10 Ways You Should Be Using Your Blog to Build Business (But Probably Aren’t)

Part 2 of 2: Did you miss part 1?
Read The Ultimate Secret for Blogging Success

Now that we’ve given voice to the ultimate secret for blogging success (actually populating your blog) and talked about some easy, painless ways to do so (even if you don’t consider yourself much of a writer) let’s go on to the remaining:

9 ways you should be using your blog to build business
(but probably aren’t).

1. Populate it.

2. Use your blog to educate readers about your business, products or services.

One way to do this is to have a spotlight product or service of the week (or month). Incentivize newly blog educated customers by providing an offer relative to your product or service of the month, such as a complimentary trial version, free add-on or another goodie.

On your working calendar (whether it’s electronic or old fashioned paper and pen) schedule out 15 minutes each week and write down the name of each product or service that you’ll write about. For each, you only need to write 2-3 paragraphs, and you will likely be able to cut and paste from manufacturer’s websites or flyers, or even take scripting from product packaging itself.

3. Brand it.

Your blog – along with your website, email newsletter, Facebook timeline page and all other online platforms – should be designed so that a customer knows they are interacting with your business (and with the same business) no matter which site they were on.

For example, I recently designed a website for my husband’s dental practice. Note how the Walker and Kraus DDS' Enumclaw dental practice website, blog and Facebook page – while not identical – still have enough harmony so that you can easily identify them as united.

4. Optimize it.

Now more than ever it’s important that you utilize your online communications effectively and strategically. I know it sounds complicated, but a little reading and research on your part about optimizing your blog posts to help drive traffic not only to itself but also to drive more traffic to your business’ website will pay off.
Your blog also gives you opportunities to specifically enhance your local SEO (the optimization that you do to bring more local clients to your website and hopefully into your place of business).

(And if you don’t want to do it yourself, you don’t have to. Content writers like me would simply love to do it for you!)

5. Engage, provoke and otherwise invite feedback.

The point of communications channels like your blog are primarily to build brand awareness and foster relationships. You should write from the standpoint of wanting to create intrigue among readers – a desire in prospects to want to know more about your business (or do business with you), the development of customer loyalty and referrals among existing clients, and so on.

Use your blog to gauge feedback, solicit reviews and testimonials, find out how well your customer service, fulfillment, service department or other segments of your business are doing, etc.

6. Establish and build on your reputation as an expert.

No matter what business you are in, you want your customers to view you as the authority, the go-to-guy for whatever it is that you do or sell. By using your blog to educate customers and prospects, you set yourself up as a perceived authority.

In addition, by populating your blog strategically and improving your SEO result placement, you enhance your reputation. True or not, people perceive businesses to be more (or inherently) trustworthy when they place higher in Google search results.

7. Ensure cross-channel coordination.

Blog posts should be scheduled, in part, to be coordinated with your overall communications strategy. Not only should you use other channels to link to your blog post, but even topics themselves can receive focus across the entirety of your business in conjunction with the point in time that it’s being featured on your blog post.

An example of this would be creating a promotion around a product that will receive “product of the week” status. in addition to blog post and social media status updates, you could put a snippet on your on-hold system, place bag stuffers in box shipments or bags when customers check out, send a postcard to customers or prospects who have purchased that product in the past or who are more likely to buy in the future, include it as a featured product in your email or print newsletters, and even provide service providers or point of sale employees with a special script about that product.

8. Make emotional connections.

People expect blog posts to be written by real people. And when you get to write like a real person, you have more ability to make emotional connections. Use analogies about people, places, pets and other things in your life that your customers or prospects might relate to emotionally. Talk about local schools, charities, civic initiatives and other worthwhile endeavors which you support. Give people emotional reasons to see themselves as connected to your brand and your business.

9. Turn it into a resource.

When you populate your blog with posts that have value (i.e., value in the eyes of your readers, customers and prospects), you establish your blog as a resource. When you provide a valuable resource, you give people reasons to come back. Reasons to forward your blog posts on to friends and family. Reasons for them to check back to see what’s new, what’s special, what’s incentivized, etc.

In addition to talking about your business, you can also talk about your community and provide links to other businesses, city organizations, events, etc. Set your business blog up as a hub for people to come back to visit, time and time again.

