Mary Scott Nabers – Author Marketing Plan, Getting Government Contracts
Marketing Plan for Mary Scott Nabers
Event Promotion Tactics
Mary, I just completed promoting an event for Wizard of Ads Group called Marketing MasterClass. These activities were successful and I’d do to promote your events.
1) Chambers of Commerce – we got listed on the events pages and some email announcements to Chamber members without paying.
2) ImpactNews – got listed on the event calendar in multiple edition locations
3) Coffee News – got 4 free ads in trade for event tickets
4) Social Media– did invites to email contacts, Facebook contacts and LinkedIn contacts
I coordinated the logistics for the event including setup, attendee services, and speaker presentation tech, and taking video of the event.
Shortfalls(which I’d be looking to do better for your events)
-Publicity – we didn’t get media coverage even though I got us a sit down with Colin Pope the editor of Austin Business Journal. So developing better angles and hooks for media stories is key.
-Video – teaser videos to excite people about attending
-Email reminders – with cool teaser videos and compelling reasons to be there or massively miss out
Book Marketing
You’re at #315,918 Paid in Kindle Store rank and #127,287 in Books
Selling Books on Amazon is about
1) Customer Reviews
2) “Customers Who Bought This Also Bought” Section
3) Description Upgrades (yours is just plain text)
4) Likes
5) Tags
Of course, sales is the number 1 factor in moving higher and getting Amazon to promote and feature your book more.
There looks to be opportunity to improve your categories. Amazon allows you to choose 2 and these have a big impact on sales.
I’d be looking to improve the 5 areas listed above and check your categories to see what improvements could be made there to boost sales.
Author page – I can’t tell if you’ve setup your author page or not. There’s no photo there which is hurting your book. Also, if you have a blog or website this valuable content should be pulled into your Author page. There’s no bio in here for you either which hurts your credibility.
Sales Tactics
LinkedIn – I’m a power networker on LinkedIn. It’s a great way for direct contact with buying decision makers at companies. I’m versed in how to use LinkedIn for maximum impact. I’d bring this skillset to bear selling for you.
Direct Sales Experience – I’ve sold financial education products and seminars over the phone so would bring this experience to the table for you.
See more samples on this blog or hire Clint Evans to surge your profits.
Clint Evans’ Learnings from Promoting and Hosting the Wizard of Ads Group Marketing MasterClass
Clint Evans: I was looking forward to the Wizard of Ads Marketing MasterClass but also concerned.
We didn’t get the press and media coverage I was looking for to fill the room with top business owner prospects.
But we succeeded bringing a great group together despite this no media coverage setback.
I was relieved we had a packed house and the event went off without a hitch. We didn’t have any technical difficulties with the video or the audio.
The presenters were entertaining and also educational.
I learned a lot about hosting and promoting big-time professional events.
I now have a checklist of a lot of the required activities for an event run smoothly.
One tricky thing about this event was the location where it was hosted. The Wizard of Ads Group hosted this Marketing MasterClass on the campus of the Wizard Academy.
This is a very large and sprawling campus. So we required signage to point people in the right direction because most of the people had never been to the Wizard Academy.
So I had to get creative and use the backs of a couple of posters to draw arrows on. We didn’t have any stakes or anything to put them in the ground. So I ended up taping them onto the existing signage as a quick and dirty solution.
Also the logistics of the bathroom, where to set the video tripod, creating an impromptu sign-in sheet, and handling attendee requests like “where are the bathrooms” and where are the snacks and refreshments?” became clear.
What worked for promoting the event:
1) Personal invites
2) Event calendars on Austin business Journal and local chambers of commerce
3) Coffee News Ad
4) 3-person crew running the event
5) Local champions — without having a local champion with an extensive network of local contacts the event wouldn’t have worked. Keep this in mind if you’re running local training events or events of any kind.
What didn’t work:
1) We got zero media coverage
2) Cold calls — cold calls to businesses running radio ad campaigns in the Austin area got no attendees. We’re going back to the drawing board with our script and offer to make this stronger.
3) Presenters running over allotted time. The fix is to be very clear before the event. We tell the speakers exactly how long they have and their feet will be held to the fire on this.
