LinkedIn has an array of powerful resources that you can use to market yourself online. The variety of tools available can be used to help you;

to sell more of your products

With so many people being focussed on receiving something for themselves from the LinkedIn community, start by giving to others first. Don’t ask for a recommendation until you have given some for others. Recommend without being asked for a recommendation. Give to others by making introductions, bring together people who you think can help each other achieve their goals in their businesses.

Getting your message across to a wider network requires you to connect with everyone. If you restrict yourself to a network that only contains people you know, you are missing out on opportunities that will arise from connecting with new people. A small and restricted network will not spread your word or help you reach your marketing goals. Widen your circle and spread the word.

Add your personal LinkedIn link to:-

When you start receiving invitations daily, to connect, you have marketed yourself successfully.

Personality – In the main, people want a relationship with others that they know, like and trust. They don’t want to connect with a person but want interaction with a human, so make your interactions personal. When extending an invitation to connect make it personal, people will remember you and are more likely to follow up when you connect in the future.

Add a personal element to your profile, telling people who you are and who you help, sharing your personal voice, will encourage people to connect with you.

Do you need some help with the assembling your products? Whether it’s written or audio/video a virtual assistant can research;

They can find the best people to carry your ideas forward, those who are most suited to you and your product.

A VA can manage the team involved in the production keeping the project on track and moving forward. Ensuring the development doesn’t ‘stick’ at any point and make people accountable for various parts of the process.

Virtual support can review at a halfway point, to make sure things are moving in the right direction and proofread the finished article before passing on to you for your final approval.

With new products available, a virtual assistant can add them to your shopping cart and link them to your website for maximum effect (or provide the necessary link/s to your web developer.)

If the product is an electronic one, a virtual assistant can arrange for it to be delivered electronically after the customer has paid. Instant access to your product!

Following the purchase, a VA can assist with drafting text for a ‘thank you’ web page for your approval. They can draft copy for autoresponders for each item you have available for sale.
When copy is approved by you, a virtual assistant can implement and include relevant links for your product.
Virtual support can help you to consider the use of tracking links, identifying the links that are most effective and therefore the best ones to employ.

If your production is audio, a VA can transcribe and create a written product for distribution (or use a transcription service to assist).

If you have employed a graphic designer, virtual support can communicate with them to create the appropriate image for your product, suggesting ideas so that the image is matched to you and your product before your final approval.

When your offer is a physical item (CD, book, ) rather than an electronically available one a virtual assistant can research and set up the shipping of merchandise by a fulfilment house. They can then submit your products to enable shipping. Virtual support can draft copy documents to dispatch with the goods and submit for your approval.

Now you have your product and all systems in place for delivery to your customers, next week we will see how your virtual assistant can help with the public release and launch.

If we can help in any way, email us here, or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

A virtual assistant can initially set up a membership site on WordPress for you and then connect the website with management software . There are many membership management programmes but WishList is powerful and easy to use, integrating easily with a WordPress site. Wishlist enables multi-level access and moving of members between levels. The flexibility also manages free, trial or paid membership. Or even, a combination of all three!

They can create any number of membership levels you choose and connect the software to a product, shopping cart or auto-responder.

Virtual support can send ‘thank you’ notes, acknowledgements and website addresses via the membership management programme.

A VA can provide customer support to existing members while helping new members access the membership area.

They can place regular content updates to the area, providing members with a calendar of scheduled events, new information and products.

Virtual help can assist you with ideas on how to acquire and increase the membership.

A VA can ask present members for testimonials to use in future marketing events that you intend to produce.

Virtual support can record audio for you, for teleclasses, webinars and marketing audio messages and then edit the audio files to eliminate unnecessary background noise. They can add music to your audio files, providing intro/outro for your final broadcast.

When the file is finished a virtual assistant can post your audio in forums and other relevant places online.