10. Think series of posts, rather than one and done.

There’s no reason that you can’t write out the story of your business in a series of posts, especially if you can tell the story of your business in a compelling way and leave people wanting more. And writing in series sequences (instead of one and done) also enhances your SEO as search engines view pages with back links as having more value and authority.

***


Elizabeth Kraus is the author of 365 Days of Marketing.
365 Days of Marketing is the ultimate resource for business owners who need actual content in order to achieve their content marketing (blogging, social media and SEO) goals! 

Available on amazon.com in print or digital format, it contains marketing how-to, inspiration and content for every day of the year -- including all of the major holidays an much, much more to help you build a bigger role for your business in the lives of your clients, 365 days a year!
  

Related articles

• 9 Blog Post Ideas for Your Small Business Blog (business2community.com)

The Ultimate Secret for Business Blogging Success

Part 1 of 2:
10 Ways You Should Be Using Your Blog to Build Business (But Probably Aren’t)

While modern blogs have evolved into a fairly consistent form, digital communities and digital diaries have existed pretty much since the internet came into existence. That puts the age of this medium at something like 20 or 22 years – which, I believe qualifies it as a grown up part of online marketing and marketing in general.

Even so, its’ still not uncommon for me to sit down to talk marketing strategy with a business owner only to discover that they really don’t know what a blog is. And it’s even more common to sit down with a small business owner to find that while they have a blog, they aren’t posting on it (1) at a regular frequency or with (2) any kind of strategy. Ditto when it comes to social media.

Once the bright shiny new toy-ness wears off your blog or social media marketing, without a plan, it’s likely to fall into disuse and become just one more piece of cyberspace litter. In fact, when this happens, it can actually harm your business to have an inactive blog “out there.”

Why?

Well, assume that your blog, although inactive (you can almost see the virtual cobwebs growing on the thing) actually does what it was intended to do: draw traffic to itself. Imagine that a reader lands on your blog only to discover that you stopped posting nine or ten months ago.

Your reader is left to wonder whether you’re still in business at all. Your reader is left with the impression that you don’t have your act together (if you did, your blog wouldn’t lie dormant, and if it was dormant, it wouldn’t be visible).

Or what if your address and phone number have changed, but your obsolete blog remains online, driving real traffic to real or virtual locations that no longer exist? Your contact information changes but your blog is there sending your inquiries out to non-existent phone numbers and email addresses?

What’s more, over time the brand of your business will change and evolve. If you leave obsolete, inactive visible brand identifiers online, and readers interact with your blog and then come to visit your website or business, the inconsistencies between the two are going to undermine your overall branding efforts.

So let’s say you do have a business blog (or a blog you’re resolved to revitalize) – now what? 

What are you going to do with your business blog to make sure that it doesn’t fall into disuse, or worse, become a business liability? To answer that question, I came up with a list of 10 ways that most business owners aren’t using their business blogs, but should be.

First, here is the ultimate secret for business blogging success; the number one way that you should be using your blog to build business (but maybe aren’t):

The ultimate secret for business blogging success:
Populate it.

Number one, without question. It’s critical that your blog be populated with quality content on a continual basis. There is no way around it if you want to get found online, and there’s no way around that, because your prospects and customers are looking for you online.

If you’re stuck for content (that was how your blog went dormant to begin with, I’ll betcha) don’t feel alone. Not everyone loves to write, even when it comes to areas of passion, like their business, solutions, employees and customers.

Beyond telling you to “just do it” (which eventually you may have to) there are some other ways to make populating your blog consistently and with quality, relevant, engaging content easier:

