Category Archives: Marketing

November 11, 2014

Does your brand represent your business and you the way it needs to?

By Lisa Nelson | Marketing, Website

A brand is more than your logo. Your brand is the experience your customers have with you and your business that leads them to buy. Your brand is determined by the reason or reasons why you do what you do…your values and beliefs.

This in turn influences everything encompassing your business, including the visual aspect of your business. Your logo, your colors, your website layout, your handouts, your fonts, your image choices, your communication style, etc.

A clearly defined brand will allow you to more easily connect with your target client and make it easy for them to say “yes” to working with you.

It’s time for a rebrand.

I started the Health Practices Online branch of my business back in 2010. Businesses naturally evolve and mine has changed significantly in the past five years…in ways I love! I’m long overdue for my visual brand to catch up to the service and experience I actually provide to clients.

Creativity and flushing out ideas from a different point of view….not exactly my strengths. Do you remember Kristen Domingue from the September event Your Wellness Business: From Practice to Profit? Happy to say I signed up with one of her programs to receive one-on-one insight into the changes I needed to make with my visual brand to better connect with my ideal client.

My education and background stems from being a dietitian. I worked hard to obtain my dietetic registration and I’m proud to be a part of the health field. It’s a natural fit for a significant number of my clients to also be health professionals. However, a majority of my clients do not come from a health profession.

I’m blessed that my client roster fills mostly via word of mouth referrals and returning clients. But imagine the impression someone gets when they visit my website or receive my newsletter and they do not work in the field of health. It screams THIS IS NOT FOR YOU!

Hence, the reason it’s time to rebrand to ensure I connect with both health and wellness professionals, as well as some of the other industry I enjoy serving.

The rebranding process.

Have you ever done a rebrand? I’ve been in business several years now and didn’t really know the right way to figure out the branding piece. I want to give you a highlight of the steps in Kristen’s branding process so if you are in a similar position you have some guidance on where to start.

October 2, 2014

2 Tools to Discover Relevant Content to Share with Your Fans and Followers

By Lisa Nelson | Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media

After (or even before) you set up your social media profiles you need to develop a strategy for how you will utilize social media to grow your business. Part of the strategy is to implement content marketing where you are consistently and regularly sharing your knowledge, highlighting your area of expertise so when they need the service you provide they know exactly who to contact… you.

One overwhelming piece that goes with managing social media profiles is the amount of content you must produce. For example, the Twitter platform moves quickly. Some recommend you share one or more tweets every hour. Facebook and Google+ are more reasonable at around two updates daily, with LinkedIn being once a day… BUT this is day after day, week after week, month after month…. It can get to be overwhelming.

You can share great content with your fans and followers that is not always your own. You will still become recognized as an expert in your area, but you will also be recognized as a valuable resource.

So, how do you find great, engaging content that is quick and easy to share with your fans and followers?

#1 ContentGems

I’ve been using ContentGems for several months now and it has worked well for what I need. ContentGems monitors online sources, including news sources, blogs, and social media accounts, and will filter results based on keywords you set. You can then scroll the results and schedule the updates to send directly from ContentGems or using a third party platform, such as Hootsuite.

In case it’s useful, I’ve recorded a quick video showing how I use it:

August 27, 2014

Are Your Blog Posts Fully Optimized?

By Lisa Nelson | Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media

Content marketing is an effective technique for driving traffic to your website. This technique involves the creation and consistent distribution of valuable, relevant content to attract a specific audience (i.e. your target market).

The foundation of content market is, well, the content. The blog posts you write.

Are your blog posts fully optimized?

Here are 10 tips for optimizing your blog post BEFORE you publish it and begin content marketing.

Enticing Headline
Your headline should include your keyword(s) for the blog post, so it is very clear to search engines the information contained within the post. Plus you want it to contain the actual words and phrases that people enter into google when they do a search on the particular topic.
URL Contains Keywords
The URL for the web page (blog post) is one of the first pieces “crawled” by search engines to determine page content. Make sure it includes your keyword for the article. If you are implementing #1 above, then it’s an easy rule of thumb to make sure your url is always the title of your blog post.
Keywords in Copy
Do not “stuff” your article with keywords. You do want to include keywords, but they should naturally flow within your copy.
Keywords in meta-description
A meta description is an HTML attribute providing a concise summary of the blog post content. It is most often used by search engines and displayed in search results. See the below image. Continue Reading…

June 24, 2014

5 Steps To Effectively Use Content Marketing to Grow Your Business

By Lisa Nelson | Marketing, Social Media

1. Know Who You Want to Attract
Before you can create content that appeals to your target market (and potential clients), you need to know what they are struggling with, what they want to know, and how they want it. Do they want to read, listen, watch, etc? (Always good to simply ask your current clients and subscribers to learn the answer.) Once you know what they want and how they want it…deliver. If you seek clients dealing with food allergies, provide content relevant to this audience. Don’t be all over the place in your content generation…one day food allergies, the next about dieting, and a third about foods to reduce stress. Your target audience is dealing with food allergies, be consistent in what you right about to highlight yourself as someone who specializing in this area.

