I keep saying I'm not a techie. But it's true that after some 10 years or so of doing web-presence marketing, I have learned a few things.
Here are 4 techie tools I use and recommend because they are supremely easy, free or really cheap, and have high benefit even if you are still figuring out your first website.
www.Constant Contact.com
A broadcast email marketing service. - 60 day free trial
- Then only $15 for up to 500 names on your email list(s)
- You can have as many lists as you want
- Send as many emails a month, week or day as you want
- Plenty of design templates are attractive and customizable
- Includes ability to have one autoresponder option that sends up to 5 pre-set email installments when triggered
www.Davesite.com
Online free html tutorials. Scroll down past all the junk on this site to the links for the tutorials. I'm totally intimidated by the thought of computer programming, but his instructions are very clear.
- Really really easy to understand
- Instructions for making text bold or italic
- Creating a bullet list, and many other basic html code features
- Make your web-presence stand out even more
- Examples of what to do and what happens
www.Bravenet.com
Free membership gives lots of very cool features to add to websites and blogs. Listen, if I can do these things, you can too. Bravenet makes it easy. - Poll widgets
- Email forms
- Speaking avatars with your recorded voice
- Message forum tool you can use to add a discussion board to your website
- More spiffy tools available from Bravenet with paid membership upgrades
- You can use the free stuff forever
www.StatCounter.com
Free membership to see how much site traffic you're getting and where it's coming from.
- Track the most recent 500 hits to your websites and blogs
- Multiple "projects" lets you track many different sites you own
- Shows what country visitors came from
- Gives what pages they looked at, how long they stayed on your site, and more.
- You can pay to see more than the most recent 500 hits
- Old hits are replaced by new ones, so most of us don't really need that paid feature
Prospective client to counselor: My life is miserable, I can't sleep, my kids won't behave, and I'm scared I'll never get my head above water professionally.
Counselor to client: I'm a licensed clinical social worker in the state of OZ, a 13 year member of the faculty of the Advanced Psychobabble Academy, and an eclectic practitioner of DBT, CBT, REBT, Gestalt,and Technique Du Jour therapy.
Prospective client to counselor: I can't stop obssessing on what my sister said to me, she made me so angry I wanted to strangle her. I need help.
Counselor to client: Appointments are available Tues, Wed, Fri from 5 am to 8:30 am. My office is in the Endless Maze office park. Bring your insurance card and download and complete these 12 forms when you come to the first appointment. Pay online here.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Same prospective client to life coach: I'm failing at everything. Nothing I do works out.
Life coach to client: Great! Life is a journey and we all go through peaks and valleys, fall into potholes, hit roadblocks, get sidetracked or forced into detours. Coaching is the road map to get where you want to go.
Prospective client to life coach: I'm not sure what I need, but I know that I feel trapped.
Life coach to client: I congratulate you on knowing what you want and having the determination to go after it. I will be your cheerleader and partner. Are you ready to have the best year ever?! Let's go!
~*~*~*~*~*~
These examples aren't as extreme as you may think.
Take a look at your website right now, and see if your side of the marketing conversation is really hearing your prospective client and responding to the pain they are feeling when they are searching for help.
We're half way through the year ~ how's your marketing plan working? Time to take stock of how well it's serving you.
Marketing is a dynamic process. That is, it's always in motion (or should be). If you aren't adding new ways to reach and interest your potential clients in your services, you won't have a steady flow of income. It's not enough to order business cards, set up a website, post a profile, and wait by the phone.
Every marketing tool -- which is anything a client comes in contact with -- should be evaluated periodically and changed if it's not putting clients on your appointment schedule. Here are some essential taking stock coaching questions for you:
Rethinking Your Business Card
- Does your card have a powerful, catchy, motivating tagline?
- Are you using the backside for brief tips, questions, or a compelling call to action?
- Do the colors coordinate with your website?
- Is your photo or logo displayed?
- Does it have your website or blog url, and your email address?
- Have at least 5 people told you your card is a keeper?
- Can a 10 year old tell you what your business is all about from looking at your card?
- Is it time to redesign your business card?
