Talking about Christmas on June 24th. “Are you crazy?”, I hear you ask.
Why it makes sense to hire a professional
Some business people think it’s cheaper to hire a high school student to come into their office and do their email campaigns and other admin tasks. I’d like to present one example of why it sometimes can be a false economy.
I had a call this week from a lady who owns a little store who was totally panicked. She had hired high school students to do office work for her while she was out front selling. She trusted them to do their jobs and found out that her mail campaigns hadn’t been going out, that when they were sending messages, they were taking a very long time to send them out.
After a short conversation I was able to calm her down and offer her a solution to her problem. I gave her a service to sign up for an account to send email campaigns and when she gets her account set up, she’ll be forwarding me the information to import her list into the mail service and send out her email blast.
Sometimes it is more cost effective to pay a little more to someone who is experienced and professional versus an inexperienced high school student. This is one of them.
Making a small world smaller
It never fails to amaze me with how the universe can send the right people into your life at the right time. Last year I took VA Classroom’s social media marketing specialist program and really enjoyed it. When VA Classroom offered an updated version for 2010 I signed up immediately. I wanted to learn more about what was new in the industry.
The requirement for completing the course was to create a social media marketing program for a business.
During the course I connected with a lady by the name of Lori Shandle-Fox on Linked In. She has written a fascinating book and is hoping to get it published – it will be the first of a fascinating series of books. Honestly, I can see it as a reality show. She had questions about WordPress, should she self-host or use WordPress’ site. Many people answered her question and she ultimately decided to self host. She then asked questions about themes, customizing them, etc. and again I offered by two cents. Over the course of emails we developed a relationship which ultimately led to a phone conversation. We bonded over the fact that she is a stand up comic and I am a comedy fanatic.
I felt comfortable enough with Lori to offer to do a social media plan to get reader interest, develop a following to hopefully attract the right attention that someone will publish it for her and generate pre-orders for book sales (whether she self-published or worked with a publisher). I told her it was a win-win for both of us; she’d get a social media marketing plan and I have a juicy subject for my VA Classroom assignment.
This morning I received word from Craig Cannings of VA Classroom that I successfully completed the assignment and passed the course. This has led me to definitely decide that I want to market my social media services to authors. Why? Their work is fascinating. I’m a fledgling author, working on my first novel and I love reading. So as they say in the networking world, “you never know who anyone else knows”, if you know authors who would like a social media action plan set up and implemented, please pass my website URL along to them.
I absolutely love how the social networking world has made a small world smaller and how it brings people together and removes boundaries. Craig Cannings of VA Classroom is in British Columbia, Canada. Lori is in Raleigh, NC and I’m in Ontario. Amazing, isn’t it?
Check out: http://www.vaclassroom.com and http://www.laughingISconceivable.com (content coming soon)
Are you promoting your use of social media?
I have two questions for you.
- Are you using social media sites such as Facebook, Linked In and Twitter?
- Are you letting customers and prospects know that you are using social media?
If you answered yes to question one and no to question 2, my next question is, why not?
I recently received a directmail piece in the mail from the store, Winners. On the back of the flyer was a little Facebook logo inviting consumers to follow them. This is a great idea – it’s a perfect way for Winners to keep people up to date on what is happening in their stores.
So if you are connected with Social Media, shout it out to the world, let everyone know. If you have a Facebook fan/business page, invite your customers to become fans. If you are on Twitter, ask your customers to follow you and follow them back. Keeping conversations going is a great way to keep you top of mind to your customers.
You can find me on:
See you in the Twitterverse!
Marketing Via Email
I received a message sent through the form on my website today and it was a classic example of what NOT to do when cold calling via email.
The person who contacted me provided no company name (just said SEO Company), the phone number was 000-000-0000 and the email address was a Gmail address. This company was trying to sell me SEO services. Clearly he didn’t consider that if he is an Internet services company he should have a real email address attached to a company dot com address and a website for me to be able to see more about them.
Cold calling by email is a crap shoot at best - personally I don’t recommend it, but if you are going to do it, you should really consider having a corporate email address or if you have to use a Gmail or Hotmail account, at least provide the recipient with the URL for your website and a phone number. You’ll increase your chances of getting a positive response.
Does Direct Mail Work? Yes!
Many times we send out marketing material and wonder if it ever gets kept or if it is tossed in the recycling bin with the flyers for pizza, window cleaning, duct cleaning, etc. I had an experience last week made me aware that marketing is not done in vain.
I had a call from a lady who had a flyer I sent about 1-1/2 years ago. She needed to have her receipts entered into a spreadsheet for her accountant. I met with her this morning and after looking at what she had, we determined that a bookkeeper would be a much better service for her than hiring me. We discussed her business and we saw a fit for working together in other ways, but bookkeeping wasn’t one of them.
It’s funny because I was starting to wonder if direct mail is a waste of time and money. The call from that very nice potential client affirmed that direct addressed mail is not a waste of time.
If you need help with putting together a mailing list and getting a mail merge completed and mailed, give me a call. I’d love to help!
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