Building Relationships Online and off

Despite all the social media I do, building trust in a brand and a company is best done live to start the relationship and then moved to online to keep in touch. I went to a social media class that totally neglected to mention the marriage between online and off line activities. Since one of my companies involves making creams and lotions, I often give free demonstrations. These finally paid off as a believe it or not construction company wants to bring me in for a "Lunch and Learn" series they have, but of course they wanted more information via my website :)

Before you take a social media class read the Referral Engine by John Jantsch (yeah same guy brought you Duct Tape Marketing) who goes through the nuances of building a fan base and getting people to refer you automatically. It stresses blending on line and off line relationships and how the two support each other.

S

My new job

Well, I started my new job and I'm quite good at it lol. Yesterday, Dave said, "We need to pay you more." Then today he may be hosting an internet radio show, which gives me more work of looking at Foreign Trade programs in Canada. I posted a job for an Applied Studies student to help convert academic research to public awareness articles. Other than that I'm doing Social Media stuff, facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogging etc. 

c

Conscious Marketing

This seems to be a hot topic with people lately. Marketing for holistic practitioners is tricky business for two reasons
1. We seem to have a lot of denial issues and low self esteem. We think we are in the business of helping other people, but the reality is we're in it for the self help which oddly leads to more denial. Every time we see a client their issues are a reflection of our own, so we can process things together. It's like a teacher, we need constant repetition to learn our lessons.
2. Business is a scary and confusing world with money, transactions, accounting, organization and stuff.

Enter in conscious marketing. How does it differ from regular marketing? It doesn't. Most of the latest and greatest business books all tell you the same thing your yoga teacher told you. Simplify, use your time wisely, value people, treat them with respect, follow up, be genuine etc. I have looked at marketing before and it was a jumbled mess of things I didn't understand and apparently no one else did either, because a new wave of books came out explaining how to do things simply and step by step. Communities like E-myth andTim Ferris's blog always have true success stories of how certain methods have changed people's lives which further inspires people to do and be better. Other books too such as Millionaire mind, asks people to gain confidence in themselves and abilities.

Once we as practitioners gain enough confidence and self esteem to say to the world "yes I'm worth this much!" things start to change, but also if we realize why we practice we may find out it's great to help people as well as ourselves, but maybe the universe is pushing us towards something else like a side business to help MORE people.

Consciousness is all about awareness, whether it's in life or in marketing.

c

Got the job :)

Who would have thought someone would be interested in my marketing skills! I am now the director of marketing for Mind Alive. Dave has a lot of ideas to build his business and has done A TON of research which makes selling flashing lights with sounds much easier :) From talking to Dave yesterday, I may need more than 16 hours per week. I didn't know he'd need help with research papers too, but we'll see how it goes.

My first job will be to get the social media side up and running efficiently, but I'll need passwords and such for that. Also, I'll be running a massage therapy study with the hope we can list our product on the NHPC site as an aid for massage therapists. I'm also designing a campaign for 1 st year college/university students, which is pretty fun and exciting!

Sima

I may have a job!

I went to see my friend sing and play the guitar at a bar not too far from my house last night. Turns out he was looking for someone to help him with his social media marketing part time and well I'm broke so any job coming my way is good news :) Doesn't hurt that I've been learning all this stuff while I've been discovering myself! I'm excited that I can start using some of my ideas and new skills, especially after my exasperation with the clinic. I came up with a marketing strategy nearly start to finish in less than hour. I have others too.

The company involves holistic health, Audio Visual Entrainment. This technique requires a headset with lights flashing to a frequency that matches certain brain waves, depending on what you would like to do. To meditate you would use a 10 Hz frequency. Sounds from a headset are timed with the lights as well as a heart beat to help people breathe smoothly and evenly. The units are compact, easy to carry, durable and work well. I can feel my body processing issues. Because regular people use the machines they are super simple to use, but the understanding of how and why it works requires A LOT more detail. Over the last 30 years, plenty of data supports AVE as treatment for a number of ailments.

