Make Marketing Yours

In this episode, I talked about the coaching attitude. This is a very interesting topic not a lot of people talk about.   I was reading an article about working with business coaches these days and it reminded me of my journey when I first started my online business.All I wanted to say is, 'be a nice coach'.  Tune in to find out more. “I love Vanessa and Make Marketing Yours.” 

A lot of start-up entrepreneurs will have this question in mind - the difference between a website and a funnel. As a digital marketer myself, I would say yes, you need both. It would be best if you had a website and a funnel to maximize your opportunities online. Listen and find out more.Book a FREE 15-min discovery call with me: CLICK HERE “I love Vanessa and Make Marketing Yours.”

In this episode, I talked about if you need to build out your content before you sell your course.  It depends on what type of online course you are launching. “I love Vanessa and Make Marketing Yours.”

In this episode, we covered 3 key elements you need on your sales page. #1  Your Target Audience#2 Your Offer#3 How To Differentiate Your Offer To OthersFree resource:I've got an excellent FREE resource for you. This Trello Launch Board is for coaches and course creators- 7 Steps To Course Launches.https://www.makemarketingyours.com/7-steps-to-course-launches “I love Vanessa and Make Marketing Yours.”

I had a very interesting weekend. I would say a little bit crazy. About a month ago, I purchased a business bundle. The bundle comes with 99 online courses which cover finance, mindset, social media, marketing, making money, youtube, TikTok, copywriting, hiring, self-care...you name it. Yes, 99 courses! So what I have been doing on the weekend was to create accounts and logins to these 99 courses. I thought it was pretty easy at the beginning but turns out, it took me pretty much 2 days. Well, you might ask me, how do I find time to get through all these 99 courses? The answer is I don’t. As I talk about this a lot lately, it’s all about structures and systems. In the process of creating accounts, I already colour coded the courses that I have to go through. Those are in green. For those I can go through the next round are in yellow. A couple of the courses are in blue meaning yes can check it out when I have time. Others without colours are those I can skip. If I have spare time, of course, I will go through them. If I don’t have time, those I can skip. One interesting founding was out of these 99 courses, I would say about 75% of course creators are using Kajabi, 15% are using Teachable, 2% Thinkific,1% WordPress and 7% of all others. In terms of pricing, there is a big variation. It all depends on the nature of the course, the lengths of the course and the depth of the course. They range from $47 to $597.Course creation seems in the trend right now. More and more entrepreneurs turn their services into online courses. I do get asked quite a lot is ‘what the heck should I teach in my online course.’  This is actually not a difficult question to answer. You just need to lay out all possible ideas. You want to teach something that you are good at and passionate about. You can teach people using your experience, the transformation you have achieved for yourself. You don’t have to be an expert. For example, I can teach people how to start podcasting. I launched it myself. I am not a professional podcaster, but I have enough knowledge to teach people how to get started and using some basic equipment. Or the results you have achieved for your clients. Like losing 10kg in 10 weeks. You can create a course and teach how you helped your clients. Or you can teach others how to do your job like what you are doing. Once they are trained they can then land their own clients. There are so many ideas.  Recently I taught my client to create an online cooking course for her private clients. My client Vivian is a Thermomix consultant. If you don’t know what Thermomix is, it is a very expensive machine that can replace 20 appliances in your home. So, just like any other multi-level marketing or affiliate marketing, every consultant is selling the same products. How can you stand out from everyone else? Why people come to me instead of going to you? It all comes down to what value you are giving to your buyers. Are you offering an extra discount? Are you offer a free gift? Or are you offering an after purchase consultation? My client loves to cook. So, she comes up with her own recipes using Thermomix. Many of her friends and her customers asked her to teach and most importantly they are willing to pay. I mean the demand is already there! She just has to get her recipes sorted, video sorted and the membership platform sorted, then she is ready to go? I helped her to set up the system, design the recipes book, teach her how to record, create her membership site. See, it’s not that hard as long as you know what your client wants. If you do some research online, you’ll see there are a million courses out there teaching different things. People teach how to do journaling for mental health, how to make greeting cards like Christmas cards, mother’s day cards, birthday cards, how to do makeup for parties, just to name a few. The sky is the limit. If you’re stuck with course idea, head over to my website and book a free 15-min discovery call with me. All you need is a course structure and system.Course creation is fun. If you enjoy this episode, please leave a review or rating on iTunes. Or, click here to listen to my other episodes. Thanks.

