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Archive for the 'marketing' Category

What if my market is two very different people groups?

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on March 20, 2012

in brainstorming, business, coaching, Communicating and marketing

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While it is conventional wisdom that you should only go after a certain demographic, the reality is that there are often times when you have a variety of different people groups who will want to use your products and services. How do you reach them?

The key to this is to tweak your message to focus on that group. I don’t mean lie [although unfortunately many people think marketing is nothing more than creative lying]. What I mean is focusing on the products and features that particular group will want to know about.

Let’s do an exercise together to see what this practically means for you. In order to demonstrate this I’ll use my business as an example. You do the same with your business.

Give an elevator speech:

Writing Career Coach teaches individuals, authors, speakers, businesses and writers how to use written communication to reach their target market.

That is great, right?

Maybe not. Do you really know what I could do for you? If you are a writer, what is it I’m offering?

I’ve given you a broad overview and hopefully made you want to know more. The next thing you’ll need to do is

you’ll need to list what those things are for each group.

Writers:

Editing

Coaching

Copy edits/critiques

Marketing ideas

Businesses:

Using Content marketing to market online and other places

Using your website more effectively

Creating products for your target customers

How word influence buying.

Speakers:

How to create books and products to increase back table sales

How to earn a living with speaking

Starting out as a speaker

Developing your brand

Individuals:

What is your dream?

Overcoming adversity to attain your goals

Becoming the person you thought you never could be.

These are just a few ideas on ways I use the larger topic to break it down in to smaller areas. Now do the same thing for business. In all of these areas I’m focusing on how the words will be used differently by different people and how the concepts of using written communication will be different for each group.

Once you’ve done that, work with your marketing or advertising person to implement your message for each group. This is actually the fun part because you’ll get to know the people you are serving. As that relationship develops you’ll learn even more ways to serve them and you’ll be able to better articulate how you can help.

This is a longer post this week, but I hope it was helpful. If you’d like help with this Writing Career Coach offers a number of products like Audio CDs and personalized coaching to help you with this. Also, read back through the archives. We have almost 5 years of knowledge available to you at no charge!

Your Coach for the Journey, Tiffany Colter, The Writing Career Coach

Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com.

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The Economical Value of Knowledge

Published

Tiffany Colter

on June 14, 2011

in becoming human to your customers, business, earn money writing, growing as a writer, marketing and success

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I was recently reading an executive summary of the book Intellectual Capital by Thomas Stewart. One of the action points they made in this summary talked about knowledge, obviously because the book’s called Intellectual Capital. But usually knowledge seems to be valued for knowledge’s sake. One point made in this book talked about how you should only treat knowledge as an asset if you’re going to get some kind of return on your investment, some kind of economic return. That got me thinking about intellectual property, not only of authors, but of any business owner.

What we create in our companies, no matter what is, selling insurance or books or hot dogs, we’re selling an idea and an experience.

Now, you may say to me well how is selling a hot dog an experience? Think about what hot dogs are. They are something that we eat at baseball games. They’re our camp food; they’re our cook out over the fire with your dad with a stick kind of food. Hot dogs can be an experience depending on the emotion you attach to them. Again, that’s using intellectual capital—knowledge—as an asset. I used my knowledge of things associated that can happen when you’re eating a hot dog and I turned it into a story or experience that added value to a sixty-nine cent food.

Think about how you can add to your bottom line, how you can grow your company, using the ideas that you have in your head. Think of those ideas that connect with your reader or your target market.

You should be developing skills and abilities, yes, through knowledge. Then you should use that knowledge and try to work creatively to connect that product to your client or your target market or the person that you hope will be your future customer. While a pen, in and of itself is just something used to write, by giving that pen as a gift for a specific event it adds sentimental value.

How can you use that kind of idea to connect with your potential customer, using written communication? That’s the key of Writing Career Coach. We recognize that every single thing we encounter is the opportunity to have or share a story. It’s creating a memory. If you can find that emotional connection with your client and then provide them with better than expected service and service after the sale, that is how you develop ongoing relationships with your customers. That is how you get repeat customers and build those referrals and clients.

Next time you are trying to decide where to apply your education, budget, or however you designate it, consider putting some money aside to look at ways to help you recognize the emotional connection that you can have with your customers. Look at the return on your investment. Don’t just run after an expensive MBA because it adds some more alphabet soup to your name. Rather, look at the return you’re going to get on that knowledge and how it’s going to help your bottom line and help your client get more from their experience with you.

