My “Power of Less” self-challenge for June was to spend at least one hour a day on my own marketing, something I did successfully accomplish except for the week of June 21, when I was on vacation.
Paying yourself first with regard to financial savings gets you lots of benefits: namely, you have money in the bank that works for you (i.e. compound interest).
It’s the same for spending time on your own marketing every day. During the month of June I managed to write four articles for other industry blogs, add new case studies to my own site, update my blogs, and send out my e-newsletters. I also sent out a promo email for my Marketing Opportunity Audit.
The result? Increased traffic and calls / emails for possible projects.
And, because I went on vacation, I was able to take a step back and see my business from the 50,000 foot perspective — and came away with a few new ideas for generating income.
All in all, a wonderful self-challenge — and one I recommend to any freelancer / consultant.
Now, I just have to keep up the hour a day marketing habit!
On my last blog post, Lesley Peters asked how I manage to get my case studies together for my DH Communications Website.
This is a an excellent question.
I actually begin thinking about the case study before I’ve even been awarded a project. Here are the steps:
1. I write really detailed proposals that include a situation analysis, scope of work, objectives / goals, timelines, terms, and use of data / results in my own marketing.
The situation analysis is the heart of the proposal as it explains what challenges the prospective client is facing, what they’ve done about it in the past, which tactics I’m recommending and why — plus the desired results.
2. Once I’m awarded the project, I do the work and then begin monitoring results. Sometimes it can take a few months to see results with things like SEO or social media.
3. Once the project is complete, I ask for a LinkedIn recommendation and then add it to my site’s testimonial pages. Once I can see the client has achieved the agreed-upon results, I ask if it’s ok if I write about the project on my site.
4. I then use the information contained in the situation analysis of my proposal and add in the results. Sometimes I update older case studies of ongoing clients with current information. For example, one client just received a **really large** order from an oversees company who found his site via search. This was a “woo hoo!” moment for sure and totally unexpected.
The key to case studies is to have the final result in mind when you quote a project — and to “prime the pump” so to speak by incorporating into the proposal the fact that you’ll want to post data / results once the project is done.
I also highly recommend that all consultants / freelancers get Alan Weiss’ book, “How to Write a Proposal that’s Accepted Every Time.” This book completely changed how I do proposals, and while not all of my proposals are accepted, a good number of them are. This book also showed me how to increase my project fees. (The secret: focus on results.)
It’s June 9 today and so far, I’ve kept to my challenge of working on my own marketing one hour a day five days a week.
Currently I’m working on beefing up the Case Studies section of my DH Communications site. I changed my messaging back in January from B2B marcom consulting and copywriting to “Helping B2B companies get found in Google.”
This is because in the last two years, the bulk of my work has been with small B2B businesses who want Website overhauls. These are companies that need help with messaging, branding, SEO, content creation and social media.
However, my old site didn’t communicate this message effectively, and while my new site does the job nicely, it was lacking current examples of my work.
Now, why did I launch my new site without case studies? Because I knew if I didn’t launch, I would never get around to writing them. And of course, even with the site live I still lagged.
This marketing challenge has lit a fire under my butt to get the job done. I’m actually enjoying the process and have been reconnecting with clients to see how their sites are working for them. I’m getting some nice replies and people are thanking me for contacting them.
If you’re following this challenge, what do you think of it? Has it inspired you to do something similar? (It does feel weird, I must admit, to go public with something like this. I feel like I’m airing my marketing sins. )
I’ve not had a hard time with making exercise a priority. I started running as a freshman in high school when I took up cross country and never looked back.
I jogged and then walked through my pregnancy and trained for a marathon when my son was very young by pushing him all those miles in his baby jogger — and this was up and down hilly terrain!
When I had to give up running due to bad knees and back, I started working out at the gym. I’m in better shape now than I was 20 years ago.
I’ve found that if I want to achieve a certain fitness goal, I have to make time for exercise — no matter what else is going on in my life.