I had two client calls today. Both of them are in different niches, but I found there is a common thing in them. As entrepreneurs, we have thousands of ideas every day. (We all do!)  A lot of us tend to focus on tools rather than structures and systems. We tend to focus on what platform to use or host for websites, blogs, podcasts, social media scheduling apps, email platforms etc. then struggle with technology and get overwhelmed. They didn't actually look at the fundamental needs of their business. For example, there are so many people who are creating podcasts. Is that something for you? Like listening to a podcast is different from creating your own podcast channel.  I have done that.  When I first started my business online, back then, I didn’t have any product or service to sell. I know I don’t want to be in a multi-level marketing niche. However, affiliate marketing was so hot at the time. I thought that’s the way to go.  I paid $1,500USD for three coaching sessions. He lives in the UK and we did the training via Zoom. Well, I mean he is making money in affiliate marketing, but unfortunately, it didn’t work for me. So, what have I learnt from this? A huge lesson!  I realised that some systems/tactics work for some people but they don’t work for others. Things are working well in his business, it doesn’t mean it will work for you even if you copy every single thing they do in their business. So, they are teaching you what works in their business. That’s why they always have the disclaimer of the results they achieved are not typical. Also, they didn’t tell you how many times they have tried and failed before reaching to this stage. How big is their email list? What connection they have?  Of course, like me, to a completely digital newbie, how am I going to be successful after three coaching sessions. And also I have spent so much money on software and tools before I signed up to this coach, just because all digital marketers were using them. Well at least in the affiliate world, you have to have a landing page, email platform, sales funnels, upsell, downsell, you name it. So, I paid for expensive software every month for nothing. So my tips for those who are still at the early stage of running an online business, don’t copy what everyone else is doing.  A lot of people are doing X; it doesn't mean that you need to do X.  Every business is unique, even in the same niche because the person behind the business is different.  So I always remind my clients, there is no 'one-size-fits-all' marketing. (that's my tagline!)Tips of the day:We don't have to do it all! Look at your service, your customer avatar, your pricing structure, your time you can put in your business, and then decide on what platform/tool you need to reach your ideal clients and how.  Remember, you should have your own structures and systems for your business.  Find out more information about me:  Website, Resources page, Instagram, Facebook, Work with me.

A lot of people think being an entrepreneur is great because we can work with any client we want and we can work any hours we like. Well, this is partly true. I am sure you understand what I mean.  For me, I actually work longer hours than I ever did when I worked for someone else and the money take home is often not much better when I first started. I think you might be the same. After all, you’re looking for freedom, money and independence but now you just feel stuck. I’ve been there.  In some days, I just wanted to give up.  I don’t want this for you, so today I’m going to show you how business systems can help you in your business.Remember, you have to work ON your business, not IN your business. You can do this by automating, delegating, and systemising to gain leverage that is the key to creating and scaling your business.  Especially when you’re just starting out, you want to start off on the right foot.The biggest tip I can give you is to have your end goal in mind. What do you want to achieve at the end? Then you’d need a marketing system.Why some service providers get a constant flow of leads and prospects coming in, but some don’t? Being CONSISTENT is key. I can’t stress this enough. They bring in new leads, follow up, nurtures their leads and turn them into raving fans.  Many service providers, on the other hand, are doing things randomly. They switch from one social platform to another, throw up an ad here and there. For example, if you are a blogger and used to blog, stick with it. Don’t try to jump on the podcast all of a sudden. Remember, it takes time to build your brand and grow your audience.  If you ask me what is the first ‘system’ you need in your business? I would say build your email list first.  I am talking about quality, not quantity. Building an engaging email list is way more important than building a huge list but the subscribers aren’t active at all.  So have you got an engaging email list? Do you have a decent size of email list? Have you been thinking to grow your email list this year? Probably this is one of the items on your to-do list.  Don’t wait any longer. Come up with an irresistible lead magnet to attract your target audience, so they will jump on and join your email list.    Start building your email list today.  If you have any questions regarding how to build your email list, drop me an email and I will respond to you. Or, if you are looking for done for you service, you can find my contact information on my website makemarketingyours.com. 

