Our featured guest will be Shama Kabani–president of The Marketing Zen Group, a full service digital marketing firm that serves clients around the world.  She has been dubbed the “master millennial of the universe” and “an online marketing shaman” by Fast Company, and was listed as one of Business Week Magazine’s ’Top 25 Under 25′ entrepreneurs in North America.   

Register here: THE NEW FACEBOOK -GREATEST WEB TOOL!

What causes do you stand for?  How could you incorporate this into your business.  For more information on social media, listen to one of our many Social Media Teleclasses.  Topics include How to Plan, Build and Promote Your Blog, Secrets To Leveraging Facebook, Turn Followers Into Fans (and Leads!) and Be On Top Of Google.

A Red Bench Effectively Uses Email Marketing by Jason Meserve, Constant Contact

A Red Bench is a continuing education and resource organization that targets service-based businesses, such as designers, wardrobe consultants, professional organizers, and interior decorators. Founders Christa Wagner and Angela Ploetz started the company in 2007 after recognizing that small business owners don’t have a place to turn for continuing education and business development tools. (Christa herself owns another consultancy, called Savvy Solutions, and has experienced these challenges personally.) The duo host fee-based teleseminars featuring interviews with topic experts, and they also publish a monthly newsletter and an ongoing blog on topics ranging from work/life balance to pricing your business.

For the A Red Bench team, since the entire business is online, being able to promote their various e-books, live seminars, audio recordings and membership offerings — while cutting through the inbox clutter — is a challenge. “Everyone is overloaded with information,” Christa says. “We’re trying to communicate to them and do so effectively.”

As little as four years ago, that communication took the form of a PDF newsletter that was emailed around to customers. That is, until someone pointed Christa in the direction of Constant Contact Email Marketing. Now, the monthly communications go out as professionally-designed HTML newsletters. Christa and Angela also send out weekly email reminders about upcoming seminars and send customers directly to 1Shoppingcart for payment.

Christa and Angela continue to build A Red Bench’s database by collecting email addresses when clients register for their free audio magazine and other information available from the company’s Web site and blog. “They receive free, valuable tips in exchange for giving us their info,” Christa explains.

In an effort to save time and be more efficient, the duo also combines their blog writing with their newsletter production to ensure the content that gets mailed out is fresh and well thought out. “This way, I don’t have to sit at the computer and come up with a topic right then and there,” Christa says. “I blog on a frequent basis and always have relevant content available making the newsletter easy to get out the door.”

Christa loves Constant Contact’s reporting features, which allow her to track what customers opened in the newsletter or clicked to. They use the tracking information to better target those interested in a seminar offering, sometimes following up with a phone call. “Plus, it allows us to see what posts and articles are of most interest to our clients – that is extremely helpful.”

A Red Bench saves money and increases its reach by using Email Marketing, as opposed to another advertising media. “Our list is large — to advertise to that many people six times a month, I’m not sure how we would do that affordably,” Christa says. “That’s a huge cost savings. Our entire business is advertised through Constant Contact.”

If you would like to use Constant Contact, e-mail us at info@aredbench.com and get a $30 credit for your account with them!

No sooner is the Thanksgiving turkey digested when the Holiday Party Season begins.  Many dread the often hectic schedule of December, as seemingly every company and organization hosts a lunch or cocktail party for their customers, clients, employees, suppliers, members and friends.

It’s true that this annual ritual of party hopping can add inches to your waist-line while stealing precious hours of down-time.  But it can also be a great time to meet new people and solidify your existing business relationships.  While part of you may wish to hide behind the craziness of your own year-end work and personal schedule and avoid this revelry altogether, staying away from holiday soirees is a networking mistake.

People do business with people they know and like; you need to take advantage of holiday get-togethers to build closer relationships with others in your business community or industry.  Think of it this way; when someone invites you to a holiday gathering they are announcing that they like you.  When you make the effort to attend their event you are returning the gesture.  And try to remeber that most of these parties are a lot of fun!

Marny was our guest expert speaking on the topic of Turning Networking Into Actual Business.  If you missed the call, click here to purchase the audio.

A Red Bench offer continuing education for professional organizers and small business owners.

One thing that really irks me is when someone gets up to speak and says something like this:

• I am really uncomfortable
• I am really out of my element
• I am so nervous
• I have never done this before

The reason this bothers me is since nearly everyone is afraid to speak in public, there’s no reason for you to announce your insecurity. If you are standing and speaking, don’t let people know you may be a little nervous. Nine times out of ten, they will think you are awesome and would never know otherwise.

If you would like some help public speaking, purchase our audio recording called Take The Fear Out Of Public Speaking and learn how to create powerful presentations that turn attendees into clients.View more of A Red Bench’s teleclass recordings here.

Potential clients and prospects are everywhere.  But what should we do after we meet them, how do we follow-up?    Consistent follow-up and communication is key to growing your database, but is so often forgotten or just simply not done well.   The fact is with each contact follow up you make, you increase the odds that a client will act on your offer.  So get in front of them on a consistent basis.

To get the ball rolling, here are three tips you can use right now to stay in better touch with your clients.

