Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

Dear Danielle: I Have a Bunch of Questions

Dear Danielle: I Have a Bunch of Questions

Dear Danielle:

Thank you so much for all of your offerings through the Success Store! Getting my company planned and put together has been much easier thanks to you than it might have been.  I just need some clarification:

  1. How exactly do referrals work?  I am giving a two-hour free referral bonus to any client who refers another paying client. What do you think of that idea?
  2. What marketing tools have you found the most effective?  I am on unemployment which is not enough to make ends meet, and I have had to get things for my business by raiding my grocery money (maxed out credit).  I am trying to get a micro-business loan, but have not done so yet. Are online directories and search engines the way to go?
  3. How did you find your industries small prospects for sales calls?  Do we have to worry about “Do Not Call” lists if someone uses one phone number for everything?  How much “cold calling” did you do to get started?
  4. About your website screening intake form:  I could not find your business website, nor could I find anything in the store about an intake form.  Is there another resource or should I just pull together my own and tweak it through experience?
  5. If a client asks for a particularly dicey project that I am not sure I can handle, how do I address that without looking incompetent, undersupplied technologically, or setting myself up to fail?

I apologize if you have already addressed these issues. Thanks for your help! –AJ

Whew! I’ll do my best to answer these and keep ’em short and sweet…

1. How do referrals work and what about giving a referral bonus?

A referral is when someone (could be a client, could be a colleague, could be a business associate… anyone) refers/recommends/tells someone about your business.

What do I personally think about paying people to refer you? I don’t advise it.

Let referrals come organically through the good will and high esteem you generate from doing good work. Those recommendations and referrals will carry far greater weight because of it.

Plus, keeping track of referrals and rewards just creates another needless task and complication in your administration that you don’t need.

Here are a couple blog posts that expand on this topic that I think you’ll find helpful:

Dear Danielle: How Do I Advertise for Referral Partners?

Tips for Harnessing the Power of Referrals

2. What marketing methods are most effective? Are online directories and search engines the way to go?

It doesn’t hurt to be in directories, but you don’t need them.

And SEO is the least effective way your most ideal, qualified client prospects will find you. It’s not the thing to waste your time focusing on right now at this stage of your start up.

Your best leads will always come from your own incoming marketing pipelines. And how do you do that?

In our business (as it is with most professional service-based businesses), networking is hands-down the most effective marketing strategy.

Not ads. Not cold-calling. Not direct mail.

The great thing about networking is that it doesn’t cost anything but your time. And that’s not a cost, it’s an investment because those efforts will ultimately pay with new clients and prospects.

The reason networking is so effective is because people look to work with those with whom they have established some kind of relationship and feel some kind of rapport.

Every opportunity you have that lets a group of people get to know, like and trust you is going to make it that much easier for you to attract clients.

Of course, the key to networking successfully starts with a target market. Otherwise, you’ll wear yourself out networking anywhere willy nilly.

Be sure you download the free ACA guide on How to Choose Your Target Market, which elaborates a bit more on what a target market is and how it will make growing your business and getting clients much faster and easier.

3. What cold calling did you do to get started and how did you find prospects for sales calls?

None. I didn’t look for any.

I never did cold calling and I don’t advise you do either.

People don’t like to be sold to; it’s completely the wrong strategy.

Professional services are a bigger ticket item and requires more relationship building and nurturing than that.

Sure, you might hear some people say they got this client or that project all from a sales call. But those are the exceptions, not the rule.

I can just about guarantee you don’t have the kind of money and energy to ever make cold calling a worthwhile ROI.

Even if you get one project, it isn’t going to come close to covering all the time, energy and effort you put into getting it.

And think about it. Do you really think you can keep putting in that kind of work just to get one or two nickel-and-dime projects? You need bigger money and bigger clients to stay in business and be profitable.

There are MUCH better, faster, more effective strategies for getting clients, one of which is deciding on a target market to focus on and then getting involved with that industry in every way you can (online forums, business groups, events, etc.). The more you interact, the more they get to know, like and trust you.

4. Is there a resource for an online intake/consultation request form?

If I’m understanding your question, I think you are referring to an online form you have clients fill out to request a consultation.

Having a form like this on your website will help screen and prequalify prospects.

By asking a few simple questions, this form can help you determine what stage of readiness a potential client is at, whether or not they are in your target market, and whether they can afford your services.

Depending on the questions you ask and how they fill out your online consultation form (which has the dual underlying purpose of helping prequalify clients), this can tell you what level of priority or attention to give a potential client or whether to guide them to further information on your website to learn more before moving on in the process.