4) Video reviews – we didn’t think to get video of the 1st thing attendees will implement upon returning to their business. It’s on the checklist to get video feedback from business owner attendees next time.
I’ve run and promoted some local smaller events before. But this was my first promotion of a big-time level event. I learned a lot about the logistics, processes, and promotion that’s effective to entice today’s time strapped business owner to attend a live training event.
I look forward to helping host and promote more of the Wizard of ads group marketing master classes went forward into 2013.
Recap of speakers and their training topics:
Jeff Sexton – What makes ad campaigns successful
Chuck McKay – A.P.E. = Advertising Performance Equation
Dave Young – How to Consistently Blog Even if You Don’t Have the Time
Ray Seggern – The Placebo Effect and the Henry Ford Effect Applied to Growing Your Business
Monica Ballard – Using Cirque Du Soleil Tactics to Write Compelling Ads
Adrian Van Zelfden – 4 Critical Factors Which Grow or Tank Your Small Business
Mike Slover – Ad Campaign Success Secrets
Peter Nevland – Livening Up Your Writing With Power Verbs
Adam Donmoyer – Using the Rhythm and Music of Language to Power the Profitability of Your Ad Campaigns
I had an hour long conversation today with Laura Kristina Stringer.
Social Media for local lead generation
She’s a nice older lady from Scandinavia who now lives in the United Kingdom. Her specialties are:
1) social media lead generation for small and local businesses
2) mobile websites and mobile app development for local businesses and international companies
On the side she builds websites and sells them on website auction marketplaces like Flippa.com.
She attaches a Facebook fan page to these websites and grows the fan following to the Facebook business page. She then sells the website and the Facebook business page as a packaged asset.
It’s quite an ingenious little system.
Clint Evans – Highlights from our conversation:
– American Struggles – She was having difficulty getting into the American market. I suggested changing the approach of her LinkedIn contacting as well as the subject lines of her e-mails.
– Lawyers were non-responsive to her marketing overtures
Big problem: her subject line sounded like every other marketing agency. Lawyers get hammered by marketing agencies with 7 to 20 e-mails per day. They get an additional 3 to 6 phone calls per day.
You must stand out to get their attention. Otherwise they hang up on you quickly or they never even open your e-mail and it gets deleted.
– I suggested she lead with value
She was contacting Craigslist advertisers who had poor ads. She had a decent template ad.
I suggested she customize that template ad for each advertiser. It would take her less than 5 minutes. But the business owner receiving it would think she took the time to do a custom job.
I instructed her to write in the e-mail “I give you permission to use this ad to generate leads right now. There are no copyright restrictions”. This is especially important when dealing with lawyers who think about this.
– Rising above the pack
Standout subject lines are more likely to get opened. But it is a numbers game. If she sends out 50 e-mails to lawyers she may get between 2 and 7 opens.
But by including a customized sample she’s far more likely to get a reply. These are prime prospects because their reply indicates they’re interested.
– Attachments are a no-no
I suggested she remove attachments because many e-mail providers filter out e-mails with attachments. She can customize the image, load it to a page on her site, then include that link for the lawyer to grab the customized ad and download it.
Feel free to take these strategies and use them for your own business benefit. Permission granted by Clint Evans.
Clint Evans – Beach Body Marketing Plan
Beach Body marketing plan. I designed this marketing plan for a couple who are almost 50. They’ve gotten stellar results with the Beach Body health and workout system. She reduced migraine headaches. He reversed diabetes, was taking like 20 medications and is now taking none. Their health results are fantastic. But they
didn’t know how to market the Beach Body system which gave them their health back and they believed in so much.
They wanted to share Beach Body with the world. But How? I told them their success story is hugely important.
Here’s the 4 Step Marketing plan for people to hear their amazing story, connect with them and see how Beach Body could also help their health.
Note: the marketing plan 2 1/4 MS Word pages
Kinkade 4-Step marketing plan
Note: I’d be willing to help host the presentations and provide you this marketing plan free. All I ask in return is the people signing up go on my list as well. I won’t attempt to sell them any Beach Body stuff because that’s your domain. I’ll sell them my books and website. Let me know if this is agreeable and you’d like to move forward working together.
