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Marketing Your Writing Business
Business writer and trainer Rick Holton spoke on "Marketing Your Home-Based Business" at our NWU workshop on November 1. He sends the following points:
- One challenge for service businesses (and writers) is that their product is intangible, and small businesses have the further challenge of having no brand name.
- To promote tangibility, a home-based business should have a list of services (features and benefits), testimonials, case studies, and samples, and a list of clients, strategic partners, industry experience, or professional affiliations. Always helpful is a photo, which personalizes your service.
- To establish a brand name, a business should generally have a company name, a tag line, and a logo or type treatment (I use Holton | Writing for Results® and the tagline "If You Have an Idea, I Can Help You Sell It."®)
Several media are available for marketing one's services. Home-based businesses, however, often have limited budgets, so it is important to choose the medium that will be most effective for you. Two books I have found to be particularly helpful were Jay Conrad Levinson's Guerilla Marketing, and Jay Lipe's The Marketing Toolkit for Growing Businesses, although there are naturally many other excellent marketing books available.
One should always look at other companies' materials. If you are doing a marketing brochure, for instance, you should gather samples of marketing brochures from similar businesses. Analyze what works and what doesn't, and use that information to create your own unique brochure.
A website can be particularly useful. It makes your services more tangible. If you do a professional job, it enhances your credibility. It enables you to inject some personality, and it is flexible and updatable. One caveat: unless you're a design professional, don't design it yourself. You want to put your best foot forward, and a good design can be a tremendous asset. If you can't afford a designer, you can often barter services.
A blog can be a lower-cost alternative to a website, and podcasts can also be effective. The podcasts on www.prcamp.net are a good example of effective marketing.
It is useful to segment one's target market into four classes:
- Advocates are existing clients who are so happy with your services that they spontaneously refer you to others. With this group, you want to retain their delight and leverage their referral power.
- Customers are those who have already purchased your services. With this group, you want to expand your share of their business and convert them into advocates.
- Prospects are people who have heard of you and what you do. You want to get in front of these people regularly with something of value, and you want to convert them to customers.
- Suspects have not yet heard of your services. You want to make them aware of your services and to qualify them as leads.
You should allocate your time and attention to each group in descending order. Attention to advocates and customers is usually the best rewarded.
Although developing a marketing program is a sometimes-trial-and-error process, there are seven must-haves of service marketing. Four of them cost a little money:
- A business card with your differentiated identity.
- A menu of services, in a brochure or on a website.
- A means of providing regular value to customers and prospects, through email, newsletters, mailings, podcasts or other means.
- A low-risk method for letting prospective customers sample your services, whether through articles, seminars, or speeches. Give examples of your expertise away for free.
And three of the must-haves are free:
- An elevator pitch.
- A voice mail message that conveys your differentiated identity.
- An automatic email sign-off that conveys your identity and contact information and links to your website.
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