you know Betty because you both have kids in the “Mommy and Me” class you both attend. But Betty isn’t restricted to that role even though she might be a full-time mother. She still knows people, stays in touch with them, and could be extremely helpful if she knows the details of your business.

Marketing You and Your Business is very important.

One of the more interesting questions I get is the question, “How do you market yourself?” or “How do you market your business?” Perhaps the question itself isn’t as interesting as the implications that go along with it. The person asking the question is awaiting my answer, expecting it to be succinct. He is hoping to find the one silver bullet that will kill the need for any constant marketing efforts, the one-step, easy routine to riches. Usually, he is disappointed. I tell him to think of a dozen ways to market himself, and I have probably tried them (and gotten clients from most). No, Virginia, there is no microwave dinner style solution to marketing. But this is a good thing. Most of the time, you don’t have to pursue a lot of options that just don’t fit your business or your personality. (There’s one big exception here; most marketing requires getting in front of people sooner or later. But just about everything else is negotiable.) first, let’s look at some basic, tried and true marketing ideas that every business can benefit from.

You’ll need list for marketing you and your home business.

- Address book/Rolodex listing of business contacts, associates, friends

- Computer and word processing software

- Business plan

- Calendar

Slow Frying Fish: Understanding that Marketing Takes Time

Yes, marketing is a special kind of slow frying fish. You have to grab the fish out of the pond today and throw it into the pan, so you will have fish to eat next month, next season, and next year.

Sometimes the toughest part of this process is that, when you are sitting in your office with a quiet phone and clean paper and a blank computer screen, it’s tough to get going. After all, what’s one day spent playing solitaire (or Tomb Raider or Pro Skater 4)? Plenty. This could be the day you were destined to catch a very large fish. That’s why you need to flesh out the Marketing section of your business plan. You’re going to come up with a list of things you can do, and put them both in your business plan and on your calendar. You’re only allowed to move them off your calendar if client work or a bona fide emergency crops up (with bona fide emergencies generally involving police, fire, or hospital personnel). This is something you need to do. And you need to keep doing it for as long as you own your business.

To do list for Marketing Your Work From Home Business:

- Draft or revise your marketing plan.
- Make a list of everyone you know.
- Write your introductory business letter and send it to your list.

The Marketing Cycle: A Typical Story

John is a friend of your favorite aunt. He heard about your business, and is considering hiring you. It is late January. You and John talk on the phone. You both like what you hear – he’s your ideal client, and to him, you are his ideal service provider. So, you arrange to meet in early February. There you are in February, snow swirling outside your favorite coffee shop, discussing possible projects and getting to know John a bit better. After an hour or so, the two of you come to the next step. John would like to see what you discussed in a formal quote, with a contract.

You race home from the meeting and prepare the quote and contract. John receives it, thanks you, and says he’ll review it – but he’s going on vacation, so it will probably be early March. He calls you on March 3 and says all is going well. However,

he’d like to expand the use of your services. Would it be possible to rework the quote and present it to his business partners as well? The two of you agree on a date when you will go to his company and make a presentation. It is now late March. Although you are nervous, the presentation goes extremely well. Everyone checks their calendars at the end of the meeting.

Tentatively, you could start on the project in early April. You’ll receive the signed contract, and a deposit, in the mail shortly. Have you noticed that more than two months went by from initial contact to signed contract? Depending on the size of the project, the time could be more or less. The client, too, might be very busy, and simply not as attentive as John was in the previous example. From the time you make first contact until you close, the business could be months, if not a year or more.

This is why marketing your home based business opportunity or program every day, day in and day out, is important. You need to work on your marketing today in order to have business coming in next month, next season, and next year. Plus, John might not have turned into a client. Something might have gone wrong, or you or John might have realized that there wasn’t a good fit. That can happen, and it might happen after you have prepared a quote, made a presentation, and performed other marketing work.