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.

Related posts:

• What My Engineering Professor Taught Me Of Life, Business And Marketing

Internet Marketing Methods for Helping to Sell Your EBooks

Internet marketing is the key to getting attention to any product or service you want to sell.

If you plan on writing ebooks and want to make a sizable profit from it, then you have to make your presence known in that cosmic territory known as the world wide web.There is a sea of competitors out there who also write and self-publish ebooks and they are all trying to get the attention of a global audience.To stand out from the crowd, you need to know how to effectively utilize internet marketing.

First, you need to determine the types of people you want to gear your internet marketing towards.You can figure out your demographics by doing a little research to find out what groups of individuals would be most likely to need the information in your ebooks.For example, if the topics of your ebooks are related to work-from-home opportunities for college students, then you would need to focus your internet marketing strategies on promoting your products on online sites, forums and the like that are popular with .college students.

The main thing you need to do is to bring the most people you can to where your ebooks are by getting the link to your products in the search engines.Methods for achieving this include pay per click advertising, search engine optimization or SEO and more.The higher your site is ranked in the search engines, the more chances you have of bringing potential online customers to your ebooks.

Another great internet marketing tool is blogging.A blog is an online journal, of sorts, where you post comments and information where the public can read it.Setting up your own blog and writing about topics related to your ebooks and featuring links to your products is a great way to help generate sales.

One of the most recent phenomenon, in terms of marketing ebooks and any other product, is social networking sites.Social networking is the coming together of various people to a common online community.They break up into smaller groups, based upon their personal preferences, hobbies and common interests.Everybody has heard of MySpace and Facebook, where thousands of businesses have set up pages to promote their products to a huge circus of potential customers.These types of sites have evolved into an effective resource of internet marketing.

Don't just focus on the better known social networking sites, however.Marketing on lesser known social networking sites may be even more effective, because there is not as much competition.Some examples of small social networking sites include BoomJ- geared towards baby boomers, Cafe Mom- for mothers and Linked in, geared towards the business community.It seems like there is a new social networking site being created every time you turn around.All of them can be useful tools to market your ebooks and generate sales.

Other common internet marketing strategies are promoting your ebooks by writing articles, sending out press releases, submitting your links to directories and sending out information to opt-in email groups.

There are, as you can see, several ways you can promote your products on the internet, all with the ultimate goal of getting folks to spend money on your ebooks.

Explore all of the vast options open to you for promoting your ebooks and determine which internet marketing methods will work best.

About the Author

Scott Boyd is an author of Internet Marketing and Health related Books.

See more information about writing, publishing, and selling eBooks at Writing Selling EBooks.

Check out my jam packed Write Ebooks Blog where you will discover a wealth of free information for a lifelong resource.

Relaited Links:

• What Are Private Label Right Articles And What Can You Do With Them?
• How to Make Money Online for Free: Squidoo
• How To Survive Internet Marketing Overwhelm - To Create True Online Success

The Illusions Of New Ways To Make Money

As a well "plugged in" neteprenuer (read to mean subscribed to many email lists), no month will pass before you get an email in your inbox about a new way to make money online.In Russell Wright's Market Domination report, he notes " the idea that there are constant new ways to make money online is an illusion...under this illusion and [at a] rush to make a fortune online through this new methods, [you] actually miss out on getting the simple facts and skills that will bring you long term success'.

Holding on to sound business principles has never been as important as it is in the internet business.And as Wright points out, there are simple facts and skills, however they are not obvious.The internet has such a knack for supporting warped business concepts due to ease of reach and access to a large gullible populace.

The illusion that there are constant new ways to make money breeds in the fertile grounds of the first illusion discussed here last week - that of constant change.Wright nails it when he says, "whenever 'the next big thing' comes along, there is always another internet market product for me to buy that is supposed to be the best way to cash in on the latest changes online"

The new ways of making money ride on the fact that things are changing.

And by being an early adopter you can cash in before everyone else.And though there is truth in profits being first to market, you need to note there has to be a market; a sizable sustainable market.Otherwise you will be dealing with a passing fad rather than an incoming trend.This is the difference; trends are usually evolutionary and not revolutionary as is always presented by fads.Market trends are gradual events, overtime, many times building on the past hence evolutionary.This is opposed to fads that easily come out of the blues and jump on you.