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What businesses should know about writing: Say the same thing different ways

Published

Tiffany Colter

on August 11, 2010

in changing with the times, know your target readers, marketing and twitter

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In the previous two blogs we’ve talked about engaging the senses and using tone to help connect with your potential customer. Now we’re going to talk about saying the same things in different ways.

This is particularly helpful when you look at the new way that social media is developing over the last year to five years. Consider things like
• blogs
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• White Papers
• ebooks
• vlogs
• and all of these various forms of social media.

All of these appeal to a different segment of your population. We learned this in our previous blog on tone. And all of them appeal to different senses. We talked about this in our previous blog engaging the senses. What I’m talking about today is focusing our style to different people and different segments in different ways.

To clarify, people who read blogs are not necessarily people who read newsletter articles, whether e-newsletters or print newsletters. Likewise people who follow Twitter are not always the same people who follow Facebook. While there is overlapping readership, each of these areas appeal to a specific kind of consumer. Therefore, whenever you’re working on marketing copy, if your target market is found in any of these areas you need to make sure that you’re using copy that will appeal in each of these areas

For example, blogs are more conducive to more up-to-date information or expounding on an issue or linking to things. (Like the blogs that I’m doing here.)

Tweets, on the other hand, are more short bursts but are very well suited to finding a relevant article. These are for the person who is frequently reading up on the industry. You want to be the first to inform your customers of updates and innovations. Twitter lets you do that.

Blogs are designed for fairly contemporary information that can be used as a reference later.

Twitter would appeal more for if there was a new industry update I wanted to get out to my readership immediately. That’s when a Tweet would come in.

Enewsletters are more about developing relationships over time, making business connections and getting to know people. Ebooks and digital downloads, or e-newsletters, are better suited to expounding on a particular topic with a company that you’re either in relationship with or developing a relationship with.

Therefore, each of your customers is at a different stage stages, whether just finding out about you, or wanting to be on the cutting edge of what’s happening in your industry through Tweets, someone who wants to continue to learn gradually through your blogs, or someone who wants to see that information expounded on through your newsletters, each person has a different preference in their interaction with you. Therefore using all of these kinds of networking tools are imperative to helping develop your complete customer base.

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What businesses should know about writing: Engage senses

Published

Tiffany Colter

on August 4, 2010

in business, marketing, success and writing tips

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As written communication becomes more important in marketing, the smart business owner will begin to use fiction techniques to engage their potential market and to build relationship right from the beginning. When I say businesses need to use fiction techniques I don’t mean creating lies and trying to be fictitious. What I mean is using the five senses, as well as emotional connection to the environment to help pull the reader and thus the potential customer in to the scenario that the business is trying to describe.

For example, I recently needed to purchase tires. What are some of the senses associated with purchasing tires? You need to give a sense of safety. You need to give a sense of reliability. You need to demonstrate understanding of the needs of the individual tire purchaser. Therefore, building a scenario that causes the reader to think of these kind of things immediately causes them to think of what qualities they really want and need in tires. The same is true for say, business consulting. You want to help the potential client to see themselves accomplishing their goal, because when they see themselves there, they can see your role in helping them get there.

It is all about engaging the senses, but I don’t necessarily mean talking about what something will smell like or taste like. I mean using those five senses, like feeling the cold, sensing the slip of the tires when you’re driving. But what I mean even more than that, is how we interact with our environment.

An excellent writer will be able to take those five senses, connect them to an emotion, and draw the whole picture together. That’s what you need to do in your marketing copy. Not dreamy promises, not try to catch somebody with a jazzy jingle.

What you need to do is show them how that product is going to interact with their life. How it’s going to help them get to their goals, whether that goal is

- getting safely from Point A to Point B

- or growing a business

- or selling a book

- or whatever it is.

Knowing how to use the senses and knowing how to create a story world, a picture, an image in a customer’s mind, helps them to actually have a mental symbol of your product and will make them more likely to want to purchase from you and develop a relationship with you down the road.

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How can I market my writing?

Published

Tiffany Colter

on March 16, 2010

in blogging, building a plan for writing., business, earn money writing, How to..., marketing, success and value of writing articles

. 1 Comment

home_photo This article is excerpted from my article “How can I market my writing.” The entire article is available free under the “Articles” tab at www.WritingCareerCoach.com

As an aspiring author there is a great deal to learn. There are grammar and spelling rules. There is a tone. There is that certain ‘something’ that helps the reader connect with the message of the writer. Writers recognize this and spend a great deal of time at conferences and in critique groups honing their craft and finding ways to better express their thoughts on paper.