Today, I listened to Jasmine Star's podcast. She just hit 1 million downloads of her podcast show. She talked about creating something from nothing. I think for people who just started or thinking of starting an online business, it's worth to listen to. When you look at people from the online world, you see a lot of successful cases. Yes, they are very successful, have a lot of followers, earn a stable 6 figures every month.  But they didn't tell you much about how they go from nothing to a millionaire. They've all been through a similar journey. Only a few people showed up to their first few events, no one listens to their podcast when they first started, only got one or two sales for their online courses...there are many similar stories out there.  So, you're not alone. Or I should say we're not alone.  All of us need to start somewhere. There is no overnight success. It all takes time and effort. There is no short cut. So I always believe in this - Opportunity is for those who are prepared. It might sound a bit negative but this is true.  For example, if someone today comes to me and asks me to do a podcast interview, I'd happily say yes. I am not scared because I am doing it. I know how to do it. I have my own podcast channel so this person can share and promote my channel to a wider audience.  If someone asked me if I have taught people before or coached people in the past because they want me to speak to a group of college students on doing online business. Again I would say yes. I have done courses and 1 on 1 coaching and they can find them on my membership site. So, I don't have to create something quickly and try to grab this kind of opportunities.  So what I wanted to say is to keep doing what you are doing. You might feel like you are going nowhere, but that is not true. It's all worth it at the end.Remember, the opportunity is for those who are prepared. 

I am back to my podcast world. If you have been following me on social media, you might have noticed that I have not done any podcasts in a while, well 8 months to be exact. My last episode was back at the end of November just before I travelled to Hong Kong in December. I was only away for a short period, but things started to change. I had other priorities in life like visiting my family and friends, which I have not seen for years, and then COVID 19 struck. I just wanted to share with you that it is ok to take a break. You can’t do everything and show up everywhere. You have to prioritize your business tasks but also balance with your family time. Your family is just as important as your business. I do feel bad that I won’t be able to continue with my podcast, but I know I will be back one day, so I will keep my podcast channel there even though I have to keep paying a small subscription fee. And as of today, I am here and am back. As an entrepreneur or solopreneur, you won’t be able to do everything and show up anywhere you want.  Just pick something that you are familiar and comfortable with and connect with your target audience and clients. So instead of doing the podcast, I chose to be active on Facebook and Instagram. I have kept consistently posting every day in the past 2 months. I have created and built my 6-week branding course and I have my first membership site set up with free resources and paid courses there. I have become a certified partner of MemberVault, which is a great membership site platform. So it might seem like I am dropping a podcast, but I’ve achieved quite a lot in the past few months. So, don’t feel bad if you have to take a break from doing one thing in your business because you might be gaining more than what you’ve given up in the process. If you’re a coach, consultant, or course creator and new to online business, then I have a great free resource for you. If you go to my membership site, you can see the ‘Online Business Starter Kit’ there. It’s completely free and it’s going to set your foundation and fast track your online coaching business. Click here to access.Thanks for your time today, and I will speak to you in the future episodes! 

0:00 Introduction0:41 The story of Kusha and why she starts her business. She share her journey and why you should not let go of what you truly want.2:56 As female entrepreneurs, we all have ups and downs and we have a business to run. We have a families to take care of. A lot of us actually lacking the confidence. When we launch a product or service, we always think if there is anyone going buy. From Kusha's experience, she shares how she helps her clients to overcome the confidence issues.7:26 Coming from a brand coach, Kusha shares how important it is to build a personal brand, especially for coaches.13:19 Kusha shares with us what problem she ran into when she first started her business.24:00 Kusha shares her favourite online tools with us.27:00 Kusha shares her FREE 5 days challenge - Unleash Your Brand. This is a challenge which can help entrepreneurs who are looking at getting a makeover done for their business.Here is the link to Kusha's 5 days challenge.https://thebespokedesigns.com/5-day-free-challenge/To learn more about KushaWebsite: www.thebespokedesigns.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheBespokeDesigns/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_bespoke_designs/Pinterest: https://in.pinterest.com/TheBespokeDesigns/

00:00     Introduction and welcome Florencia Mena.00:50     The backstory of Florencia Mena. Why she started doing her business.13:32       What problems or issues did Florencia encounter when she first started her business. How did she overcome all of these?19:46     How important it is to be consistent as entrepreneur?22:37     Bow important it is to build up your personal brand? Is it going to help the business?27:54     What are the favourite online tools that Florencia shared with us?34:40     How to find out about Florencia Mena.You can check out Florencia Mena on different platforms.website: www.virtualracescr.comemail: reallyjappyflower@gmail.com@virtualracescr 

