Marketing Yourself and Your Business

by Melinda Coker

I recently took a two-day refresher course on * Pay-Per-Click * Internet advertising, and it got me to thinking about this month's topic of marketing.

In a former life, I was a career counselor.  You may notice that I can relate that topic to nearly anything. :-)  Anyway, I helped people figure out what they wanted to do with their lives and then taught them how to find work in their particular field of interest.

That whole arena was basically teaching people how to market themselves.  Many of them were college students, and I encouraged them to volunteer, or get an internship or even get a part-time job in the industry they were evaluating.  Why?  Well, it would help them learn whether they even liked that field, but more importantly, if they DID, it gave them some experience to put on their resume'.

What else did I teach them?  I taught them to research their chosen industry.  I taught them to network with people in that industry.  I taught them to interview and to dress appropriately.  We planned events and workshops to help them.  Ultimately, what they were doing was putting together a package so they could MARKET themselves to prospective employers, or clients, if they were going into business for themselves.  Often, the way they showcased all of this preparation was through their resume' and their job search skills.

As a business person, when you are trying to HIRE someone, don't you look for a person who has prepared themselves?  Don't you look for someone who knows something about your industry and your company?  Don't you look for someone who has experience in your field?  Don't you look for someone who is creative and well-spoken?  Someone with initiative and drive?

How do you find these people?

The ones who take the time to come by and tell you about themselves in light of how they can help  YOU and YOUR business are usually impressive candidates.  They've got to understand you (their target market) and appeal to some of your concerns and then they've got to tell you how they can HELP.

That's marketing.  You as a business owner or professional do it all the time.  Some of you were brought up to think that you shouldn't have to do it.  People should just know that you have excellent skills or products to help them.

That would be like a job candidate just sitting in the employment office waiting for someone to find him and offer him a job.

Now, if that same job seeker doesn't really understand the marketing process, he may just write up a generic resume' and broadcast it out to every business he can think of - in any industry or for any position.  Most of you have received a resume' or application like that and you probably threw it in the trash, UNLESS you were desperate and didn't have any other applicants.

How do you market yourself and your business?

Sometime using the broadcast media such as radio, television, or print you'll send your generic message to anyone and everyone hoping that there will be someone who is ready to buy what you're offering.

How can you send a more targeted message to those people who might be interested in you or your product?  You can start out by thinking about your favorite customers.  You can then do some research as to what THEY care about and what THEY need.  This may cause you to get more training or to make changes in your services or your product line.

A second step after researching your target market is to build a web site that will answer the questions and concerns for your target market that you uncovered during your research.

But, you'll have to do more than build a web page.  You'll have to get those targeted potential customers to find it.  You can do that by talking about it to all of your current customers.  Let them know what you're doing (networking).  There may be other services or products you offer that they don't even know about.

Once you've developed a good web site and told your current clients and customers about it, you may want to think about advertising it through the search engines.  There are millions of people every day getting on the Internet and looking for information or for products or services they WANT to purchase.

They are ready to buy and if they can't find you, they'll buy from someone else.

Optimizing your site for search engines is a good thing to do, but the search engines change their rules so often that many times all you can do is chase a top organic (free) listing with them.  A faster way to get your message seen is through something referred to in the industry as PPC or Pay-Per-Click.  Those are the sponsored messages you will find on nearly all of the search engines.  When a customer decides to purchase something and puts in a key word to find it, wouldn't it be great if your site came up so that he could see it?

When you develop a Pay-Per-Click campaign, you'll need to find the best keywords and keyword phrases that your target market might use.  Then you'll have to write a short ad copy to make sure those who are looking for your product or service will click on your site.  And, finally, you'll need to be sure that the landing page you are sending your PPC visitors to, can actually get them to take some kind of action, whether it be to purchase a product, call and make an appointment, or just sign up for your newsletter or report.

Remember, marketing is nothing more than offering people a choice of providers - offering them the information so they can make the best choice of a provider for themselves.  

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