Hopefully, the interview goes well tomorrow :)

c

Marketing evaluation

My sister had gone to a course about on line marketing. From the sounds of it she didn't get as much as she wanted to out of it. I had talked to her about it before as I am making all these amazing discoveries! And have found that marketing has some good grounding in science. For those that know I have a degree in Chemistry and was surprisingly close to going for a 2nd degree in marketing.
Hypothesis: My product will suit this ____ crowd. Women who live in dry climates usually buy creams and lotions. Alberta is pretty dry so market to women between 25-40 who want to buy a lotion they don't need to keep re-applying
Problem: How will I get my good quality product to the women of Alberta?
Experimental Design: The design you choose will depend on where your strengths in marketing are and what you want to achieve. For example:  Join meetup groups that are mostly women and remained active in them for about three months. All the women in the groups were suspects, those that were interested in trying a sample were bumped up to be classified as prospects and those that LOVED the product and told their friends were further bumped up to be classed as champions.
Results: Though cost effective, the women in these groups couldn't fully understand the benefit of the product as they were more interested in the theme of the meetup rather than my attempts to solve their dry skin problems.
Discussion: A variety of meetup groups that had over 50% women membership, but most of these turned out to be full of suspects, but low on prospects forget champions. Being more specific about the target market may yield more qualified results.
Conclusion: Look for an added feature of the product that can narrow the target market down. Adding essential oils may interest holistic therapists.

Of course it doesn't have to be as detailed as this, but it's quick and dirty peak at what's working for your company and where you need to make changes.

c

Another rant

People, especially in the holistic field take the "Power of Intention" a bit too far, though it explains why, marketing courses for hippies works. You don't need anything profound, just something slightly better than the dismal situation out there. From what I can see there's NOTHING holistic about holistic practitioners. They haven't got a clue about anything, except may be their modality. That doesn't speak well to becoming a well rounded individual.
So, I got an e-mail talking about this ridiculous visualization. Why do I feel this way? Because a paragraph above it I read something to the effect of we're on facebook go find us. We're posting events there (I'll come back to this as I'm mad about that too) WTF? Why not just include the link in the e-mail? Remember my past comments about them not knowing how to use facebook? No matter what you visualize unless it's accompanied by actions it's a dream with no basis in reality. This why no one takes us seriously! Well, they were taking action the same e-mail talked her research about the benefits of ionized water. Given her knowledge of cosmetic products and ingredients I can only imagine how she came up with this idea /facepalm. This is all like watching an imminent train wreck.
So back to the Facebook page. I hunted it down and joined only to find out MY event wasn't posted. On top of that when it came time for me to have my class (which started 15 min late, because the last class didn't leave on time) our inept marketer whom I have no respect for stayed in the room talking rather loudly while I tried to hold my class. Yes, I know she is a reflection of the attitude I have for her. Maybe I should change, though at this point jumping ship seems to be the better option.
So what does all this mean for me? I'm going to focus my attention on my other projects rather than Body Talk. Lotions and Potions is enjoying some time in the Sun, so I want to capitalize on that. I was looking at setting up some more speaking engagements. I actually get paid for them now, so I just need to find more opportunities.

c

Cause for pause ~ Evaluating what makes good business sense.

Small Business owners can't do everything themselves, but at the same time they can't just give away all their responsibilities without having a clear idea of what they expect. For example before you outsource your marketing have a program in place that anyone can follow for about three months. Once the person is comfortable in that role they can make suggestions or changes.

Right now I'm in the midst of needing some business advice about making sure I get credit for all the projects I'm involved in. This has caused a pause for me, because now I have to go back and look at all the stuff I do and evaluate what works and what doesn't. I went from nearly spending over $700 on a 10 X 10 booth to educate people on what I do to having people pay me to come onto their job site to tell them the same thing, spending only an hour of time vs an entire day! I give talks and demonstrations for free at various locations. This has worked out well increasing my visibility, but for the most part has netted me no new clients and very few prospects for my mailing list. Sometimes people need time to find a need for your services, but because I gave free demo where I sold a lot of product and have a possible advertising deal that maybe I should spend my time on those projects rather than the freebies.

c

Clever non-profit :)