Online Presentation – the Lynch Pin
Step 1 –> invite people to the presentation via:
- Email Contacts
- Former MLM’ers in your upline or downline
Step 2 –> Presentation
There are 3 main technology platforms which allow online presentations
1.
Free but show ads during presentation along the side of viewing area
http://l.anymeeting.com/homepage/
200 attendees for free or cheap
2.
Free for up to 25 attendees
http://www.meetingburner.com/index?page=signup-v2
Cheap plans for up to 1,000 attendees
3.
The Gold Standard online presentation platform
https://secure.citrixonline.com/commerce/buy;jsessionid=abcMhEkHedKMcgcKVu_Nt?execution=e1s1
up to 1,000 attendees
Many of these have 30 day trials.
I’d recommend starting with the free one for the first 2 or 3 presentations. Here’s why…you can “learn the ropes” and invite people to your presentation. Maybe only 2 or 3 people show for your first one. Maybe your 2nd presentation 20 people show.
You use the free platform to learn the process. You get to practice your presentation with a small number of people. This is very low risk.
Once you can get 20 or more people to attend your presentation then you can make the leap to your 30 day free trial. Work as hard as you can during the 30 days. If you’re making good money you can keep doing the process. Stay on the paid plan and do presentations.
If not, you can go back to the free presentation platform and further refine your invite process and presentation delivery until it’s making you good money. Then step up to the paid platform.
Step 3 –> Sign ups
Setup your registration page. This tells people what day and time, what they’ll learn and gives them a compelling reason they should take some time out of their day to actually show up live and listen.
You’ll want to connect this registration page to an email collection service. This way you can collect the names and emails of your registrants to follow-up and stay in contact with them over time.
Step 4 –> Follow-up
Alert them to new training material. Training material should include some call to action. To buy your stuff, join the Beach Body program or just like or share the training material with their friends.
Staying in contact with them is critical. Weave your own personality, personal story, and mainly where you started and the results you got using the Beach Body system. Talk about how long it took you from the time you started the Beach Body program.
And of course, give updates today. You started the program back in ____________ got fast results in only _____________ days. Now you’re still going strong and have __________ results 1 year later (or however long you’ve been in Beach Body).
Also, talk about your husband’s powerful results. He was on an insulin resistance, pre-diabetic, and diabetes downtrend so many Americans are currently on. They’ll identify with where he was and would love to have the improvement he’s achieved. They’ll be willing to test the system he used successfully.
The 49 pounds of weight loss he achieved is an added bonus. Melting fat and feeling more energized are further bonuses.
Also, you can talk about your son’s results. Talk about how your children’s health and eating habits have improved. Childhood obesity is a huge fear with mom’s everywhere.
[end suggested marketing plan]
Whether you’re in Beach Body or not you can put this simple and affordable marketing plan into play now. I give you my permission to use it!
Day 45 is finally here and it started out bright and early at 7 AM.
I didn’t even have time to get my customary meal 1 so all I had was some water, walnuts, and some sliced almonds. I had to be out the door and over to the office HQ at 8 AM because we are headed up north for a class that started at 9 AM.
So I picked up Andrew and we were off to the workshop. It was hosted by mortgage IQ and a realtor named Curtis Reddehase.
He went over some excellent information that pertains to real estate and what particularly caught my attention was when he talked about IDX solutions. There were a couple of plug-ins and software providers he liked and used.
We went over some of the new changes with the Google Farmer update and the things your site absolutely must do in order to rank high.
And he also said what activities to focus on which is worth your time.
Going after terms like “Austin real estate” are not nearly targeted enough to go after. There are also national big brand sites with lots of authority and trust rank already positioned for those. So it takes tons of effort just to get any traction.
There are many other terms and more ultra-local phrases that are far better to go after. Also relevance is the key.
Even if you have a small and new site, as long as you are the most relevant that is the most heavily weighted factor in the Google algorithm.
Steve made a few contacts including one who is looking to lease right now but wants to purchase up to a $2 million property within the next year. There’s also a client who wants to do a luxury lease and will probably buy within a year or two as well.
Andrew and I got back to the office HQ and did a bit of link building for the video we did for Rocky Creek. We also did some video responses to boost what it was doing.
