Marketing a Professional Practice Free By WritingWritten by Susan Dunn, Coach
Permission to reprint this article is granted provided bio line stays intact.Since I'm a writer, I grow my coaching practice by writing; it gets my name around, establishes my expertise, promotes my services and also field of coaching. Writing itself takes time, so I economize my efforts. Here's what I do: 1. Read a current interest book such as "A General Theory of Love," by Lewis, Amini and Lannon. Then I do extensive Internet research around topic to see what else is out there. 2. Review book on Barnes & Noble, amazon.com. 3. Write an article about new theory of love and submit it to coaching sources. 4. Create Top 10s, Coaching Tips, and Quotations from material. 5. Rework material and write a story for another sort of ezine (relationships, for instance, or singles) - this could be for free, or for money. 6. Write an article on topic for my own ezine, which comes out twice a week. On a large topic like that, I'll do a series of short articles.
| | The Top 10 Marketing Mistakes You Don't Want to MakeWritten by Susan Dunn, M.A.
Permission is granted to reprint provided bio line stays intact.1. Resting on your laurels. Just because you have what you think is a good marketing plan in place today doesn't mean it'll be right tomorrow. The pace today is so accelerated, you must stay ahead of game. Constantly research what your competition is doing. Surf Internet to see what's new out there. 2. Hype. Sooner or later hype will catch up with you. Being superficial and underestimating consumer is first of all poor taste, and second of all, it's bad business. Avoid jargon and pat phrases and give substance. 3. Not having an R&D Team, focus group or feedback source. Test your ideas on others. There are some absolutely wonderful ads out there that people remember, but they don't remember name of product/company. For example, there was a great ad out awhile ago that talked about Bank of Northern Hemisphere. Very clever; everyone remembered it. The problem was, they didn't remember name of bank you were supposed to use instead. 4. Not trusting your marketing person. If you hire someone to do your marketing, hire someone you trust and then let them do their job. With 20 years marketing experience, I had many interesting jobs and some interesting job interviews. One corporation asked me, "Can you stick with a plan once it's in place?" Red flag. Any marketing campaign must be constantly monitored and you need to be able to switch on a dime. An experienced marketing person can titre what's working and what isn't. It becomes almost a sixth sense. Why would you throw good money after bad just because changing it is an inconvenience? 5. Not giving it time to work. It's an adage in marketing that if you're going to say it, say it at least 3 times. I've consulted with individuals, particularly, who send out a brochure, no one bites, they want to abandon it. Generally it takes 3 "hits." People run through their emails rapidly and delete things they wish they hadn't. Make their wish come true! Give them a second, third, fourth chance. The formula is--when you're sick and tired of it, public is just beginning to hear it.
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