5 Easy Ways to Market

Posted on March 6, 2016 by admin

By
Rhonda Campbell

If you’re like me, you thought that there was something to the fact that millions of people were on the internet. Pros operating software, companies or social networks hailed how easy it was to market to the world. It didn’t matter if you used giveaways, affiliate websites, newsletters or press releases to market your products or services with.

Numbers were on your side.

Remember those millions of people on the internet?

What I’ve Learned After 15 Years

More than 15 years in, I know that numbers are not necessarily that big of a deal. Besides, if numbers is the most important factor when it comes to the effectiveness of a marketing technique, then it would make better sense to market to the 7 billion folks offline.


To successfully market, you have to go where the people who want your products or services are. Finding these folks is more important than finding out how many people are on the internet, in your town or in a club or association that you are affiliated with.

Demographic reports are a good start. Magazines, newspapers and websites that accept advertisements, often know the demographics of the people who read their periodicals or visit their websites. Ask for this demographic data before you pay for ads. If websites, magazines or newspapers don’t pull in your target audience, move on. Other doors are waiting for you to knock on them.

Easy Ways to Market to the Right Buyers

Although that’s not one of the five ways to market, it’s a must first step. You must know your target audience. You must know how and where to find your target audience. If you’re the type of person who buys the types of products or services that you make, think about the places where you hang out and the places that the people you are close to frequent.

See if you can hang flyers or stack giveaways or postcards at these places. Get approval before you start to market at other businesses. If your target audience visits or attends colleges, universities, restaurants or libraries, ask if you can speak at these locations or offer freebies or giveaways.

Consider working with ethical companies that develop software that pushes graphic sales pieces, including book covers and CD covers, out to hundreds or thousands of people in a matter of minutes. If you use content marketing platforms like Outbrain, Percolate or Contently, review reports and analytics, ensuring that traffic to your websites mainly comes from your target audience.

More Ways to Market

Add your websites to relevant directories, online and offline. To get in print directories, you may have to pay a small fee. An advantage that print directories have over online directories is that, unless recipients toss the directories in the garbage or shoves them in a drawer, the directories stay in eyesight. Get on the front or back flap of a directory, and your business could get repeated attention.

Organizers of festivals, vendor market days and cultural events create directories that you could add your products, services and website URLs into. You can get into some directories for $10 to $25.

There are also free online directories that you can add your business to. Make sure that you include your website URL.

Reach out to colleges, local organizations and associations. Ask if you can speak about important topics that tie into your products or services, topics that can benefit people who attend the colleges, organizations or association events.

Start interviewing on radio stations, both online and offline. Gebbie Press lists radio stations and the types of information that the stations focus on. Your local radio stations are great places to start as well. Don’t assume that local radio stations won’t want to interview you. Stations want and thrive on great, engaging guests.

Another way  to market include writing and distributing press releases. Data to add to your press releases include pictures of your products, your website URL and keywords that your target audience uses to search for products and services like yours.


Stay consistent. You may not always realize the results that you want. But, if you stop, you’re almost guaranteed to generate zero results and if you’re serious about reaching your target market, zero results is not an option.

Posted in Growing Business | Tagged | 1 Comment

Accepting Change

Posted on February 21, 2016 by admin

By Rhonda Campbell

Change is a component of this world. We start dealing with change beginning in infancy. Yet, accepting change is not always easy.

Our resistance to change manifest in different forms, including body illnesses, depression, inflammation, heightened stress levels and, perhaps most of all, fear. The National Center for Biotechnology Information reports that factors that influence stress include coping skills, genetics, personality and support.

Accepting Change Means Relinquishing Control

A root cause of stress is often change. That change could come, for example, as the departure of a loved one, a new job, a relocation, a child leaving home or a marriage or breakup. Fortunately, change can lead to greater learning, awakening, increased awareness and dream fulfillment.

Gaining from change may require that we lower or remove our expectations and relinquish control. If there truly is a Source behind everything, that created everything, then each thought and/or action impacts every other thought and/or action. We’re all connected. if that’s a fact, that alone could be cause for the constant change that occurs in this world.


Relinquishing control is one of the toughest actions to complete. When we’re comfortable, we often feel in control. Let enough change enter our experiences and we may not only feel that we are no longer in control, we may feel abandoned, forsaken, separated from others and alone. We may feel like it’s us against the world. Expectations are another factor that come into play when accepting change.

Our expectations are generally personal, revolve around what we think will benefit us the most. Few of our expectations may focus on others as much as they focus on us. The Tiny Buddha shares that less expectations can keep us open to “come what may”. This single decision could eliminate or reduce frustration, anger and sadness.