We did some more work on the Shore Vista and self-guided home search videos. We ran into some problems but those will be cleared up tomorrow.
Blake got the new header graphic done and loaded. It looks clean and excellent.
I made a few more tweaks and modifications to the site including adding a privacy policy and putting Steve’s phone number in strategic places on the site so it’s easy to find.
I also set up our Adwords campaign using a boost ad.
When you have a Google places account and maps listings set up you can now do Adwords through that. Google manages all of the bids and the keywords that you’re going to be showing for.
All you have to do is choose what category you’re in as well as what your monthly budget is going to be.
They give you 3 levels of budget and tell you roughly how many clicks you’re going to get for that level of budget. I talked with Andre on the phone at Google and he called it “Adwords light”.
This was meant for business owners who have no experience in Adwords to be able to easily get involved in the platform and take advantage of its power. You don’t have any control over the keywords you will appear for but I’m testing it out to see how effective it will be.
I’m very excited to actually get something we can look at and start optimizing for.
Our video was now back on page 2 in the highest position it had ever been. It flirted with page 1 last night but is still being wiggled around in the results which is natural for a fairly new piece of content.
I also sent out the next video we did in our series to some friends to take a look at and give feedback on. I’ll post an update soon.
This is the end of the initial 45 days to freedom small business marketing challenge.
I hope you enjoyed these posts and learned a lot from them in terms of what it takes for daily activity to get your business rolling. If you have any questions leave comments below. Or just leave your feedback or suggestions.
I, Clint Evans, wish you well in all of your life’s endeavors and look forward to seeing you again either online or off-line.
Today started out around the regular time at 8 AM. I had to take care of some blogging and some reviews early this morning.
The goal was also to get a real state Adwords campaign up and running but that ended up not happening. I had to call Juan who does work with John to see about setting up a meeting for next week which we did for Tuesday at 11:30 AM.
There were also some modifications to the site which had to be done. AusTxHomes.com is coming around but still has a ways to go.
I put up a simple header graphic which was text. I got into Adobe and put a few updates on it.
I used a stroke, a drop shadow, and also a gradient overlay with the color burn which looked pretty decent.
This serves as a placeholder until our graphic designer Blake can get one designed that’s a better. You can see the newest one she designed over at AusTxhomes.com.
Then it was time to head over to the office HQ to see what the updates were and finish out the day’s work.
Steve made some contacts because he attended a big session debating the Nutty Brown Cafe. Homeowners across the street want to get it shut down because the music is too loud and keeps them awake at night.
Unfortunately for them, Nutty Brown Cafe has done everything legally and is commercially zoned so they really don’t have a legal leg to stand on.
But Steve was able to make some contacts there and get his name out as a realtor.
Then I worked with Steve to get the videos recorded for AusTxHomes.com. Then it was time to edit them and export them so we can upload to YouTube.
The site is looking more and more together which I’m excited about.
It’s about time to start driving leads.
Follow Clint Evans and the final days of the 45 days to freedom small business marketing challenge right here.
Today started off very well and we’re coming down to the final days of the 45 days to freedom small business marketing challenge. It’s already day 43 and I feel like the time has flown by.
It’s also been very rewarding and productive to see how far we’ve come. Following the story on the blog here shows just what progress has been made.
This morning was spent mostly dealing with clients and getting verification codes for a few Google maps and Bing maps accounts that I have working.
I talked with Nathan and Bryant to get our pay per click campaign up and running. And fund the account so we can start generating clicks.
Steve got in 6 good contacts and Andrew got our press releases submitted through to the other 4 press release sites. Things are on target for today.
Today started out at the normal time of about 8:30 AM.
I have lots to take care of in terms of client work and getting the pay per click campaign up and rolling. I finally got the verification code for the home theater Google places listing so it’s verified and live.
That has been over a 2-month fight to get the postcard because the original show room that we were using apparently doesn’t get their mail. I had resent the postcard about 4 times and still never received it.
I had to talk with Brian and Nathan to get everything coordinated, get account information to the right areas, and do some testing on our forms to make sure everything was working correctly.
A little bit later on in the day we had Blake coming over for the 2:30 meeting. So I wanted to get some things done beforehand.
