When you have an online company, it only makes sense to use all the online resources available.  The payments you accept should be credit card and payal, if you choose.  Are you going to accept international orders.  If you are going to receive orders daily, which is the goal, you will want to use an online shopping cart that automatically accepts the credit card, approves it and delivers the auto responder emails and in the end, the product itself.  What exactly is an online shopping cart.  It is a lot like a regular shopping cart, where you can add or remove items as you please.  It calculates shipping and taxes and the total of the purchase and passes this information along to the merchant account by a secure site, which protects the customers’ information.

  Choosing a shopping cart is crucial because if you choose the right one, it can double your sales.  Imagine trying to purchase a product and you are entering all your information when you order and the pages take forever to load.  Or worse, there are too many forms to fill out or you cannot find the pricing or product list easily.  You would abandon that idea pretty quickly.  In addition, you will also need a reputable merchant account that can handle the amount of sales you are going to send their way.  You do not want to find a merchant account that requests a very high escrow fund, because this can be difficult to come up with.  Before you launch your product, you need to make sure you have a way to provide customer service.  You could hire a fulfillment house that takes care of customer service, orders, credit cards, and shipping all at once.  But, if you intend to have a lot of business, this is not very cost effective.  It would be much easier to take care of the customer service with paid employees and have a special fulfillment house only duplicate, package, and ship products for you.

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When the first generation of women entered the workforce in earnest in the 1970s, they succeeded in the only way they could – by imitating men.  Authoritarian leadership and tight control was the hallmark of that day’s businessman, and women were not exactly welcomed into the ranks of management.  Well ladies, that was yesterday, and today is today!

 Forget what your mama or your boss told you, because following the rules can be bad for your career.  Today’s CEO/entrepreneur can no longer tap his/her company’s full potential using a “command-and-control” style.  The 21^st century business woman needs to be able to build a vision based on the awareness of economic transformation, then help her partners and staff fulfill that vision.  She must draw on a wide range of skills to get to the top and stay there.  Following are 7 Key Characteristics that are essential:

1. 1.      Sell the Vision: A leader with a fresh, independent plan for her company’s growth and future has a distinct advantage in luring and keeping great talent and investors.  Vision is not some lofty ideal, but an obtainable concept that is easy to understand and will make the company grow to another level.
2. 2.      Reinvent the Rules:  While women have traditionally been socialized to please others, the 21^st century leader knows that good girls rarely post great returns.  The strong managers/owners today not only anticipate change, they create entirely new organizations that respond to shifts and search for innovation.
3. 3.      Achieve With A Laser Focus:  Go where others fear to tread! Being aggressive and ambitious has long been considered male traits, but they are key qualities for new leaders.  Today’s business woman has the ability to home in on opportunities that others may simply not see, and then excel in that uncharted territory.
4. 4.      Use High-Touch in a High-Tech Era:  When a number of leaders are conducting business by e-mail, voice mail, passwords, and PINs, the female entrepreneur succeeds because she guides with a strong, personal, bed-side manner. Today’s business woman is just as technologically savvy as her peers, but her skill with staff and customers is “high-touch” which gives her a critical edge and separation from the “pack”.
5. 5.      Challenge or Opportunity? – Women are great at turning a challenge into an opportunity instead of using the “slash-and-burn” approach.  They are able to make bold strokes, but they also win the cooperation of others in the organization in making any transformation a success.
6. 6.      A Customer Preference Obsession:  In this information age which makes it easier to shop around for the best “whatever”, businesses must work harder to give people what they want before their competitors do.  There is no substitute for spending time with clients to become expert at their businesses and learn their demands.  Female leaders are almost intuitively adept in doing just that, and without the client even suspecting.
7. 7.      Courage Under Fire:  Show me any career woman or female entrepreneur today that isn’t able to “stand-the-heat” in any tough-call situation.  Their decision-making skills are rooted in a high level of confidence, because they’ve had to weather and surpass any and all “corporate” storms they’ve encountered over time.

It takes a certain mind-set and bravado for anyone to start their own business and succeed, but it’s even more difficult for a female entrepreneur.  Let’s face it, ladies!  We’ve always had to be twice-as-smart and twice-as-confident as any male counterpart in the corporate world.  After all, if we can bear and raise the future generation, how can running a successful business scare us?

