Getting paid for your time

Everyone has those moments that they look back on and get that dreaded feeling in the pit of their stomach. I was meeting a potential client about her interior design website and some changes that needed to be made. It all seemed to be going brilliantly since she was open to my ideas and was ready to revamp her website. Thinking that I had found my next job began to plan out the proposal silently. But then the worst happened. The words… “I’d love to pick your brain, how about we go out to lunch sometime?”
All of a sudden I didn’t know what to do. Speechless and embarrassed I began to stutter the first excuse that came to my head, “I’ll check my calendar and get back to you.” After all, it’s really no fun to have your brain picked through, even though you see it frequently in any business. Then you find yourself become resentful, thinking with each new client, “They probably just want free help, they won’t hire you.”
But is this really supportive for obtaining new clients?
There is a way to reverse this, for those who have been in similar situations. Handling these circumstances with poise and without aggravation is imperative to turning the freebie wishes into paying clients. It might sound intimidating, but it is important to set boundaries within your business to clarify what you’re willing to do for free and what must be paid for. Getting paid for your time is important, and that must be emphasized. It’s not beyond your reach to do, and we’re here to help.

1. Take complete accountability
Do not be upset at the prospect for asking, this is vital. It helps to see the situation through their eyes. If given the choice between getting a favorite electronic for free or paying for the same electronic, of course you would pick the free item. It also wouldn’t be likely that you consider the company who is not getting paid for the sale. There is no reason to. Everyone likes things for free. Blame cannot be placed on the potential client for asking for free service when in fact they would be impractical for paying for something they could have gotten for free. It’s simply logical.

Don’t overlook the subtle compliment that is being presented, also. The person asking for your time already views you as someone who can offer helpful instruction; you should be appreciative of the praise. Since they are already partially “sold” on you, because they would be asking you for more if they weren’t, view them as someone who will be a future client or a basis of referrals as opposed to a scrounger trying to attain free labor.

2. Be sure that what you are offering is apparent.
If you haven’t given potential clients anything to buy, of course they’re going to ask for free work. While I was doing web design, I was not presenting enduring support packages. Clients were charged per-project which was considered done when the project was signed off on. However, it was inevitable that I would be contacted once the project was “finished” with small changes- insignificant things that would probably take 5-10 minutes of my time. It seemed that writing up an invoice for these tiny requests was just unreasonable, but all these started to seriously take up my time. Clients were paying once for the project, and then getting this revision service for free; I started to feel like I was being taken advantage of. Of course hindsight shows they were not in fact taking advantage of me, but assuming that since I had no charge for extra support, that is service was free. The blame therefore did not fall onto the client, but squarely onto me. It is essential to provide a definite offer that clients can purchase, removing the ambiguity of what is free and what needs to be paid for.

3. Come to a decision on what will be given away for free.
Content marketing is helpful here since you can give plenty of priceless free resources like your blog or newsletter. Introductory phone calls may also be suitable, as well as hosting live group sessions for people who are interested in working with you. Whatever you do offer, though, make sure it is clear. It is not required to offer services for free; you can get hired without free consults if you are doing a fantastic job of constructing relationships through your content marketing.

4. Do not presume that all they want is free counsel.
Everyone loves getting things for free. Just because they ask to “pick our brains” does not mean that they are unwilling to pay, it means they are hoping that they will not have to. You are trying to run a business which means you are exchanging your time for money. Treating them as a prospective client when they are articulating interest in learning from you is important. Take the lead and steer them down the path of being a customer instead of leading down the free path.

