“I have a great website and publish a regular blog,” my client complained, “but I’m not getting any clients from it. The only new client I got this month was a referral from a friend. What am I doing wrong?”

It’s a common complaint of self-employed professionals that they spend a great deal of time and money on Internet marketing and social media with minimal results. You build an attractive website, launch an ezine or blog, set up a couple of social media profiles, and maybe try a Google AdWords campaign. But for all that effort, not much seems to come of it. What’s going on? Read more

It’s only natural to emulate successful people. You’d like to copy their success, so it seems it would make sense to copy their approach to sales and marketing. But modeling your marketing after the gurus in your field may not get you where they are. Read more

We all know that getting a referral from a satisfied customer is one of the best ways to get new clients. The problem is this can be a long, slow process. But using social media can help speed it up. Read more

Does it seem like you spend much of your marketing time sending out messages that never get received? You call a prospective client to follow up on an email or letter you sent, and they say they never got it. You leave someone a voice mail message you’re sure will get their attention, but they never call you back. Read more

There’s a lot of talk from Internet marketing gurus about how to drive more traffic to your website. Some will suggest you try to get a higher page rank on Google by optimizing your site for search engines. Others preach using pay-per-click advertising like Google AdWords to attract streams of new visitors. Read more

Many aspects of business are driven by numbers, but marketing often seems to be all about words. Whether it’s naming your business or brand, coming up with a tag line, or writing copy for your website, you probably spend a big chunk of your marketing time trying to find just the right words to use.

While you’re busy hunting for the perfect words, your business cards don’t get printed, your web copy doesn’t get posted, and your marketing emails don’t get sent. When you don’t have adequate marketing tools in place, you don’t market. No marketing; no clients. And all for the want of a few good words!

For major projects like a website, brochure, or postal direct mail campaign, hiring a copywriter may be a wise investment. But there are also steps you can take to improve your own ability to communicate about your business in writing. Here are four strategies you can use to break your marketing writer’s block without breaking the bank:

Read the full post

Every independent professional should have a website, an ezine or blog, and an email marketing strategy, right? If you’re not taking maximum advantage of web technology to market your professional services, you are behind the times, and missing out on huge opportunities. At least that’s what most marketing experts would have you believe. Read more

The six marketing strategies for professional services described in Get Clients Now! are listed in order of effectiveness from most to least: direct contact, networking, public speaking, writing and PR, promotional events, and advertising. Seeing this list for the first time, you may wonder where the Internet fits in. Read more

How many times already today has someone tried to sell you something? The ads come in by email, postal mail, fax, radio, magazines, newspapers, TV, and your web browser; the salespeople write you, call you, and approach you in the store or showroom. Read more

There’s more marketing hype published on the Internet in one day than P.T. Barnum generated in his lifetime. Like a worm swallowing its tail, the Internet marketing beast feeds mostly on itself. Read more