After last night's rant I feel a need to present something positive. Being on a budget and a downsizing binge I've been using the library a lot more. It's not too far from home either, 10 min bike ride. I usually put things on hold and receive an e-mail when it comes available. Last week I went to pick up my book "Authenticity Hoax". As I flipped through the book, I found a flyer for a fundraising project. Have breakfast at Albert's and they will donate so much to the library.
What a great way to grab attention! They have to place my name in the book anyway for me to pick me up, so adding a flyer doesn't add any time to their routine. Even though the message was available on the web where I place my holds on line it was a traditional flyer that conveyed the message.

c

Inept Marketers

I don't understand why people who obviously can't do a job effectively or efficiently retain their positions. I'm not talking about minor things either. A person who is paid to do marketing should know how to market, not ask me about how facebook works, when in the last meeting I explained it or how I got my ad free in one of the newspapers with the other girl had to pay $20. Setting up a foursquare, facebook, twitter or linkedin profiles aren't hard to set up nor hard to maintain if that's how a company chooses to market themselves. Yes over the last few months I've had A LOT of time to investigate how to market things and open up avenues for myself, but if I can do it anyone should be able to figure this stuff out, especially if they've been HIRED to do it. I shouldn't be too hard on people. I was annoyed that university students 10 years younger than me either couldn't or didn't want to use free technology that was available to them, but at the very least they can use FB.

What's more depressing about this situation is while this person is completely ineffective with social media she ignores the company's biggest asset the e-mail database. E-mail marketing is modern telemarketing, annoying as hell, but it gets enough sales even with an open rate of 20% to continue using it for the next little while. For my class 80% came because of the clinic newsletter, 10% from another group and 10% from a newspaper ad.  We are a clinic, so we should set up our database to follow up with our clients regularly.

My sister says I should relax and let nature take its course, but I feel defensive about this, because as someone who works at this clinic I want to see it succeed, though I am reluctant to offer my input for a couple of reasons. One being people keep telling me I should come in to help them, but never with any sort of concrete dates or times, which annoys the hell out of me, you either want my help or not. Two I'm not paid for marketing. I'm just another practitioner renting space. The up side of all this annoyance is I've developed a marketing course that I'd like to offer to people at some point.

I shouldn't be surprised to have so much passion towards marketing. If I hadn't taken science I would have chosen marketing, though I feel I've learned way more in my time off than I could have in school.

c

Business Planning ~a case study

Talking with my sister about her upcoming venture as well as my new direction for both my companies, I've decided to revisit business planning and business plans. From everything I've read and learned over the years two things come to mind. Have a vision and have a market, you can wing everything else.

I remember miserably working on my business plan for Lotions and Potions freaking out over my financials, long strategies and other things I had no idea about, because I'd never run a cosmetics company before! Asked some University of Calgary business students look at my company to see what they would suggest for a business plan (yeah kinda validated what I thought about business school ~ a complete waste of time unless you were doing business). They had me expanding to a giant facility and having 200 customers/month with no mention on how I would find these 200 people. I didn't have a clear vision about my product, how to sell it or who would buy it. Yep, the most important terms were the most vague. I became so depressed at the hopelessness of all this I lost control of my company. I happily gave my power away to my mom, who wanted to help me succeed, but because I'd checked out my company was doomed.

Fast forward five years. I learned some Body Talk techniques to energetically balance your business, which put the right people in the right place. In my case I needed to add a third piece of advice make sure you own your business! (Worked wonders, two days after I used that technique I got a $50 order out of nowhere) After reading Rework, 4 hour work week, E-myth (which surprised me, because E stands for Entrepreneurial not Electronic) it was time to do things a bit differently. I decided to focus on winning the hearts and minds of Vegans, who are a growing population and want to buy high quality cosmetic products made with vegetable ingredients. What a difference! I never would have thought I'd be on track to be doing an internet TV series, starring me.

Five years ago I never saw myself where I am today. In the next five years I have no idea where I'll be, but I DO know that if I work on a project by project basis I'll see results to base my next ones on.  Short term planning offers the most flexibility and responsiveness to constantly changing business conditions. At bare bones of it all, know what you want to sell or provide and know who wants to buy it. Take control of your company to focus your energy on understanding your market and find ways to make sure yours is the product to solve their problems. Everything else? Wing it.

c

Ideas out of nowhere

I was late for my treatment this morning, but all was well. After talking to a fellow scientist (she did molecular biology) turned therapist. We have a date to discuss a workshop. Basically, therapists don't make a ton of money, because we can only treat one person at a time for about an hour, but if we taught then we'd have more people for the same amount of time, in theory.  When it came to the question of what we could offer, we both have different scientific specialties pre-therapist days, as I did chemistry, but since we've been practicing our respected modalities our backgrounds have come in handy when we need to explain what we do.

