Thinking about your online business – of the various marketing tools and methods you use, which has yielded the best financial return?
In this article, I’m going to share my two favorite tools that I use in my business as a business and life coach for mom entrepreneurs.
My favorite marketing tool is Twitter. I get several leads a day directly from Twitter. That's why I'm so passionate about it. Let me expand a little on that, though.
In a teleseminar I hosted at MomBizCoach.com with Rhonda Hess, she explained how we should all focus on a blog as our centerpiece. Write in your authentic voice, share your thoughts, wisdom, opinions, photographs of your work or products, lessons learned from a situation or experience that is relevant to your target market, etc. and you'll start attracting readers who want to spend more time with you and ultimately purchase what you sell.
Then every time you post to your blog, you share it on twitter (and Facebook and LinkedIn, etc.) with a link back to your blog. By doing this, along with asking for and responding to comments to your blog posts, you are building relationships and increasing the "stickiness" of your blog.
I use Twitter as a vehicle to connect with people, to build relationships, and to deliver prospects back to my website and blog so they can learn more about what I do. Upon checking my blog statistics, the top referrer to my blog and website is almost always Twitter.
Twitter is, of course, a free tool, but it does cost me my time. As a mompreneur, time happens to be my most expensive and valuable asset. That said, I spend very little time on Twitter most days. I usually pop on and off for 1-5 minutes at a time several times a day. There are days I never log on to Twitter, and then there are times when the kids are in bed that I'll spend two hours on Twitter chatting with friends and potential clients. I also use several Twitter integration tools so that lots of what I tweet can occur automatically, saving me a lot of time.
As a return on my investment, I am currently getting a couple of warm leads each day from Twitter. Given my very limited work schedule of only 10 hours a week (client-facing time), this is more than enough to fill my pipeline.
My second favorite marketing tool is my BlogTalkRadio Show. I'm finding that people all over the world are hearing me on the internet and already feel related to me because of this. As a result, my prospects are ready to hire me before we ever speak in person.
People like to consume their information in different formats, so if you're not currently using audio or video as part of your marketing strategy, it would be worthwhile to consider adding these options. If you have no clue how you could integrate audio and video into an effective marketing strategy for your business, talk to a business coach or strategist to help get you started.
So what are your favorite marketing tools? Do you enjoy marketing or prefer to delegate it to someone else? Do you spend most of your marketing budget on traditional (print, radio, TV) methods or on Social Media Marketing?
Guest blog by Lara Galloway, Momprenuer & Mom Business Coach
