Professional Service Providers, What You Must Know about Marketing Professional Services Today

Let me be clear - what should be referred to as selling, now is called marketing by many. This is problematic because it causes them to expect too much from what are actually very indirect efforts.

Many people think that marketing - the single most important thing any of us can do to increase our business - is supposed to result in new clients.

In fact marketing's role is to put us in a position where we can sell more effectively. A well considered marketing strategy will illustrate our uniqueness, our suitability as a service provider, and it will attract people - the right people to us, but unless we are willing to ask them to buy something, it was all just a waste of time and money.

Marketing professional services effectively is an art as much as anything else. If you do it the right way, you will find a lot of takers in the market for your services. If you do it wrong you will be considered just another hype merchant whose so-called value proposition sounds remarkably like all the others.

In the good old days marketing professional services was a lot more straightforward. Your goal was to have a very strong network of friends, relatives, fellow service providers, and existing clients. Then, thanks to your wide network, you were able to get new clients through word of mouth alone.

So, you never felt the need for marketing professional services aggressively. When your inventory was low you'd attend a Rotary Club meeting, play a round of golf, attend a convention in your target industry, or take another professional advisor to lunch and get a few referrals.

However, that was before the advent of the Internet. Now, everything has changed - or has it?

The Internet has completely altered the way people do business. Earlier, a nice referral from one of your existing clients would seal the deal - converting the prospect into a new client. This is not necessarily the case today. Even with a very good referral, prospects will insist on taking at least a cursory look at your web site.

In the old days they might ask you for your brochure and they might even look at it. Now the expectation is that you have a web site - everybody does, and if you are as sharp as you want them to think you are, it will be well put together and up to date.

If you have a clunky, poorly managed web site, it will create a very bad impression of you. By now everyone knows it does not cost much or take much knowledge to have a professional looking web site, so if you don't - what does that say about you?

And if you do not have a web site at all, your chances are slim to say the least. Think about it.

A great looking web site does a brilliant job of marketing your services. It does it better than the brochures of old because there is never any out of date information on it - and new content is added regularly. Like your old brochure your web site is your brand, you can't leave it on their desk, but they can bookmark it. Here are three things you should remember while developing one.

1. The design should be professional. It should not look poorly constructed. And that's simple with about a zillion WordPress themes available - at no charge whatsoever or customized to beat the band for as much as you want to spend. That's why there is no excuse for not having a respectful looking web site

2. The content, needless to say, is the king. Potential clients won't just take a cursory look at your web site, some will actually read it, subscribe to your newsletter, and regularly read the information posted there - they want to get to know you better. Again this is too simple - people know that and if you don't have good relevant content, you lose points on the credibility scale. The better your web site copy, the better the chances of impressing your new clients.

3. Your web site should be optimized properly. To many people that means all the search engine optimization stuff we hear so much about, but that's not important. What is important is having your on-page and off-page optimization around the keyword phrases your prospective clients use when they are looking for the services you provide. The beauty of web site optimization, compared to traditional advertising and marketing, impacting marketing professional services - is that it's possible for you to puzzle out the precise terms people are using when they are looking for services like yours and then test - getting results quickly so you can make the adjustment on the fly.

Marketing professional services is very easy once you harness the power of the Internet, but it still won't put clients on the books and it won't put money in the bank.

That will come from making sales. Your Internet marketing strategy will tilt the odds in your favor and increase the number of people to choose from, so you spend your valuable time with the people you really are fired up about serving.

While the Internet has dramatically altered marketing professional services, it has not eliminated the power of referrals, the importance of attending association events, or having lunch where the successful business owners are.

Everything that worked in the past should still be done - the Internet makes it faster!

About the Author

Successful professionals are always on the lookout for ideas and resources to help them. They are also looking for creative ways of marketing their professional services. If you want to be even more successful in the future than you are today, learn more about marketing professional services and share your insights with others, visit us and join in the discussion.

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When Marketing Professional Services - Don't Try to be All Things to All People

As a professional solution provider do you try to "specialize" in everything?Or do you specialize with every person in your niche, providing the services each of them require?Let me explain.

Years ago a friend of mine, a multiple lines insurance agent, had what he thought was the opportunity of a lifetime.There was a gas station in his community, on the busiest street in the neighborhood - that had gone out of business.The owner of the property could not find another oil company to lease it so he cleaned up the site and began trying to lease the building as a bakery, pizza shop, or small retailer, anyone really.