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Top sales pros confirm that it often takes seven or more communications or sales messages before prospective customers make a purchase. They also confirm that it’s generally easier to sell to a referral, because someone they know gave positive testimonial about their products or services.

What would happen if you combined both of these powerful ideas? A nifty and thrifty two-step. Try this two-step tip:

1. Collect leads with your auto responder. Ask for mailing addresses and telephone numbers, too, for additional ways to follow up with each person. When you download the e-mail digest of everyone’s e-mail addresses and other information from those who requested additional information from your auto responder, follow up multiple ways. Send postcards. Call. Mail sales letters and other promotional pieces.

2. Publish a price list of all the products and services that you offer in an insert, direct marketing package and / or .pdf to be made available via auto responder. You could also include order forms, product descriptions, and other sales material. Then send to the people in #1 above with monthly updates, announcements of new sales and products / services, and a request for referrals.

So why not improve your closing ratio and reach out even farther at the same time? Do the two-step!

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 The Internet offers many means of affordable marketing with auto responders. Here are a couple of popular ways of using them.

DIRECTORY

Some webmasters set up link or article directories on their sites. They create a directory on a specific industry topic, placing their own ad or banner along the top. Then they invite others to add their website links via a link exchange program, listing themselves in your directory. Or they invite articles to be submitted that include a resource box at the bottom of each with a link to the author’s website. This results on increased traffic as sites link up across the World Wide Web. Enter “link exchange software” or “article directory software” into a favorite search engine for help with each.

TEACH A COURSE

Some marketers write up a simple step-by-step instructional class in their area of expertise. Then they break it up into smaller portions or messages and set them up in an auto responder as email messages, including short ads within each message to invite sales & website visits. Then they invite website visitors to sign up through on online form or email subscription address offered through the auto responder service. As people sign up, they will learn more about the products and services through the teaching series.

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Stuck in an auto responder rut with only your eZine going out regularly? Get out of the rut with some of these ideas for improvements.

 1. Provide back issues of your eZine archives via your auto responder instead of hosting all your archives online. This will give your subscribers and web site visitors easy a ccess to them and offers a chance to include graphics, audio and video and other components all rolled up in .pdf files for quick, easy download.

2. Help with tech issues and publish your entire web site, save it in a pdf file, and load it into an auto responder. Sometimes visitors don’t have enough time read your entire site or they lose their Internet connection or time online. So this way, they could print it out and read it offline.

3. You could offer your eBook via an auto responder. Often your visitors won’t have to download it or have the software to read it right away, so this way they can take it “to go”.

4. For a handy – -and nice legal – touch, you could include the terms and conditions to purchase transactions and load them into an auto responder that is triggered with each purchase. This could include return policies, purchases, refunds etc.

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Marketing through auto responder series is a popular strategy to increase repeat website visits and sales. Here is a popular strategy.

 EZINE EBOOK

Instead of trying to publish a small daily or weekly eZines, try publishing one large monthly eZine (similar to a monthly magazine) as an e-book format delivered via auto responder, preferably an Adobe .pdf file. You could have it made up of a large number of articles per issue and insert regularly featured areas throughout like inspirational quotes, industry tips, favorite sites and advice from the pros. You could also insert full-color graphics, multimedia components like audio / video file links and ads. Then you can charge a monthly rate, with an annual discounted package purchase, and sell advertising spots to sprinkle in your auto responder announcements for each issue and with an informational series to announce your monthly eZine to new prospects.

In summary, by using customized marketing techniques like an eZine eBook, tailored to fit your own products and services, you can reach out and increase your website traffic and sales opportunities. Internet marketing can mean more ways to grow your business.

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You understand that article marketing works and we’ve talked about why you should do it. Before you sit down and start pumping out as much content as your fingers can type, you need to really understand how to attract and capture targeted traffic from your article marketing. This all starts with a good plan and an understanding of just what you want those visitors to do once they get to your website.

Want to get good results with your article marketing? Follow these steps:

1. Choose your topics carefully. Obviously, some topics are more compelling than others (take, for instance, the prevalence of “Lose 10 pounds in 10 minutes” headlines in the grocery store check-out lane). You probably already know to pick topics around your virtual assistant business and what services you provide. What you want to do is dig deep and make sure your articles are talking about the problems your potential clients have. Things like “How to get a membership site up and running FAST”, or “How to attract visitors who buy from you”. These are the kind of topics that will catch a potential client’s attention.