What writers are only beginning to realize is that running alongside this is the need for a strong marketing sense. For some people with a business background this could come more naturally. They’ve grown accustomed to networking and making sales contacts. For born writers, however, our more solitary nature sometimes makes the idea of networking about as appealing as dragging our tongue across razor blades. There is the perception that marketing our craft somehow sullies it, and thus, we want to leave that part to our publisher. Doing this will doom your work to obscurity. Therefore, we need to find ways to make marketing, if not pleasurable, bearable.

In this article we’re going to look at a few simple ways to begin to market your writing. While using all of these ideas together may give the best result, selecting only one or two can give you a significant jump start on establishing name recognition. Furthermore, most, if not all, of these techniques can be used before you even have your first book contracted. That makes these not only a means of marketing our writing to readers but also marketing our writing to potential publishing houses.

Blogging

Blogging is a phenomenon that has only been around for a little over a decade and has received mixed reviews. One of the advantages of establishing a blog is that many blogs are free to start. The setback of blogging is the same as the setback of anything else, you must let people know it is there and give them a reason to come again and again.

Articles

Historically the way to publication began with an author writing a variety of articles and then “shopping” them around to various magazines and periodicals. The face of publishing, however, has been changing over the last 5-10 years with a transition from print publications to electronic publications. While this has led to a decrease in the number of paying markets for a writer to break in to, it has offered an increase in the potential of using articles to market YOU, rather than the magazine you are writing for.

Newsletters

For people who like to stay in the know but who don’t like to read daily blogs there are newsletters. One benefit of the newsletter is the ability to add graphics to your stories and links to your blog and to other articles. Furthermore, a newsletter gives the perception of professionalism to some readers. I find that there is some overlap between my blog subscribers and my newsletter subscribers. Despite this, the two distribution means tend to reach different groups.

Speaking

This is my favorite part of marketing. I love to write, but I also love teaching other people how to write. Therefore I spend as much time as I can speaking to business and writing groups. This option isn’t for everyone but if you do have some interest in speaking, take the time to learn how to do it properly. Find some online classes and read books. Remember, just because you can talk, doesn’t mean you can speak.

Networking Communities

Finally, a great way to market your writing is by networking. Membership in online communities helps you with national and international connections while local groups help your develop your people skills. Make sure you focus on giving to these communities more than you seek to take.

This is not an exhaustive list of ways to market your writing but gives you a start. While these tips and ideas may not help you with the nerves inherent in putting yourself out there, they will help you to develop the relationships that will make marketing your work a much more pleasurable experience.

For a more expanded view of marketing and developing your writing check out my ebook Writing and Business: A Guide for Freelance Writers. Available for purchase by contacting Tiffany, only $7.

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How to nail your ending

Published

Tiffany Colter

on January 5, 2010

in coaching, craft, excercises, exercise, growing as a writer, How to..., improving your writing, marketing, success and technique

. 1 Comment

The Pleasure of My Company

I just completed the book The Pleasure of My Company a book about a highly neurotic man on a quest to normalcy. I picked up this book because it was not only written but read by Steve Martin [yes, THAT Steve Martin], so if the writing was bad the reading would be amusing.

I was captured by the humor and the incredible characterization in this story. As with every book I searched for ways to improve my own writing during the process of reading.

This book had one of the best endings of any book I’ve read in a very long time. I would put it among the top 5 endings of ANY book. It was the type that cannot be shared because it would spoil the entire the book. It ended when the story ended rather than jamming in needless [and useless] words just to hit an artificial word count. The ending was incredibly satisfying and logical. There were no cheap theatrics, it simply was.

The ending always sells your next book and this story absolutely sold the next book to me.

Here at Writing Career Coach I spend a good bit of time telling you ways to market your writing. I interview authors to introduce you to different ways of marketing your writing and looking at your career. None of that matters if you don’t deliver.

So here is today’s assignment, what is your ending? Where are you going? How is your main character going to grow and develop over the course of your story? Why is someone going to invest hours of their time to live the life of your characters?

How are you going to end? Tell us some of your ideas in the comments.

Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail.

Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com

Tiffany is a speaker and teacher. Find out about available topics for your group’s next event.