It occurred to my friend that this would be an ideal location for his insurance agency.It was on the main drag, there was parking in front, and it was on a corner for easy in and out maneuvering.The building was remodeled, the parking lot was re-paved and the original 15 foot high gas station sign was painted with his logo.

It read, "Suburban Insurance, We Specialize in ALL Kinds of Insurance" in a very professional look.And of course his catchy phone number everyone around there would remember easily.How could he lose?With all those people driving back and forth every day?They would see the sign on their way to work, call for an appointment on the way home.

What did the people driving by think?Who knows, no one stopped.He was trying to be all things to all people and it did not work.For three months he didn't make a sale that could in any way have come from one of those passing motorists.He was faced with the prospect of giving up this really neat space or cutting back elsewhere because he had signed on to a lease based on his untested assumption that people would drive in every day of the week.

During a chance conversation with the owner of an actual gas station in the area a light went on.He realized that he needed to specialize in something, offer something unique or timely - get people to stop in for that one thing, so he could tell them about the other products and services his agency offered.

He returned to his office and found behind the building a portable sign, we've all seen them - the kind gas stations roll out by the curb where the passing motorists can't miss it.He had it painted using his professional theme with the message, "Changing jobs, we have short term medical insurance - don't put your family at risk" and put it out by the corner.

Not being a savvy marketer he did not know that a major employer in the area was laying off a lot of the very people who were driving by his office twice a day.

Within the next two days nearly 20 drivers stopped in, over a dozen of them bought the insurance - they were about to change jobs and had never heard of this kind of insurance and the other picked up brochures for the short term medical and some of his other products.

Every week or so he would showcase another of his products - travel accident, International medical, errors and omissions, etc.Every time he did that, people would stop in.From the relationships he created he sold the other more complex and more profitable coverages demonstrating that his agency actually did specialize in all kinds of insurance.

For the last twenty years I have seen examples where professionals of all types claim to specialize working with home business owners, small business owners, and executives.They think that by covering the entire waterfront they won't miss anyone.The opposite if often the result however.

Too often we try to be all things to all people and lose our credibility.Just because we do a lot of different kinds of consulting or coaching, or offer several different and usually complimentary services - people really only want to know if we have what they need right then.

Start by thinking of your audience those people ideally suited for the services you provide.Maybe a should say audiences.Think about your several audiences vs.your specialties.So, if you are a business coach and do sales training, customer retention, and recruitment within one field that's not bad if you tie them together under one umbrella firm name providing a range of services for a specific audience/category.

On the other hand, if you position yourself as a marketing expert and as engineering expert, you may want to consider your audiences again and use different materials, literature, etc.for each audience.Savvy professionals have several bios or web sites, not linked together - one they use for speaking for instance, those they use when they are emailing to a specific category prospects, those they use for different audiences they serve.

Remember, you can't be all things to all people but you can be different things to different people.

About the Author

Successful professionals are always on the lookout for ideas and resources to help them.

They are also looking for creative ways of marketing their professional services.If you want to be even more successful in the future than you are today, learn more about marketing professional services and share your insights with others, visit us and join in the discussion.

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How To Build A Killer Squidoo Lens For Marketing Online

Squidoo is quickly becoming a great way to market a business online and earn income via affiliate programs.In case you don't know, Squidoo is a free resource that allows anyone to build web pages (referred to as "lenses") about anything and everything.From an Internet marketing perspective, these lenses can be extremely search engine friendly and drive massive traffic to your website.

Here are 10 strategies to build a great Squidoo lens that will bring traffic and money your way.

1.Make sure you completely fill out your entire Squidoo profile.This includes adding an interesting bio about yourself and a photo that represents you.Doing this will let people on Squidoo know what you're about and encourage them to read more of your lenses

2.

The name you choose for your lens is very important.Your title needs to be unique and catchy rather than bland and generic.The title also needs to point out exactly what the page is about and should include search terms that people would use when seeking out the info you are providing.

For example, the title "Why Dalmatians Are The Coolest Dogs Ever!" beats the pants off "About Dalmatian Dogs".

3.Write a quality introduction that is appealing and informative to the reader.Your intro should also contain keyword / search terms in order for the search engines to recognize you.Remember that the first line of your intro is often what shows up in the search engines so make sure that it displays your purpose of the lens and targeted keywords.

