Small Busines Marketing

Marketing Your Small Business 

Hi all.

This is just a quick post to remind you how important it is that you go and market your services on a regular basis. Even if you're incredibly busy with your business, you need to keep up your marketing activities. The reason for this is that you might be busy now, but it's because of marketing work you did months ago. So the marketing work you do now is what's going to keep you busy in coming months. 

Saying that, you don't need to spend a great deal on marketing, particularly in our type of industry. Too often I see too many businesses going crazy and spending too much.  They go out and buy all the bells and whistles, hundreds of T shirts and pens and brochures and banners, etc. etc. Personally I have never believed too much in the flashy bits and pieces of marketing. You need a solid website, business cards, maybe some vehicle branding, Facebook and social media. And then to go and list it all on different business directories. 

Howzit! is a brilliant place to go and advertise your services or any of your classifieds. Unlike most other services like this they allow you to bump up your ads every day. http://www.howzit.co.za/

Remember that you can purchase my ebook - Working From Home as A Transcriptionist in South Africa. 

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Times to work / blogging

Hi guys,

I met with a very interesting lady today, who also works for herself although not in the field that we work in, and among the many interesting things we discussed was when is the best time to work.

Like me, she likes working at night ... I thought, sometimes, that I'm the only one driven nuts by the entire 8 - 5 thing ... sometimes, I just find those hours so hard to work in because the phone is ringing, (usually clients), email is going mad, skype going mad, or the school decides to shut at an odd hour, ...

ONe of the toughest things is working until 3am when you KNOW the phone is going to go mental from 08:00 onwards or you need to be up to let the maid or gardener in at 07:30 ... but often I still find I get a lot more done at night than I do during the day.

Your thoughts?

We also discussed the importance of the discipline of marketing and having a marketing plan. This doesn't just mean okay Friday I'll write a blog post. It means that for a month before hand, know the different subject blog posts you're going to write about and sit down and prepare them. Know where your target market is going to be, know what type of marketing approaches you want to take.

Times to work / blogging

Hi guys,

I met with a very interesting lady today, who also works for herself although not in the field that we work in, and among the many interesting things we discussed was when is the best time to work.

Like me, she likes working at night ... I thought, sometimes, that I'm the only one driven nuts by the entire 8 - 5 thing ... sometimes, I just find those hours so hard to work in because the phone is ringing, (usually clients), email is going mad, skype going mad, or the school decides to shut at an odd hour, ...

ONe of the toughest things is working until 3am when you KNOW the phone is going to go mental from 08:00 onwards or you need to be up to let the maid or gardener in at 07:30 ... but often I still find I get a lot more done at night than I do during the day.

Your thoughts?

We also discussed the importance of the discipline of marketing and having a marketing plan. This doesn't just mean okay Friday I'll write a blog post. It means that for a month before hand, know the different subject blog posts you're going to write about and sit down and prepare them. Know where your target market is going to be, know what type of marketing approaches you want to take.

Virtual was rough this week

It's been rather an interesting week. Last week, my son had bronchitis and I made the mistake of mentioning to a friend of mine, who accompanies me and other members of our suburb on a regular walk through our suburb (click for more information) that by this week, my whole family should be healthy enough to attend.

After jinxing myself like that, of course, I caught bronchitis within the next two days.

The single worst part of working from home is that there is no sick leave - soldier on is what you do, so I did, with a course of penicillin as my army mate. But Tuesday night I hit rock bottom with raging fever and dizzy spells to go along with the sore throat. Luckily, I felt better by Wednesday morning and was able to get most of what I had to do done, but not without refusing point blank to take on any work for that evening and in so doing, upsetting one of my customers (being virtual, we also can't prove show very effectively that we're ill, and he is one of the customers who does not allow me to outsource).

Thursday I was back to chugging speed, and today, up to about 75 kph if the norm is 100 kph, and I've managed to stay up to date and keep most of my customers' work up to date, except the one mentioned above - who I have a long history with and I know I will hear from him in the next week or so.

A particular transcription I received in this week reminded me of the fact that I truly am virtual (with discussion groups like TAVASA, a great forum for South African VAs and transcriptionists, this can slip one's mind occasionally). My client records his files on site, and this one was done whilst under the attack of a swarm of horseflies!

Working from Home as a Transcriptionist in South Africa E book - R90

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