• Use your website’s FAQ (frequently asked questions) as topics for multiple blog posts. You probably have enough to provide you with content for many, many blog posts, and they will also help you educate your customers about your services or products. Plus,they should enhance your SEO since they are likely to incorporate key-words and phrases that contribute to boosting your business in search results. 
• Use a book like 365 Days of Marketing which has themed content for (literally) every day of the year. Share interesting facts and lists such as those found on sites like Wikipedia or MentalFloss.com. (Be sure to correctly credit original sites when sharing information from other sources!) 
• Utilize corporate marketing and educational collateral such as your website, marketing brochures, materials provided by vendors or manufacturers, and even information found on the labels of your products themselves to build content on topics that would most interest your readers: namely, how your products or services would benefit them. 
• (Solicit and) use customer testimonials and survey findings about your products and services as blog post conversation starters. 
• See what other businesses like yours are blogging about and what their readers are responding to; these might be direct and indirect competitors or equivalent organizations in other communities.
• Ask your customers for input about what kinds of topics would be of interest to them. 
• Keep it simple. Your blog posts don’t need to be longer than a few paragraphs. In fact, readers will remember more if you say less. 
• If you really hate writing blog posts and maintaining your business blog, get help. Pay a content marketing expert to populate your blog and post on your behalf on a regular basis or identify someone within your business who wants to do it. Or share the responsibility out between several individuals so that no one person is burdened with a task that doesn’t come naturally to them.

Next Up: 9 more ways you should be using your business blog to actually build business (but probably aren’t)

Related articles

• 4 Reasons Why You Need a Blog (business2community.com)
• What is a business blog anyway? (marketing.yell.com)

April 16.2012 | Style, Strategy and Marketing Savvy Newsletter

April 16.2012 | Style, Strategy and Marketing Savvy Newsletter

Feature Article:  Ten reasons you need an email newsletter [ go ]

Statistics prove that not only do people perceive companies that send them email more positively, they are also more likely to buy from them, whether they make purchases online or off.

Also in this issue: 
- Thirty things to tweet about your brand
- Eight traits of a good online marketing article
- Twenty tips to delivering awesome customer experiences
- Nine ways to destroy employee morale
- Six ways to empower employees to take initiative

Get all the article links online at www.12monthsofmarketing.net/5apr2012.html

 

10 Reasons You Need an Email Newsletter

Last week someone sent me an invitation to connect on LinkedIn. I “okayed” the request, and the next day, I had an email from this same person in my inbox, asking me to share all of my business needs with him. No relationship building, no trust, no foundation or even context for the conversation. It was the equivalent of being proposed to on a blind first date.

And since I was just about as creeped out as if it had been a proposal on a blind date, I responded appropriately. Deleted the email, told outlook to block future emails from this individual and un-connected on LinkedIn. The equivalent of changing my phone number and eliminating my blind date proposer from my social media networks.

It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last; my question is, how many times have you moved from introduction to proposal too quickly? How many times have you lost customers by being presumptuous – failing to understand what they really needed or where they were in the buying process? Or how many customers have you lost because you didn’t know they were ready to buy, and so never even extended an offer?

Building relationships with prospects is vital if you want to move them from prospect to customer. And moving customers to the next step in the relationship is vital if you want to garner referrals and gain enduring customer loyalty.

Developing communication strategies for each stage of the customer life cycle can greatly aid your ability to keep the relationship growing and keep your business on the prospect’s mind so that when they are ready to buy, ready to move, ready to try a new product or service—when they are ready to do business with you—yours will be the business to which they turn. And communications collateral can be the means by which your customers will refer friends and family to your business by passing on an email newsletter, coupon, menu or brochure.

While some business owners express doubt as to the return on their email marketing investment, and others worry about being perceived as spammers, email marketing is alive and well. And, done correctly, email marketing can have huge benefits to the bottom line. For instance, did you know:

• Email marketing produces one of the highest returns on investment compared to any other form of direct marketing. The DMA says that email marketing ROI was $40.56 for every $1 invested in 2011; compare that to the return on banner ads at just $2 for every dollar invested and keyword ads which produce a $17 return for every dollar invested.
• According to the email stat center, Epsilon studies found that 57% of respondents have more positive impressions of the companies that send them email, 40% say that simply receiving a company’s email positively impacts the likelihood that they will make a future purchase from that company, and 50% say they are more likely to buy products from companies that send them email, whether they make those purchases online or at a brick and mortar place of business.
• And email marketing is permission based. This should ease business owner’s fear of being perceived as a junk emailer. If your customer or prospect asks you to communicate with them via email, why should you be afraid to do so? All of the power rests with them: they can choose to delete your email or save it for later if they don’t want to read it right away, and they can unsubscribe at any time if your email newsletter isn’t something that adds value for them any longer.