In the same way, virtual support can help you to create videos, edit and add intro/outro for the final take. This can then be placed on the appropriate channels (e.g.YouTube, Vimeo). They can than edit your profile, description and keywords to help make the video easily found by the search engines.
Are you thinking of setting up a membership site? If so, we can help, email us or speak to Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

You have a prospective customer make contact and enquire about your services or products and they go away with all the detail you can supply them with.  Let them take the information but don’t forget to follow up.  A report by Sales and Marketing magazine suggests that 80% of  people who request information progress to purchasing the product or services within the year, but not from the company where they initially enquired.

Many people like to go away for a time and continue with a little research, to see things from another point of view, another customer’s experience; consider the costs and reliability or productivity. Perhaps their enquiry was for a future purchase and although the sale wasn’t achieved in the first instance , contact at a later date may result in a sale. Don’t be afraid to follow up enquiries, to see if there are any questions that have arisen from their research and see if there are any ways you can help them decide on their purchase. In general, surveys suggest at least five contacts with a prospect can take place before they commit to a purchase.

People buy from people they trust, so nurture and build a relationship with them so you are uppermost in their minds when they make the decision to invest. Show that you are a valuable resource and and expert in your field, remind them of what you do and follow up in different ways. There is no need to bombard with sales pitch but build a relationship that answers all their questions and keeps you uppermost in their minds. Emphasise different aspects of your product or service, supplying other advantages of investing in your product/service.

Let them know of events that may help with issues they may have that are delaying their decision to buy.  If you are speaking at an event, a sponsor or organiser invite them to the occasion.

If you discover articles that have been written about your product or service, email them the item or send a link. Likewise, if you have written an article about it, send this and a link too.

New things happening in your industry? – send them the announcement about the development. If you produce a blog or newsletter, send them copy and ask them to subscribe so they are kept up-to-date.

If you have a video of helpful tips, how to use your product, or client success stories send a link for them to review. If you have a free tele-class or webinar about your product or service invite them along.

Be consistent in your follow up and your marketing activities will produce results. Contact those that have send ‘no’ in the past, you will be surprised at the response.

Again, it’s making sure your name is the one that springs to mind when they next consider buying.

Using a sales matrix with your existing customers buying history may help you identify where you can increase your sales. Don’t forget that the customers you have had in the past, know your products and may not realise all of the products or services that you can supply.  As existing  customers, they know the value of your product or service having bought from you before. Trust has been established by supplying a superlative product or service.

Create your own sales matrix by simply placing you products or services in columns then place your customers in the rows. Tick products sold and to whom, (tick or colour cell) you can then easily see what your customers have bought and which others in the range you can sell to them. The blank cells are your  opportunities to sell more and increase your profits.

For more information, email us, or telephone Tamara on 0203 4688594.

If so, you need to stop thinking and take action now before Facebook make changes on March 10th. Facebook are changing the way tabs work on business pages by gradually phasing out FBML(Facebook mark up language) and using iFrames(the website code which builds the tabs) After the 10th March , even if you have Pages you will not be able to add tabs as easily as you can now. From the information available so far, we are not sure whether you’ll still be able to add custom tabs, this will mean, no more Welcome tabs, Newsletter sign up and Special offers tabs.

At the moment existing Facebook business pages with existing custom tabs (built with FBML) can still be edited. If you have been procrastinating about getting Facebook pages for your business you need to stop and take action now before Facebook introduce this change. With only just over two weeks left of the FBML style Facebook and pages taking a few days to build, make that decision and contact us now to get your Facebook business pages.

As one of the largest social networks with 500 million users worldwide, Facebook now directs more web traffic than Google. It shares and finds more weblinks, providing an incredible platform to advertise your business. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to spread the word about you and your company.

We can set up your Facebook Business page or fix existing ones. For those ready to take action and get ahead of the last minute rush we will install Google Analytics on two of your Facebook Business pages at no extra cost. So make that decision now and contact us to get your pages before it’s too late.

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