Who? Tell the reader who your product will help. This should be your target market.   What? Tell your reader what your product or service will do to improve their lives. In other words, tell them the benefit’s they will receive, what's in it for them. When? When is the offer good for? If there is a special offer, when does it expire? When will the product or service help them, immediately or over time?  Where? Where can you order the product or service? Where will it work?   Why? Tell your reader why he or she needs your product or service. Why will it benefit them? Why should they sign up or order today? Why is the quantity or offer limited?   How? How do they register or order? How much will it cost? How much return will they see for their investment? How does it work?   Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? There is no trick - it really is as easy as that. Put yourself in the shoes of the reader and answer the questions you would likely ask or want answered about your product or service. Answer those questions clearly and thoroughly and your Web copy is complete.  These copywriting tips and copywriting techniques will work not just for Web copywriting but also for direct market copywriting, other online copywriting, and offline copywriting as well.   

How To Manage Your TimeAs some of you might aware that I am running my marketing agency and also my marketing coaching business. I am a mum and a wife, so some people actually asked me how do I manage my time? I have to tell you; this is not as easy as you think. I struggle quite a lot at the beginning. My son is a competitive swimmer, so I spent a lot of time sitting at the poolside. I mean hours and hours next to the pool. In this episode, you are going to learn how to manage your time to better plan your day and goals. How Managing Your Time Can Save You Time Regardless of how you make money online, you need good marketing skills but also good time management skills.  Why? Because managing your time can save you time. Goal SettingMake sure you set attainable goals each day. It’s no point of setting goals which are difficult to achieve. It’s good to set short term, medium-term and long term goals.Tips for you if you are working from homeWork around your scheduleAvoid answering phone call Avoid DistractionsCreate a scheduleDelegating tasksSimple Tools For Time ManagementPlanner Organiser Entrepreneurs are both blessed and cursed. On the one hand, they have more control of when, where, and what kind of work they do. On the other hand, most self-employed business people tend to end up working crazy hours. Fortunately, there are some simple ways for you to start to do less while accomplishing more. Employ the 80/20 Rule   If you want to get more done in less time, then you need to create your daily work schedule around the 80/20 rule. Creating a daily work schedule using the 80/20 rule will allow you to spend 80 per cent of your day working on the most critical tasks, and 20 per cent of your time on the menial, but necessary tasks.If you’re still interested in finding out more, I have got the latest 36 pages eBook ‘Your Time Management Guide – To Better Plan Your Day And Goals’ for you to download. It is completely free and just clicks the link here. 

Recently, I have been promoting Russell Brunson’s 106 Lead Funnel Case Studies. The book has 106 Lead Funnel Swipe Files, and it is only selling for $7! It’s insane. I bought it as it is a no brainer. If you are interested to know more, you can click my affiliate link in the show notes below.And because of this promotion, some people asked me what a funnel is and why do I need a sales funnel. So I think I will do a podcast on sales funnel.A sales funnel is basically a marketing system that leads people to go through a systematic selling process. The idea is to turn a lead into a prospect and into a paid client. I am going to talk about some general and popular sales funnels.Optin FunnelTripwire FunnelWebinar FunnelHigh Ticket FunnelIn fact, apart from these 4 sales funnels, there are many other funnels such as bridge funnel, application funnel, membership funnel, etc. They all have their unique elements for each funnel type. You need to know what you want to achieve and then use the right sales funnel. It will increase your hit rate. If you are interested in finding out more, click the link in the show notes.In terms of platform, you don’t necessarily need to use Clickfunnels. There are many funnel building platform out there like another popular one LeadPages. For me, I just love the Clickfunnels community as I do get some paid and free templates. I am not the person who like to re-invent the wheels if I know that there are resources out there. Like my website, I used to build it on WordPress. This time, it is the first time for me to build my website on Clickfunnels. I like it as I am able to put everything on one platform. As a digital marketer and an agency owner, you probably can imagine how many software, apps, programs and different platforms I am on. That’s insane. With Clickfunnels, I can have my website there, my membership area and all sales funnels on one platform. It’s only $97 a month. In fact, it saves me money. Again, if you are interested in finding out more, I have put the Clickfunnels link here. Ok back to lead funnel. A typical lead funnel should have 5 steps.Lead Magnet - a lead magnet is something you give away for free when someone gives you his/her email address. In theory, you’d create a lead magnet which is usually free that would attract your ideal customer and provide value.Squeeze page or landing page - A landing page or a squeeze page is a webpage where you exchange your lead magnet for an email address. You’re offering something valuable enough that your prospective customers are willing to trade their email addresses for.Thank you page - On the thank you page, you build trust with your prospective customers by giving them what you said you’d give them. You fulfil on your promise.Upsell page - After your leads have received value from you, they are more likely to do business with you. This is the best time to offer a product or service to them on your sales page. Offering a product or service right away also helps you recoup your ad costs quickly and build your customer list.Follow up funnel or Email nurturing - Because of the email addresses you collected earlier, you continue to grow your email list so you could market to them without paying any advertising cost.There is also a strategy behind in teaching you how to attract leads and build value in the ebook. Click the link in the show notes.Here is the link to Lead Funnel Swipe Files.