Sending a regular email newsletter is a great way to initiate and develop your relationships with prospects and customers. Here are 10 things that an email newsletter can do for your business:

1. Email can significantly impact your overall branding strategy. 

Your brand is the sum total of an individual’s perceptions about your business (and you!). And email communication is one of the few customer touch points where you control most of the interaction in terms of what the customer or prospect sees, and where they are directed next with each and every email communication. And you can use your email communications to drive traffic to your website or webstore, your blog or even to outside sites which can further help to influence and educate your audience to do business with you.

2. Email can enhance your customer education strategy. 

Part of getting the prospect or customer to “choose you” when they are ready to purchase what you have to offer is educating them as to the benefits they will receive as a result of doing business with you. Email communications provide the forum for sharing these types of benefits as well as your mission, vision, customer bill of rights—all of the promises you make to customers about what they can expect to be true, each and every time they do business with you.

3. You can use email to create intrigue. 

In 365 Days of Marketing, I make the point that intrigue is vital to turning prospects into customers and moving customers deeper into relationship with you. In order to gain mindshare among prospects, you must keep them interested in your business, even if they aren’t yet ready to buy. To return to the blind date analogy, it’s the equivalent of creating a desire on the part of the other person to want to know more about you—to be intrigued about what they don’t yet know or fully understand about your business, products or services, but want to find out.


It’s important to point out that creating intrigue on a first date isn’t done by proposing marriage; it’s done by omitting information – and giving your date a reason and the motivation to go out with you again and develop a relationship over time. It is during this relationship over time that intrigue leads eventually to relationship decisions, like buying, referring others and becoming a loyal customer.

4. Email can be used to gain referrals. 

When you provide useful information to prospects and customers in email newsletters and updates, you provide both the reason and the means by which they can refer friends and family to your business. For instance, something in your email newsletter might remind them that an acquaintance needs your products or services. And having an email in their inbox makes it incredibly easy for them to forward the email itself or a link to your online newsletter on to interested parties.

5. Email can help you build relationships. 

Though referenced throughout this article, remember that email is not a one and done marketing push, it’s about building relationships over time. Your email newsletter should have a combination of content that creates intrigue but also educates, communicates your values and customer promises and helps to build your brand, in addition to actually extending marketing offers to your readers.

6. Email can help you establish influence and expertise.  

One of the reasons that people choose to buy from you or feel comfortable referring a family member or friend to your business is because they trust you. They trust that you will treat them (or their referral) to a positive customer experience and they trust that you will provide them with the right solution. Trust is built over time and repeated interactions; and email can comprise those interactions. Use your email newsletter to communicate news, information and expertise to enhance your reputation and the reputation of your business and set yourself up as the expert in your field in the minds of customers and prospects.

7. Email can be used to extend offers.  

The top reason that consumers subscribe to mailings and interact with businesses on social media is to receive special offers and discounts. Your subscribers expect you to email them and they expect (and want!) to receive valuable offers from you. Use your email newsletter to tell customers and prospects about current offers, or create special offers that are redeemable only by your email readers. In addition, you can use your email newsletter to tell people about what is new in your business and remind them about offers that will be expiring in the near future.

8. Email can help you move customer to the next level in the customer life cycle. 

You can invite customers to events, ask them to refer others to your business, extend membership, VIP or other club type of offers and make any number of other calls to action meant to encourage your prospect or customer to move to a deeper level of relationship with your business. If you have openings for new clients, you can use your email newsletter as the means of telling your readers exactly “who” your business would be a perfect match for. You can provide education about your business, products or services that engage your readers not only intellectually but also emotionally and give them even more reasons to want to do business with you. You can tell them know about your commitment to the local community, local schools or local charitable causes. You can talk about the history of your company, your employees, your passions and a variety of other personal topics that will help them to connect themselves emotionally and to feel proud about identifying themselves with the brand of your business.

9. You can use email to gauge interest. 

Before launching a new product or service or making changes to customer processes, you can use email to gauge interest ahead of time. This can help you to fine tune new offerings before they launch or even avoid costly mistakes, like investing in a product for which demand is not strong or making a change to the customer process that might make your customers upset or even leave.