For example, if someone is only “browsing,” you may not want to waste your limited time and effort on a consultation. You may instead want to send them to a white paper you have prepared for these kind of instances, and invite them to subscribe to your blog or ezine.

Many clients are not ready to work with us immediately so it’s all a process.

Here is a blog post that talks more about how the consult form can act a prequalifier: One Way to Sort the Ideal form the Unideal.

As far as a resource, I recommend you get my Client Consultation guide. Not only does it give you usuable examples of an online intake/consultation form and questions you may want to ask, it will walk you through the entire consultation process from start to finish: from targeting clients, identifying your ideal client profile, prequalifying clients, how to conduct the actual consultation conversation and what questions to ask, how to follow-up afterward and what the next steps are once you take on a new client. It’s VERY thorough!

5. How do I handle a request for something I don’t know how to do (or do well)?

First, you have to distinguish what kind of business you are in.

Are you in the secretarial business where you’re simply doing one-off, transactional, piecemeal project work?

Or are you in the business of administrative support?

Because the two are completely different business models.

Once you answer that question, it will help answer subsequent questions about what kind of client needs that work, what work is entailed and so forth.

When you know what you do and who you do it for, and educate clients accordingly, this kind of thing isn’t as much of an issue.

However, let’s say you are in the administrative support business and the client asks if you do X thing.

Honesty is always best so tell them if it isn’t something you know how to do or that you have limited experience/knowledge with it.

That said, you can always let them know that you are willing to learn how to do it (IF you are interested in doing so, that is).

Or, you might look at this project or work and think to yourself: You know, this really doesn’t fall under administrative support at all and isn’t what I’m in business to do. They really need to be working with someone who is in the X business.

In that case, you might offer to help them locate the proper professional who IS in business to do that thing.

Or, in yet another example, perhaps you have a separate division in your company that does this thing, in which case you would take them through those separate processes for intaking that kind of work or project and charge them separately for it.

You have to always remember that administrative support is not a catchall term for “anything and everything.”

Just because a client asks doesn’t mean you’re supposed to comply. They need educating.

If you were a plumber and someone asked you to fix their car, that wouldn’t make any sense, right?

And you’d inform them very simply and helpfully that what they need is an auto mechanic, not a plumber.

Same thing here.

YOU have to decide what administrative support consists of in your business and what doesn’t.

When you have that clarity yourself, you shouldn’t have any qualms about letting clients know when something doesn’t fall under the umbrella of your support.

Always be clear and upfront with clients about what’s what in your business. You’re not going to look bad in any way for not taking on or knowing how to do something or needing to refer them to another kind of professional entirely when that’s the case.

The only time you will look bad and create ill will is by not being honest and straightforward.

I hope that helps! Let me know if you questions on any of this. 🙂

Dear Danielle: Is It Difficult to Rank or Be Found in Search Engines Using the Term Administrative Consultant?

Dear Danielle: Is It Difficult to Rank or Be Found in Search Engines Using the Term Administrative Consultant?

Dear Danielle:

I am only two months in to this business, but I wanted to know how to handle SEO, keywords and marketing using the term Administrative Consultant. Is it difficult to rank or be found in searches? —DW

This is a question that is frequently asked. For example, here’s one I got from someone back in 2011 who was wholly misinformed how SEO works:

This is terrific advice (as always!), but here’s one problem: for the purposes of search engine optimization, the term “virtual assistant” is invaluable to attract people to your site. People don’t know to look for an admin consultant, so SEO advice says the VA terminology needs to appear repeatedly in out web copy. I’ve gone through my site (which already had an unfortunate domain name chosen before I found YOU and all your amazing insights) and I’ve taken out every instance of the word “assistant.” Now I feel better, but also utterly unsearchable. What’s a girl to do??

She could not be more wrong. Keyword stuffing has been poor website/SEO practice and obsolete for I don’t know how many years now, well before 2011.

Here’s how to understand this:

Your title isn’t for marketing (or SEO) purposes.

It’s for setting proper expectations, understandings, mindset and perceptions in prospective clients, which is a whole other topic that has nothing to do with SEO.

No one even needs to know your term/title to find you. (Remember, there was always a first someone in every new industry; how do you think they survived and succeeded?)

Because how they find you isn’t due to what you are called, it’s what problem, pain or challenge you can solve for them. Your title has nothing to do that that.

Marketing is about having a target market (which is simply an industry/field/profession that you cater your administrative support to) and then networking and interacting with the folks in your target market to create your own pipelines for those people to get to know and come find you.

