One woman business needs marketing advice

Re: One woman business needs marketing advice

do you have website? If yes,
You can set up free website, and drive traffic to it with 100$ adword ads you have.

chels82;47358 wrote: I have had my transcription/administrative business since 2007 and have had a steady stream of clients since then. I usually handle about one client at a time and my current client has been with me for a year. I think after three years, however, I'm ready to expand. Being that I'm a one woman show, I'm wondering the best ways to market without getting overwhelmed. I still work a regular 9 to 5 job on top of having my own business so my time is limited. I have been using Elance.com but I'm not happy with doing just projects, I like to have a long term working relationship with my clients, if possible.

I recently got a $100 worth of free advertising through Google AdWords and was wondering if that would be worth it.

Any tips would be helpful.

Re: One woman business needs marketing advice

That's a good idea to drive a traffic and there are lot of methods through which you can drive traffic to your site.But just keep one thing in mind that your fund don't get exhausted.I was also offered $100 free for advertisement and because of this I started a new Adwords account about a month ago. Instead of going for advertising I thought to work more on my site then go for advertising so few days ago when I logged in my balance was exhausted.

Re: One woman business needs marketing advice

I've noticed that a number of professionals find themselves and their businesses simply not scalable b/c they can only handle a set number of clients...and while that is great, because you do want to treat your clients like gold - it's just not scalable no matter what new marketing you put in place. There are only so many hours in the day...

It sounds like you have a real skill and passion for what you do - you may think of taking all of your knowledge and creating some simple content (videos, articles, interviews) and then starting an online continuity program (subscription) that delivers your knowledge on a daily, weekly or monthly basis...it allows you to provide valuable information too many many people at a low cost to them, but you'll get hundreds if not thousand of members bringing in a real nice chunk of change. If someone wants/needs to work with you directly then of course you still have that side of your business...

Spencer
http://SmallBizDigest.com

Re: One woman business needs marketing advice

Marketing advice:

Know your customer
Features and benefits
Always follow up

Re: One woman business needs marketing advice

If you are working a 9 to 5 job then you're not likely to put a lot of time on your business if you really want to expand. You can probably do better if you don't sleep...LOL! No seriously, you can choose between devoting your time to your business full time or work part time on it without quitting the day job. If you can improve your business little by little and steadily with the time left after work, then I really wish you the best of luck. As for Google Adwords, you shouldn't even hesitate to try it, but this has nothing to do with creating a "a long term working relationship" with your clients. Google Adwords simply expose your business online. If you have existing clients that you want to keep, you should focus on them. If you want new clients and believe that you can handle more workload, then use Google Adwords.

Now, if you have a good website already, there's no sense in wasting your time making it pretty, because Google Adwords offer expires after a month or so. Therefore, you should start your account as soon as you can. But before you do this, you should know a little about search engine marketing, because Google Adwords rely on the keywords you choose to advertise your business on the search engines.

I really wish you the best of luck!:)

Marie

Re: One woman business needs marketing advice

Your article has given me the courage to press on to my ultimate goal which is to have my own business and work from home. I’ve had some failures, but some small successes also.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Sports Supplements
Sports Nutrition

Re: One woman business needs marketing advice

$100 for Google won't do much. You've got to really know how to target yourself and your landing page or you'll end up using the $100 on clicks that go nowhere.

I'd suggest you try speaking to local chambers of commerce or small business organziations. It will cost you nothing, you'll be able to speak at meetings that work with your schedule and plenty of small business owners need VA support in some way or other.

Re: One woman business needs marketing advice

Concentrating on your current customers while targeting to get more is the main business mantra.

Re: One woman business needs marketing advice

I agree with Shughendu. Concentrate on the customers you already have. Try to upsell them on one of your other products/services. If you dont have one, then take some time and come up with something. I usually tell clients this all the time (even though they dont always listen). Dealing with clients that have already bought something from you in the past is the easiest way to move your business to the next level.

Re: One woman business needs marketing advice

Hello,

I am interested to have my own business of transcription/administrative business . Please advice me how to start that at home and what requirements do I need. Is there training class I can attend online for that?

______________

Re: One woman business needs marketing advice

Yes I do think that you will need a website or atleast a blog or possibly both.

So that when you meet somebody that want to know more about your service you
can simply name your website.

Possibly you could create some kind of system that people can simply send
their audio as an MP3 through the mail and let them transcibe by yourself and/or the people you hire to do it?
You might like to have look at already existing Transcription Companies how they do it
to model their way of working?

I have done transciption work myself once years ago and I was wondering if
there where services like that now on the internet. So I recently 'Researched' it
So I know a few of them that you might be able to use to model?

To name a few:

Quicktate.com, capitaltyping.com,
gmrtransciption.com, expertperfection.com

All the Best,
To your Happy - Small Business - Inspiration,
HP

Re: One woman business needs marketing advice

I find in my industry 100 in ad words will be spent in about 3 hours. And based on what you said about your business, it's probably the same for you. However, 100 bucks is 100 bucks. Use it! There are other ways to market your business. Obviously, the reason we market is to get found. I have found that building backlinks is probably the best way to boost your online presence. I have outsourced this task in the past, and the going rate is really reasonable. If you don't know what back links are, you can look here for more info:
http://www.merchantcircle.com/blogs/Sequoia.Payroll.Solutions.479-409-8284/2010/5/Get-found-on-the-first-page-of-Google-and-Yahoo-/555885

Re: One woman business needs marketing advice

How can this guy get so many other sites to agree to backlinks so fast? I'd like to use the service, but you klnow what they say--if it seems too good to be true...

Re: One woman business needs marketing advice

Lyrafire;51077 wrote: How can this guy get so many other sites to agree to backlinks so fast? I'd like to use the service, but you klnow what they say--if it seems too good to be true...

It's what he does. He has spent hours reseaching, networking, testing, and so on, just like the rest of small business owners. I have used the service, and I have helped him with the service because he can' keep up with demand. There are downsides, it's not all good. For example, links fall off. If you look at my blog, it states that we are on page one for "tulsa payroll". I have stopped adding links to that term, and I have slipped in the ranks, because links fall off. Some links take a while to be indexed (noticed by Google), but for the price you can't beat it. I just cracked onto the first page of google for "payroll services". I was on page 50 a little over 3 months ago. The first thing I did when I hit the first page is order 640 more links because I want to stay there. I am very confident that the service does work. It's not an overnight remedy, but it does work very fast, depending on the competition on your field.