This means that I do get up at 4:30 AM to get to the gym by 5:00 or I that I squeeze in a workout between work and making dinner no matter how exhausted I am.
As the Nike slogan says, “I just do it.”
Making time for my own marketing works the same way. It doesn’t really matter how much client work I have, or that I need to do my accounting, or that my desk is full of clutter that needs to be dealt with.
Marketing, like exercise, is important.
Exercising regularly means I enjoy excellent health and a fit body. Marketing my business on a daily basis means I continually bring in new business without suffering “feast or famine.”
And like exercise, marketing takes real discipline. Even though I get my butt to the gym at least four days a week, I still fight that voice in my head that says, “You can take a break today. You’ve worked hard. You deserve an hour to just sit and eat cheesy poofs and read a good book.”
When I hear that voice, I quickly change my clothes and high-tail it to the gym. I’m always glad I did.
I hear the same voice with regard to spending time on my own marketing. “You can skip today,” the sly voice says. “Your billable hours are filled for the month. You don’t really need to make those phone calls or write those blog posts.”
I learned this week that when I hear that voice, I need to double-down and get my butt in gear.
And despite the siren call of “the voice,” I did spend at least one hour per day this week working on my marketing. It felt really good. And you know what? Within 48 hours of making this my new habit for June, I became fully booked for June and half of July.
If you’ve taken up the challenge with me, what were your results?
I’m a huge fan of Leo Babauta, author of The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential, in Business and in Life and the publisher of the Zen Habits blog.
One strategy that Leo recommends in achieving the life you want is to make a list of what you want to change with regard to your life — and then focusing on changing or implementing one new habit per month.
I initially made a list of bad habits I have and half-heartedly tried to change a couple. But nothing stuck.
That’s because I wasn’t inspired by them and the pay-off was too small. I already exercise five days a week, I’m not overweight, I eat my fruits and veges, and I actually do a pretty good job of separating my work and personal life.
But I have one honking huge habit I’d like to change . . . I’d like to put my marketing first instead of last (or never). Before client work. Every day.
Like many freelancers and consultants, I use the same tired excuses for not doing my own marketing:
1. Billable work comes first.
2. I don’t have time.
3. I’m the shoemaker’s daughter.
4. Marketing is hard.
5. I have so many ideas I don’t know what to do first.
So, to make this new habit “stick,” I’m following Leo’s advice and posting it here. My goal is to work on my marketing at least one hour every day five days a week.
It’s a huge goal for me and one that will take some work. But the pay-off for me will be huge.
If you’re struggling with finding time for your own marketing, why don’t you join me?
I’ll keep you posted on my progress. If I don’t post anything here during the month, you’ll know I’m not keeping my goal!
I’ve been operating under a big secret for over eight years now.
No, I’m not a convicted felon.
Here’s my big secret . . . I stop working every day at 3:00.
There — I’ve finally outed myself.
I kept this a secret for a long time because I wanted to look “corporate” and “hard working” to my clients — especially since I used to work at home. I wasn’t one of those slipper-clad, PJ-wearing home-based workers, no, not I.
I was (and still am) a Professional.
Yet every day at 3:00 you’d find me slinking to my car in order to pick up my son from school and then begin my Mom shift.
For years I operated under time-clock induced guilt, which was compounded when I would discover voice mails left at 3:47, 4:24, or 5:06. What did people think that I wasn’t at my desk to answer the phone? Did they guess I wasn’t working?!
Once I moved into my rented office, I would forward my land line calls to my cell phone. Only then I would get calls from clients while waiting in the carpool line — and would quietly shush my son as he climbed into the car. He knew the drill having been well trained from infancy. Ha!
But then I read Timothy Ferriss’ book, The 4-Hour Work Week. Ferriss says the 40-hour, 9-5 work week is arbitrary. I mean, really, who decided we all have to work 9 – 5 (or 8-6 or whatever it is we all work these days)?
I started realizing that working 6:30 AM to 3:00 PM every day was indeed a full day of work — and why did I need to make people think I worked some standard “shift”?