People who randomly find you on the Internet are few and far between and rarely are they qualified, ideal candidates.

SEO is the least relevant, and poorest quality way people will find you (at least in terms of how the misinformed person above was advising).

SEO is also a highly specialized, sophisticated area of expertise. It most certainly cannot be reduced to merely “just add your keyword all over your website and you will be found.”

Most laypeople these days do not know how SEO works, and especially not now in the age of the Google Penguin, Panda and Hummingbird algorithm updates.

SEO simply does not not work anymore the way most people think it does. They’re stuck in outdated understandings from 5, 10 years ago.

If getting clients was as simple as slapping an industry term all over your web pages, everyone would be rich and overflowing with clients. (This is the erroneous logic of those who think the only way clients will find them is if they call themselves a virtual assistant.)

But that’s just not how SEO (or marketing, for that matter) works, and you’re not going to get found that way.

Plus, results are personalized these days. When you see these people crowing about how they’re on the first page of search results, what they fail to realize is that’s only because the search engines are smart enough to know they’re interested in their own website.

They might be on the first page of their own search results, but page 10, 20 or 200 for anyone else.

And, if your site is new, your site is going to rank even worse. No over-saturated industry term is going to change that; in fact, your results will be worse with an overused search term.

Forget SEO right now. It’s the least important thing for you to be focusing on.

Paradoxically, the less you worry about keywords, and the more you focus on simply writing like a real person specifically and conversationally to your target market and providing in-depth educational information for them, the better your site will fare organically in the search engines.

This is because search engines these days value high quality content written by people for people and the fact that those characteristics foster more and higher quality inbound links and referrals. They are that smart.

If you are going to worry about keywords and phrases at all, it’s your TARGET MARKET’S industry search terms and phrases you need to be focused on using, not ours.

Here again is where having a target market makes everything in business so much easier.

When you have a target market, you stop wasting time and energy trying to be found by anyone and everyone and focus instead on that just that specific group and where those folks are hanging out in large groups, online and off.

You should be networking amongst them, and if you are, then you should also be directing everyone you meet (through your signature line, through your calls to action, through your free offers, etc.) to your website.

When it comes to SEO for your website, stop focusing so much on our industry terms and focus instead of the industry terms and search phrases of your target market. What topics are they frequently conversing with each other about? What problems and pains are they trying to solve? How can you include or adapt your content on your website to address these subjects?

For example, someone in your target market isn’t going to set up Google Alerts for our industry, but they certainly are for their industry and the related kinds of things they do and are interested in.

Those are the kind of keywords and phrases you want to use in your search engine marketing and optimization.

But SEO is never the lead driver of traffic to your website.

It’s your networking and relationship marketing efforts that create the real and better qualified pipelines. You’ll get far better results placing your focus there.

Business Owners Don’t Provide Resumes

I wanted to focus today on another of the words to delete from your business vocabulary: resume.

Business owners don’t provide resumes (or curriculum vitae), employees do.

And you are not an employee.

Here’s how to understand this stuff:

When you were an employee, the cover letter is what got your resume read. The resume is what landed you an interview. And the goal of the interview was to cinch the job.

But once you are in business, you need to use business terminology to set proper expectations and understandings in clients. When you use employment terminology and apply employee-minded ways to business situations, you confuse and miseducate your prospective clients about the nature of the relationship. It actually causes the kind of problems you live to regret later down the road.

In the business world, your marketing and networking become your “cover letter.” This is what lets your target market and prospective clients get to know, like and trust you, and leads them to your business website to learn more about you and how you can help them.

As a business, your entire website and other marketing collateral become your “resume.” This is what should be working toward educating qualified and interested would-be clients about how you can help them and lead them towards engaging with you further in a consultation.

And the consultation is what is used to learn more about the client, determine if and how you can help and that there’s a mutual fit of needs and interests, and ultimately decide whether or not to work together.

Here’s the visual:

THAT WAS THEN (EMPLOYEE)
Cover Letter > Resume/References > Interview > Job

THIS IS NOW (BUSINESS OWNER & ADMINISTRATIVE CONSULTANT)
Marketing/Networking > Website/Testimonials > Consultation > New Client!

Just because someone asks you for a resume, doesn’t mean you provide one. If you continue to indulge requests for resumes and references from clients, you have no one but yourself to blame when you keep getting clients who don’t extend you professional respect nor view the relationship in its proper context–namely, one of B2B (business to business).

Instead, steer them toward your website. In fact, you could even say something like, “My website is my business resume. It will give you all the information you need about the work I do/my company does, how I help clients and what kind of clients benefit most from working with me. There’s even a page where you can learn more about me personally, and I’ve included some words from some of my happy clients.”