Even with trends you really do not have necessarily a new way to make moneys, rather a different way.Often this way is more convenient, cheaper or better or some other positive adjectives as far as the market is concerned.

This illusion of new ways to make money can be blamed on particular cliques of prominent internet personalities that feed their email lists with the fear of change.These cliques then profit from selling the purported anti-dote to the change through joint ventures and affiliate programs.However what is not clear is whether this is done as a well planned rip-off or they too are disillusioned.

These cliques consist mainly of individuals that entered the internet business in its early ages when the internet was still getting its footing in the world's economics.This was a time of perpetual change as the human race expected big things to happen with the internet but were not exactly sure how it was going to happen.With the entry of email list these individuals managed to gain access to many netprenuers inboxes.So their ideologies tend to spread like wild fire.Obviously when they hold on to wrong ideologies they tend to infect a whole lot of people.

But a word of caution from king Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, "Is there anything of which one can say Look!There is something new?It was here already, long ago; it here before our time." So if it's new, buyer beware.

About the Author

The author recommends an All-in-One Small Online Business solution by SiteSell, see the SiteBuildIt Review here.

It is a product by Ken Envoy.

Relaited Links:

• Are You Looking For Your Niche in All The Wrong Places?
• What Are Private Label Right Articles And What Can You Do With Them?
• The Essential Steps To Search Engine Optimization

What Or Where Is The Road To Effortless Money?

Maybe you have a stinking rich uncle?Or maybe you have the winning numbers to the lottery?Nonetheless, if you're pondering that starting an Article Directory is the way to go, you might be wrong.

Why isn't an Article directory the course to success?

With the search engines, information of content is "king" so more content should grow the chances of a website being included in the search engine results - Right?

Traditionally, making money from an Writing Directory required the publicizing of some advertising, like Google's AdSense, being added to each article's page.Users would find the article via the search engines, read the article, and then click on the advertising links if relevant enough.The end result is money attained from the member clicking on an ad.If we publicised more articles, then more people would click and we would make MORE money, you get it?

This usually would be a sound method; notwithstanding the only thing is with search engines it is simple to forget that they have real few slots open at the top of their search results.Getting to the top is not easy anymore, in particular if you're working within a popular subject area.The amount of information on the net continues to grow daily.

So what good then is an Article Directory?

I'd say that an Writing Directory is one part of developing a website that is worth checking and so maybe "worthy" of the top search engine results.You need to have Good PRODUCTS and SERVICES to make any money.However, if you need your website to be around a real long time you will also want info that will keep your visitors busy.

For instance: When I first started looking into establishing a home online business, I knew nearly naught about anything - other than the fact that there were a lot of scams and I would have to be very sure before pulling out the credit card.

I did some search, and then finally picked a company that had been around for some time with products that I could trade with.The owner had there own website and one of the first things I did after joining up was to look through his website for more data.I went through various web pages on his website observing everything I could and also clicking on good AdSense ads.(Google and there advertiser's would probably have been elated as well because I was a "targeted clicker").

The point of this explanation is that there are many Means TO MAKE MONEY on the net - You should MAKE USE OF ALL OF THEM.

An article directory may very well aid in drawing groups to your website via the search engines, depending on what is written in the articles and a number of other factors.Nevertheless, like countless other website owners you may need to use twofold techniques to get visitors to your website.Along the same line of thinking you will probably want multiple modes of making money.Once you get visitors to your site you want to keep them there and keep them returning to you for more and then to either give you money or generate money via ad clicks.

Today, with online marketing there might no longer be just one "simple road" to success, but there are still lots of different techniques which together all contribute to success.

Your own article directory is one way to flourish.

About the Author

Uchenna Ani-Okoye is an internet marketing advisor

Sign Up Now and Receive Our FREE Make Money Online E-Course At: Free Affiliate Programs

Relaited Links:

• Affiliate Marketing - What You Need To Succeed...
• Advantages Of Online Marketing
• Is Running An Internet Marketing Business Right For You?

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.

Relaited Links:

• Can You Tell Me How Affiliate Marketers Use RSS Feeds To Make Money Online?
• The Essential Steps To Search Engine Optimization
• 5 Methods to Keep Visitors Coming Back