2. Keep your writing short and punchy. When reading online, people like to skim quickly rather than read word-by-word. As a result, providing clear, short sentences and paragraphs, headlines, bolding, italics and plenty of bullet points will help move your readers’ eyes to the bottom of the page. Make sure you use them appropriately by highlighting important points throughout your content.

3. Have a clear message. Got a really meaty topic? You’re much better off creating three articles of 400 words, each with a concise, tight theme, rather than one longer piece of 1200 words. Being more targeted allows online publishers to choose the pieces that resonate best with their audiences. A better message-to-market match means a stronger connection and more likelihood the reader will want additional information from you.

4. Have a strong call-to-action. Don’t leave your readers hanging at the bottom of your article. Tell them clearly what you want them to do next, whether it’s to sign up for your mailing list, request a free report or consultation, read another one of your articles or even hire you directly. Leave them with no doubt in their mind about where to go next. Let’s go one better and suggest you know what your call to action is before you even start writing your article.When writing articles you need to always be putting yourself in the shoes of the reader. Ask yourself, “What value will they find in this? What will they need next? What questions will they have?”

Creating a clear plan for your article and making sure you lead the reader to take action will allow you to build your potential client leads and turn those leads into paying clients.

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Article marketing is so simple a concept that anyone can do it – but not everyone does it well. Here are the top mistakes article marketers make, and how to avoid them:

1. Failing to proofread your work. As a VA, you want to demonstrate your attention to detail and professionalism. Not thoroughly editing your work for spelling, grammar and comprehension makes you look sloppy and disorganized – not the image you want to portray as a top-notch VA! Most article directories will not edit for you, so make sure you take the time to do this step yourself.

2. Not including a powerful resource box. The resource box is the section at the bottom of the article where you can market yourself. At a minimum, it should include a link to your main website and a call to action to your reader, such as “For more tips on saving money while working with VAs, go to YOUR WEBSITE.” The most important part of this resource box is the call-to-action, NOT the part where you tell everyone all about you. They want to know what you can do for them first—they’ll figure out your name and qualifications later.

3. Writing with no personality. You are writing a marketing document, not an obituary. Add a little pizzazz and personality to your writing. Make it compelling and interesting to read, not boring and dull. Sparkle sells!

4. Not telling people about your articles. Once you publish an article, you should be telling people about it. Include a section on your website that directs people to your articles, mention your latest articles on Twitter and Facebook, and send out links to your email list. Keep the ball rolling.

5. Failing to reuse your work. As a small business owner, you should be looking for ways to leverage all your work. Submit articles to more than one directory. Adapt an article and make it into a blog post, add slides to it and release it as a video, or record it as an audio podcast. Combine several articles together into a short report to give away or sell… the possibilities are endless. Always strive to do as much as possible with as little as possible!

Keep these principles in mind as you create articles and you’ll be well on your way to article marketing expertise! Now check out some of my published articles.

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Now that you know how simple and effective article marketing can be, you are in a great position to help your clients with their own article marketing. Here are five ways you can help your clients with article marketing:

1. Tell them how article marketing can help them achieve their goals. What does your client want? Additional traffic, greater expert status, and validation from others? Explain the basics of article marketing, including why it’s a good fit with their particular business.

2. Brainstorm a list of article ideas. One of the biggest sticking points for article marketing is knowing what to write about. Research what others in your client’s industry are writing about and prepare a list of 10-20 article topics.

3. Write articles for them. It’s very common for business owners to outsource their article marketing efforts. Sometimes this tactic doesn’t work well because the writer isn’t familiar enough with the business owner to create appropriate content, but you have a leg up. You have the inside scoop on the business, its market, and the owner’s personality, so you can create personalized content more easily than can a generic outsourcer.

4. Submit articles for them. After you’ve learned how to work with the numerous article directories online, you can easily use your skills on behalf of your clients. Help them develop profiles and submit their articles (don’t forget to continue to submit your own, too!).

5. Test and track results. A critical component of any marketing effort is the testing of alternatives and the tracking of results. You can help your client figure out what topics are the most widely read and published, and which resource boxes result in the best click-through rates. Use this information to constantly upgrade your client’s efforts.

One of the best things about being a VA is that any new skill you learn for the benefit of your clients can be applied to your own business. And, of course, the reverse is true; now that you are an expert article marketer, you can use your new skills on behalf of your clients. It’s definitely a win-win!

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