One way to get the word out about your products and services is to offer derivative courses at local community colleges and through online educational sites. These are usually not big money-makers, but they do get you in front of potential clients who might hire you as their coach, book you to speak at their event and/or buy your products and services.

If you are a beginner, it also gives you an opportunity to hone your speaking skills in a smaller group setting that is relatively safe. It is rare to find hecklers in a continuing education course! It forces you to collect your thoughts about your content, as well as the market you wish to serve.

For example, I’ve offered a version of the Marketing Strategies for Promoting YOU! course at one of my local community colleges, Paradise Valley Community College. I’ve also offered online versions through several resources:

The Long Story Short School of Writing at Colorado Free University offers a variety of online courses for both fiction and non-fiction writers. Since this is a target market I wish to reach, I created versions of the Marketing Strategies for Promoting YOU! course for these two audiences: fiction writers and non-fiction writers.

I’m also offering a version of MSPY that has been tailored for professional organizers at The Professional Organizer’s Toolbox.

I’ve even created a special VIP Gold Group through PodClass!

All these opportunities add to your marketing funnel, making it more diverse and robust. This, in turn, makes it healthier and better able to support you in your business mission.

Expand Your Empire is a post from Marketing Turbo-Charge

In yesterday’s call, I promised to post a resource on how to pull together a teleseminar. I mentioned Cindi Dawson, the Teleseminar Coach and said I’d post a link to her site here. So, here it is!

www.teleseminarsuccesssystem.com

This is not an affiliate link, I just think Cindi’s great! And she’s fun to listen to, too. Even better – I’ve invited her to be one of the featured speakers in the next series of Turbo-Charge Your Marketing calls and she’s agreed! Yeah!

Any way, go to her website and sign up for her free monthly calls — they are filled with golden tidbits of information that will help you pull together your own teleseminars.

Teleseminars make great attraction and retention tools. They are easy to do for very low cost — in fact, there are several free bridge line services out there. I use FreeConferencePro for Turbo-Charge Your Marketing.

Oh! And be sure to check out her cool list of teleseminar resources at:

www.teleseminarsuccesssystem.com/tstools.html

Teleseminar Resources is a post from Marketing Turbo-Charge

Yes, you can sell your tips booklets and other products as “back of the room” sale items at your speaking engagements. Many professional speakers, internet marketers, and other business people do that all the time. And there’s not a single thing wrong with it either. It promotes good will, and allows the reader to test-drive your material for not a lot of money. You can sell single copies, which acts like an expanded business card, and adds “author” to the list of your descriptors. But wait, there’s more.

Think about what happens when you sell a whole lot of copies to a large group. You know, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of copies. (And yes, those are totally possible numbers.) Not only are you making some handsome money for the sale. You are also being paid for your marketing materials. Lots of those same speakers make tons of money at their event from doing that, either directly or in a two-step process.

The sponsor of your speaking event may purchase a single copy of your product for each attendee, or you may sell directly to your audience. In an ideal situation, your audience is comprised of people who are large-quantity decision makers. They may be high in the ranks of marketing, publicity, advertising, sales, product management, or business owners. They are people who realize that giving away your info product can help them sell more of their own products.

Each and every copy of your booklet or other info product that gets distributed by a large quantity buyer who has had you customize or private label the product promotes their own product, service, or cause while also promoting you. And you were paid for the right by that group to promote you. It doesn’t get a whole lot better than that.

Which would you rather have? You may still decide to only give away copies and sell single copies as back-of-the-room products. Just let that be a conscious decision you make rather than one out of ignorance of the large scope of possibilities.

‘Back-of-the-Room’ Booklet Sales — A Great Start is a post from Marketing Turbo-Charge

Online audio can enhance your business, from increasing sales conversions to the number of opt-ins your squeeze page gets to improving customer service. Here are five ways you can use online audio in your business.

1. Dowloadable Audio Products
Did you record a particularly informative teleseminar? Why not turn it into an audio product available as a downloadable mp3? Add in supporting material and you can create a wonderfully robust product. And, I’ve heard that audio products sell very well.

Example

2. Podcast and Internet Radio
Always wanted your own talk show? Now you can. Record yourself sharing information, interviewing experts, chatting with fellow business owners and you’ve got the makings of an audience building podcast or Internet radio show.

Example

4. Instructional Messages
On your squeeze pages, at the point where you include a call to action, you can also include a short audio message that emphasizes that call to action. This can be helpful on squeeze pages where you encourage the visitor to enter their name and email address in the form.

Example

5. Audio Samples
If you’re selling products that include audio downloads or CDs, including short samples of the audio recordings can help people make the decision to purchase. This works well if the audios are instructional or musical.

Example

Online Audio and Your Business is a post from Marketing Turbo-Charge

Ever wonder who writes tips booklets? Since writing my own in 1991, for awhile it looked like it was mostly speakers, consultants, and personal or business coaches of every persuasion and topic. Those people still do write lots of booklets. Here is a small sampling of other professionals who decided to join the ever-increasing party:

• Rabbi
• Truck driver
• Plastics packager
• Pharmacist
• Dentist
• Massage therapist
• Professional organizer
• Stay-at-home mom
• Product inventor
• Realtor
• Trolley tour operator
• Engineer
• College professor
• Freelance writer
• Athlete
• Musician
• Interior designer
• Lawyer
• Accountant
• Chef
• Web designer
• Animal behaviorist
• Published book author
• Financial planner
• Chiropractor
• Actor
• Metaphysical practitioner
• Software designer
• Retailer

If you didn’t recognize yourself in that list, remember, this is a small sampling. And there is always room for more. Have you been thinking about doing a booklet with all those sound bites you’ve gathered about something over the years? What stops you? Share your great stuff with the world. There are lots of people who want and need what you’ve got. Start generic. No matter how much knowledge you’ve got in your area of expertise, or how much credibility, or how long you’ve been in your field, the first (and maybe only) booklet must be as generic a presentation of your information as possible. Why? It’s because you can always go into more depth with the content or in a particular industry when someone commissions you to do so. However, it’s much harder for your booklet buyers to relate to your content when it’s been customized or goes in-depth too quickly.

You can feel like you’re a race horse being held back by writing a generic booklet first. It really is the way to go. It’ll give you much more leverage to make many more sales going that route. And you’ll still have plenty of room to expand in subsequent products you create. Holding back now will pay off big time going forward.

Who Writes Tips Booklets? is a post from Marketing Turbo-Charge