10. You can use email to gather feedback and customer data. 

While you may view email as a push marketing our outbound marketing tactic, it can be much more. It’s easy for people to respond to email—it takes very little time and no cost to do so. If you aren’t yet, you should be using your email newsletter not only to share information but to ask for information. Provide the means for people to respond directly via return email or links to surveys and questionnaires which can help you gauge everything from your customer’s level of satisfaction to what they like best (or dislike most) about your business, what they want that you don’t provide, what you do better than the competition (or vice versa). You can also ask readers for product or service reviews or testimonials or even for feedback that can be used to help improve the level of customer service you provide (or where you are falling short of customer’s expectations).


Email communications have a relatively low cost, especially when compared to other forms of outbound marketing. And they have been shown to produce a significantly higher return. And now you have 10 great ways to use email communications that you might not have thought about before—so what’s stopping you?

You can easily get started with an email service such as Constant Contact, and you don’t have to be a programmer or HTML expert to do so, since they provide you with easy-to-modify templates. If you sign up using the link above, you'll get to try it out for free and receive a $30 credit.  Alternatively, if you do want professional help, feel free to contact me for information about starter email marketing or overall content marketing packages and strategies.

Build a bigger role for your business in the lives of your clients—it’s going to be a great year!


***

Elizabeth Kraus is the author of 365 Days of Marketing.
365 Days of Marketing is the ultimate resource for business owners who need actual content in order to achieve their content marketing (blogging, social media and SEO) goals! 

Available on amazon.com in print or digital format, it contains marketing how-to, inspiration and content for every day of the year -- including all of the major holidays an much, much more to help you build a bigger role for your business in the lives of your clients, 365 days a year!
 

Related articles

• The Most Important Question of Email Marketing: "Why?" (community.constantcontact.com)

6 Ways to Supersize your Networking ROI

A few days ago I jotted down notes for an article on how to get more value from your networking efforts and as I sat down to write this article for the 365 Days of Marketing blog, I remembered writing in 365 Days of Marketing about the fact that a lot of people misunderstand what networking is and isn’t, and so may never realize any return on their networking efforts.

If this has been your experience, you may have written off networking as a waste of time in terms of a bona fide marketing tactic. I’m hoping to give you a reason to give it a fresh look, and I’m hoping to give you some useful ways to adjust your approach to networking so that it brings some actual benefits to your business.

As it turns out, the 2nd week of April is actually National Networking Week -- so no wonder it was on my mind!  

In 365 Days of Marketing, I define networking this way:

net-work-ing, noun
meaning: the exchange of information or services among individuals, groups, or institutions
specifically: the cultivation of productive relationships for employment or business

Networking is more than attending meetings with other business owners or showing up at events where prospects might be in attendance.

Real networking is purposeful.

It either involves working together with peers to help improve the business climate in your community or it involves being present, visible and alluring in the same places as are your target market/s prospects or ideal types of clients.

Maybe that’s why so many business professionals give up on networking or put it on the bottom of their priority list; they’ve been doing it wrong! Now that you have a better understanding of what networking is (and isn’t), how are you going to put this tactic to work to help build business?

Here are 6 ways that you can reap a bigger return on your networking efforts:

1. Know what you want to get out of it and be prepared.

When you attend networking meetings and conferences, be prepared with an audience-targeted, short introduction – no more than 30 seconds, and no more than one main point beyond your name, company name and title. For more on networking introductions read this post on the topic called “I’m Sorry, I’ve Already Forgotten Your Name."

In addition to your 30 second power introduction, consider offering something for give away (I frequently bring a copy of one of my books for give away at networking events by way of instant business card drawing). And create a one-sheet which is targeted to that audience and which highlights some important aspect of your business. I like to include a sample blog post along with a short list of “Related Services” that my business provides.

And make sure every one-sheet or take away includes a call to action and the means for the recipient to take the next step in the relationship they have (or want to build) with you and your business. Such calls to action might include an invitation to subscribe to your blog or email newsletter, to visit your business or book an appointment, to shop your store or website, to connect with you on social media, etc.