1. Create a newsletter:  I will be the first to tell you a newsletter is time consuming, but every time we send our newsletter we get a new client, a product purchase or inquiry.  Use a tool like Constant Contacts and start communicating on a consistent basis to your database.  Consistency is key here.  For more information on creating your own newsletter, purchase our audio recording called Launch and Sustain Your Newsletter.
2. Use Send Out Cards: I would be lying if I said I could get a card in the mail on time and that’s for my Mom’s birthday.  So the thought of actually coming back to my office and sending thank you card, or nice to meet you card, to a potential client is just not going to happen.  Then I discovered Send Out Cards and all that changed.  I absolutely love this product!!!  I’ve created campaigns and can send a thank you card in a few seconds.  It’s just that easy.  For more information on  staying in touch using note cards, purchase our audio recording called Rise Above the Rest with Relationship Marketing.
3. Free Information: A great way to grow your database is to offer free tips and information on your website.  The key is to have the person enter their contact information in order to get the tips.  A simple and effective way to increase your database.

Every touch point is an opportunity to grow your business and increase profits.  Get back in touch with potential clients today and consistently stay on top of your database.

A Red Bench offers business training to Professional Organizers and small business owners.

So what is in?  Spending money on lipstick and high end cosmetics is up.  This may be attributed to vanity and escapism.  I believe if women are tightening the purse strings on their wardrobe budgets they may be loosening them on cosmetics which have a smaller price point then a new pair of shoes.  What else are people still purchasing?  According to the CNN report:  i-phones, specialty pet supplies, vegetable seeds, romance novels, vitamins, and insect repellant are the hot items of the summer.

The report states “Conspicuous consumption is now seen as bad manners”.  This is great if you are in the business of helping clients to stop over buying and start reducing their purchasing!

It seems like people are looking for more of the experience.  Is that what you are offering?  Is there anything you can do with your marketing language that can suggest more of an experience for your clients?

Do you have a marketing plan?  You must have a marketing plan.  Typically, business owners market their business when the phone stops ringing and that’s not a plan.  A marketing plan allows you to capitalize on what really drives your business in a consistent manner that allows you to work smarter, not harder. By having a marketing plan, you should not have to re-create the wheel monthly, but rather have a system that works for you. 

Not sure how to create a marketing plan?  We have a great teleclass called Create A World Class Marketing Plan that is an awesome tool to create your marketing plan.  And so what that it’s July; listen to the teleclass and create a plan thru July ‘10 or thru the end of year.  Just don’t sit on your marketing any longer. 

But, let say all your marketing eggs have been in the Twitter (or another lonely) basket and you are feeling a little uneasy with the recent system glitch.  There are so many ways to market your business; most are low is cost, yet still achieving highest results or impact.   Still do the plan, but here are a few tried and true marketing tactics that work well for small, service based businesses.

• Start a blog and consistently post.  Consumers love information and people want to see new and updated information from you.  A blog gives you a home base and you personally own all your content. (Need some help starting and promoting your blog, purchase our teleclass called How to Plan, Build and Promote Your Blog with Blog Expert Rich Brooks)
• Connect your blog to your monthly newsletter.  Staying in touch with clients in critical to your success.   Use tools such as Constant Contacts to send a monthly newsletter to your existing client base and use blog articles to link people back to your blog.  (Need some help starting and promoting your blog, purchase our teleclass called Launch and Sustain Your Monthly Newsletter.)
• Automatically upload your blog to Facebook.  Start turning followers into profits and paying clients by letting them know what’s going on with your business.  You may be surprised where business comes from.  (Be on the lookout sooner for our Facebook Teleclass with Shama Hyder coming soon!) 
• Offer a workshopin your local community.  Public speaking is a great way to let people know about your business and be sure to leave behind contact information and info to your Free blog.   (Need some help starting and promoting your blog, purchase our teleclass called Take The Fear Out Of Public Speaking with expert Liam Brown)
• Contribute to or write an article.  Articles are fantastic as you can link back to your blog and drive traffic to your website. 

Are you starting to see a pattern here.  One or all of things may work for you, but the plan comes first and then connect the dots so everything works together.  We have lots of resources to help you market you marketing your business.  Check them out and get started on your plan today.

After interviewing many people on marketing here is what I have come to realize:
1. There is no magic one size fits all solution.  What works for one will not work for everyone.  You can’t just copy what someone else is doing and expect to have a successful marketing campaign. 
2. Find your sweet spot and embrace it!  One of the biggest learning’s I had from the TeleSummit is that most of our speakers did all forms of social media marketing a LITTLE bit, but they did one of them BIG.  They had their favorite and that is where they put most of their attention and that is where they saw their best results. 
3. Use other types of marketing to support your main marketing effort.  Again, most people use many different types of marketing, but they simply use it to supplement their major focus area.  Of course you are going to practice multiple marketing efforts, but you don’t have to dedicate equal amounts of time to each of them. 

So what will you focus on?  Internet marketing, face to face marketing, relationship marketing?  We would love to hear your thoughts.

I was really looking forward to this call, because as much as I resisted Facebook and was forced into using it, I really like it.  I have gotten back in touch with so many friends from high school (North Allegheny, Pittsburgh, PA) and college (Indiana University, Bloomington, IN) and its been really fun.   That said,  I could spend hours on Facebook and I have a business (two of them actually) to run so I was anxious to learn how to more effectively use this powerful tool

Just learning how to automatically post my blog on Facebook was enough, but I learned so much more on this call.  I learned some techniques to using Facebook in just 15 minutes each day and the difference between groups and fans.  Very helpful for me!

Thanks Shama for a great call.  You certainly understand the big and constantly changing world of the social media giant. 

Continue to check our website and blog for more information regarding social media tools.  If you missed the Embrace Social Media, a TeleSummit, be on the lookout for Nancy’s presentation available from A Red Bench.

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