4.Write killer content that people will enjoy.If you lens lacks content, doesn't entertain or doesn't inform people than nobody is going to want to read it.Pick subjects that you know something about and share your experiences.If people see you are excited that will get them fired up too.As always, don't forget to include your keywords and search terms throughout the copy but make sure you don't go overboard with this (ie.keyword spamming).

5.Include targeted links to related content.Remember that search engines notice not only who is linking to you, but also who you are linking to.Make sure that when you do link to related websites you use targeted words and phrases as your links.For example, if you are writing about Mini Coopers your outgoing links should say something like, "For more info, check out this website on Mini Coopers" instead of just "Click here".You can also add Amazon and other modules that can help with this.

6.Don't forget the graphics.Graphics will help break up your content and encourage people to continue reading.

7.Make sure that you tag your lens with 10 to 30 phrases and keywords that people might search for when looking for your topic.

8.Provide a variety of content.Large blocks of text, ads, graphics, etc can easily lose your reader's attention.Mix it up and spread your lens out.

9.Encourage people to come back to your lens by providing a guestbook and poll.You also want to update or change your content every once in awhile which will help you with the search engines.

10.Make sure you proofread before you publish.Grammar and spelling do matter so utilize your spellchecker and read through your content a few times before you go live.It's also a good idea to have others read your stuff over to catch anything you might have missed.

So now all that's left for you to do is take action and start Squidooing!By putting all these strategies to use it won't take long until you are enjoying targeted traffic to your website compliments of your new Squidoo lenses.

About the Author

Josh Bradley is an online marketing specialist that has developed many products and services relating to the Internet business industry.

Check out his website at HomeBizGalaxy.com to take advantage of FREE training, expert articles and "insider" information about increasing your profits from home.

While your at HomeBizGalaxy.com make sure you sign up for the HomeBizGalaxy Ezine.As a subscriber you instantly gain access to 10 of our highly requested ebooks ($200 value) that cover every aspect of making money on the Internet.

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PPC Internet Marketing Campaigns - Features, Benefits and Unique Selling Points

Internet marketing and the advent of techniques like search engine optimization and web analytics have taken much of what is traditionally taught in marketing and communications courses, and turned it on its head.The technologies are completely different, an entire new set of contacts and protocols has to be made and learnt, and very different aspects of your products become important.However, there are some things in marketing that haven't changed for years, and the rise of internet marketing hasn't altered that.If you are trying to execute a successful PPC campaign, you need to go back to the basics of marketing, even more so than with other web marketing strategies.One of the most important things to do is to re-examine your product through new eyes, and determine its features, benefits, and unique selling points.

The features and benefits of your product are very different things to the technical specifications, or even the physical nature of the product, in most instances.Identifying what a product actually does for a consumer, to make their life better, is critical in writing PPC ads, where you have 160 characters at most to explain an entire company.

You'll need intimate knowledge of the product you are promoting, and also to have identified your target market for the internet marketing, which we've written on previously.For example, if you sell lawn care products, and you've identified that your target market is men, aged between 30 and 40, and 60 and 70, with average to high household income and in certain geographical areas conducive to growing grass, the next step is to put yourself in your customer's shoes.What will be the most important features of the product to them?Will they care about how much it costs, how quickly it works, how hardy it is, or the image the product is selling?As always, whether you are building an offline or a web marketing strategy, if you don't know what your customers want, ask them.Market research is a valuable thing.

When thinking about benefits for your product in an internet marketing strategy, you need to understand what the product does for the customer, not simply what it 'does'.Your lawn care products might save them time on gardening, may help them get better results for the time they put in, or might help them create a pleasant outdoor lifestyle.This is quite different from giving them a high nitrogen content or long effectiveness period.

Another important thing to determine if you are building a PPC campaign as part of your web marketing strategy is your unique selling point.This is another marketing classic that is just as relevant when trying to increase search engine rankings or build traffic as it is when trying to get people to physically visit a store.To determine this, you will need to understand your competition as well as your own offering, and know what sets you apart.Your internet consultancy service will be able to use new tools like Webtrends and other website analytics to determine who your 'online' competition is - very different to offline competition.Analyze their sites, ask them for more information, and then determine what it is that sets you apart - and then exploit this to its full potential in your PPC campaign.

