Posts Tagged ‘business consultant’

How To Set Up Shop As A Marketer To Offline Business

Setting up shop to become a provider of services to offline businesses involves firstly identifying the types of services that you will offer to your clients.

For example you might offer all or some of the following services:

• Website design

• Search engine optimization

• Auto-responder & email services

• Video marketing

• Article marketing

• Traffic generation

Whatever you decide to offer, you need to put together a professional website that outlines all the services on offer. Be assured – once offline businesses begin to hear about you and your services, they’ll look you up on the internet so you need to present as a professional, well organized business.

Because so many offline businesses do not have a web presence, it is highly likely that website design services will be something they request. Therefore it makes sense to create a sample portfolio that showcases designs you have provided for previous clients. The provision of a website will probably become the “bread and butter” of your business. Every offline business that wants to go online is going to need a website that incorporates their company information; logo, mission statement and is fully optimized for the search engines.

Similarly, if you intend providing an online marketing campaign, then you will need clear outlines of what is included together with any case studies that illustrate what you can do.

Starting out always presents some difficulties but you should not be deterred by these challenges. If you apply a little creativity you can offer your initial clients a special deal in exchange for a testimonial and this helps build your portfolio. These initial deals also help you to develop and refine your skills in presenting yourself to prospective clients.

In setting up shop, you should focus on the provision of the website design and basic content. Many of these offline business owners will have a limited understanding of all the other add-ons you could offer them by way of marketing their business effectively. Terms such as “search engine optimization” or “back links” will be like a foreign language, in many cases. Be patient and as they grow to know you and trust you, then you can begin to offer them sophisticated marketing plans for their business.

Therefore keep it simple in the beginning and work on building up a positive working relationship.

The pricing of your services is an important consideration in the beginning. Web packages can range in price from $800 to $8000, depending on what is included. You will therefore need to think about where you fit in that range as well as analyzing customer requirements.

Another key factor that affects pricing is whether or not you are doing the web design work yourself. Don’t despair if you feel you don’t have the necessary skills in this area. Outsourcing is a very viable alternative. You then simply have to factor in a price that still gives you a reasonable profit.

The best thing about outsourcing via the internet is that not only can you get quality work done for an attractive price, but your client doesn’t even have to be aware of it. As far as the client is concerned he/she is dealing with you and you are providing what is required.

One final hint about setting up shop – offer your customers a discount via a coupon system on your web site. This helps with breaking into this field and establishing a solid client base. Make no mistake this field of consulting to offline businesses and helping them to go online is a rewarding path to take. You can get started today – just grab a copy of Turning Bricks Into Gold

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Getting Into Your Client’s Head

Every business has expectations that need to be addressed when developing the original action agenda for transitioning an offline establishment into an online presence.  If these are not addressed almost immediately, the relationship can suffer over time as their unspoken objectives remain unfulfilled.

Careful evaluation and discussion of what the business can rationally expect to gain from a presence on the Internet is extremely important.  The raw data can be obtained using a written series of questions in the original interview.  Or the information could be developed through more informal means. It is important to get a feeling for the pulse of the business and what can be reasonably expected from the online effort.

If the business is faltering, and this is a last grasp at a lifeline, make sure you make no promises.  More often, though, moving to the Internet is seen by an uninitiated outsider as an easy way to increase sales immediately and exponentially.  It may happen: there are many cases where Internet successes have been massive, but there are just as many where the results took much longer to develop than expected.  Either way, it is vital to the developing relationship to understand these expectations and make sure the store is given a realistic viewpoint of what your services can and will deliver.  It is the classic case of under promising and strongly over delivering that should be a hallmark of any services you render.

During the initial evaluation phases, it is also a great time to determine what resources and advantages the client can bring to the table on their own behalf.  Often there are many hidden gems of people who can provide a lot of unique expertise and benefits to the Internet community. Store specialties must be identified and exploited to full advantage in the online presence.   Every little edge that is exploited may spell the difference between a strong campaign and one that falls inexplicably short

Many older store owners have years of expertise and knowledge in areas that can bring huge benefits to them and their followers/readers/fans.  Often they become known as experts in their field.  But this style of presentation requires dedication and commitment to an ongoing contribution.  Many shopkeepers simply do not have the patience or writing skills to provide ongoing content.  It is up to the consultant to recognize inherent talent and even more importantly, understand whether it can be relied upon in an ongoing fashion.

Be very careful about relying on employed talent.  Employees have a way of suddenly leaving a business at the very worst possible time and taking their knowledge with them.  It is unwise to devote an entire campaign, unless it is very short lived and transitory by nature, to the skills offered by an employee.  It is a much better bet if you can count on an owner to perform since he/she would have a vested interest in the outcome.

Identifying and correcting, if needed, the expectations of the client in the very beginning leads to much less stress and disappointment as time goes by.  An open and honest relationship is the foundation for many future collaborations.  Making sure you understand what the business is willing to expend in time and effort also prevents many logistical mistakes.  It is much better to know right away that all the work will fall on your shoulders, so that the fair compensation for the effort is understood right from the beginning.

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How To Add A New Dimension To Your Internet Marketing

Internet marketing is both a fascinating and frustrating activity in which to be involved.  The fascination arises because of the different skills that one has to acquire in order to be on top of the game as well as the challenges presented by the rapidly changing scenarios on the internet.  The frustration arises because of fierce competition and the constant battle to get growing streams of traffic to your website(s).

Therefore it is important to be on the lookout for new opportunities where you can beat the competition by being ahead of them.  The purpose of my article today is to alert you to a new field of opportunity where, if you take advantage of it, you will find a source of untapped riches that will swell the coffers of your bank account.  I am talking about being a consultant to offline businesses.

Do you realize that in the USA over 50% of small businesses do not have an online presence?  It is also reasonable to assume that the situation is very similar in other major countries.  The percentages may vary, but the real point to understand here is that there is a huge market waiting to be shown how to improve their businesses.

In addition to the above scenario you also need to realize that where small businesses do have a web presence, it is often ineffectual.  In other words, it is not bringing about increased business.

When you put those two scenarios together then you have a great opportunity to take your internet marketing to a new dimension.  You can become a consultant to offline businesses and to those businesses that have a website that doesn’t help generate new customers.

Consider for a moment this new dimension and what the needs of your prospective clients might be.

• They will need a website that is search engine optimized so as to bring in the maximum search traffic

• They will need a website that captures the email addresses of visitors so that there can be follow-up campaigns to convert those visitors to customers

• They will need an auto-responder that will send out the follow-up messages

• They will need a marketing plan for their business

• They will need advice about other tools and resources that may assist in the growth of their business.

For example, using videos on squeeze pages and sales pages.

Can you see the opportunities provided by this new dimension?

The opportunity is undoubtedly there and you need to get yourself organized and begin taking advantage of it.  It has been calculated that the scenarios I have outlined represent a multi-billion dollar industry.  It is therefore crucial to get organized and get in early and procure your share of this growth industry – online consulting to offline businesses.