Today I want to share a very typical story from one of my clients. I am helping this client on SEO, email marketing and FB advertising. I also need to build landing pages for different messaging. In general, I will do a 2 hours workshop with a new client and go through their business goals, how they started their business, some background information, where they are at and what they want to achieve. This client has been in the industry for 10 years. His business is not consistent. He basically is not getting enough clients.Usually, when I dive into someone’s business. I need to know their target audience. Who he wants to target. He gave me a genuine and very general answer. He told me he is not sure. When he looks at his list, he can’t see anything in common of his clients, which I am not surprised. He didn’t have any strategy at all in getting those clients. They were more like random. That’s Ok I told him, we are going to spend time working out the avatar.Then I asked him his unique selling points (USPs). Does he have anything that stands out from other consultants in the same industry? He looked at me and said, ‘this is a very good question, but I don’t have any unique selling points. What I am doing is exactly the same as what others are doing in the same industry.’  Straight away, I know what his problem is. Knowing your avatar and your unique selling points are crucial in marketing. No matter if it is online or offline. It relates to your brand and not just limited to online. If you are in the same situation, first you need to drill down your target audience. Female, aged 30-45, own a business, live in Sydney are too general and is not going to help. Be more specific. For example, if you are in a fitness niche, you want to target female and promote your online fitness course. When you create your course, you should already know who this course is for. Are you targeting working mums, single young women, female entrepreneurs, female students, married women without children, etc.? As you can see from these 5 groups, they all have different pain points. They all have different motivation factors.   What problem is your course going to solve? For working mums, they struggle with time, and they struggle with having ‘me time’. So this online course can help with this. They can follow the program when they are at home, before school drop off or pick up, or watch it after kids are off to bed. If you don’t have or can’t think of your USPs, then you can create one! Yes, you can create one and use it as your bonus offer. Look at any other program that you can do to complement your existing workshop or course. If you are a graphic designer, then your complement product could be Canva templates on ebook. There are so many offers you can package up. Just to make sure the offer is related or adding value to your existing product or service. So today spend some time and look at your target audience and unique selling points.  Also check and see if your social media channels are reflecting these.Today I want to share a very typical story from one of my clients. I am helping this client on SEO, email marketing and FB advertising. I also need to build landing pages for different messaging. In general, I will do a 2 hours workshop with a new client and go through their business goals, how they started their business, some background information, where they are at and what they want to achieve. This client has been in the industry for 10 years. His business is not consistent. He basically is not getting enough clients.Usually, when I dive into someone’s business. I need to know their target audience. Who he wants to target. He gave me a genuine and very general answer. He told me he is not sure. When he looks at his list, he can’t see anything in common of his clients, which I am not surprised. He didn’t have any strategy at all in getting those clients. They were more like random. That’s Ok I told him, we are going to spend time working out the avatar.Then I asked him his unique selling points (USPs). Does he have anything that stands out from other consultants in the same industry? He looked at me and said, ‘this is a very good question, but I don’t have any unique selling points. What I am doing is exactly the same as what others are doing in the same industry.’  Straight away, I know what his problem is. Knowing your avatar and your unique selling points are crucial in marketing. No matter if it is online or offline. It relates to your brand and not just limited to online. If you are in the same situation, first you need to drill down your target audience. Female, aged 30-45, own a business, live in Sydney are too general and is not going to help. Be more specific. For example, if you are in a fitness niche, you want to target female and promote your online fitness course. When you create your course, you should already know who this course is for. Are you targeting working mums, single young women, female entrepreneurs, female students, married women without children, etc.? As you can see from these 5 groups, they all have different pain points. They all have different motivation factors.   What problem is your course going to solve? For working mums, they struggle with time, and they struggle with having ‘me time’. So this online course can help with this. They can follow the program when they are at home, before school drop off or pick up, or watch it after kids are off to bed. If you don’t have or can’t think of your USPs, then you can create one! Yes, you can create one and use it as your bonus offer. Look at any other program that you can do to complement your existing workshop or course. If you are a graphic designer, then your complement product could be Canva templates on ebook. There are so many offers you can package up. Just to make sure the offer is related or adding value to your existing product or service. So today spend some time and look at your target audience and unique selling points.  Also check and see if your social media channels are reflecting these.

