Who will buy your professional services?
By: Sandy Barris

Are you an engineer, IT consultant or marketing professional?  Have you recently been downsized or laid off, or are you retired but climbing the walls to get back in the game?

If you provide, or want to provide, one of the thousands of professional services sought after by millions of businesses, then pull out your magic wand, wave it around and imagine creating your dream business – without fear of failure.  What does it look like?

Read more . . .

 

Marketing tools to reach your customers

The article “Who Will Buy Your Professional Services” asks you to explore simple marketing strategies to market your services to your target audience.  ZANA Business Network offers low cost solutions to help you keep communication going with your existing customer base AND target prospective customers.

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Increase your visibility on ZBN by helping another business

At ZANA Business Network, we continuously look for ways to help you shine a light on your business. To help boost your company’s visibility on ZBN – namely our home page and select locations throughout our site – we have developed the Refer a Business Program. Here’s how it works:

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Who Will Buy Your Professional Services? (cont.)

Got it pictured?  Good.  Now, take your magic wand and break it in half.  Why? Because no matter what professional service business you choose to create, you’ll always be in the sales and marketing business. In a nutshell, if you don’t promote yourself and close deals, you’ll have a rough time staying in business.

One of the keys to your success in a service business is identifying who will want and who can afford your expertise.

Getting started

You need to figure out what the perfect clients look like.  By answering a few questions, you’ll be well on your way to discovering who will want your services.

• What business niches are they in?
• What markets do they serve?
• Who supplies those business niches with goods and services?
• Where are those niches located?
• Are there enough businesses in those niches to be profitable?
• Can they afford your services?
• Who would recommend their products or services?

 Use different marketing approaches; some will work better than others.  Some will start out like gang busters and then fade off. Others will crash and burn with no ROI. It’s all good because every success and failure is a lesson and brings you closer to succeeding.

Marketing tactics

The key here is to create an overall marketing strategy that includes 15 or more marketing tactics.  The more tactics you try, the greater your chances are of attracting the perfect future client.

Keep in mind that people absorb information differently.  For those who prefer verbal information, face-to-face interaction or a CD/DVD/Mp3 promotion is appropriate.  For those who prefer visual data, communicate with them via videos, graphs, charts and pictures.

You should test many different marketing tactics.  The following are just the tip of the iceberg:

• Build an optimized website and use the Internet to describe the benefits of your service using video, audio and the written word.
• Attend networking events.
• Approach your suppliers for referrals.
• Host webinars and podcasts because they are the 21^st century “brochure.”
• Grow your database.
• Market your growing database via email.
• Create a local pay-per-click internet marketing campaign.
• Develop a social media marketing (SMM) plan by joining LinkedIn, Facebook and three to four additional top SMM sites.

No matter the type of promotion you choose, you must provide a compelling reason for others to try out your services.  If future clients have choices among numerous similar services or do not have a compelling need to purchase your service, your company will not grow fast.

Targeting big business

Your ideal prospect may be hidden deep within the corporate structure.  Professional service providers sometimes find it easier to sell at a department level rather than target chief executives or CxOs. But, it can pay to go to the top first in order to name drop to the lower rungs.

Granted, it’s a lot harder to get to the CxOs.  Is it worth the effort?  You’ll have to be the judge.  Now, keep in mind that birds of a feather flock together so when you do get an audience with a CxO, it could be your ticket to many more C-level opportunities.

Sandy Barris (sandybarris.com), CEO and president of Business Marketing Services in Bloomfield Hills, MI, and author of “97 Marketing Secrets to Make More Money: Your Secret Guide to Growing Your Business Right,” is a consultant and contributing writer for ZANA Business Network.

 

Marketing tools to reach your customers (cont.)

Today, doing business means more than operating from a physical location.  Everywhere you look, practically every company – regardless of size or product / service offerings – has a website to advertise and inform, and to simplify customer transactions.  Quality websites provide the convenience and efficiency that customers demand.

You don’t have to have technical skills to get your business on the web.  You just need a desire to be successful, and ZBN will do the rest.  Our affordable products are designed to help you attract new visitors, increase customer purchasing and advance your company.  Here is what we offer:

 

Domain Names	Email Marketing
Private Registration & Private Transfer	Traffic Blazer
Email Accounts	Shopping Cart
Web Hosting	SSL Certificates
Site Analytics	Virtual Dedicated Server
Website Creation	Dedicated Server

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Increase Your Visibility on ZBN (cont.)

• For every business you refer to join ZANA Business Network, you get a free image ad on our home page and select inside pages for one week.*
• There’s no limit on the number of businesses you can refer! For each referral, we add another week of free image ads for you.
• The businesses you refer must complete a ZBN company profile.

But, that’s not all.

Each business you refer gets one FREE rotating home page text ad for a week.

Just follow these simple steps to participate in this program:

1. Invite a small- or medium-size business to join ZANA Business Network by referring them to go to www.zananetwork.com and clicking on the Join button at the top of our home page.
2. Have the referral complete the Company Profile.
3. Send an email to vicki.meza@zananetwork.com with the contact name, business name and email address of the company you referred.  Include the information you would like to appear in your image ad.
   (For image ads: Size 200 x 200 pixels; .jpg or .gif format; can be animated or static. No flashes allowed.)
4. Once we receive your email and confirm your referral’s membership, completed profile, and compliance with ZBN’s Terms and Conditions, we will build your image ad and place it on our web pages for a week. 
5. Once we receive your referral’s text copy, we will build your referral’s text ad and place it on our home page for a week.  (For text ads: 35 characters per line, maximum of four lines; characters cannot exceed 146.)

All image and text ads must be approved by ZBN technical staff.

We have over 200,000 businesses from all over the world in our ZBN network.  Start making your contacts now to shine in the ZBN spotlight.

*All current ZBN members and referred businesses must comply with ZBN’s Terms and Conditions in order to receive the benefits of the Refer a Business Program.  Click here to review ZBN’s Terms and Conditions.