So, I'm thinking about quantum mechanics and bonding and of course ways to promote the class. For structure we were thinking of  6 - 90 min classes once/week all about the science of energetic medicine. I'd like to have a screening of quantum activist as well at the end of the session. I should check into seeing how much that movie is and if I could get a wholesale deal.

Do you have ideas that you could into a class?

S

Websites ~ Vistaprint

Yes, everyone is on the web. Are you? 

Websites can be a huge pain in the butt! You have to find a domain name, designer, integrate a blog, add video, slide shows, pictures, shopping cart etc. And THEN people need to find your site. You'll need search engine optimization (SEO), an analytics program to know where you're potential clients are going to on your site, a way to capture their address. Wouldn't it be fantastic if you could easily do it all yourself for under $50/month.

Enter Vistaprint. It's not just for free business cards anymore. Using the templates available you can create a slick looking website like this www.reconnective-health.com (I pay under $30/month) to match your business cards, stickers, note cards, brochures and other fun stuff :) You can test drive your website for 30 days to see exactly how much work it's not to put up content. It has three different packages with various add on packages including ones for SEO, email marketing, analytics and others all in one stop. If you've ever talked to a designer about all this stuff you probably would have been able to pay for YEARS using this company.

Before vistaprint I shelled out $1500, on a website that was a headache and a half. The designer was hard to get a hold of. I couldn't make changes myself etc. Luckily things have changed in 4 years. I've received a number of compliments on my site. Now, I'm thinking about adding the SEO package so people can find me :) After calling a few places and told up front I couldn't possibly afford their services this one offers a viable alternative.

I use it and I've strongly suggested my friends use it too. I visited a friend and she showed me her cards, bumper stickers and car magnets all for under $150. As for their service center, they offer fantastic help. They actually answer the phone in less than 5 min both times I called and solved my problem/answered my questions.

Introduction to me and Marketing Energetics

As a kid in high school I remember my guidance counselor asking me what I wanted to do in university, I definitively said "science or business" (hey I narrowed it down to two options that's pretty good for me!), which garnered a strange reaction from him. In the end I took science in school, because science is theoretical and thus meant for university study, but business requires experience and practical applications. So, here I am, a chemist turned holistic therapist and entrepreneur, though for the last five years I have had a little cosmetics company that I see big things for using some of the new things I've learned from unlikely places.

I've always had trouble marketing, because I knew how important it was, but I had no idea about how to go about doing it! Words like niche and target market and ROI, and networking groups and measurable and then with internet stuff, e-newsletters, blogs, facebook, twitter, affiliates, web sites, search engine optimization. All I seemed to do was spend money, when it was (and still is) in tight supply. Due to some rather tragic circumstances (depending on your point of view), I had enough time on my hands to spend in Chapters looking at popular books to develop a new concept of marketing (and then hitting up the used bookstore or library). Some how in my frenzy of signing up for free stuff and then canceling my subscriptions I stumbled upon a series of interviews that led me to more business books.

The trend in the newer business books written by younger authors matched the "other" stack of books I actually bought from Chapters all about yoga and spirituality. In a fan letter I wrote to a business author "I loved your book as it's in line with the yoga principles that I recently learned." Then in an advanced Body Talk class I learned about how to balance the energetics of groups including businesses, which led me to believe that holistic practitioners have tools that other businesses don't unless they have the same belief systems that we do.

In the books written by older people, they had tried and true systems that worked. Because I had heard interviews with many of the authors, their stories and work came from their hearts to help others. I think those would have been a good addition to the books. Maybe for the next editions :) Reading so many books at the same time allowed me to notice how people cross referenced each other, even between the age groups, which strongly suggests they still are relevant. 

So this little blog is the culmination of things I have learned to help me explain and cement these concepts together for myself. If all goes well, I'd like to design a webinar or speaker series and yes the blog is about marketing, so I have no guilt about monetizing it :)

S