2. Use your social media platforms to make generous mention of businesses in your networking groups.

All too often we focus all of our marketing communications – social media profiles included – on marketing our own businesses. You can improve your SEO and generate plenty of goodwill among your peers if you will use your social media platforms for what they were intended; social interaction.

Over the last month, I’ve made it a point to mention every independent business that I’ve interacted with on social media as quickly as possible. It costs me very little by way of time and brings a wonderful return in the relationships that I’m building with other business owners. And hopefully it encourages my peers to do the same on social media in mentioning my services and those of the other businesses in our networking groups (and isn’t that one of the purposes of networking groups, anyway?)

3. Encourage reciprocal links.

Most blogs include a list of recommend other blogs or other websites that the blog’s author would recommend to their readers. Just as you can mention other local businesses on social media, you can also set up links to their businesses on your blog or website as local resources which you would feel comfortable recommending as resources for your customers. And there’s no reason not to point this out to the businesses with which you choose to network and to create reciprocal links in order to boost everyone’s SEO as well as provide a helpful list of local resources for your customers.

4. Write reviews for your networked peers.

Again, you might be asking yourself, why should you spend valuable time talking up other people’s businesses? The first reason should be that you genuinely want to be an information hub to your own customers in providing valuable resources to your customers. It improves your own reputation when you make good recommendations to others, and it makes you look good to both your peer business owners and your customers when you spend time saying good things about other people, and other businesses!

Secondly, reviews, blog comments and other similar online forums can also help you improve your own SEO and visibility to prospective customers. You can leave reviews on sites such as citysearch.com, yelp.com and others. You can also leave your own “shout outs” and complimentary reviews of local businesses on their blog sites, and on their social media pages (as well as your own). You may even choose to feature raves for local businesses in anecdotal stories as posts on your own blog.

However and wherever you decide to leave reviews for other businesses, I would recommend that you adhere to what “mom” always advised. When reviewing other businesses in your community, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

5. Create an online directory.

One of the ways to build influence and become a catalyst for improving the local business economy is to turn your blog and websites into hubs. And not only hubs of information, but your website (and blog roll) is a great place to create a hub of local business listings. Include a directory of local resources on your website which features listings of the businesses within your peer networking groups.

6. Actually visit – and patronize – the businesses represented in your networking groups.

I recently attended a local networking group at the invitation of a friend who said that she was a little fed up with the networking group. When I asked why, she replied that in the year they’d been having the meetings, not one of them had even visited her business.

While participation in networking groups should bring referrals from other members, it might be that a lot of networking groups are missing the person that should be the most obvious referral: you.


If you participate in business networking groups, and especially if you are going to refer your own customers to these other businesses, take the time to visit these other businesses and patronize them when you have opportunity. After all, this is something you want from other group members, right? Time to put your time and money where your desires are!

If you think about it, local business networking groups operate as loosely affiliated cross and cooperative marketing partners in many respects. Wouldn't it behoove your networking group to approach this strategically and make this one of the biggest benefits to local business owners for participation?  Feel free to pass on my tips to your group or even use them as the basis for a more purposeful, concerted effort in order to boost the local economy for all participating businesses!

Like any other part of your overall marketing, networking should be done as strategically and efficiently as possible. You are much more likely to reap a return when you understand what networking is (and isn’t) and you have a plan for getting the most ROI on the investment of time and money you make.

***


Elizabeth Kraus is the author of 365 Days of Marketing.
365 Days of Marketing is available on amazon.com in print or digital format. It contains marketing how-to, inspiration and content for every day of the year -- including Mother's Day and Father's Day to help you build a bigger role for your business in the lives of your clients, 365 days a year!

7 Tips for Succeeding as a "Coffee Shop Consultant"

7 Tips to Help Consultants, Independent Sales Reps and Other Solo-preneurs Work More Profitably and Productively -

There are many individuals who choose to work as consultants, sole proprietors, home based business owners, independent agents and representatives who could be termed "coffee shop consultants." So-named because many of their meetings occur in coffee shops, restaurants and other non-office settings, Coffee Shop Consultants share some unique problems as a result.

These professionals often devote many hours to providing free analysis and consultation services to other business professionals which go unpaid, for a variety of reasons. They also face the challenge of conducting meetings and doing business without a traditional office space. For these reasons, I wanted to provide consultants and other independent professionals with some tips that can help them become more profitable and productive, no matter where their "office hours" occur.

