Ways to Help Customers Find You

Hello Brainy Marketer,

You'll find a few new resources, ideas for helping customers find you, and a funny joke in today's issue. Read on!

As always, subscription information is at the end of the newsletter.

~Lois

In this Issue

1. Helping Business Find You
2. Thanks
3. Resources for Entrepreneurs and Marketers
4. Quote of the Week
5. Top Five Reasons to Participate in a Forum
6. A Little Fun
7. Smell the Coffee

PLEASE TELL OTHERS!
Please forward this to anyone who wants to attract more customers, close more sales, get more website traffic, and find resources to help them compete more successfully in today's market.

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1. Helping Customers Find You

Last week we had two subscribers asking vastly different questions that could both be answered—at least in part— with the same solution.

Subscriber Althea Francis wrote, "I have just started offering my administrative skills after being laid off and would like to know the best way to market my services to potential clients. I now resort to word of mouth, website, business cards and am presently working on a brochure. But what are the best techniques to attract new customers."

Patti Pokor of Down to Earth Gardens asked, "We're a little off the beaten path.......so people get lost finding us. Plus we're a seasonal business so it's a bit stressful and
too hectic at times. Do you have any ideas for us?"

See this related information:

And Lois replies...

One of the best ways to help people find you, either on the Net or physically, is to write educational articles and publish them both online and offline. If you become known as an expert in your field, you'll begin to create a buzz about yourself and your company and pretty soon everyone will know where you are.

Patti, this is something you can do in the off season when things are less hectic. I suggest you also include a map on your website and in all your advertising—including Yellow
Pages—to make it easier to find people. If your customers are continually missing a turn when they try to get to your shop, consider putting up a roadside sign that points them
in the right direction. You'll have to get the proper permissions to do that, of course, from property owners and municipalities, but it would be worth the effort.

Althea, your business is perfect for creating an educational booklet that teaches potential clients one (or several) organizing skills (and really shows them why they need you).
If you don't know how to put a booklet together, you can learn from a recent teleseminar I did with Paulette Ensign, the Queen of Tips Booklets. It's available in CD, MP3 and a
downloadable transcript that you can be reading in just minutes.

Read more or order "How to Promote Your Business with Tips Booklets."

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2. Thanks

A few people emailed me with ideas about the recipe site I'm thinking of developing. Thank you! I appreciate your feedback. I'm a bit disorganized this week, so I can't find
the specific emails to thank you publicly. Sorry.

I'm still evaluating this idea so if you have thoughts about how to make money on free recipes, please send me a note.

And for a FREE yummy, low-fat recipe—Pumpkin Squares—send a blank email here.

Or, for the high-fat, full-of-sugar Chocolate Cherry Squares recipe, send a blank email here.

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3. Resources for Entrepreneurs & Marketers

• Girls Gone Great. Yikes! I'm doing great. Now What?

This is a FREE teleseminar by Tasha Walsh, LCSW, to help you get past your fear of success. If most people would describe you as successful, but you don't feel it—this seminar is for you. In this workshop you'll learn three common underpinnings of "success-phobia," gain clarity about what this is about for you, learn the key of balancing on the waves of success, identify your path to enjoying your accomplishments and OVERCOMING SUCCESS-PHOBIA!

Friday, May 27, 1:00-2:00 PM Eastern time

To register send an email with your full name and email address.

All you pay is your long-distance charges to connect to the seminar.

• Breast Cancer Clicks

Give underpriviledged women access to free mammograms by clicking on "donating a mammogram" for free (pink window in the middle) here.

• eWomenNetwork Luncheons

June 7, 11:30-1:30, City Club, Washington, D.C.: Celia Connolly, national staff writer at the Washington Post, will speak on healthcare issues. Cost to attend: $35 members/$45 guests.

August 10, 11:30-1:30, City Club, Washington, D.C.: Hilary Bruggen, a nationally respected expert and pioneer in the field of relationship marketing and effective business development, will discuss "How Golf Outings Can Help You Build Better Business Relationships." Cost to attend: $35 members/$45 guests.

Register by clicking on the link above or call 703-779-0785.