5. Be self-assured in your reply.
If someone asked to take you to lunch or coffee to “pick your brain” here’s a simple way to respond: I’m happy to hear that you’re interested in pursuing this. My next step is a one hour consultation. Would you like me to tell you how that works? Observe that you are requesting permission and handing lead to the client. You are also giving a clear service offering. There’s no need to explain why you’re charging because we’ve already established that your time is valuable. Get used to responding as such, even if you’re not used to thinking in that way yet. If they are interested in hearing more about the consult, wonderful, you can sign a new client. However, some will recant, saying that money is tight. If this happens, a good response would be, “I understand, you have my card so just give me a call when you are ready. My blog has many helpful articles and general advice that you can use until you are ready to initiate this project.” Do not falter or discount, you want to be firm and show respect for your business and you’ll see that the client will share that respect.

6. Stand strong and the freebie requests will stop
If you observe the people at the top, they seem to struggle with this topic less, though they get the most leads. Why is that? Being plain and secure in what you propose offers natural progression towards paying for your time. If you want to be the expert who always gets paid for their time, be clear and confident in what you are offering and be flattered by those freebie requests.

Google changing the game.

Doing business online can be tough, especially when Google plays games with the business owners. Regular users typically feel that the “see who survives after we change all the rules” game is an enjoyable and satisfying experience, but it leaves the business owners frustrated. However, Instant Previews was recently debuted by Google in their latest version. Floating your cursor over links in your search results now enables a swift snapshot of that website. The rule that says any visitor to your site will decide within three seconds whether to stay or not is now obsolete. Users can now see a snapshot of your site before they even click on it and can decide in 0.3 seconds whether or not to continue on. Does your site pass the new 0.3 second rule? If not, let’s repair it.

With Instant Preview, the pop up window is simply too small to allow users to read your content and then decide whether or not to click through for a visit. What they will be looking for in the minuscule box is how well the page is designed. Since users now don’t even have to leave Google to get a preview of your page, you need to make sure that the content that they are seeing is pertinent. Since you will now essentially have a magnifying glass analyzing your website and presenting users only your headlines and possibly the subheads, you will need to clear the clutter. Here’s how:

Get rid of the mess.
First, examine how many social media icons, ads, sidebar entries and sign up boxes are on your site and if they are taking up space that could be put to better use in advertising or enhancing your site. These items may be important, but not enough to be a priority on your page. Decide what you want to take precedence and emphasize this content. Move the important information towards the top, make it bigger, and use bright colors. The ads and such can be moved down the page where they aren’t as distracting. Make them smaller and use subtle colors.

Consistently modify, simplify, and execute.
You don’t want your site to look contemptible.
• Look at your header. Does it feature cheap clip art?
• Does your website employ the use of many different colors without visible visual branding?
• How many typefaces are being used? If it’s more than a few, then it will need to be fixed.
A custom header for your page can be created easily using a nice, intelligible typeface over a background downloaded from photo sharing sites, many of which are free or relatively inexpensive. Image editing software will also be needed, which you can also attain for free. Without hiring an expensive designer, you can have a low-to-no cost distinctive header for your website which will make you noticeable.
Do not go overboard on color schemes, two main colors should do it, however black and grey text does not count towards this number. Be sure to make these two colors priority to emphasize your visual brand; any other colors should be subtle and secondary.
Also choose only two typefaces to utilize. Your message will be more comprehensible and easier to capture in a glimpse if you’ve consistently used only two typefaces.
It is also possible to use a premium Wordpress theme to mimic these expert design elements without the expense of a designer or your time.

Headlines are very important.
A fantastic headline is an invaluable tool to get people to your site in that instant they see the snapshot on Google. Be sure that your subheads also tell a convincing tale. The subheads can also often be read from the preview and must allure the reader to click through to your site to learn more.

Make your content readable.
Instant Preview does not offer your readers individual sentences. However, they can see how your paragraphs have been formatted. Long paragraphs and sentences can be difficult to wade though and can be daunting to the reader. Use short paragraphs, strong subheads, and plenty of white space so as to not make your content appear painful to read.

Clean up your content.
Content is everything. But, it must be presented properly. Content inside of an unattractive website will not attract searchers to click through and read. Revamp your website to make it visually appealing inside of the Google Instant Preview. Another bonus to this cleanup is it will also make your website look great on the tiny screens of mobile devices.