1. Treat Coffee Shop Meetings As Though They Are Professional Appointments (Because They Are) 

As a consultant or independent agent, representative or sole proprietor, your time is your most valuable asset. Treat all meetings, even those that occur with acquaintances in coffee shops, like professional appointments. Set a time to meet, and stick to it. Set a time for your appointment to end, and stick to that, too.

Analysis and consultation does not have to be a 'free' service, just because you meet in a coffee shop. If the information that you provide to clients has value, it should not be given away for free; you may need to set a fee not only for services delivered after a consultation, but for your consultation findings themselves.

One way to recoup a return on some of the unpaid hours that inevitably go into most consultations of this kind is to provide a summary of your findings and recommendations, but charge a fee for a full report, business plan or the specific strategies and tactics a client would need to undertake in order to implement your recommendations. This gives you the ability to demonstrate to a potential client that your expertise has value, without giving all of your information (which is your product, in reality) away for free.

If you do provide free consultations and recommendations for clients initially, then you should establish an hourly fee for subsequent consultations. If you do not, you run the risk of giving away even more valuable time for free; and, as the old saying goes, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" Remember that information is at least part of your "product" and learn to value it. If you don't, no one else will, either!

2. Set Expectations

Both you and your client (or prospective client) should have an idea of what you want to accomplish at your coffee shop consultation. You should be meeting for a purpose and for the most part, you should try to constrain your meeting to those topics. This will help you to keep your meeting within the time frame you allotted and it will prevent you from giving away consulting expertise which clients should be paying for.

3. Do Your Homework

Based on the expectations set and the purpose of your coffee shop consultation, if you do some research ahead of time you will be more prepared for the meeting with your client (or prospective client). This kind of preparation can help you to present yourself even more professionally and will reinforce your role as an expert in your field; both of which give you more ability to put a monetary value on your time and business.

Pre-meeting homework might be accomplished by internet research, reviewing press releases, websites or other corporate collateral or reports, contacting mutual acquaintances for information or referrals, or even conducting pre-meeting surveys or questionnaires from meeting participants or employees of their organization.

4. Establish Your Own Desired Outcomes

Unfortunately, many times the only one who receives value from a coffee shop consultation is the individual on the receiving end of the information. When information itself is part of your product - the value that you provide to clients - and when you give this product away for free, sometimes it leads no where.

Make pursuit of specific outcomes part of your consultation strategy! When you agree to a coffee shop consultation, make sure that you are clear on what you have to gain from the meeting, as well as what you are expected to give. Keep a prospect or client record for each meeting which includes your own desired outcomes, the calls to action that you make, the proposals for services that you provide, etc.

5. Write Up An Agenda

Prior to any scheduled coffee shop consultation, write up a meeting agenda for yourself which will enable you to stick to your schedule and give you the ability to meet both the client's expectations and to accomplish your own goals for the meeting. Make a checklist. Write down all of the most important talking points that you want to cover and leave room in the schedule for a discussion of proposal, paid service options and next steps.


6. Ask Open-Ended Questions
Open-ended questions can help you identify other needs that your prospective client may have that you can fill. They can also help you to better understand their preferences so that you can tailor your proposal or presentation to meet their unique needs and wants. 

7. Know What the Next Step Is

Consultants and independent agents often leave money on the table simply because they do not have a plan and a schedule for how they will follow up after the meeting. Next steps might include the production of a proposal or even a paid report, an in-house seminar or workshop, provision of specific services or sale of products, policies or accounts, etc. Even setting up a second meeting can be the appropriate next step in some cases where there is a long buying cycle or where you need time to do research in order to provide your prospective client with a proposal.

Before the end of your meeting, tell the prospective client or customer what the next step is and when it will be taken (if the next step is on your part) and then do it! If after your meeting the ball is in the client's court, ask when it would be appropriate for you to follow up with them, and make sure to do it. Keep some of the responsibility for the 'next step' on your side of the table (meaning, don't leave it up to the prospective client to contact you next) so that you retain the right to touch base with them relative to your coffee shop consultation.

