Coaching For Success
Management Tips
Why Internet Consultants Can Help Your Internet Business
Aug 14th
Internet Consultants UK Can Help Your Internet Business By Fitting The Peices Together
There are many new products on the market every day telling you how to use or utlise another advance in Internet marketing. When you are new to Internet marketing this perptual increase and ever changing flow of information and methodology can seriously impact on whether you actual get any real internet marketing done or you are stuck at square one continually trying to learn new techniques to help make your internet business visible in the market place.
This is where an internet consultant can help you by showing you the best products to use or by introducing you to a good internet marketing service company. Internet Marketing done with the aid of a UK Internet consultant can be far more cost effective than going it alone and can far more quickly help you see return on investment (ROI).
An internet consultant can help you plan advertising strategies dependant on your budget so that they fit in with your overall business plan and allows you room to test your markets in a more productive way that you maybe able to do alone. Some of the strategies an internet consultant could useare organic search marketing, PPC, CPC image or video ads and social media advertising.
Your internet business’ visibilty is important so it is necessary to your online survive that you stop buying products whether they are good or not and start utilising and buying advise from someone that understands your arena in this case the internet to ensure you are reaching your target audience and that your ads are engaging enough to ensure either leads or new customers.
An internet consultant can help you fix the problems and issues on your website first and will help you analyse your market throughly, they can look at your content and traffic and even your email campaigns. They need not be expensive to hire either and can be considerably cheaper than the latest product launched and if managed properly can be great for your business and free up your time to get on with the real business of your business.
There are many internet consultants in the market and it is always best to try to choose one from your local geographical region especially if you are doing business locally this will ensure they know your market and can better aid your internet businesss and your internet marketing to greater success.
‘Importance Of Work-life Balance For An Entrepreneur’
Jul 12th
Work - Life Balance
Running your own business is a tough job. If you are in a conventional earning job then you can plan in order to maintain a balance between work and your personal life. But things become different when you own a business because running a business demands the extra efforts and can leave you spending many more hours working than if in a conventional job.
When working for yourself you need to be there whenever you see an opportunity and you must always be ready to face new challenges, this fact alone makes it hard to plan anything with certainity so it becomes tough to get time for yourself, let alone your family.
As a person you must appreciate the fact that you should not work for hours on end like a machine. You do need some time to relax and rejuvenate yourself. If you work continuously in a stressed environment you may get burnt out.
It is a known fact that productivity levels fall when you do not refresh your energy levels from time to time. ‘Workaholics’ advocate that the output they can generate, given a set of inputs, is directly proportional to the number of hours they put in. This may be true to some extent but maybe they should also think about the fact that the productivity unleashed during those hours are what matters in the final outcome, and not just number of hours spent.
As a businessman/ woman, you should try to focus on the output generated per hour rather than the hours put in. This way you will be able to evaluate your operational efficiency and work towards improving them. It is important to keep a time for yourself during busy schedules to rejuvenate yourself, by doing so you help yourself towards better work-life balance. There are some steps you can take to maintain work-leisure balance while on the job.
Firstly, check out the time when your customers require you the most and plan your work schedule in such a way that you are available at that time without any sort of breaks unless it goes over lunch etc (bathroom breaks not included of course 
). For the rest of the time you can plan out appropriate breaks during the remainder of your working hours.
You can take time out to walk out of your office or attend a networking event and interact with different people (it is work but of the lighter version , try not to go in with a sell mentality), that way you have time out and at the same time expand your network, you may even get a prospect or customers through your network.
There are a lot of social networks which are available like Lion’s club, rotary club, Chambers of commerce etc. where you can meet like-minded business persons which may be useful to your business. Alternatively listen to some music for ten minutes, go for a walk, join a gym and work out during the slow hour periods, if you decideto do this you will free yourself from hectic hours and also build up healthy physique.
To get more family time plan to do things in quiet times, if you think you cannot find quiet time ask yourself this ‘can i get up a little earlier or do something else like read and respond to email a little later in order to make time during sensible hours to play with your children or take them/ pick them up from school? With a little thought you will find that you can – the key is knowing when your busy periods are so you can utilise your quiet times.
Adopting a better life-style is as important as generating better profits for your business. No matter how much you have to work, you must make space for leisure time. As we have seen above, even eisure activities can be aligned to your business motives like expanding networks, if planned in a proper way, running a business can be fun.
Always remember that you should not ruin your health to earn money and then spend the same to regain your health. You must always strive towards a healthy work-life balance.
Is Conventional Advertising Dead?