Be Honest About Change

Admitting that change is occurring is another way to gain and truly learn from change experiences. If we find ourselves seeking distraction (i.e. burying ourselves in reading books, working what seems all-the-time, partying incessantly, sleeping incessantly), we may not be willing to admit that we are in the midst of change.

We may not be willing to admit that we are not in control of everything. However, we do have the power of choice. We can choose to speak and think positive thoughts or affirmations and we can connect with people who encourage us (even if these connections are kept via the telephone if friends and family do not live nearby).
Should we fear that we are incapable of accepting change or of managing our way through change, there are steps that we can take to strengthen our confidence. Among these steps are creating a list that lays out specific changes we have processed through already, particularly changes that we didn’t think we would make it through.

We can also talk with others about changes that they have come through. It can help to listen to others share their concerns about change. This alone can cause us to feel “normal” and like if other people are not only accepting change but also managing through change effectively, so can we.

Keep Moving

Keep moving. Realize that change is a part of this world. We may experience periods of constancy in this world, but, those times don’t last. Accepting change could reduce stressors.

Practice awareness and catch yourself if you see that you’re slipping into old patterns. The slip could be resistance to a current change. The resistance to change could be an attempt to keep things from changing.

Accepting change means that you practice awareness and catch yourself should you start retreating in even one area of your life. Pursuing passions and dreams can motivate you. So too can eating a healthy, balanced diet and exercising. Getting outdoors for at least one hour a day could do wonders for your system.


Love yourself. Be patient with yourself. Ask for help if you feel you’d benefit from it, and, again, keep moving. Regularly connect with others. For example, you may join an in-person discussion group, join a hobby group or attend movies with friends one to two or more times a month.

Posted in Staying Motivated and Inspired | Tagged | 1 Comment

Paycheck jobs aren’t enough

Posted on February 13, 2016 by admin

By Belinda Johnson

Paycheck jobs are great for paying bills. But, there’s a catch. Because these jobs leave you feeling flat, you may buy-buy-buy to give yourself emotional rewards. Pile on debt and don’t be surprised if you start working longer hours at a job that you hate just so you’ll have more money to buy more clothes, shoes, technology gadgets, furniture and more.

It takes more than money

Why? To be truly rewarding, work has to pay off in more areas than the bank. Good jobs strengthen your personal and career confidence. You can see how good jobs connect to higher levels within an organization. For example, if you work as a human resources recruiting coordinator and you love helping people connect with profitable, growing jobs, you could step into human resources specialist jobs then get promoted into human resources recruiter jobs.


Stick with it, and you could head up an entire human resources department one day. But, that’s only if you love helping others to excel on the job. If that’s not your passion, a big salary won’t be enough to graduate the gig away from being a paycheck job.

Finding the right jobs

It really is up to you to discover with jobs are best for you. Think about your hobbies, your passions. Consider your dreams, the activities that you think about engaging in during your free time.  For example, if you love building home designs, jobs in the furniture industry might be a good fit. Keep advancing. You could end up owning a chain of furniture stores.

On the other hand, paycheck jobs don’t excite you. Not only would you quit these jobs if you could had the money to do so, you may not find any jobs that are related to paycheck jobs that you work appealing. Feeling flat and lacking the desire to advance at work aren’t the only drawbacks to working paycheck jobs.

Downsides of working paycheck jobs

Additional drawbacks to working paycheck jobs include fatigue (it’s hard to feel energized when you’re spending eight or more hours a day doing what you hate), sleeplessness and headaches. Paycheck jobs could also find you:

  • Easily irritated
  • Dreaming about the future instead of enjoying living in the NOW
  • Complaining about nearly everything at work
  • Lowering the vibes and the morale of your colleagues
  • Believing that your life is never going to get better
  • Living paycheck to paycheck (as you buy products to try to fill up the empty feeling that seems to be controlling you)
  • Aligning the lack of zest that you feel for paycheck jobs with how you feel about your friends, relatives, neighbors and other people around you

Keep going


The answer may not be to walk out on jobs that use your gifts and stir your passions. You could start looking for jobs that inspire you, that bring out the best in you. Keep searching until you find the right jobs for you. You may even decide to launch a new business in your passion field.

Stay open to change. You’re going to need to accept change to continue to advance in your chosen career.

Posted in Employment and Finding Jobs | Tagged | 1 Comment

Best customer service features

Posted on February 7, 2016 by admin

By Rhonda Campbell

To be effective, customer service features have to keep how the customer feels as top priority. Sales, increased customer interest and revenues cannot trump how the customer feels. You understand this during the marketing and promoting stages.