Delivery RateThe delivery rate refers to where your email messages end up after they’ve been delivered. It tells you whether your emails ended up in the subscriber's inbox or if they ended up in their spam folder.Open RateThis is the percentage of subscribers who opened your email, viewed your email, and whether they opened it more than once. For example, if you send an email to 100 people and 25 of those people opened your email, then your open rate will be 25 percent. Click-Through RateThe click-through rate shows you the number of people who clicked on at least one of the links in your email. This is a good way for you to gauge the interest of your subscribers because it shows you how many are taking time to click and dig a bit more. If you have more than one link in your email, you can then see which link gets the most clicks. Next time, you know what people are interested.Conversion RateThe conversion rate metric allows you to take things a bit further by taking a look at the definite action that you want the clicks to result in. It measures the percentage of people who clicked on a link in your email and completed the desired action, like making a purchase or filling out a form. Bounce RateThis metric looks at the number of emails that didn't reach your customers' inbox. There are two different kinds of bounce rates that you should be tracking, the soft bounce rate and the hard bounce rate. The soft bounce rate is when the subscriber's email box is full, or there is a problem with the server. A hard bounce is when there is an invalid email address and your email bounces back. Unsubscribe RateThis is the percentage of people who unsubscribe from your email list. If you have a particular email that results in high unsubscribe rates, then you’ll want to rethink a few things and adjust your next campaign accordingly.Or, you simply have wrong target audience.List Growth RateThis shows you how quickly your email list is growing. The metric takes into account the bounces, unsubscribes, and the number of contacts that are added to your list during a specific time. Keeping an eye on these key metrics will help you develop a successful email marketing campaign. On my new website www.makemarketingyours.com, there is one eBook which you can download. It’s called ‘100 Grabbing Headlines’. This is exact same strategy that I use in my business to create sales letters, email campaigns, podcasts, Facebook ads. The eBook is free! So, head to my website and download it. It’s www.makemarketingyours.com

While many people may think that email marketing is dead, it still has one of the highest engagement rates of any marketing strategy. Plus, with an average return of $44  for every $1 spent, email marketing also has one of the highest returns on investment. The key to taking advantage of this is to find a way to stand out from the crowd. One easy way to figure out if your efforts are paying off is to pay attention to the open rates of your email campaigns. Here are some of the best ways that you can improve the open rates for your email marketing campaigns. Create an Engaging Subject LineThe first thing that consumers see on any emails is the subject line. If you haven’t tested and optimized yours, then you are leaving money on the table. A/B testing isn't just for your landing pages and websites; it is also an essential part of your email marketing. You want to aim for creating a casual and personal opening line.Write Quality ContentIf your customers come to expect your business to send engaging, entertaining, and informative emails, you'll see a substantial increase in your open rates. However, if you are sending information that they can find elsewhere, or you send them nothing but promotional emails, your messages will end up in the trash bin. One of the best ways to keep your open rates high is by sending high-quality emails less frequently.Send at the Right TimeIn marketing, timing is everything. This is especially true when it comes to email marketing. You want to make sure that you are sending emails at the best times based on the audience, message, and intent. You can do some testing to find this out, or you can do your research on the industry to determine the typical results. Avoid Spam FiltersThe filters on email servers are becoming more and more sophisticated, and if your emails end up in subscribers’ spam folders, you’ll see your open rate plummet. If you want to stay out of spam folders, then you need to make sure you avoid sending emails that look like spam. Limit the number of links in your message and make sure it doesn’t read like a brochure. These are some of the best ways to ensure your emails get opened. If you want to run an email marketing campaign that is successful, then you need to work on increasing your open rates.  

