If you haven’t defined a target market for your business or private practice, you may actually be preventing yourself from getting clients. I often hear professionals and entrepreneurs say they don’t want to “limit” themselves by narrowing their marketing focus to a particular group. Read more

Have you developed a profile for who your best clients may be in the business-to-business marketplace? Do you know what kind of organizations need your service the most? Or what their biggest challenges are? Does your marketing strategy address these Read more

Publishing your articles online can be an affordable and effective method of attracting more traffic to your website and building your credibility as a professional. The quickest and easiest way to publish online is to submit your articles to article directories. Here is a list of 16 different article directories to get you started. Read more

It’s a strong temptation when starting out with a new business to market to everyone. You don’t want to miss out on any possible opportunity. If you take the approach that anyone can be a client, how can you lose? Read more

As business owners, we are frequently offered “opportunities” that may deliver a significant return, but also have the potential to take up a great deal of time. You may be asked to provide your professional expertise, collaborate on a project, help with organizing an event, or Read more

Selling professional services can often be a challenge because of their intangibility. When a client hires you to deliver a service such as accounting or web design, they can’t see the outcome in advance. They have to trust that your work will produce a result they will like, Read more

When visitors to your website email you with questions about your services, they might be legitimate prospects. But they may also be window shoppers, tire kickers, or looky-loos. Before you invest too much effort in trying to close a sale, you should try to pre-qualify these online prospects. Read more

One day, the phone just stopped ringing. At first, you may not have noticed it. You were busy serving your clients, keeping up in your field, and getting the bills paid, like all good professionals do. But then a project ended or a client quit, and you didn’t have a replacement waiting in the pipeline. Suddenly you realized that it had been quite some time since any new prospects were referred to you. Yikes, what’s going on? Read more

Let’s face it, many service business professionals treat self-promotion as a necessary evil. We know we have to do it, but we just don’t like it. Professionals often say, “I love my work, but I wish I didn’t have to keep finding customers.” We describe the process of marketing as distasteful, frustrating, intimidating, and just plain scary. Read more

When launching a professional practice or service business, the success of your first few months of operation is crucial. If you are a typical service business owner, you’re starting up with less capital than a storefront or product-based business. You are likely to have the expectation that you will begin earning income right away. Read more