Learn to Love Marketing AND Selling for Your Small Business

Can you market so well that you never have to sell? 

I saw that published once from a marketing guru. You can market so well that you'll never have to sell again.

Forget about it – that’s my opinion. As I wrote on my Running a Small Business blog, if you’re the owner of a small business then you have to sell either to customers or you have to sell your vision to employees and perhaps business partners.

So what if you’re scared to death about selling and you’re a consultant just starting out? Can you get enough referrals to generate business? Perhaps. But getting enough referral business to make a living is going to take a couple of years. 

You’ve got to be the one to make the sale. But don’t sweat it. 

Instead, click here to read this article on what helped me overcome my fear of selling. It’s brief but I trust it will be helpful for you.

The article was published on Yahoo! Finance.

Making sense of writing copy for a web site

Here’s how I broke out a proposal for a Business-to-Business client wanting to market their small business using a web site and improved web presence.

I simply made a list of how I go about my tasks to get the copy down:

1. Interview – a structured questionnaire to cull the info from the senior partners
2. Research – reading through 3 to 5 industry competitors and highlighting strong and weak copy
3. Site Map
4. Draft 1
5. Client Review
6. Draft 2
7. Final Revisions

I also broke out the pages. Most basic web sites need a few key landing pages with a headline, sub-head, and call to action.

• Home -- appx 75 to 150 words
• Services – appx 250 words
• About – appx 250 words
• Contact
• Industry News or Resource Page

Sites needing more content and pages can have those. However, professional service firms may choose instead to write downloadable white papers.

I’ll put together a series on developing your online presence and more about the interview process. That's a key area and worth focusing on.

I invite you to click here and visit my Right Touch Marketing site to learn about the web platform that's a great fit for Small to Medium-Sized Businesses.

My writing can expand your reach and marketing efforts

The content I write for clients can expand their reach and position them favorably in front of their target customers.

Recently, I rewrote the web copy for Redtop Coffee Shop.com on a project from Joltwise Marketing.

I interviewed the owners, wrote the web copy, and then used the additional material to write three articles on Examiner.com where I'm the LA Business News Examiner.

The Internet is a great way to leverage information. Copy written for websites can be re-written for online articles, guest blog posts, and even expanded into white papers or e-books.

When writing for the web, show readers how you solve the problems and challenges of your customers and why a reader should do business with you over the competition.