You have to understand that many clients have been completely miseducated about the nature of our profession, the relationship and the work we do thanks to incorrect (and, frankly, idiotic) articles about our industry. When most of them ask for a resume, it really is because they think we are a sort of offsite, telecommuting employee.

The term “Virtual Assistant’” doesn’t help things either–when you call yourself an assistant, that’s exactly what people think you are. Go figure. ;)

Call yourself an Administrative Consultant instead and just see what a difference it makes in peoples’ demeanor and understandings. It’s like night and day!

Professional respect and understanding of the relationship are very important ingredients in shaping client perceptions, showing them how to treat you, and commanding professional fees. Insist on being treated as a professional. Use the right language to reinforce that expectation and understanding.

Ultimately, this is about providing superior service to clients. If you create misconceptions and confusion because you’ve used or allowed clients to continue using wrong terminology at the start of your business relationships, you make things more difficult for them in working with you because I guarantee you, it will cause problems and misunderstandings in the relationship in some form or fashion down the road.

Using correct terminology and engaging in business practices that subtly educate clients that you are a professional they hire for business, not employment, facilitates great working relationships.

Yes, You CAN Write Articles to Market Your Business

Yes, You CAN Write Articles to Market Your Business

How do you think you will get prospects into your pipeline if they don’t know you’re out there?

Article marketing is one of the simplest and least expensive methods for marketing and promoting your business (often costing nothing but your time).

It’s one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website and improve your SEO (search engine optimization) at the same time.

Yet business owners come up with all kinds of reasons to avoid article marketing.

In this article, I’m answering all your objections. No negative self-talk allowed. You CAN do this!

Objection #1: I don’t think I’m a good enough writer.

No one is asking you to be Hemingway. In fact, some of the best articles out there are those that are down-to-earth and from the heart.

All you have to do is be yourself, write conversationally (like you would in real life) to your target market on a subject they care about or a problem or question they want advice on.

Objection #2: I don’t have anything interesting or of value to say (I’m no expert).

You’re a human being, aren’t you?

Unless you are a mannequin, you have thoughts. You have opinions. You have experiences. There are things you are passionate about.

Not to mention, you’re a business owner with some skill and knowledge in your field or else you wouldn’t have gone into business, right?

You have something to offer and that is yourself.

It doesn’t matter that the topic may have been covered a million times before.

No one else can write from your perspective, in your voice, with your personality and your unique insight.

Your right clients need to hear you so they can get to know, like and trust you.

Objection #3: I don’t have enough time; I’m too busy with clients.

That’s great that you have clients. But clients aren’t necessarily permanent fixtures in your business. They move on for all kinds of reasons.

Sometimes, it’s you who outgrows them.

Even if you have more business than you can handle at the moment, it’s always a smart idea to maintain your marketing presence to keep those prospects flowing into your pipeline.

One article a month is completely doable even for the most time-strapped entrepreneur.

Objection #4: I don’t have enough time; I’m too busy trying to get clients.

That’s exactly what article marketing will help you do, silly. 😉

Article marketing is a way to drive traffic to your website, which is what you want prospects to do.

Articles help increase your expert status in the eyes of would-be clients; they see you as an authority in your field.

Articles give them a chance to get to know you, which is what establishes rapport and gains their trust and confidence in you.

Articles also lend to the laws of attraction and intention: your right clients will be drawn to you and want to learn more about how you can help them by clicking through to your website.

Objection #5: I don’t know what to write about.

Here’s my own simple technique: Imagine you’re at a networking function. You’re talking shop with the business owner next to you, getting to know each other.

The business owner, now knowing that you are in the ___ business, asks you about ___.

Your answer to their question is your article!

It really is that simple. So go to those business get-togethers. Write down the questions that current and prospective clients ask you. These are the topics for your next articles.

What to Do Next with Your Articles

  • Post them to your blog.
  • Publish them in your ezine.
  • Post them on LinkedIn.
  • Post links to them on your social media accounts.
  • Shop them around to the professional publications of your target market.
  • Identify the popular expert blogs of your target market and ask to them to guest-post your article.
  • If a particular article topic proves to be especially popular (i.e., gets a lot of feedback and/or comments), expand it into a white paper or guide for your target market that you can use a free or sign-up give-away.

© Copyright by Danielle Keister for the Administrative Consultants Association. You are granted permission to republish this article only if used without alteration in its entirety with this copyright notice, title, article content, resource, and links left intact.