Jun 2nd
Leaflets a Traditional Form of Marketing
‘Outdoor Advertising’
The traditional printed ‘brochures’ or ‘leaflets’ carry your message to various sets of customers, by reaching inside their homes. They are very cost effective provided you have good distribution channels i.e a good delivery company and if done in the correct way can get your phone ringing immediately. The mass distribution or door-to-door distribution approach has proven for some industries to have a higher ROI for B2C ( Business to Customer) than an online advertising campaign of the same nature. Apart from leaflets, and brochures, posters or banners can be printed and placed on various public sites i.e billboards if youcan afford it or places like local Banks (seen as trustworth on the most part) is always a good place to advertise as they have local boards for advertising and local shops. These advertisements are also cost effective, have repeated exposure to customers and provide quick communication, with local boards in banks if they are busy banks you may need to go there twice a month to renew your ad. None of these methods will work for you if your message is not concise with a finishing touch of creativity.
‘Newspaper advertising’
Newspapers or magazines have a mass reach and therefore are a good means to reach many customers by a single ad. You get the attention of your target customers by strategically choosing the section where you put your ad, be it classifieds or in an editorial section. If you are publishing an ad in editorial section make sure that it is more of an image building or awareness creation activity rather than a sales pitch. The biggest advantage of using newspapers and magazines is the mass reach among the already classified audience which means you can target your customers easily. Since the newspaper or magazine ads have a short life span, they ought to be creative enough to get and sustain the attention of the reader. The Proviso here do your research on the reach of the paper you are putting your ad in make sure it reaches a significant amount of the right type of readers (target the type of reader and the type of newpaper or magazine you use),also haggle on the price you pay to advertise always try to get a discount on long runs or extra weeks free.
‘Mass media advertising’
TV, radio and cinema are the conventional means of advertisements. They have proven to be most effectivethough they are not cheap. Because they cater to such a large audience it becomes difficult to capture any target audience unless what you sell has a wide ranging appeal i.e. a product like chocolate. A TV or a radio ad must contain a message that has a repetition of ads in order to sustain the attention of customers in these cases. In fact, repetitive advertising is not very costly in the case of radio, as radio ads don’t have images, but the message you want broadcast must be quick, sharp, to the point and of broadcasted quality.
‘Direct interaction with customers’
Reaching out to your target customers by direct interaction with them is a useful promotional method. one of the ways is ‘direct mailing’ which is, sending a sales letter to a list of customers by mailing or by inserting them in newspapers or magazines. You can also distribute CDs containing an audio or visual message. Though the responses are not always one hundred percent but a fraction of customers are still captured. You can also organize PR events where you can involve the public. But you need publicity for such an event to be successful. Such PR activities are better than mass advertising as you get on the spot feedback for your campaign. Last, but not the least, is the ‘word of mouth’ advertising. If you have established a reputation for your brand, then all you need to do is to showcase your product and its features; the rest will be done by your customers. Remember, your customers become your promoters if they like your products or your worse crritics if they do not.
Conential advertising is far from dead it still is a better form of advertising for some business types than online marketing and does have the added advantage of something physical which many people still can associate with far easier than virtual advertising. There is still a lot of potential in conventional advertising provided you know how to utilise it. remember that like all advertising these methods can be your friend or enemy depending on how well you have researched and planned your campaign.
The Secret On How to Reduce Business Telephone Bill
May 29th
Today’s post is all about one of the biggest costs for many businesses regardless of the size. All business use their phone for calling clients after all it can well be the lifeline for reaching out to prospective clients and present clients. I need not spout benefits at you, however as great a communication tool as it is the cost of ringing some service providers and or utility companies indeed possibly suppliers can end up costing you a fortune.
Now I know that some businesses have tied themselves into business packages, which reduce some of the cost of calls, but even these most of the time do not cover the dreaded 0844,0845, 0870 and 0871. These calls are non-geographical numbers that are essentially tied to a standard landline number 01,02,03. Now the secret of how to save money is out and The Internet Business Coach is sharing it with you.
Recently you may have noticed a drive from BT to make 0845 numbers free for people, what you do not know is the reason for this. Well over recent years more and more people are complaining about having to call these numbers and the cost of them especially when it was discovered that many of the larger companies were using the money they made from you ringing these numbers to help finance the cost of call centres and such, even smaller companies using these 08 numbers could offset costs using it. Not too long ago a The Guardian newspaper and BBC Radio 2 featured a company who basically said that they would help consumers and businesses to save money on these calls.
Now a lot of people did hear about this site but millions of others did not, so i am going to share this money saving information with you because it must be shared. The idea of this site is to allow you to either enter the companies name or the 0844, 0845, 0870 or 0871 number given for a company and get a standard line number you can ring as an alternative.
On seeing the site I was sceptical that it could work but trust me The Internet Business Coach have been using it for over a month and it has been amazing, I am yet to come across a dead number although it does happen as some companies once they know the word is out will change the number, however this is a minor inconvenience as the saving you can make both on your business and home telephone bill is major.
The site also features a sharing area where if you know a standard number for a company that you can enter the details for it to share with everyone else, this whole site works on the cooperation of all users adding to the database and lets face it sharing is your way of giving back, like how i am sharing this information with you now.