About the Author

InetAsia Solutions is a new breed of internet marketing consultancy.

InetAsia is the official WebTrends distributor for South East Asia, Hong Kong and Southern China.Services include web analytics, search engine optimization, website design and internet marketing services.Check out our website to find out more about search engine optimization and much more.

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How to Make Money Online for Free: Squidoo

Squidoo is a community system of creating one page topical websites.Entrepreneur Seth Godin came up with the idea.The purpose of a lens is to allow the lens master to explain or review a topic and present the information in an orderly way using a one page website or lens.

There are also other things you may do with Squidoo lenses.It's really up to your imagination.

The best part about using Squidoo though is that is a great way to make money, and once you learn how to create a lens, it really is easy.The secret to making money from Squidoo though is the same secret to bum marketing: make a lot of lenses because some of your lenses will do better than others.

To begin making money from this opportunity, here's how to get started:

1.

Do your homework first.

Before you sign up for an account, you want to browse around the Squidoo site and get familiar with it.See what others are creating lenses about.Explore the top 100 lenses to see what topics you may be interested in, as well as what a lens looks like.This will help you decide what to add to your lens to make it make money, as well rank high in the search engines and make you money.

2.Do your keyword research.

Next, choose one or two topics you are interested in.Do your keyword research.Start by searching for a general keyword on your topic (this is generally a one or two word keyword phrase).Look for keywords with lots of searches.

Look for keywords that are three or more words long.The longer the keyword phrase, the more targeted it is.This is a keyword that is more likely to convert and make you a sale.

Make a list of the keywords you want to use.You may expand this list later, but this will get you started.

3.Sign up for your account.

When you first sign up for your account, the system will ask you to build a lens.Don't be intimidated.It's really easy.

Follow the steps and add the information that Squidoo asks you for.When it asks you for the URL of your site, use your first keyword.(Make sure your lens is on this keyword.) If the lens is taken, then use dashes between the words, or the underscore.

Don't worry if your lens isn't exactly perfect at this point.As you tweak and add information to your lens, your lens will get better and perform better.

If you plan to build lenses on more than one topic, then sign up for multiple accounts.This way you build credibility as an expert on your topic.

4.Complete your profile.

In addition to having a general profile for your acccount, each lens will have a profile.Create a general profile for your account and create a profile for each lens.This will allow you to give more information about yourself and your topic.Ultimately, you will better connect with readers.

5.Build more lenses.

The more lenses you build, the more money you make.One of the most important things to remember here though is to keep your lenses on the same related topic.The reason is that ultimately you are branding yourself as an expert on whatever topic you are writing about.Keeping your lenses related will give you credibility and increase your chances of making the sale.

About the Author

Like these tips?

Then find even more ways to make money online for free at my site.Free ebooks and other tools.Get my free Squidoo ecourse and learn how to build your lenses.

Jinger Jarrett is the author of the "7 Day Ebusiness," available on Amazon.

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A Guide To PLR

What is PLR?Like me you also might have heard this word many times.PLR refers to Private Label Rights.We can get PLR articles, PLR ebooks, PLR software products etc.But what does this mean?right?Suppose that we bought 5k PLR articles for $ 5 (yes, these PLR things are pretty cheap now a days - don't get shocked seeing the price), then we get the right to publish them in our blog by changing the content a little bit and make pretty good amount of money.Not just that, we can even publish them as it is - no one is gonna sue us for that - just because these are PLR articles, and we have the right to do whatever we want with it.

PLR products come with Master Re-sale rights as well.It means that we can sell the same thing to others - just like the seller sold them to us.

How to get these PLR products like ebooks, articles, etc?A good place to get PLR products is from forums like DP,namepros etc.There you will find people selling these kind of stuffs for pretty cheap price.As I have mentioned earlier, you can get 5K of PLR articles for even $5 - so that speaks about the price of the PLR products.So, don't get scammed from people when they tell you that they are gonna give you 1000 PLR articles for just $ 100.There are a lot of people who knows nothing about PLR products and end up wasting their money for PLR products this way.These guys get excited when seeing such an offer and buy them the same moment.Only after buying it for such high price, these people comes to know about the real value of those PLR products.

How to make money with PLR products?You might be wondering whether it would be easy or not?right?It's pretty easy to make money from PLR products if you do it the right way.Here we are going to explain you one of the many things that you can do with PLR products.

