Marketing Charm School

The Nuts and Bolts of Marketing

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I did an interview with Anastasia Netri on her Blogtalk Radio Show called The Conscious Entrepreneur Show this past Monday. She wanted me to put on my "MBA hat" and demystify some of the marketing terms that MBAs use, making them relevant to self-employed professionals.

    "On this show, we demystify marketing jargon and make it useful for you in promoting your business. Nina     will explain and help you get comfortable with terms like: Market Share, Competitive Analysis, Marketing     Funnel, Positioning and others.

    We’ll look at simple examples of ways of using these concepts to promote and grow your practice. Nina's     graduate students have successfully written marketing plans for their practices with the information she’ll     include in this talk. Think of this talk as the components of a Marketing Plan explained in terms everyone     can understand and use."

Please do download the attached MP3 file and listen to the interview.

When you're ready to REV UP YOUR REVENUE, grow your client list and make more money from your business - go to http://www.revupyourrevenue.com/register.html

Business Need a Boost? Time to Move its Qi!

I practice acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine so my business is about getting qi moving. Like acupuncture, marketing your business or practice is all about moving qi.

Marketing is getting the word out about your business, yourself, what you do, what's new - reasons why potential clients should be interested in working with you and your business. Marketing is moving qi. The more marketing you do, the more awareness of you and your business is created. From that awareness comes interest and business: inquiries, opportunities for conversation, offers, invitations, appointments and sales.

When your business needs a boost what do you do to move the qi and generate interest? Do you speak? teach? write articles? blog? go to networking meetings? call people?

In this economy marketing is essential. If you need ideas for what to do to move qi in your business - let's talk about what you can do. Email me ninapricelac@gmail.com so we can unblock the qi and get your business back on track.

Rev Up Your Revenue Self-Study Now Available

How do you prefer to learn? I've noticed that while some people love to take a class, others prefer to read and learn on their own at their own pace, on their own schedule. They don't want to wait until the class they're interested in is offered again. They don't want to wait for the others in the class to "get it". They just want to learn the material on their own time and terms.

With that in mind I created a self-study version of my Rev Up Your Revenue: 90 Days to More Clients and More Money class. It's for coaches, practitioners or any independent service professional who needs more clients and wants to be more effective in growing and marketing their practice.

The twelve modules are very straight forward. They allow you to learn by doing in a step-by-step way.

Here are results you can expect from the Rev Up Your Revenue Self-Study Program:

•    Identify who you really want as your clients

•    Discover your personal brand and how it will be key to your competitive edge

•    Learn to effectively communicate with your potential clients so you naturally attract the clients you want

•    Learn to use your website and Web 2.0 (Social Networking, SEO, Internet Marketing) to help you grow your business

•    Learn the most effective marketing tactics for you and your business

•    Create a marketing plan for your business and ongoing processes.

•    Develop confidence in your ability to market your offerings.

For more information visit http://www.revupyourrevenue.com/self-study.html

My "Ouija Board" Business Card

I didn’t set out to design the ultimate “ouija board” business card, but it turned out that I succeeded.

While I was in acupuncture school I made my living as a coach and as a massage therapist.  I decided that I wanted to create some marketing collateral that would keep my name in front of my clients so that they would book regular appointments.  I always want to be memorable and I enjoy being creative. One day I saw that you could purchase and print post-it notes in some new non-rectangular shapes.  I found some really cute hand-shaped post-it notes and decided that I would have my logo and contact information printed on the post-its. With the assistance of my friend Erin Ferree, (http://www.elf-design.com/ ) a talented designer, we created a clever variation on my logo which became the background of stars on the hand to tie the logo and contact information together into a balanced design.

We printed what seemed at the time a huge quantity of hand-shaped post-its, and I started giving them out to people I met. Before long they became my business card.  I really liked having a non-traditional business card because it was memorable, and I was memorable.  One time I even went to a massage class taught by a woman who had written a book on marketing for massage therapists. I gave her my card, a pad of  hand-shaped post-its, and she asked whether she could include it in the next edition of her book! Needless to say I said “of course!”

The most profound aspect of my hand-shaped post-it notes is that I noticed a trend in peoples’ reactions to the post-its when I gave them to them. I noticed that the receiver either did one of two things: either they said “How cute, what a clever idea for a card! I love it!” or they peeled the top post-it off the pad and gave me back the rest of the pad.
Once I noticed the two trends I then watched to see whether the people who received the post-it pads booked an appointment with me or booked a return appointment with me. To a person the people who peeled off the top post-it and gave me back the rest of the pad did not book or rebook an appointment with me! The people who loved the concept and said so for the most part booked or rebooked appointments with me, without any follow up or cultivation on my part. In some cases they booked appointments in the short term and in other cases it took a longer time.

What’s amazing about all of this is that I can predict by the way people respond to my post-it note pad business card, who are my ideal prospects and who I need to follow up with and cultivate. These days I do follow up conscientiously with ideal prospects. This is a huge gift.

What if you had a business card or a piece of marketing collateral or a website that offered you predictable insight on who your ideal prospects are? What indicators do you use to determine who your ideal prospects are?  How reliable are they?

Being able to accurately predict who your ideal prospects are can save you time, money and effort. Start to notice the trends in how people gravitate to you, why they buy and continue to buy from you. The trends can help you predict more accurately how to market to other similar ideal prospects.

p.s. If you would like a copy of my hand-shaped post-it pad business card, write to me nina@ninaprice.com and I’ll send you one via snail mail, but be sure to send me your snail mail address.

Welcome to Marketing Charm School

Some years ago when I was a high tech marketing professional, I was known for training technical sales people. One of the courses I designed and rolled out worldwide in that company was known by my colleagues as "charm school".  I think I made up the name, but people thought it was so funny and ridiculous given that we were doing heavy duty technical training, that the name stuck. Even our senior management, who collectively had a great sense of humor, called it "charm school". It was so successful that they didn't care what it was called. What happened was that I became known for developing and implementing an incredible success known as "charm school".

I'd forgotten about "charm school" until I recently developed a teleseminar series designed to teach independent service professionals (self-employed practitioners of all sorts) to market themselves and their practices more effectively. One day I realized that this was another kind of "charm school".  The series is called Rev Up Your Revenues - 90 Days to More Clients and More Money, and I decided that its tag line should be: Marketing Charm School for Independent Service Professionals.

Like my previous version of "charm school", this series will help people become more effective, and charming, when meeting and getting to know their prospective clients. This version has some technical content on websites, internet marketing, and social networking, but it's no where near as technical as the previous version which was all about designing and configuring networks and networking gear.

The new "charm school" is also available worldwide thanks to the web and teleseminar technology. Like my previous "charm school", my students come from a number of different countries. A key difference in my non-corporate charm school, is that each student's business is unique - they don't all have the same job description. In fact their businesses can be quite different.

My goal is to teach practitioners who are really good at whatever they practice: life coaching, acupuncture, massage therapy, chiropractic, homeopathy... to think more like marketing professionals do. I want them to think about their clients' needs, how to get their clients' attention, and how to deliver the top quality information and services that their clients want. What's exciting is that in the end, my students become more comfortable and confident with marketing themselves and their practices. We work through all the issues and we develop marketing strategies and tactics that will work best for each of them and their businesses.

Do they become more charming?  I think that more confident people tend to be more charming - so yes, they become more charming.

If you're ready to become more charming:
http://www.revupyourrevenue.com
http://www.revupyourrevenue.com/register.html
http://www.revupyourrevenue.info/