Tiffany is a National Examiner. Read her articles here.

Learn more about Tiffany’s Marketing techniques on her main blog.

Common-sense money management is free at The Balanced Life website.

Read Tiffany’s award winning manuscript “A Face in the Shadow” on her fiction blog.

She writes a blog for the Christian writer Tuesdays at Writer’s Rest.

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Preparing for change: part 1

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admin

on June 23, 2009

in future of publishing, Making money writing and marketing

. 2 Comments

Last weekend Chip MacGregor posted a fascinating blog about where he thinks publishing will be in 5 years. Rather than the usual list of non-information you can find on some blogs, this posting is very thought provoking. Over the next couple of posts I want to comment on three of Chip’s points. I urge you to go back and read the entire blog to get a full understanding of all the changes he sees ahead.

Chip’s 1st point: “You will own an electronic reader.”

The reason I found this idea so striking is the multiple marketing channels that are available when you consider instant gratification in book reading. While it offers authors the opportunity to sell their books online through their own website [and have the reader see them instantly] it calls in to question current marketing practices like book signings, influencer copies [that are then passed along to other readers who become fans] and sales based on scanning the shelves.
On the positive side, it can also mean an increase in impulse buying.

Chip’s 4th point: “The concept of convergence will jump from newspapers and magazines to books.”

This is a really neat concept that I hope comes soon. This is having links, video, audio and bonus footage in the electronic books. I love the bonus features available on DVDs and many smart authors have recognized the benefit of bonus chapters or other special gifts on their website, but to have an ‘interactive book’ is awesome. When I consider the kinds of things that are possible with this technology my creative and marketing centers of my brain start doing flip flops. In fact, I can hardly wait 5 years to see some books using this. I can’t wait to use my creativity to maximize this technology with my own book.

Friday we will look at his 8th point. Make sure you go over and read his post, comment on my blog and then come back Friday to talk more.
So, if either of these are the future of book publishing, how do you need to start adjusting your marketing strategy and your platform development so you’re prepared to maximize your book sales?

Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at http://writingcareercoach.com/contact.htmlTiffany is a speaker and teacher. Find out about available topics for your group’s next event.Tiffany is a National Examiner. Read her articles here.Learn more about Tiffany’s Marketing techniques on her main blog.Common-sense money management is free at The Balanced Life website. [www.TheBalancedLife.com]Read Tiffany’s award winning manuscript “A Face in the Shadow” on her fiction blog.She writes a blog for the Christian writer Tuesdays at Writer’s Rest.[http://writersrest.blogspot.com]

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How to apply the great ideas you learn

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admin

on June 9, 2009

in marketing

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Yesterday I talked about the stickiness factor in marketing. If you didn’t read that blog go back now and do it. You can click the link here.

So, what does the stickiness factor tell us. How can we apply it to marketing our own writing. This will require some thought because each person will be different [if not, what is there to attract someone to you rather than to me?]

Think about this a minute. What did I do in the blog yesterday to increase your likelihood of reading the article I suggested. I included a link.

What did I do to increase the sales at my garage sale? Had a bag sitting in each box of clothes.

One thing I didn’t include yesterday was that EVERY person thought it was a great deal. Two or three people called others on their cell phone to let them know about my great deal. Countless people decided to purchase when they hadn’t planned on it ["For 25 cents I can give them away if they don't fit."] and two people actually gave me double the amount due “because it was a such a huge bargain”.

I want you to seriously consider what lessons for your own marketing efforts you can glean from these examples. There is a wealth of information you can learn from this. What small change to your blog, website or marketing would draw more readers to you? It isn’t an easy question. I had to experiment a few times on Saturday with the placement of the bags until I found that actually putting them in the boxes full of clothes made them sell. You will have to experiment a bit with your own marketing efforts until you find what works.

Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at www.WritingCareerCoach.com
Tiffany is a speaker and teacher. Find out about available topics for your group’s next event.
Tiffany is a National Examiner. Read her articles here.
Learn more about Tiffany’s Marketing techniques on her main blog.
Common-sense money management is free at The Balanced Life website. [www.TheBalancedLife.com]
Read Tiffany’s award winning manuscript “A Face in the Shadow” on her fiction blog. [http://tiffanycolter.blogspot.com]
She writes a blog for the Christian writer Tuesdays at Writer’s Rest.[http://writersrest.blogspot.com]

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Small steps to increase your readership

Published

admin

on June 8, 2009

in earn money writing and marketing

. 1 Comment

Since reading The Tipping Point, I have begun to look at the way I reach out to my target market differently. The premise of the book is that a series of small action or small changes can cause something to take off [or suddenly stop]. One of the ‘pillars’ of the theory is called stickiness. It is essentially how responsive a person will be to a particular idea. Will they follow through.