Suppose you bought about 1 K PLR articles from someone.The next thing you should do is to find an article re-writer who would re-write these articles for you for pretty cheap prices.It's gonna cost you just $ 25 for 25 articles of 500 words each.Give the article re-writer 25 PLR articles from your collection of PLR articles and ask him to re-write them ask soon as possible.Most of the re-writers would do it within 24 hours of time.This way, you have done the most important part.Now let's get into the next part.

Now you are having with you 25 unique articles.You may check it for plagarism before you pay the article re-writer.Don't pay if it doesn't pass copyscape.There is no use of plagarised content.It's because search engines would find out easily if our site/blog ishaving copied content and will penalize our site the same moment.Thus we won't be ranking in the search engines from then on - and thus our blog/website will be of no use from then on.Let's hope that you got 25 copyscape passed articles from those 25 PLR articles that you submitted to the article re-writer.

Publish one article each day in your blog from those 25 articles.This way you can have 25 blog post that are 100 % unique and copyscape passed after 25 days.During this time, you can do little bit of promotion to your blog and make it indexed in the search engines.Indexing in the search engines is not a tough job.You can find people who would do that for as cheap as $5 in forums and all.So, the amount of money you have spent so far is just $ 25 and you are with a blog that has 25 unique articles which is indexed and is 25 days old as well.

Now, goto your favourite forum which allows you to sell websites and blogs.Post a thread informing others that you are selling your blog which consists of 25 articles.And don't forget to mention that the site is 25 days old and indexed too.You would be getting at least $ 100 for such a site.So you get a profit of $ 75 from one blog.Just think, if you are having 25 such blogs.The earning potential from PLR products is thus infinitely large.

About the Author

If you would like to buy Premier PLR Products at a great low monthly price then visit the authors site here http://premierplrmonthly.

com

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How To Keep Your Social Rankings

Social Sites or Web 2.0 properties can be quickly and highly ranked in Search Engines.In a nut shell the reasons revolved around the SEs camping out on these sites as they wait for new content to index.This however proved to be a double edged sword.The same reason that got your content quickly ranked was the same that got you bumped of the Search Engine Rank Position (SERPs) as newer content got ranked.In this article we explore some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies that may help you to stick high on the web 2.0 properties.

Before you can try to have a sticky social content you need to have a strategy.For example, you can write the content in the social site as a snippet that will direct traffic to your main site.This way when your social content ranks, it can drive traffic to your site as the visitors look for the rest of the information.Another strategy is to place your principal offer on these social sites so you commercially engage them at these social properties without having to send them to your website.Whatever strategy you come up with make sure it is helping you achieve your Most Wanted Response.

Regardless of the social sites furor, SEs have maintained their core means of identifying and ranking relevant content.Below are three on page tactics that should help you Web 2.0 content stick around the top SERP.

Title Tag: Cute headlines are a favorite among offline advertisers, but online they will get you ignored.If your content is about iPhones, you better have that keyword phrase in your title tag.Using cute headlines like "The Latest Apple Gadget" will not only not get you ranked in SE for the keyword "iPhones" but it often does not attract the eyes of someone searching for a review of iPhones, inspite the fact that the article is about it.If you do not include you main keyword in the title tag SE also assume that you do not consider that content important for that phrase.A title tag is found in the HTML code.But in social sites usually the headline is what is used as the title tag.

Bold: Bolding your main keyword within the content emphasizes to the SE that the content is about that particular topic.But since you are not trying to look unprofessional, you do not bold every occurrence of the keyword.Rather simply bold the first occurrence preferably in the first paragraph.

A similar strategy would be to italicize the main keyword.You are aware that in print bolding, italizing and underlining content is meant to make emphasize.Similarly SE bot will note such modifications and provide emphasize too.

Keyword Density: There is simply no way I could naturally writing a review on the latest iPhone and only have one mention of it in a 1500 word article.SEs are aware of this.So they use the frequency of the occurrence of phrases to determine what the content is about.A frequent occurrence of the word iPhone, apple etc will indicate to the SE bot that the page is indeed about iPhones.Maintaining a fair high density of you main keyword phrase in the social media content can help you stick high up the SERP as they consider you very relevant.

About the Author

The author recommends an All-in-One Small Online Business site builder solution called Site Build It.

Get a detailed home business opportunity review here.

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