The job descriptions for the interns were sent off to Amber and Billie who were the appropriate people at Campus to Careers. I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of activity we get on that.
Andrew got the rest of the press release sites submitted through and done. The video has come back now to page 4 and should start rising again. We went through the Traffic Geyser process.
The videos on some of the other sites like Dailymotion, Vimeo, and MetaCafe are starting to show up in the results in Google from page 2 back to page 4. And these are happening just within a few hours of being submitted to those sites.
Clearly Google’s bias for videos is still alive and well. It’s also incredibly strong.
Steve did some research for our 4 clients and the client who wants a $1.5 million commercial building. There is also a client from a few months ago who had been quiet for a while but is now looking to get a bed and breakfast started back up.
Andrew also did some work in iMovie on a couple of our other videos for luxury homes that we’re doing.
We made some more changes to the AusTxHomes.com site while Blake was there. And got some updates on the other things we needed to get done so the progress continues to be encouraging.
Follow Clint Evans and the last days of the 45 days to freedom small business marketing challenge at twitter.
Today started out very well and quite early at 9 AM.
I took a few minutes to see what came through my craigslist rss feeds because I’m pricing Apple iMac 27 inch computers. I want to get a feel for the market before making a move.
And for almost all things it’s preferable to buy used instead of paying retail. Especially with technology because the value of it goes down so rapidly as newer technology comes in.
I had to do some things with client work and invoicing to see when payments had come in and got that all taken care of. I also called Naomi over at our office to tell her to be on the lookout for the Google postcard which she did.
She called later in the day to say that she had received it in today’s mail so I was ecstatic to confirm our Google local business listing.
The rest of the morning was working on an article to post through and syndicate to give our video a boost. And I prepared a press release which was also going to boost our video links and hopefully views.
Then it was off to the office HQ.
Steve only got in a few calls but was working a lot on the CRM. He got his database of around 1500 people who he’s met over the last 2 years imported into Icontact. We were looking around on our mobile contact manager solution to see about importing but could not find anything.
We may have to use a different mobile solution to reinitiate contact with these people. We’re going to message them via e-mail and via text.
Steve was also working on a video idea he had. He wanted to tell the back story of how he and Andrew got started in home schooling and the whole Unconditional Marketing creation.
He also went to work doing some research and finding properties for a couple of our prior client leads.
Andrew went to work building out our logins for syndication using Traffic Geyser. We are using Traffic Geyser to promote our videos since it’s automated and a very powerful service.
He also did some work on press releases. He completed the logins and I showed him how to push a piece of media through Traffic Geyser. Then we got a couple of the press release sites submitted and 4 more are due today.
For the rest of the day I was working on building out job descriptions for the 4 interns we’re looking to hire over the summer. We need a PHP/HTML Web design coder, an assistant for Barb, a web content/press release writer, and a video creation/editor.
This was an exhaustingly boring process for me which is why I’m glad I didn’t go into the human resources field. But it was extremely important because getting the right people on the team and putting them in the right positions to succeed is paramount for any business to be successful.
So I kept this in mind knowing that the large amount of time spent will be time well invested.
Follow Clint Evans news and updates on the 45 days to freedom small business marketing challenge right here on my twitter account.
Today is Sunday and it’s Ryan’s confirmation day at the Bethany Lutheran Church. Ryan is Steve and Barb’s oldest son.
I went to the service which was quite interesting and different from a Catholic church service. I always thought they were very closely aligned and in some ways they are. But they also have divergences.
There was this cool little video they had somebody make telling the story of doubting Thomas. Ryan picked his Scripture to be Philippians 4:13 which paraphrased as saying “anything is possible”.
Then we went back to the office HQ and had a barbecue for over 20 people to celebrate this day. It was good to meet the family and give Steve an opportunity to tell people how proud he is of the business and what Andrew is doing as well as the progress.
It’s going to be a big finish this week to Clint Evans 45 days to freedom small business marketing challenge.
Today is Saturday and is going to be a very restful day. I got caught up on a few of my TV shows which I haven’t watched in about 6 weeks because of this intense 45 day business and lead getting challenge.
So this was quite an excellent time to get the batteries recharged for the final push next week. Follow Clint Evans on this 45 days to freedom small business marketing challenge.