Redesigning Your Website
- How many sticky elements are on your home page?
- Are you tracking where people come from to get to your site, and how long they stay to read?
- Are graphics supportive or distracting? Do they reinforce your message?
- Are you giving prospects a way to interact with or request content that they are desperate to have?
- Does your content exude your personality, and generate trust?
- Is your contact info on every page?
- Is your photo prominently displayed on at least 2 pages?
- Are you using the same tagline on your website as on your business card?
- Does your content speak directly, simply, and emotionally to prospective clients?
- Is your content 80% about the client's problems and want they want, and only 20% about you?
- Have you written in the 1st person tense?
- Is it time to do a major rewrite of your website?
Ready to kick your business up a notch? The fastest way to do that is to determine which marketing pieces you have in place are stale, inaccurate, and not performing for you, and to rethink, redesign and relaunch them.
And after that? Let's talk. :)
Everyone in business intends to be successful. But are you planning how to actually get there?
Plan?? Who me? I hear you groaning.
When I ask clients, what's your current marketing plan, most often the answer I hear is: My plan is to get more clients and make more money.
Uh huh, I say. And exactly what are the structures and action steps that accomplish that?
Well, uh, I hear, I put a profile up on the internet, and I have business cards, and I sent a letter announcing my services to chiropractor's offices but I haven't really gotten much business yet. I guess I just need to do more of that.
Okay, let's stop right here. This is not a plan.
A plan at minimum identifies what you want (goals), what you need to have and do to get it (actions), how you will know it's working (measures), and when you are holding yourself accountable for getting things done (timelines).
A marketing plan is your road map to success. It keeps you focused on the effective and efficient actions that will have the desired payoffs. It helps prevent detours into the land of self-sabotage.
And even prior to thinking through your marketing plan, there are 3 very necessary steps you can take, starting right now.
That's why I introduce my clients -- most of whom are introverts just like you who go into heart pounding, sweaty panic at the idea of promoting themselves at networking events -- to the step by step foundation building and advanced actions that get them on that road to private practice success.
What are the first necessary steps -- before a marketing plan, business cards, profiles, and referral solicitation contacts?
- carve out a minimum of 3+ hours every day for developing your marketing plan, building the structures, taking the actions, and evaluating the results
- start with narrowing your marketing to one ideal client type
- know their psycho-graphics inside and out
If you haven't done these three necessary steps, no amount of planning, or profiles or business cards or letters to others will help you fill your practice on a consistent basis.
I've been playing with different website builder programs for the last year, to get familiarity with various ones so I can being more helpful to my do-it-yourself clients who aren't that tech savvy. Here's how I choose which company to go with:
1. Can I register a domain name for under $10 and have low cost web builder from same company? Can I have a no cost trial or see the templates before signing up? Are there any templates I like? How customizable are they?
2. Can I have a site with more than 5 pages? 5 is a good basic start, but quickly becomes static and stale. Extra pages allow new content that attracts clients.
3. Does the tool bar look like something familiar like Word more or less, and can I change fonts and sizes, colors, move elements around on the page easily, create bullet and number lists, import from Word, etc?
4. Does the web builder program have cool extra features -- can I import PayPal buttons for e-commerce or does it have an e-commerce feature? Can I easily add my photos, forms, have a blog on the site, collect email addresses (aka contact management system, CMS), easily upload a pdf file (file transfer protocol, aka FTP), add audio or video, add a date/time stamp which automatically updates every time I make a change to the site(lets people know the site is current), etc?
5. Is there tech support available for the web builder at hours that work for me (why is everything on east coast business hours?!) Are there tutorials to help me problem solve?
6. Can I have an already registered domain name pointed to this new website? Is an email account part of the package or extra? Can I transfer an existing domain name to this company, and what do they charge for that and how long does it take?
I think that covers the initial thought process, but if I remember anything else I'll post again. I would add that if you decide to have a site built for you, you may still want to know all these things PLUS, how fast will they work, and can you take over after it's built in order to add new pages and content?
If you can create a flier in Word, you can build a website. Play, create, have fun!
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