It was then I got really daring — I decided to take Fridays off after reading The Big Moo. By Friday mornings, I’m pretty much fried. The idea of taking a day off to do nothing but recharge sounded really appealing.
I’ve taken the last five off and let me just say, I love it and highly recommend it.
A few weeks later I read this blog post from HubSpot’s CEO Brian Halligan on how HubSpot has done away with its vacation policy. Why did an employee have to submit a debit for weekday time off, asked Halligan, but not submit a credit for time worked on a Sunday?
That made a lot of sense. Here I was feeling guilty about cutting out at 3:00 PM but not feeling guilty when I checked email at 8:30 PM or wrote blog posts on Sunday mornings.
That was when I decided to come clean. I changed my “Contact Me” page to reflect my “new” hours and decided to celebrate the fact that I’m a morning person and get more done before 11:00 AM than most people do in an entire day.
What do you think? Should freelancers and consultants work the same hours as their clients — or does it not matter anymore?
The number one mistake is getting a site “on the cheap” from one of those all-in-one services.
Lots of companies today will sell you the tools for getting a Website up and running in a matter of hours . . . Quickbooks, GoDaddy, YellowPages.com, etc.
This services do look attractive: they’re inexpensive, they offer you templates you can easily modify, and you get a packaged deal: template, hosting, domain registration and heck, even canned content.
The problem is that with some of these services, you do not own your Website, its content, or even your domain name.
What are some cost-effective alternatives?
1. WordPress — If I were just starting out today and had to build a site, I’d go with WordPress, hands-down. WordPress is an open source platform that’s free. You download the program to your Webhost’s server, then hire a WordPress specialist to either modify an existing WordPress theme or create a custom theme for you.
I’m such a fan of WordPress that I moved both of my existing sites into the program — and have never looked back.
Tips:
Don’t go cheap and use the standard WordPress theme (boring and ugly).
Don’t attempt to modify WordPress yourself. Using WordPress to create your own content is easy; setting up a custom template is not. I recommend finding a highly competent WordPress designer. (Not all Web designers know WordPress, as I learned the hard way). I personally use Cre8d Design based in New Zealand.
Use WordPress to solve existing challenges. With WordPress, you can modify the underlying code to make it do what you want plus incorporate plugins and widgets.
When I moved my DH Communications site into WordPress, for example, I wanted to eliminate having to manually post HTML versions of my newsletter online, I wanted breadcrumb navigation, and I wanted custom sidebars for some of the pages. Cre8d Design made it happen (I sure as hell could not have done it!).
2. Hosting — You can find hundreds of low-cost services that will host your Website for less than $100 a year. I’ve even used some of them to host my blog — much to my dismay.
Problems included down servers (meaning my blog was inaccessible for long periods of time), too many Websites at one IP address, again making my site inaccessible and/or slow to load, and very poor customer service.
In addition, some Web hosting services, such as Earthlink, aren’t WordPress compatible.
I now use and highly recommend MediaTemple. Cost is $200 per year but worth it. Support is excellent as is the Control Panel interface. Plus, it’s WordPress compatible.
3. Domain name registration — I highly recommend that you purchase your own domain names or URLs versus letting an agency, Web designer, or “all in one” company do it for you.
Purchasing domain names yourself means you’re assured that you own them.
Should you purchase all domain name extensions, i.e. domainname.net, domainname.biz, domainname.org, etc.? It depends. If you have a domain name that’s similar to an existing company name, you might want to claim all domain extensions in order to secure your brand.
Other people also purchase versions of their company names that include hyphens, no hyphens, misspellings, abbreviations, etc. It’s really up to you and your budget.
I do recommend that you purchase your personal name, i.e. I own diannahuff.com, your company name, and if possible, domain names that describe your service.
I highly recommend GoDaddy for managing domains. They have an easy-to-use domain manager interface, making it easy to see when domains are up for renewal. Plus, they’re relatively inexpensive and offer “premium” add-ons, such as domain privacy. When someone checks Who.Is, for example, they won’t see your name and address, an important consideration for some people.