Small Business Internet Marketing Tips 6-10

6. Check out your competition. Visit your competitors’ websites. Do searches for keywords related to your business. Find out what others in your vertical are doing and saying. This is a great way to get ideas and take stock of your own company’s online marketing efforts.

7. Repeat after me – “I have an ugly baby.” A lot of business owners love their websites, but the first step to improving your website is to admit that it has some deficiencies. No website is perfect, and every website can use improvement. If you have a website, you have an ugly baby [sorry]. Just how ugly your website is, however, is open to discussion.

8. Start blogging. Every business, and we mean every business, has something to gain by blogging and absolutely nothing to loose. The list of benefits is long, but here’s a short list of reasons small businesses should blog.

9. Post online video. Video is still a little cutting-edge for some, but the benefits can’t be understated. Online video is the wave of the future, and every business needs to have something on YouTube, Metacafe, etc. If you’re concerned about expense here, keep in mind there are some low-budget options that won’t damage your brand while still providing concrete benefits.

10. Contact us. We can help your small business rise above the rest. Contact us so we can discuss your business and your basic goals – our initial consultation is free of charge.

Learn more at The Media Zoo.

5 Small Business Internet Marketing Tips

1. What is the goal of your website? Ultimately, it should be to drive more business, but how exactly will it do that? Start with one goal – such as increasing the number of phone calls – and branch out from there. It’s important to set goals, but it’s just as important to come up with a system for measuring those goals.

2. Evaluate your website’s content – Content is King. What does your website say? Is the content unique and useful? Will people learn anything when they visit your site? When was the last time you added new content? Does your website have content worth reading? Does your content match your business goals?

3. The title tag. Visit your website. Look at the very top of your browser window. What do you see? Does it describe the page you’re looking at? Is it a unique description? Does it contain the keywords you want people to associate with that page of your website? If you’re a local business, does it contain your key local search keywords? If you can’t answer ‘yes’ to all these questions, check out this article all about title tags.

4. Call tracking and analytics. You can’t improve upon what you can’t measure. Analytics provide a tremendous amount of incredibly useful data, such as where your website visitors come from, how long they stay, and what they do on your site. Google analytics is free and pretty darn good, and we recommend it. We also recommend you make sure you can track every lead that’s generated by your website.

5. Take advantage of free local business directories. There are a few great local business directories that are completely free. Get your business listed in each of the directories below and you’ll see a boost in website visitors and hopefully a boost in business too.

Learn more at The Media Zoo.

5-8 Email Marketing Tips

5. Tell a Story
In All Marketers Are Liars, Godin emphasizes the importance of storytelling as a successful marketing strategy. Email offers the opportunity to tell the story in continuous installments.

“Email marketers don’t have a prayer to tell a story,” Godin says, “unless they tell it in advance, in another medium, before they get permission. Otherwise, it quickly becomes spam. The best email marketing starts with a foundation, like Amazon, and uses the email to drip the story, to have it gradually unfold.”

Too much email marketing, Burke opines, is one-off offers written as if recipients “like to run home at the end of the day and turn on Home Shopping Network so they can be targeted 24×7 by commercials.”

A well-crafted newsletter should be more than just a summary of your resume or company history. For instance, each issue of Sant’s Messages That Matter offers a free tip or strategy on how to make business proposals sing. “We focus on providing specific content, messages of a page or so about the kinds of things we’re good at,” Sant says.

6. Let Readers Drive Design
As there’s no such thing as guaranteed delivery in the email business, design is especially important. Because filters often block logos, graphics, and Flash animation, they can determine whether or not a customer or prospect even sees your message. “Filters are getting extremely thorough in what they’re filtering out,” Burke says. “If you’re not careful, those filters can filter out legitimate email.”

He recommends using flat text with hyperlinks to your Web site. “It’s text so it’ll go through,” Burke says. “You can put all of the graphics in the world on your Web site and once they click through to your Web site you’re better able to capture their identity and their information for future follow up.”