• Networking Secrets Revealed Now Available

Bonnie Lowe has just released a new ebook, "Networking Secrets Revealed," in which she asked networking experts to"tell all" so that YOU can learn how to improve your business with networking. And guess what? I'm one of the experts she tapped for quotes. Check it out.

• National Business Women's Conference, June 7, Washington, D.C.

This conference is the place to be for women who are—or want to be—contracting with the federal government, major corporations, or with Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. From insightful educational sessions to one-on-one meetings, this conference offers a host of opportunities to meet people and learn from top speakers, all in one place.

• Make More Money

Joel Comm makes $500 a day with AdSense (the Google ads that appear on websites) and he wants you to do it, too. His ebook, "What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense!" is a very hands-on ebook that can take you from making a few pennies to hundreds every day. On sale now for just $79 (regularly $99).

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4. Quote of the Week

"I know we need rain, but the lack of sunshine makes me feel blue, so I keep trying to think about all the pretty flowers we'll have soon."

~ Lois Carter Fay

What's your definition of success? Email your comments to me.

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5. Top Five Reasons to Participate in a Forum

• You'll meet new friends.
• It's fun!
• It's interesting and you'll learn new things.
• You can ask a question and get lots of great advice to help you solve your business or personal problem.
• Some forums (like Success Secrets Forum!) give you FREE stuff when you join. Read on...
  

Join now while it's still FREE! Be one of the first 100 people to sign up for our Success Secrets Forum and win a F*REE LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP. With your membership, you'll get:

• 9 terrific bonuses valued at $491.00
• Attendance at all our teleseminars at half off. ($449.00 value)
• The ability to network with successful women entrepreneurs. (priceless!)
• The ability to post classified ads F*REE. (priceless!)
• Free access to my large library of audio seminars (priceless!)

Read more about it and subscribe to Success Secrets Forum now.

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6. A Little Fun

This article, attributed to Andy Rooney, was sent in by Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound:

Telemarketing and Junk Mail Tips from Andy Rooney

• Three Little Words That Work!

  The three little words are: "Hold On, Please..."

  Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.

  Then when you eventually hear the phone company's "beep- beep-beep" tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset, which has efficiently completed its task.

  These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting.

• Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?

  This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.

  This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a "real" sales person to call back and get someone at home.

  What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialed the call and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer!

• Junk Mail Help

  When you get "ads" enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return these "ads" with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their own junk mail away.

  When you get those "pre-approved" letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope.

  Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right? It costs them more than the regular 37 cents postage "IF" and when they receive them back.

  It costs them nothing if you throw them away! The postage was around 50 cents before the last increase and it is according to the weight. In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes.

  You could send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express. Send a pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn't get anything else that day, then just send them their blank application back! You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing! It still costs them 37 cents.

  If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn't on anything you send them.

  The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own junk back in the mail, but folks, we need to OVERWHELM them. Let's let them know what it's like to get lots of junk mail, and best of all they're paying for it...Twice!

  Let's help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that's why they need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea!

  If enough people follow these tips, it will work—I have been doing this for years, and I get very little junk mail anymore.
  

Be sure to visit our past jokes and trivia at:

Marketing Jokes and Trivia and Fun Stuff

Take a look. You'll have fun!

Help keep the smiles coming...please send me your marketing, PR or sales jokes. I'll be happy to give you credit and list your website! Email me.

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7. Smell the Coffee...

Well, Wendy and Tony still need your prayers. If you've been reading my newsletter for awhile, you know that my friend's husband, Tony Wilinkski, had a liver transplant the day
before Mother's Day. He was doing super...and then a bowel infection set in and he had some blood pressure problems so they had to do another surgery to find out what was going on. So he's still in the hospital. Thanks for holding Tony in the Light.

I'm looking forward to the long Memorial Day weekend. Monday is a holiday in the U.S.

I plan to paint my family room and the adjoining sitting room. It's now painted a celery green and sort of a raspberry/maroon color—very dark. We're painting both rooms a very light beige that is a yellowish tone. I think that will both lighten it up and make it feel
warmer.

Have a good and profitable week. And over this Memorial Day, let's all pray for world peace.

Peace & Light,
Lois

P.S. Don't forget to join our Success Forum while it's still FREE.

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