|
 Listen
to an audio message from Dale...
 From
the Desk of Becki Noles...
In December we launched the
Virtual
Assistant Toolbox blog and boy are we very excited about it!
Take a moment and check it out...leave a passing comment while you're at
it ;).
On a somber note...on
January 3, 2006, the VA industry lost a true champion, Janet Jordan.
If you were unable to attend the online memorial service on Friday,
January 13, you can review the recorded session
here. Several VAs posted tributes on their blogs and you can
view them by going to:
Mentor and Friend - A Tribute,
Thank You Janet and
Sad Week for Our Community. Janet truly was someone special to
both Dale and I and she will be sorely missed.
I look forward to hearing
from you. If you have any questions or comments, please drop me
an
email.
Becki ;)
Featured Resource
XSite Pro
Everyone Gets “XSite’d” with
XSitePro!
There’s a buzz floating around the internet about a new web design
software called
XSitePro. Its target market? Affiliate
marketers.
While I
dabble in affiliate marketing, it is not my main focus, so at first
glance I didn’t think this program would be for me. However, my
nine-year-old son, Matthew, was working on developing his own site,
and I didn’t have the time to create it for him, nor did I have time
to sit there and teach him the basics of FrontPage. He’s nine. I
never thought this idea he had would come to fruition, but here he
came with not only research, but excitement.
I
began to look for a way he could build a site on his own. I once
used a really great site builder through
InternetBasedFamily.com, but the monthly
fee was on the pricey side – more than I wanted to invest in my
nine-year-old’s venture. For all I know, this site idea could be
like last year’s wrestling. He was all geared up about it, so I went
out and invested all this money in a singlet, shoes, and head gear.
He never finished the season. It just wasn’t his thing, and now we
have all this wrestling gear that we’ll never use again.
I
went back to look at
XSitePro. I watched the “7
Reasons Why You Need XSitePro Now!” video,
and the program looked easy enough to use. I liked the fact that you
could use their templates or build your own. I liked that if you
wanted to change the layout of the page, you can do it in one place
and have it change all your pages for you.
I
downloaded the free trial and told Matthew to check it out. I
printed out the user’s manual that included easy, step-by-step
instructions and screen shots and let him play. Sure he had
questions, but in the end he had a nine page website built just by
going through the tutorial. What’s even better? He had nine
optimized pages. He doesn’t know about targeted keywords, but I can
help him with that later on.
XSitePro
is a very simple program to use. To add an
article page, simply click on “Add Article” and a box pops up for
you to add your title, description, resource box, and any other
additional information you have. Click okay, copy and paste your
article, and voila! You have an article page.
XSitePro even
indexes them on your main page and automatically creates a site map
for you, as well.
The same
is true for product pages – very simple forms to fill out and the
page is created for you. No html or design skills required.
Matthew
can even add Google AdSense to his pages with out copying and
pasting code. He simply right clicks, selects “insert Google AdSense”,
chooses the color scheme and size of his ads, and hits okay.
After I saw how easy it was to use, and knowing that I could still
put this program to use if his online venture falls by the wayside,
I invested in
XSitePro. Matthew now works on his site
every night. I tinkered with it and put up a 45-page, content-based
site in 3 hours.
There are two types of people for whom I would recommend
XSitePro: affiliate marketers and those
who have little web design experience but would like to set up a
site of their own. It is half the cost of Dreamweaver and ten times
easier to use. The best feature of this program? It comes with a
365-day money-back guarantee. You have a whole year to decide if
you’ve made a wise investment. I didn’t need a year, only a few
hours, and now I’m XSite’d about the many things I can do with this
program in the future.
And let’s
be honest…if a nine-year-old can operate it, so can you!
Click here to view the “7
Reasons Why You Need XSitePro Now!” video
About the Author
Heather Jacobson is the owner of
Valley Virtual
Assistants, providing marketing support
and services to entrepreneurs and small businesses. She is also a
business coach with
VATraining.com,
speaker, and author of “Making
Dollars Out of Cents: 101 Tips for the Frugal Marketer“.
Heather has over 12 years of sales and marketing experience from
multiple industries and uses this expertise to custom tailor the
perfect marketing avenue for each client. For more information visit
www.valleyva.net
or
www.inexpensivemarketingideas.com
Marketing: Your Handshake with the Future
of Your Business Part 1
By Dale Noles
One of the biggest issues facing any
entrepreneur is knowing how to market his or her business successfully.
More over, it is the communication barrier that creates the biggest gap
between those that make it past the first five years and those that
struggle. Marketing should not be this huge monstrosity that threatens
to squash any good idea into pulp dreams. However, many entrepreneurs
experience the sweaty palms and the tightened chest of anxiety when they
think about marketing themselves.
The plan is to explain away some
marketing faux pas and entice you with the absolute best marketing
strategy that ever existed. You will read about marketing and branding
strategies, how marketing is easy when you know what to do and ways to
make marketing work for your bottom line instead of your bottom line
making marketing impossible.
What is marketing?
The word marketing has a double meaning.
It references a deliberate act of getting your product or service out
into the public’s eye. But it is also a thought process that successful
entrepreneurs have taken a passion to.
The first is obviously the most common of
the two and the easiest to explain, as within our culture, we are
inundated with marketing everywhere we go. At home, it is on
television, in our mail and in our Inbox. When we leave our homes it is
on billboards, in newspapers, on the radio, park benches, telephone
poles and even the people that we talk to, to name only a few. It is
the physical aspect of marketing that when the word is mentioned our
minds typically think of these things.