Many companies offer both plain and rich text email editions, giving customers the option of registering for the html edition on their Web sites. In those editions, design becomes especially important. But Ogilvy has found that email requires something different than traditional creative marketing design: Its studies have shown that users are most likely to respond to images and copy to the left of an image.

“We have seen increases up to 75 percent in response rates by moving the call to action button up next to an image instead of below the image, or by literally changing a link to a button so it stands out more prominently in the text,” Mullen says.

She has also found that the use of industry-, company-, and brand-specific words and phrases enhances the response. For instance, the word advice generates a high response for companies considered to be the thought leaders of their industry, but companies with consumer products, such as Apple with its iPod, will generate a better response using words like new or sleek.

7. Have an Exit Strategy
People who gave you their email address did so because they wanted to hear from you. But that can change and often does.

“If they stop responding,” Mullen says, “chances are it’s for one of two reasons: either they’re not interested in your content anymore or they’re no longer getting your emails.

“In either case we recommend that you define a set number of non-response messages [after which you] stop sending them emails. It sends a negative brand message and it doesn’t do anything to help reestablish your relationship with them,” Mullen says.

That number differs by industry. Travel companies, for instance, cannot predict when their customers will be traveling and looking for discounts on rooms and airfares, so their horizon is much longer–as long as several years.

On the other hand, a high-tech B2B company is probably only going to want specific information on wireless security when it’s addressing the problem internally. After the problem is solved, continued mailings about wireless security are likely to irritate. Devising a successful exit strategy is much like determining a successful formula for content: Know your industry.

8. Best Practices–Know what you want
The key to maintaining a set of successful best practices is to know what you want from them and be prepared to rewrite them as your business needs change. Mullen suggests starting with a good awareness of what you want your best practices to achieve.

Learn more at The Media Zoo.

9 Ways Video Promotes your Business

If you own a business and have a website, then you’ve likely considered video marketing. Once you learn and are determined to implement video, the next step is to decide how to use videos to promote your business. Here are just a few examples:

1. Testimonials – Ask your customers or clients to give you quick 1-minute videos of their feedback. You can also interview them about your business for a more structured testimonial.

2. Product Demos – One of the biggest drawbacks to buying online is that you can’t actually test the product. Bypass that objection and demonstrate your product on video to help increase sales.

3. Case Studies – If you’re involved in some kind of before-and-after (website design, fitness, SEO, etc.) case studies are an excellent way to demonstrate your expertise. Seeing an example helps the potential customer understand exactly what impact your service or product can have on their business.

4. Product Reviews– Video brings an added element to product reviews, particularly if you’re reviewing a physical product. But hearing you talk about a book or piece of software is effective too.

5. Education – Use video to educate your market on the use of your products. Lead them towards the sale by answering their most frequently asked questions and objections.

6. Entertainment – People love to be entertained! If you can entertain in your video and combine that with a call to action, you’ll have a winning combination.

7. Webinars – If you provide webinars or other video presentations to your market, capture them via video and offer a replay to generate leads or even sell as a product.

8. Commercial – Done correctly (meaning compelling with a clear call to action), commercials for your product or service can be very effective.

9. Business Overview – One of the first things many people look for is who they are buying from and what they stand for. Let your potential customers learn about you and your business through a business overview.

As you can see from the list above, there are many ways to use video to promote your business. Just creating video is not the only step to effective marketing. You must craft a video that responds to the wants and needs of your market. They are looking for solutions to problems and questions. It’s your job to figure out how to use a video to solve issues, answer questions, provide the right solutions and lead them to the next step.

Learn more at The Media Zoo – Video.

1-4 Email Marketing Tips

1. Get Permission
“Email is one of the most powerful and yet one of the most dangerous mediums of communications
we have,” says Jim Cecil, president of Nurture Marketing, a customer loyalty consultancy in Seattle. “Virtually everyone uses it and in business-to-business marketing everyone you want to reach has access to email. It’s also very inexpensive and it can easily be built into existing marketing systems. But of all media, it is the one where it’s most critical that you have explicit permission.”

