BrandingYOU&Co. » Service Professionals

Attention All Service Professionals – 5 Simple Ways How to Create an Online Presence to Generate More Business

Claire Morawski — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:18:54 +0000

Ever since moving to Toronto I started realizing how different marketing oneself is here, compared to Malta. In Malta, which is a small island in the middle of the Mediterranean, has a population of roughly 400,000. So, word of mouth, the local newspapers, radio and TV stations were the most effective marketing strategies that one would use to brand oneself and one’s business. However, this all changed when I moved to Toronto, and started studying how someone can market effectively to a much larger audience, such as the 2.4 million people who reside in Toronto alone.

This quest led me to the internet solution. I started realizing that if I wanted a hairdresser in Toronto – I would look up ‘hairdresser Toronto’ on the internet. I would check who has a website and what feedback this hairdresser has from the public. This happened whenever I wanted an accountant for my tax returns, an esthetician for my facial, a dress for my brother’s wedding, a place to rent, a particular piece of furniture, a health insurance plan, an instructor for our driving lessons, to buy a car, and more. I always found my answers on the internet, and I am sure I am not alone considering that in 2009 in Canada alone 74.9% of Canada’s population are internet users.

Unfortunately at this day and age, if a service professional (or anyone for that matter) doesn’t have a presence online, they are considered invisible. So, in this article I will be discussing how a service professional can market his / her business online.

Who are the Service Professionals?

According to the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law, a professional service is defined as ‘a service requiring specialized knowledge and skill usually of a mental or intellectual nature and usually requiring a license, certification, or registration’.

So, it could be anyone who provides a ‘skilled’ service. Some examples are hairdresser, esthetician, teacher, accountant, chef, GP, podiatrist, dermatologist, nutritionist, personal trainer, dressmaker, lawyer, photographer, carpenter, massage therapist, interior designer, and so on. This list is not exhaustive, but at least it gets you thinking whether your profession can be classified under a Service Professional.

How to Create an Online Presence?

1. Have a website. I recommend having a self-hosted blog, because
a. you have total control over your website
b. you own your blogs and you are responsible for them
c. it is easy for you to install, maintain and update information
d. blogs do better in Search Engine ranking.
Nowadays you don’t need to know HTML or spend a lot of money to have your own website. I set mine up in 1 day (this is just structurally and not the content). It costs me US$15 annually to have my own domain name, and roughly US$12 per month to host my domain. And through my website’s host I get a free program which I can install on my domain, to be able to have my website.

2. Social Network. Create various accounts with different social media sites, such as Facebook, Linkedin and Meetup. And network – this is a similar concept to how you would network face-to-face, to promote your business. Although one has to keep in mind, that each social media site has its own ‘hidden’ rules that one has to follow, otherwise you risk being pushed to the side and not being taken seriously.

3. Give Value. When people search on the internet, they are primarily looking for information. So the rule of thumb is to give 95% of the time, and expect 5% in return. This means that if for example you are a hairdresser, post regular articles on your blog where you are educating your readers. Examples of topics would be – choosing the best hairstyle for your features, how to take care of your hair during the hot summer months, 5 easy tips on how to maintain healthy hair. Once people find that you are providing value, they would view you as an expert and a person-to-go-to for advice.

4. Build a Relationship. Once you have a loyal following, it is time to build a relationship with your readers. Usually this comes in the form of asking your readers for their email address, so you would be able to send them weekly emails full of valuable information. Never spam or try hard-core selling.

5. Send Updates. When you have a list of people following you, it is easy to keep them updated with any news that you might have. You would do this either by sending an e-mail blast to your readers or by using tools such as Twitter.

How to Benefit from Online Marketing?

Once you are seen as an expert, you can benefit in either of 2 ways:
1. If people are looking for a service professional in your area and they have realized how knowledgeable you are in your niche, then they would come to your salon or office or restaurant.
2. On the other hand, if you are in a different area you can make use of the loyal following by selling online. Examples of items that you can sell are: an e-book which you wrote, products that you work with, and affiliate products.

Visit mySkin&Co to see how I brand myself in my niche of skin treatment and myBody&Co where I focus on providing information on healthy living.

P.S. To Learn More About Marketing Strategies And How To Use The Internet to Brand Yourself As An Expert In Your Niche Marketing, Lessons Are Being Given At www.BrandingYouandCo.com

To Your Success

How to Market Online To Generate an Income

Claire Morawski — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:54:10 +0000

Whether you are involved in a Network Marketing Company (MLM) or you are a service professional or you are a small business owner, internet marketing can help you explode your business. However, one has to have a strategy in place for the marketing to be effective.

Branding YOU as the Expert

The NUMBER ONE rule of thumb is that you have to Brand You and Your Company as a leading thought in your industry, to succeed on the internet. You have to respect the ‘law’ that first you help people before asking for their business. It is human nature that when people start viewing you as an expert in your field, they automatically do what you tell them to do – as they have come to respect your opinion and trust you that you are advising them for their own benefit. You have become a source of authority in their life – so they buy from you, they ‘hire’ you as their service professional, they follow your guidance, …

To become known as an expert in your niche, you mainly start by helping people. You have to earn their trust, by showing them that you are a leader in your industry and you know what you are talking about. But first they have to experience first hand that you know what you are talking about and that they can trust you. Hence, a complete no-no is pitching your sales talk at first sight. Rather at the first meeting offer some tips on how they can better their situation.