“Wait a minute,” I can hear you thinking. “You’ve just given me three separate services to manage something that I can do much more easily and cheaply with an all-one-service.” Yes, it’s true — the services I’ve outlined here will cost more in the short-term.
But in the long-run, you’ll have a Website that you own and control 100%. And that, my friends, is worth all the money you would have “saved,” and then some when you learn you’ll have to “jail break” your Website from an all-in-one service.
I’ve heard and read lots of commentary about Tim Ferriss’ book, The 4-Hour Work Week, and what I heard made me believe I really didn’t need to read it.
I really have no desire to work / live in another country or sail around the world or anything of that nature.
And, I sold information products for over a year and realized that I really didn’t like doing that, either. (Part of Ferriss’ plan for “freeing” yourself includes developing a product or products you can sell.)
My ambitions are more modest — I want more time with my son, and I want to take Fridays off.
My son has become a teenager and while you’ll find lots of debate about the pros and cons of being a stay-at-home mom when your children are younger, it’s always been my belief that kids need you more when they go out into the world and confront complex life choices.
I’m not sure what got me to read Ferriss’ book. Maybe it’s because the revised version with the bright orange cover jumped off the Borders bookshelf and into my hands.
I started reading it on a Saturday afternoon and couldn’t put it down. I read all the way through and realized hat Ferriss gives you a plan of action for developing the life you really want — whether it’s living in Bora Bora six months out of the year or finding a way to take Fridays off.
The key to living the life you want is to eliminate and delegate those tasks that keep you from achieving what you really want. For me, that meant finding ways to eliminate the day-to-day minutia of running a business and a household.
The other key to Ferriss’ plan rests on questioning the status quo — do you *really* need to work 40, 50, or 60 hours a week? Conventional wisdom holds that the harder you work, the more successful you’ll be.
“Work harder” usually translates into “work more hours.”
However, “work harder” can also be translated into, “Work harder to find ways to work smarter so that you work fewer hours.”
Since reading The 4-Hour Work Week, I’ve managed to eliminate much of the junk that fills my inbox, get Basecamp up and running in order to better manage projects, move almost all of my software applications to cloud-based applications so that I can access them from anywhere, train myself to “batch” tasks, and work with my virtual assistant to help me learn how to delegate tasks to her — so that I can free myself up to think about how to get better results for my clients.
The result? I’ve taken the last three Fridays off. In fact, I spent last Friday walking the Freedom Trail in Boston with my son. It was a gorgeous spring day — the kind where the sky fills your senses and the spring air blows thrilling little breezes that caress your skin.
We walked the city, looked at people and historic buildings, and ate candy while sitting at Faneuil Hall.
At the end of the day, despite all his grumbling and moaning about having to “walk all day” and “being bored,” he said, “Thanks, Mom. I had a great day.”
It was in that moment that I realized that I would always remember this day with him — but I would never remember the day if I had worked.
And that my friends is why you need to read The 4-Hour Work Week. What do you want to achieve and what’s been keeping you from achieving it?
A few weeks ago I watched the 212 Extra Degree video on YouTube. The message of the inspirational video — that success comes with just a little bit of extra effort — stuck with me.
I found myself looking for little ways in my day-to-day life to “turn up the heat” a notch — to go from 211 degrees to 212 degrees. Surprisingly, these little things were pretty easy to find.
For example, instead of getting up at 5:00 AM — or 5:15 or 5:30 — I started getting up at 4:30 AM. And instead of putzing around the house and reading emails on my iPhone, I showered, ate breakfast, and went straight to my office. This put me at my desk at 6:00 AM (versus 7:00 or 7:30 AM).
An earlier start gave me more time to think and accomplish the “big” tasks for the day. The earlier start has also made me much more focused, and I’m finding I’m accomplishing a whole lot more.
Too often, I think, we tell ourselves we can’t be successful because ______________________ (fill in the blank). I’ve proven to myself that all it takes is just a little bit of extra effort — that one degree — to make a real difference in how I approach my life and my work.