Generating confident, happy, sexy, trusting and adventurous feelings in customers is what marketing is primarily about. Tie welcomed feelings to your product or service and you could see a pick-up in sales as customers start to believe that getting your products or services will create those welcomed feelings within themselves.

Customer feelings don’t stop with marketing and promoting

Why abandon the focus on customer emotions when customers call your service line to tell a representative that the product arrived in the mail damaged, that a repair technician refused to uphold their warranty or that pricing was 10% higher than it was advertised? Give your customers the best experience by listening to them fully.

Ensure that customer service representatives receive sufficient and focused training. Teach customer service representatives not to cut customers off when they are voicing an issue or challenge. Patience is an absolutely necessary customer service feature.

Other absolutely necessary customer service features are empathy, a positive attitude, communication and clarity. Grove goes into each of these and other customer service features in more depth.

Organizations that offer customer service training include:

• Dale Carnegie (the training is broken into modules)
• Skillsoft (they offer software training programs)
• American Management Association

Colleges and universities also offer training programs that focus on customer service. After your representatives are trained, make sure that you have enough representatives. This prevents workers who communicate directly with customers from feeling stressed and as if they don’t have enough support and bandwidth to perform their job effectively. All of the training in the world won’t make someone feel good about their job if they’re working 12 or more hours a day.

Customer service features showcase representatives

Reward customer service representatives when they positively resolve complicated customer service issues. It’s not uncommon for representatives to be located away from other employees, spending hours responding to one telephone call after another.

Recognize your representatives. Put them in the spotlight and don’t hide them away. After all, other than sales professionals, few (if any), people connect with customers as much as customer service representatives.

Thank customers for telephoning or writing in an issue, bringing a potentially larger issue to your attention. Keep in mind that you could have one customer to satisfy or that customer could remain silent and you end up having hundreds of angry customers to face. So, the first customer who brings an issue to your attention could serve as an ally, keeping a challenge from growing.

Check in with customers

Measure customer service satisfaction by surveying customers. Give customers a gift, price discount or other incentive to take the survey.


Keep in touch with customers by sending them holiday greetings, birthday cards (print or electronic) and anniversary greetings. For example, if customers bought a new laptop from you, send them an anniversary greeting and an invitation to save 15% on a laptop accessory, all because it’s the second anniversary for when they purchased their new laptop from you.

Posted in Business Management | Tagged | 1 Comment

Signs you have bad freelance clients

Posted on January 31, 2016 by admin

By Rebecca Davis

Picture by Graphikamaal

Picture by Graphikamaal

More than 53 million Americans earn their income freelancing. Clients that they work for cross all industries and range from hospital administrators to corporate human resources directors to major motion picture studios to financial services institutions. Some of these freelance clients are demanding, requesting constant revisions, travel to in-person meetings and long work hours.

Freelance clients that drain you

These client demands can etch away at the benefits of being a freelancer, including attractive salaries. At the top end, freelancers earn six figure salaries. On average, a freelancers annual income is about $50,000 – $60,000, depending on the field that freelancers work in. But, it’s flexibility and the ability to shift incomes upward with experience (instead of waiting for a once a year salary increase at a traditional job) that attracts skilled professionals to freelancing.


Freelance for a year or longer and you’ll learn that money isn’t always enough to make a client worth sticking with. So, how do you know when it’s time to let freelance clients go?

At the top end is low pay. Even if this is your very first time working with a client as a freelancer, you deserve to be paid a reasonable rate. Do a quick search online to find standard, low and high rates for jobs in your field. Professional associations sometimes post rates at their websites.

It also might be time to let freelance clients go if:

  • Clients ask you to edit or revise a project three or more times. Set a limit on the number of revisions you will perform before you start working on a freelancing project. Include this limit in your contract.
  • Late payments are becoming the norm with a client.
  • During meetings with prospects or third parties, a freelance client repeatedly disrespects you, despite your attempts to educate them to stop this behavior.
  • You are expected to adhere to unreasonable deadlines as a freelancer. This includes tight work deadlines that regularly chip away at your weekends.
  • A client is engaged in a scam. Believe it or not, this happens.

Protect yourself as a freelancer

Do your homework on prospective freelance clients. Don’t send clients money or work for free, even if a client tells you that she can get you exposure. Set clear boundaries and stick to them. However, stay flexible and be open to reasonable negotiations.

You teach clients how to perceive and treat you. Respect yourself and your talents and skills. As a freelancer with a sharp business acumen, you’ll attract far more great clients than the types of freelance clients that you need to let go. Yet, when it’s time, be willing to pull the plug. The last thing you want is to drain your time, energy and resources on a client who is never going to pay you or who doesn’t respect your talents.

Posted in Employment and Finding Jobs | Tagged | 1 Comment