Give your marketing tools a job

Each tool you employ as part of your marketing strategy should have a job - something to DO. Otherwise it will just sit and “be” and that is not good.

Here are example “jobs” you could give each marketing tool. Try to limit each tool to one or two primary purposes:

• Encourage people to sign up for your newsletter
• Drive people to your website
• Sell your service
• Drive people to download your audio recording

Each job has an intended result, and that’s how you know whether or not it’s working.

• Job: Encourage people to sign up for the newsletter –> Result: Increased signups AS A RESULT of that specific tool
• Job: Drive people to the website –> Result: Increased hits to your website AS A RESULT of that specific tool
• Job: Sell your service –> Result: Increased sales AS A RESULT of that specific tool
• Job: Drive people to download audio recording –> Result: Increased downloads of the recording AS A RESULT of that specific tool

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Yow! Is this you? You’re everwhere: Facebook, Squidoo, EzineArticles, Adzines, Clickbank, Technorati, etc. You’ve got ten websites. You’ve got 15 social networks.

Yet the business isn’t coming in. Your thoughts: my marketing isn’t working!

Is it not?

Have you ever employed someone? Or, have you ever worked for someone? You were given a task - or a set of tasks - and you called that…your job.

What are your marketing method’s jobs? What’s Facebook supposed to be doing for you?

The universal answer is “make me more money” or “bring in clients” or “spread awareness,” but unfortunately, it’s just simply not specific enough.

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Is Sunday really a day of rest? I set out with that intention in mind this morning. I really do hate working over the weekend.

My son, Aidan, and I took a nice, breezy stroll to Starbucks, where he flirted with the associate and I drank an iced white chocolate mocha and sipped ice water (to feel “healthier”).

Then we came back. Since then, I’ve been cleaning up a client’s website, cleaning up my own new website, going back and forth between Biznik and email, and contemplating my work for this week. I somehow also found time to clean out Aidan’s dresser of all of his baby clothes and fold them and pack them away.

I also made a lovely Tilapia lunch and just put chicken and dumplings in the oven for dinner.

And I’ve already decided that I’m going to play catch-up “in advance” and finish up some work for existing clients tonight, so I have time for new clients that I expect to land this week.

Still, I find rest in this. I find this Sunday, even though it is busy, somehow peaceful and restful. How can that be?

If it makes you feel uncomfortable calling yourself “the expert” in your particular field or industry, try writing it down, reading it a few times over and then possibly even saying it out loud.

With internet marketing, it’s crucial to be an expert and equally as crucial to let people know that you are an expert.

The truth is that the day you began charging for your work is the day you considered yourself an expert. In my opinion, there are novices and experts. Novices don’t usually charge for what they do, so if you’re charging, you are an expert by default.

Experts haven’t necessarily “arrived.” There’s no solemn law that says that if you’re an expert, you have learned all there is to know about your work. You are continually growing, learning, and improving so don’t let the feeling that you don’t know all there is to know hold you back from calling yourself the expert.

Once you’ve gotten comfortable with the fact that you’re an expert, do what experts do:

• Submit articles - free and paid. Seek out those who will pay you for your writing but don’t limit yourself only to those experiences.
• Participate in forums by offering your advice. No one likes it when they ask a question in a forum and an “expert” replies saying only, “I have the answer you need. Contact me.” That’s not active participation! Be proactive and involved and offer your advice.
• Put a LOT of good content on your website that you can link to later. Be thinking ahead. I’ve posted all sorts of Wordpress-related content on my website that I can now refer to in forums, blogs and articles. Instead of just linking to random, “salesy” pages on my website, I can now link to good, solid, informative content that helps people. This is a great way to increase the quality links coming into your website.

Going through challenges is the quickest and most effective way to reinvent yourself to become the new and improved you. — Kurek Ashley, How Would Love Respond?

Have you ever encountered a challenge in business? Perhaps you tried something that you thought would work. You gave it a bit of time and then gave up. Instead of making money, you lost money! In your eyes, you wasted previous dollars doing something that could have been spent on something else…something that would work.

I’ve faced business challenges before - financial, marketing, organization, etc. Challenges of all kinds, actually.

Recently, I was faced with a business challenge on a personal level that was really trying for me. Looking back, my perception of the situation is entirely different than it was at that moment, but I will whole-heartedly admit that my initial thoughts were completely negative. I thought, “What in the world? Why me!? Why am I being picked on? What’s so wrong with what I’m doing?”

The problem with thinking those kinds of thoughts is that I was focusing on the problem, rather than the solution. Instead of asking myself, “What’s great about this?” I was telling myself, “This isn’t good. I don’t deserve this. I should pack up and go home.”

Fortunately, I consulted mentors and I picked up a book that quite literally changed my entire way of thinking, and I was able to see the light in the perceived darkness. I started asking, “What’s great about this? How am I going to grow from this experience?”

And grow I did.

I titled this post “The Reinvention” because that’s exactly what I decided to go through - a reinvention. I put away old ways of thinking about challenges. Instead, I reinvented myself and created a new reality for me.

I decided that I wanted to change my world, my reality, my situations and my results. I realized that I didn’t like the things I was going through and that if I didn’t want to go through them anymore, I would have to change my patterns. In order to change my patterns, I needed to change my thoughts.

The you that you are now is the one who is doing what you’re doing now, and that’s why you have what you have now. — Kurek Ashley

Next time you face a challenge - and you will face challenges - consider your thoughts, because thoughts are so powerful.

When I changed my thinking, what was happening actually changed - really! Remember that events are just events and it’s our perception of those events that creates our reality. We are 100% in control of our reality. I decided to stop being the victim and reinvented myself as the creator - the creator of my own reality.