Try it and see what you think.
(One caveat: A pan of boiling water will run dry so it’s also equally important that you recharge yourself in order to have plenty of energy to sustain your 212 degree focus.)
A marketing and copywriting consultant to banks and other small businesses, Patrice Robertie, principal of Acorn Advertising, is also married to the foremost backgammon expert in the world, Bill Robertie.
I first met Patrice a few years ago at a New England Direct Marketing (NEDMA) event — and was delighted to learn that she was one of my favorite commentators on a blog we both read regularly.
Patrice knew her husband’s Website, The Gammon Press, needed some work, but she wasn’t sure which steps to take first. Because she is a marketer, Patrice understood the value of developing a Website that increased sales, but she didn’t understand the technical side of online marketing — i.e. search engine optimization (SEO), shopping carts and the like.
Patrice decided to take advantage of my Strategic Marketing Coaching Clinic. The heart of the Coaching Clinic is a comprehensive audit coupled with recommended changes based on the client’s goals. In Patrice and Bill’s case, they wanted to increase sales of Bill’s backgammon books and products.
Before doing the Website and SEO audit, I had no idea that Bill Robertie was *the* Bill Robertie, backgammon expert. (He’s also a top-ranked poker player — you might see him on TV.)
Learning about Bill and studying the Gammon Press Website, I noticed that while Bill had dozens of articles that mentioned him or were written by him, many of these articles didn’t link back to his Gammon Press site. Bill even had a Wikipedia page written about him — again with no link to his site!
In addition, when you typed his name into Google, The Gammon Press site didn’t show up (for various reasons). Clearly Bill needed to take advantage of his name and his expertise.
At the end of the audit, I had 18 changes Patrice could implement to make the site rank better in the search engines as well as improve the visitor experience once someone landed on the site.
The Gammon Press Home Page — Before
The Clinic includes a one hour call to go over all findings; after the call, Patrice took her list of “to dos” and set to work. According to Patrice, it took her three months to implement the recommended changes. The process took this long because she was also learning about SEO, how to write title tags, and analyzing the data from Google Analytics.
Changes to the Gammon Press site included:
* Redirecting links to the Gammon Press site
* Signing up for Google Analytics, adding it to the site, and learning how to read the data
* Performing low-level SEO, researching keywords, and writing meta tags
* Adding text to the home page
* Removing dead products, updating all content
* Adding a coaching page
* Adding a shopping cart
* Playing up Bill’s name as the recognized pro backgammon and poker player that he is
Patrice also updated Bill’s Wikipedia page, wrote a bio for him for his Amazon author page, and signed up for Google Alerts in order to track when Bill is mentioned in the media.
None of these to-dos involved wholesale design changes, although Patrice did work with Sonora DesignWorks to implement the mostly text changes and to add new pages and the shopping cart. (Patrice now uses Contribute, a content management system that allows her to make simple text changes to the site.)
The result of all this work? Traffic that converts. Bill is now getting three to five sales a week from the site. In addition, he’s now getting calls from people who want backgammon coaching. According to Patrice, he’s done nothing to promote this service except to add a new coaching page to the site.
Even more important, when you type Bill’s name into Google, The Gammon Press site is now on the first page of Google — and while his Wikipedia page usually ranks higher, this page now has a link back to the Gammon Press site, making it easy to get targeted traffic to the site.
The Gammon Press Home Page — After
Sums up Patrice, “Bill and I knew that the site needed work, but we didn’t want to redesign it. However, I also wasn’t sure what to do it with it, which is why we didn’t take action sooner. I had been following Dianna for months and knew that while she is very technically-savvy, she also sees the big picture. Her advice to play up Bill — because he is a recognized pro — was spot on. It was just the objective advice we both needed. My husband is delighted with the changes to his site, and now I can take what I learned and apply it to my site and my clients’ sites. It was a win-win for everyone.”
Thank you, Patrice, and thank you Bill. You both are awesome, and it was a real honor to work with you. I’m so happy to see your success!
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