Let me give you an example for all this to be clear. Let’s say you are a florist by profession and have a store (can be online or offline). You are in an online forum when someone complains that they bought these flowers and after just 1 day they died. So you would write in the forum about tips how to make your flowers survive longer than 1 day – you would go into how to choose flowers when buying, if to cut the stem or not, how often to change the water, what room temperature should the flowers be and so on. At the end of your comment, you would write your name and your website address. This would position you as an expert, and people would come to visit your website and then your store. Compare the above to instead leaving a comment and writing something like this: ‘Buy your flowers from www.FxLxOxWxExRxS.com – guaranteed to last you for 10 days.’ I am sure you realize which comment will generate more traffic.

Who can Market Online?

Anyone who is alive and breathing can use the power of the internet to market and brand oneself and one’s company.

If you are a Service Professional or a Solo Entrepreneur, you can use the internet to brand yourself as an expert in your field. Set up a blog and market yourself as a thought leader in your niche, by writing articles and giving free knowledge to your readers. For example if you are an accountant you can write articles on how to calculate your yearly income tax, how to save on your taxes, simple tips for business owners, and so on.

Same goes if you are a Small Business Owner – use the internet to brand your business as the leading company in your niche. If you are an owner of a hairdressing salon – write articles on how to have a hair cut that suits your features, the latest trends, 5 easy tips on how to ensure healthy hair, and more.

Let’s now look at someone who is involved in an MLM company. You were given a generic company website, you were not taught how to market effectively, and hence you are suffering from a lack of leads. So you turn to the internet to brand yourself as an expert in your niche, and hence start generating endless leads. Let us say that you are involved in a company selling vitamins. So you create a blog where you market yourself as an expert in vitamins – you write articles on why vitamins are important, how many vitamins a day is needed, what vitamins to avoid if you are breast feeding, and on and on. This will brand you as an expert in vitamins, and people would automatically follow your advice and buy vitamins from you. Now in Network Marketing, one makes a living from selling but also from recruiting. So it is also important to brand yourself as an expert in recruiting. You can do this by targeting those individuals who are aspiring entrepreneurs. (Note: not your friends and family, nor the strangers at the mall, nor the leads that you call off a list, but aspiring entrepreneurs who have always dreamt of being their own boss). You would write articles to teach them on how to start their own business, how to market online, how you recruit people, and so on.

One thing I have to emphasize is that the information that you supply to people has to be the truth – as otherwise if someone finds out that you have been tricking them, then your reputation and business takes a quick downhill turn.

How to Market Online

Your next question must be how do I market online and brand myself as an expert?! You have to use marketing strategies to generate traffic to your website – some of them are free and others are paid strategies. An easy-to-understand example, which many of you are familiar with, is offline marketing – stores and other businesses use different mediums, such as newspapers, magazines, press releases, postcards, radio, TV to advertise and generate traffic to their store or business. Exactly the same goes on in the internet. There are different marketing strategies that you can make use of to advertise you and your business, to generate traffic to your online store (your website) and / or your offline business.

One of my favourite marketing strategy is blogging, and hence article marketing. I am sure that you have realized that having an online presence is a must nowadays for any business. If you don’t have an online presence, you are invisible to the world, and generating business would be harder. Some businesses choose to have a static website, however I strongly prefer a self-hosted blog where you are constantly updating information and constantly communicating with your clients. (Note: creating a self-hosted blog is easy to setup – no knowledge of HTML needed, and you can set up your own self-hosted blog with one 90 minute training webinar. You can Click Here for the free training) With blogging comes article writing, where you can even submit your articles to different directories – this marketing strategy will help to continue branding yourself as the person-to-go-to in your niche, and will help to promote your blog as a platform to your business.

Other marketing strategies include using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn to brand you as an expert, and direct people to your blog, and hence to your business (can be online store or offline business). Using paid strategies such as Pay Per Click ads and Paid Press Releases is another form of generating traffic to your business. Leaving comments on other blogs, participating in forums and interacting on the internet is also effective, especially in the beginning. Advertising for free on Craigslist and Backpage is another option. E-mail marketing is another effective way to keep a correspondence with your list of readers and clients.

As you can see, there are many ways one can ‘advertise’ on the internet. But MY ADVICE TO YOU is to choose one marketing strategy, or maximum two, and stick with it till you start seeing results. Keep tweaking and testing till you become an expert in that marketing strategy, and your conversions start pouring in. Always follow the mantra ‘expect to give before expecting anything in return’ – give out free valuable information (not spam and not pitching your sales story) that will brand you as a leader in your niche, and eventually this will earn you big bucks. And also keep in mind that using the internet as a medium to brand yourself as an expert takes time – so be patient but consistent – your determination will eventually pay off big time.

I personally use MLSP as my marketing system – it is my educational platform where I constantly learn effective marketing strategies that brand me as an expert in my niche, strengthens my reputation, and consequently gives me great leverage and power to explode my business. If you would like to test drive the same system, then visit www.BrandingYouandCo.com for more information.

To Your Success

How a Podiatrist Blogs to Generate More Business For His Practice

Claire Morawski — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:52:49 +0000

This is a short post from me for today, but if you are a service professional and would like to see a ‘live example‘ of how a podiatrist (foot doctor) created a blog to:
* syndicate his offline business with an online presence,
* get more clients for his existing, offline business – his clinic,
* be viewed as the person-to-go-to for any foot problems,
* be seen as an expert in his niche.

Take a time today to visit Dr Andrew Schneider’s Blog and read through some of his interesting and informative articles, such as:
<< Ten Important Foot Facts for 2010 >>
<< Is That A Bunion On TOP Of My Foot??? >>
<< Why Suri Cruise and All Children Should Not Wear High Heels >>
<< Five Items Every Runner Should Have On Their Holiday Wish List >>

Thanks to Laura Roeder for the tip to check out Dr Schneider’s blog!

To Your Success