P.S. As a post-script tip, my advice to you is that if you utilize a coffee shop or another public space to conduct a meeting or networking event, patronize the business: buy a coffee, a sandwich or something and be lavish in praise and word-of-mouth recommendations for this business among your network of professional and personal acquaintances.  Remember, it's far cheaper than rent!  

***

Elizabeth Kraus is the author of 365 Days of Marketing, Little White Marketing Lies and the 2012 Small Business Marketing Calendar. 

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Which Comes First: Your Product or Your Marketing?

Thinking about launching a new product - or even a new business?  Find out why marketing should be at the heart of your planning process, from the beginning. 

It used to be that Marketing professors and books opened up marketing discussions by presenting the "4 'P's of Marketing," most of which occur toward the end of the long range or marketing planning cycle:

• Product (the goods, services, information, etc., that will be sold)
• Price (the amount of money or other rate of exchange at which a product will be sold) )
• Placement, also called "Distribution" (the means by which goods or services will be made available for sale, including the means of distribution and the real or virtual stores where they will be made available for purchase), and )
• Promotion (how you will tell potential buyers about your goods or services and the ways you will entice them to buy)

In fact, for many people, the last "P" in this list, "Promotion," actually comprises their view of marketing. They view the other three items in the list as part of other business processes (such as accounting and operations).

So when should marketing come into the equation?

Recently, marketing guru and best-selling author Seth Godin asked this question: When should you add marketing?

He makes the point that marketing is not something to be added after you have all of the rest of the questions answered, suggesting instead that now, more than ever, marketing is the starting point for any business. I couldn't agree more!

If you adopt Godin's conclusion, that it is marketing conversations which are the starting point and so must be the core of your business planning process, it begs the question: What are these marketing conversations?

I would suggest that there are two major categories of conversations which comprise the beginning of any effective business start up, planning or long range process, both of which come down to a phrase I saw many times while visiting London: "Mind the gap." You'll see signs with this phrase at entrances and exits to subways, the bottom of escalators, etc., warning pedestrians that they need to pay attention so that they don't trip over the gaps between where they are and where they want to be.

And gap-finding is a great way to think of marketing when it comes to determining whether your start-up business idea or the product or service you want to add to your business is a worthwhile endeavor.

Here are some of the marketing conversations that can help you determine consumer supply and demand:

The first category of marketing conversations that should be at the starting point of your business process pertains to totally new products and services. The gaps that you need to identify, or which must exist in order for you to know that you are on the right track are these:

• Is there an unfilled need or desire that represents demand for the product or service (or new business type as a whole)
• Is there an underserved market or niche market which represents demand for the new product, service or business
• Is there an as-yet undefined up and coming market which represents demand for the new product, service or business

The second category of marketing conversations which should occur before launching new products or services or changing your business model have to do with current customers, rather than new markets or un-served demand. When thinking about your current customers, clients or patrons or the "ideal client type" and target markets that you pursue, you will want to identify these types of gaps:

• Are there other products or services your customers, prospective customers or ideal client types want or need that you could provide
• Could you provide the products or services that your customers, prospects or target markets want in a better way (more efficient, more quickly, etc.)
• Can you significantly improve the customer experience in a way that is meaningful to your customers, prospective customers or ideal client types

Starting with marketing is essential!

You can see how putting marketing conversations at the beginning point of your business planning accomplishes many things. First and foremost, it puts the needs, desires and wants of your customers and ideal client types at the heart of your business planning. And consequently, this type of thinking can also help you make better business decisions and avoid costly mistakes!

The question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" is representative of man's quest to know which came first in the process. And it's a question which has yet to be answered, in terms of the literal chicken and the egg. But when it comes to the question, "Which comes first, the product or the marketing?" the answer should be clear.

Marketing conversations are essential if you want to know whether a new business idea, or an idea for a new product or service for your business has merit, because if no demand exists, you may be left with 'egg on your face,' as the old saying goes!

***

Elizabeth Kraus is the author of 365 Days of Marketing.
365 Days of Marketing is available on amazon.com in print or digital format. It contains marketing how-to, inspiration and content for every day of the year -- including Mother's Day and Father's Day to help you build a bigger role for your business in the lives of your clients, 365 days a year!