It is quite common for business’
marketing to become so passively ingrained in us that we may even be
unaware that we are influenced by it. If I were to mention “Just Do
It!” or “Mmm, Mmm, Good” you may have already thought about what
companies came up with those marketing tidbits. If I asked you, “What
is the choice of a new generation?” I am sure that you could tell me.
These businesses have spent millions of dollars becoming a household
name. That doesn’t mean that millions have to be spent making your
business a household name within your target market. It just means that
you must get creative.
How is it possible to be that household
name for your target market? You must adjust your thought processes.
Making marketing a conscious effort for your business becomes a
paramount decision. You must choose to be what you intend to be and
pursue it regularly. You must do it in a format that will appeal to
your target market and be consistent with it.
Planning – the strategy that makes the
difference
A marketing plan is a must for any
business owner but it is essential for any business on a tight or
limited budget. When a marketing plan is created, there are several
items that must be taken into consideration. You need to consider the
following:
Your situation: Keeping track of
what marketing you have done in the past including what worked and what
did not work. You will need to outline your products and or services.
You will want to identify any marketing ideas that you might have and
whether or not if it is feasible to implement them. You will also need
to identify any marketing challenges including any competition that you
may have.
Your Target Market: Be sure to
identify as clearly as you can whom you are marketing your business to.
What qualifies them as a target market? How will they benefit from what
you have to offer? What is the real reason behind using what you have
to offer? Where do they network? What magazines do they read? Are
they tea, coffee, soda or water drinkers (yes, it can make a
difference)?
Goal Setting: Making tiered goals
at intervals so that you can gauge your marketing efforts. Depending on
what type of marketing campaign you enlist, you may need to have
frequent goals set at closer intervals or less frequent at further
intervals. The important key in this step is to make each of your goals
in measurable increments.
Strategies and Tactics: This
should be as detailed as you can possibly make it. Include as many
steps as you can think of for each marketing tactic that you employ.
Include special promotions, mail campaigns, trade shows, conferences,
media outlets, etc. into your strategies and tactics. Schedule the
larger pieces of your marketing in as early as you can so that these
vital pieces are not missed.
The Budget: You will need to
assign a cost to each and every item on the Marketing Plan. If your
budget does not allow for any of the items that you have included into
your plan, you will need to make the adjustments in your strategy to
compensate. The more marketing tactics that you can employ, free or
paid, will increase the likelihood of your success.
Making the MO$T with your resources
To really capitalize on making your
business attractive to your target market you have to make your business
very attractive to your target market. This means knowing what drives
your target market to make decisions. You will need to be a
specialist. People tend to use specialists for things that they hold
value with. If your faucets burst, would you use the guy down the
street who says that he can fix your faucet, landscape you yard, fix
your carburetor and reinstall your hard drive or would you contact a
plumber?
How many times can you recall as you were
growing up, when you were asked the age old question, “What do you want
to be when you grow up?” Answering this question when you were a
pre-teen brought answers like; ballerina, fire fighter, police officer,
doctor, astronaut, etc. These were high aspirations. Much like asking
yourself this question, “What do you LOVE to do?” Do you like being
creative? Do you dream of helping others achieve their best possible
self? Do you love numbers?
If you can identify five key loves for
your business you can compare these against your top five talents and
note where they overlap. The ones that do overlap should be the key
services that you offer. Why is this useful? If you can do what you
know and what you love, your business will flourish. Think of how it
makes you feel if you have to do what you dislike. Most people do not
put forth the effort towards something they loathe; on the other hand,
their best effort is put into what they love to do.
If you build it “right”, they will
come
When you design your business to be
positioned in a market that uses services that you offer, you are
essentially encouraging them to use your services/products. This is
easier to do than most budding business owners think. One of the
easiest ways to encourage your target market to use your
services/products is to get inside the head of your target market.
Think about what it is that they need and plan your business around
filling that need.
In essence it only makes sense to market
your services to businesses or individuals who need or want your
services. If you identify the market that needs what you have, it makes
it easier to market to that area only. You can brand your business to
appeal to that market. What does branding mean to your business?
Branding means using the right colors, logo, images, text, marketing
material, office forms, uniforms, etc. that are attractive to who you
are looking to attract. All aspects of your business need to be geared
toward an image or a feel that draws your market to you.
Write all of your marketing materials
(on-line and off-line) around the idea of providing the solutions that
your targeted market needs to make their business better, by providing
them the time to do something that they desire or by increasing their
ability to bring in more customers or clients into their business
thereby increasing their profits, which is typically the best selling
point to most business owners.
About the Author:
Dale Noles is the President of Virtual Accuracy and VATraining.com.
Virtual Accuracy supports the coaching community by offering marketing,
branding and process streamlining. VATraining.com coaches and mentors
both aspiring and existing VAs, giving them the tools they need to
create and maintain a viable and successful VA practice. For more
information visit
www.VirtualAccuracy.com and
www.VATraining.com.
Disclaimer
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and suggestions from our readers. If you have information that you feel
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written information included in Inside VA Training is the opinion
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Accuracy and its subsidiaries harmless for its content. Most
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written by an attorney or a CPA it will be clearly stated in the byline
of the article, however please consult your legal counsel and/or CPA
firm before utilizing the information contained herein.
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Virtual Accuracy.
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