2. Be consistent with your publishing.
Certain pieces of content imply different levels of consistency when it comes to creating and delivering content. How often you want to publish may impact the form of content marketing that will work best for you. For example, consistency is expected with blogs, newsletters, magazines, and podcasting. Consistency is wise, but not required when it comes to videos, ebooks, webinars, and infographics. If you know you will be inconsistent, go with content where consistency does not hinder results, such as guest blog posting.

3. Leverage audiences of others.
Guest blog posting is a great example of how to leverage someone else’s audience. Someone else has taken the time to grow a following. If you provide a guest post/article that includes where to learn more about you, this is one strategy to grow your own following. Keep in mind, whatever content you provide to someone else needs to be of value to their audience…they are not going to accept just anything. Another example would be to teach a class hosted by someone else and to someone else’s audience.

February 25, 2014

3 Must Have’s for a Website to Generate Income

By Lisa Nelson | Email Marketing, Marketing, Website

Don’t think of your website as a glorified business card. Think of your website as your business hub. All online marketing efforts should funnel into your website, BUT when that traffic comes in you need to some key components to convert sales and generate income.

Yes, you do want an attractive website with a good design. However, if you want to make sales online you need to consider more than just text and images.

Blog — Blogs are an easy way for you to highlight your expertise while sharing valuable tips and resources your target market seek. Consistently providing new content via a blog keeps both your target market engaged and google regularly scanning your site.

Video — Blogs can be text or video format. Video is a more powerful way to connect with a potential client. It allows a relationship to grow faster because you are providing a face and voice for your potential client to connect with. Plus, YouTube searches are at times as high as Google searches.

July 19, 2013

How to Have a “Bare Bones” Online Presence to Market ‘in person’ Appointments

By Lisa Nelson | Marketing, Website

I was contacted a few weeks ago by an individual looking to discuss his online presence. He had a website set up quite awhile back that was eventually discontinued due to lack of results….his main goal being to increase in person appointments.

As is often the case, budget was tight so looking for the most cost effective methods for using the virtual world to grow his in person practice.

Let’s talk “bare bones”…

1. Marketing plan

First, before you do ANYTHING, you need to have a marketing plan. There is no point in putting up anything online if you do not know how you will use it. This is not a “build and they will come” scenario. If you set up a website, you need a plan for driving traffic to that website.

Also, consistency is key online. You can’t just start a virtual presence (let’s say a Facebook page), use it a week or two and then drop off. Building a following online that leads to in person clients takes time. Have a plan!

2. Collect names and emails

Most people will not buy or schedule an appointment the first time they come across you on the web. You need to collect their name and email address so you can follow up with them. You need more than “sign up for my newsletter” to accomplish this. Think….how much email do you get? Do you really want to sign up for more in exchange for nothing? No. You need to provide your potential clients with an enticing offer that they just can’t pass up. This might be a tip sheet, free report, audio exercise/training, video series….anything they get in exchange for giving you their name and email. This “freebie” you offer needs to not only be of value to your target market, but also should highlight your expertise so they start thinking of you as the go to expert when they are ready to purchase.

June 22, 2012

Are you collecting names and email addresses?

By Lisa Nelson | Email Marketing, Marketing

Do you need to have a fully functioning website before you start collecting the names and emails of individuals interested in your services?

No.

The sooner you start collecting contact information for individuals interested in what you have to offer, the better.

When marketing your services online it takes time to foster a relationship. Potential clients need to get to know and trust you. An offline relationship can grow much faster because face to face communication allows you to learn so much faster who someone is, do you like them, and do you trust them. Online it takes many different points of contact, or “touches”, before someone feels confident working with you. This is all part of your email marketing strategy.

An aside: The above point is why video is becoming so popular and such a useful marketing tool. While it’s still not the same as face to face communication, it does allow someone to see and hear you. This is an invaluable way to let potential clients learn who you are faster.

Since it takes time to foster a working relationship online, the sooner you begin developing these relationships the better for your business goals long term. Waiting until a website or program is complete and fully functioning isn’t necessary. All you need is a landing page that offers visitors an “irresistible offer”, so they provide you with their name and email in order to receive the “freebie”.

May 28, 2012

Are you hosting teleclasses to market your services?

By Lisa Nelson | Marketing

Regularly hosting teleclasses gives you an opportunity to more closely interact with your audience. It’s a way to more quickly develop a relationship with those who follow you on social media or subscribe to your newsletter. Not only do they get to learn the great content you share, they get to know who you are as a person.

Here are three options for hosting teleclasses:

1. Conference line – This is the simplest method and least expensive. A good choice if you are just getting started with teleclasses. There are many free conference call services, such as http://freeconferencepro.com and http://www.freeconferencecalling.com. When selecting a service, just make sure it provides you with a recording of the call the is downloadable in mp3 format.

2. Livestream – I’ve seen many more business owners promoting livestream calls these days. It used to be that simple teleclasses providing a simple phone connection was the standard, but this is slowly evolving. It appears people don’t just want to hear your message, they want to see you. Livestream allows participants to see you as you host the call. Many times this can allow for higher energy calls with more interaction. You can not only share content, but listeners can engage with you and each other via a chat box.

Page 2 of 212

Contact