Without permission you not only risk losing customer goodwill and inviting CAN-SPAM penalties, you could end up blacklisted by ISPs that refuse all mail coming from your domain if spamming complaints have been lodged against you.

Permission is not difficult to get. Offer something of value–a coupon or promise of special discounts, a whitepaper or informational newsletter–in exchange for the customer agreeing to receive your messages and, often, to provide valuable personal information and preferences. Sign-up can be done on a Web site or on paper forms distributed at trade shows and conventions or by traditional mail, resellers, and affiliated organizations in a business network.

2. Build a Targeted Mailing List
“The very best way to get permission is to have your best customers and your biggest fans ask their friends to sign up,” Godin says. It results in a self-screened database of prospects who are probably interested in your offering.

That is how Tom Sant built a mailing list that now numbers 35,000 for his newsletter, “Messages That Matter.” According to Sant, author of Persuasive Business Proposals and Giants of Sales, “We simply began by following up with people we met at trade shows or on sales calls and asked them, ‘Would you like to get a tip from us every few weeks about how to do your proposals better?’ We made it clear that people shouldn’t be getting this if they didn’t want to.”

Sant includes a Subscribe link in his mailing so new readers have a means of signing up when their friends forward it to them. His mailing list “just grew organically,” he says, “because people would pass it around. We created an entire network of people who were getting these messages. It’s very effective and it’s enabled us to strengthen our position as thought leaders or recognized experts in the field.”

3. Work with a Clean, Targeted Database
Jack Burke, author of Creating Customer Connections, advises that you should work with the cleanest permission-based list you can find that is targeted to your industry and your offering. Many companies have this information in CRM, SFA, and contact management databases. But there are places to prospect if you don’t.

“A good place to look is with traditional, established data merchants for your industry,” Burke says. In the insurance industry, for instance, Programbusiness.com allows its members to send broadcast emails to its database of some 50,000 targeted subscribers and members have the opportunity of selecting subsets of addresses categorized by insurance type such as commercial, health, life, and auto.

Coregistration services Web sites, such as www.listopt.com or www.optionsmedia.com, can help. Coregistration simply means you offer your e-zine and email promotions through a registration form that appears on multiple sites. You should, however, do some research to ensure they will reach your targeted demographic and the lists are maintained.

“Too many companies, large and small, are under the illusion that they have the email addresses of their clients,” Burke says. “If you actually go in and audit their client databases, you’ll find they’re lucky to have 20 to 25 percent–and what they do have is often out of date.”

4. Adopt a Strategy of Persistence
It takes time to build customer relationships. “They used to say it takes something like 7.3 impacts to make an impression with an ad, and that was long before the Internet. I believe today it’s approaching 20 imprints before it makes an impression,” Burke says. “So if you aren’t touching your clients in some way at least once a month, chances are they’re going to find somebody else to do business with.”

Successful email marketing, Godin says, “starts with a foundation and uses the email to drip the story, to have it gradually unfold.” That foundation requires an entrance strategy to greet new prospects and set up expectations for the relationship.

“After the customer has registered for future emails, downloaded your whitepaper, or entered your sweepstakes, there often is nothing to enhance that relationship. Companies need to think about what should happen next,” says Jeanniey Mullen, partner and director of email marketing at OgilvyOne Worldwide.

Ogilvy’s research shows the first three emails are the most critical. Mullen advises there should be an introductory message in which customers accept an invitation and give permission for future communications, followed by a second that sets up customers’ expectations by explaining future benefits (discounts, coupons, or high-value informational newsletters). The third should begin to deliver on their expectations by sending the promised newsletter, whitepaper, or discount offering.

Stay tuned tomorrow for tips 5-8!


Learn more at The Media Zoo.