At this point you need to know who it is but before I tell you this let me just mention to you that although this site is amazing, has a forum to answer any questions you may have unfortunately sometimes the site is just plain unavailable. Now i do not know if this is due to the high volume usage of the site or the huge database in any case if you find it is not going on one day it is well worth it to you to keep trying on alternate days till it is back up – it does come back up eventually.
Just Say No To 0870
Ok drum roll – the site is called ‘Just Say No To 0870‘ use it. My suggestion is to compile a list of people you regularly ring go to the site and look them all up and put the standard landline numbers next to them. Now go save money on your home and business bills 
Outsourcing is ‘Not Easy’ contrary to what some IM’s are telling you.
May 28th
Outsource Survey
First off there has been a surge of recent towards pushing outsourcing from all quarters and some give good reasons to do it. Others however have jumped onto this bandwagon promoting services either they know little about having not really outsourced or have been doing it so long that they have it down to a tee so YES it is easy for them because lets face it they pay outsourcers to find outsourcers to do the job for them.
Now it might sound like I am bashing IM’s and outsourcers, believe me here when I say I am not, just stick with this a bit longer and you will see where I am going with this.
Outsourcing is an really great way to get more of your work done in a short space of time and basically many of the jobs that never get done or get done poorly due to your inexperience at them can be done for you by an outsourcer, which can be invaluable to your business. The cost savings as compared to getting help in your main country of residence is a major benefit. I am in the UK and if I were to employ someone to do a weeks work here 9-5 it would cost me a pretty penny whereas if I look to outsource to a person in another Country (typical choices when cost is involved are India, The Philippines and Eastern European countries although their prices are starting to become as expensive as the UK) I could get help for half the cost.
Now here is the rub, if you have never outsourced before you can find yourself in hot water quickly as some outsourcers can smell a newbie a mile off and will take you on the long journey to the never-ending hourly rate of no return
Seriously when starting out with outsourcing many business owners are not really sure what they should outsource or how to place the ad to hire an outsourcer and worst still how to give instructions to the outsourcer on how to get the job done (this is how they smell you). All this adds up to disaster, this is then compounded by the not so good IM’s selling their ‘snake oil’ wonder cures that leave overworked business owners, poorer, not any wiser and still overworked and overwhelmed. There are many good IM’s out there that give sensible advise and even some of the tips I will share with you here such as Tim Ferris in his book ’4 hour Working Week’ – If you have not read it i recommend you go by a copy now.
Ok now i have that off my chest, I would now like to offer you a few tips on how to organise your self first, so that you know how to organise an outsourcer.
1, make a list of everything that needs doing.
2, divide the list up first by the things you like to do and those you do not.
3, divide the list of things you like to do by the things you are just plain no good at even though you like the. All the things you like but are not good at add them to the list of things you do not like doing.
4, look at the list of not good at and do not like and sort it by the things that could be outsourced, for instance if on that list it says go to the suppliers for more product each week – then sorry you will have to suck in and do this yourself or hire someone in your Country to do pick up and drop off delivery for you, however if you have email, accounts, invoices, advertising etc on that list then these things are prime candidates for outsourcing.
5, once you have identified what can be outsourced group things by job type i.e admin & office duties, Web development etc.
6, If your tasks are mainly admin this tells you that you need a VA (Virtual Assistant) if it was mainly advertising it tells you that you might need a marketer and so on.
7, sit down and clearly define the exact tasks you require doing – THIS is the KEY to your success as an outsource buyer. So if it is reading email and separating it so that you only read necessary email and that the VA is the person who responses to all others so be it.
8, Make your ad concise and to the point, list the skills necessary to do your job. Make sure when people apply that you ask for C.V as you would if they were in the same place as you, ask questions and ensure proof of employment and qualifications – this is easily done via email as good people will email copies of certificates or employer referrals. Main thing to remember here is DO NOT be afraid to ask.
9, Interviewing out of the way never pay for work upfront always pay one week in arrears this ensures that your work gets done to your satisfaction before you pay and also ensures your outsourcers compliance and best effort. Never agree to upfront fees or partial payment or shoddy work. If you can avoid it never pay by the hour as this is where it can get really long and drawn out particularly if you are hiring any sort of web developer. Last thing to remember here is to put them on a trial basis first if you interviewed two good people put them both on a trial and see which one performs best, then chose to keep that person.
10, Be prepared to spend time with your outsourcer to ensure that they are doing the job properly and that they understand how to do the work, just like any trainee they can only do the job once they understand it, so build it into your plan. Do not just assume that because they are qualified they know everything about you and your business and how it runs. If you want to be successful at outsourcing you must understand this.
Hopefully these tips will make outsourcing easier for you, I know from past experience with outsourcinghow difficult finding good people can be, how hard it is to explain things and why the tips i am giving you here are important, I guess it is experiential learning that allows me to give you these tips as for me I found books like Tim Ferris’ too late in the day but did use it to get a better handle on process modelling for outsourcers and like all things you will find a multitude of not so good people for your job before you find the right ones and then your set.