What do I mean by “follow through?” I mean, will they go the next step to buy the book? Will they check out the next blog? Will they act on your recommendation or will they simply say “Wow, I should do that.”

Consider this. I wrote a series on increasing your readership at my Examiner.com articles page. If you google my name and Examiner you should be able to find it. Many of you have read my articles before there, so it will be fairly easy for you to find. A few clicks at most.

But I also wrote a quick article on doing book reviews of other books to increase your own book sales. This is the link to it.

How many of you clicked over [or just decided you'd click over as soon as you finished reading this post?] I didn’t really do anything differently. The content was equally helpful. In fact, the stories I didn’t link to were SEVEN DIFFERENT ARTICLES each providing help from books I read. The book review article included some information from a single source, but it also contained a bit more analysis of the information from me. You were likely to read one quick article than seven articles that would require you to google.

That small step increased your likelihood to read my article.

I tested this theory further at my garage sale Saturday. I was selling a large amount of clothes my kids had outgrown for 25 cents a bag. For the first hour we sold them and did fairly well. People were excited to hear about the deal and most filled a bag.

Then we next separated the kids sizes by the box. Each box had its own size. Most people bought a bag or two that way too…but we were getting more people filling two bags.

Then we laid bags in each box. When a person came up we said “The clothes are 25 cents a bag. As many as you can stuff in there.” You know what happened? People started buying 2-3 bags full.

There were only VERY small changes in each scenario.

Think about this and consider how this may affect your marketing. Tomorrow I will analyze this a bit further and tell you how you can use this to grow your own writing.

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Where is your growth potential?

Published

admin

on May 12, 2009

in building a plan for writing., business, knowing your level of influence and marketing

. 0 Comments

Yesterday I talked a bit about the research I’m doing for the new Writing Career Coach product. One thing I’ve had to ask myself is, as a writer, where is my greatest growth potential.

Like many of you I have a variety of legs to my platform. I write articles for E-zines and magazines. I write/contribute to 3 blogs as well as writing articles for online journals. I speak to writer’s groups and business groups regularly and teach webinars. I also have newsletters that I distribute. This is in addition to my business which is coaching aspiring writers, writing fiction and writing non-fiction.

When you are a writer, especially one working to breakout in book length writing, you must always balance your need to write with your need to pay your bills. For most people that means you work, work, work for pay until you have something paid for, then you start working on your writing until you find you need money again…then the cycle repeats. Many people don’t advance because they are not looking at where their real growth potential is. Furthermore, they aren’t willing to invest the time to build up the weaker areas to reach their dreams. By that I mean people who want to write novels may not be strong at that YET but what are they doing to make that their strength?

Admittedly, this is quite a bit to juggle. Most of us have responsibilities beyond simply writing our stories. It can, at times, seem overwhelming. That is why it is so important to find where your current growth potential is, then build on your strength. Once you feel confident in that area you can work on the next. My writing career has been built almost entirely in 30 minute increments. I never had the time to sit down for hours and write. Therefore, I had to take advantage of 30 minutes of quiet, 30 minutes where I could read, 30 minute lessons.

Find where your growth potential is and build on it.

Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at www.WritingCareerCoach.com
Tiffany is a speaker and teacher. Find out about available topics for your group’s next event.
Learn more about Tiffany’s Marketing techniques on her main blog.
Common-sense money management is free at The Balanced Life website. [www.TheBalancedLife.com]
Read Tiffany’s award winning manuscript “A Face in the Shadow” on her fiction blog. [http://tiffanycolter.blogspot.com]
She writes a blog for the Christian writer Tuesdays at Writer’s Rest.[http://writersrest.blogspot.com]

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Archive for the 'marketing' Category

What if my market is two very different people groups?

The Economical Value of Knowledge

What businesses should know about writing: Say the same thing different ways

What businesses should know about writing: Engage senses

How can I market my writing?

How to nail your ending

Preparing for change: part 1

How to apply the great ideas you learn

Small steps to increase your readership

Where is your growth potential?

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