Hi, welcome to the new episode of Make Marketing Yours. Before I go into today's’ topic. I just wanted to share a couple of things with you. I was out for a month and didn’t do my podcast because my parents were visiting from overseas and I haven’t seen them for 4 years. Before they came, I have 8 episodes ready, and I just need to record them. I thought I am going to do that before they arrived. And of course, things happened, and I didn’t get a chance to do it. I had two choices – do it or leave it. At the end I have decided to leave it. Why putting on so much stress when you just know that you couldn’t do it. Is the sky going to fall or is the world going to disappear? Nope. I have learnt to just do what I can do. Then I got flu on the day my parents left, so another week without doing any podcast. The only thing I could have done better is to announce it at my last episode and to let my listeners know that I will be off for a couple of weeks. I did receive a couple of messages and asked me if I was ok. Thank you for those who left me messages. Ok, back to today’s episode. I am going to talk more on Instagram. Instagram is a huge social network with over 1 million active users – a user base that is continuing to grow even now with no signs of slowing down. It is quick to manage thanks to its largely visual nature and has some of the best engagement on the web. Many companies use Instagram to boost their products and services to extraordinary popularity. There are countless ‘Instagram celebrities’ who make a living from posting to Instagram alone. Some of them get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single post. That tells you something about how much big companies value Instagram! However, there are many businesses still failing to gain any momentum on the platform. That’s because they’re stuck posting the same content day after day, not providing any value for their audience, and not quite ‘getting it’ when it comes to what sticks or what strategies work. So stay with me, I’m going to change the way you view Instagram and the way your business operates. First, we’ll see how you can create a real movement by understanding what makes Instagram tick. Then we’ll get into details – the tips and tricks that make any Instagram account grow faster. We’ll start with the big picture, then get down to the details. And speaking of big picture, that’s what Instagram is all about for business. It’s about selling a dream or a ‘value proposition’. Being very visual, Instagram lends itself to promoting feelings over figures – it shows people who are successful, who are happy, or who are very trendy. This creates an excitement reaction in the viewer, who is socially motivated to want to do the same things and feel the same way. That’s why we follow aspirational accounts, and it’s why Instagram posts have the potential to influence more so that anything you can accomplish on Twitter. Like people say: a picture is worth a thousand words! The simple filters that Instagram offers allow anyone to take an ordinary everyday moment from their life and make it look ‘beautiful’ or at the very least, artistic. In doing so, they alter our focus and find the beauty and the appeal in our lives. And to this day, Instagram is filled with hipsters taking photos of their food, or of glasses standing alone on tables. Then there are photos of journals, carefully placed on desks surrounded by coffee and potted plants. There are other corners of Instagram of course. There is a huge fitness community, for example, filled with photos of people looking tanned and muscular while jogging down the beach. Travel is absolutely huge. Beauty and beauty products likewise have a big place. And fashion is perfectly suited to this visual medium. Art and photography do well on Instagram too. And there is a larger silver-surfer contingent than you might think, made up particularly of people who enjoy activities like hiking, bird spotting, sewing etc. Then there is also a concept of ‘stunting’ on Instagram. What is stunting? It’s the act of creating an account in order to portray a particular image, that actually isn’t authentic. Most often? It means looking extremely wealthy and successful. For example, then, someone might post an image of their hand on the wheel of a Lamborghini, wearing a Rolex and with a stack of cash on the seat next to them. In reality though, they are testing the car at a show-room, the Rolex is a knock-off, and the cash is just $100 that they withdrew in small notes. Believe it or not, people actually make a living from being stunting! I personally think this goes too far. I don’t believe in ‘fake it till you make it’ kind of concept. You should be who you are, no matter where you show up. It is the same for your business. You can post about the lifestyle and using the filters and your photography in order to make it all look amazing and desirable, you can make an account that is highly persuasive, and that will grow exponentially. Rather than just a corporate brand. It’s why companies like Apple are so successful – they speak to the creative side, the showy side, and the aspirational side of the buyer. That’s what Instagram will let you do. But again, keep it real. With all that said, you need to make sure you are posting images and videos that help to convey the message you wish to portray. Ideally, someone should see one of your images and feel inspired and moved – in turn seeking out your content to learn more. For many, this means taking photos that are as attractive as possible – so if you have photography skills, then that’s ideal! Each photo should somehow tell a story, and show the benefits of the product or service you’re offering. At the same time, it also means sharing videos – which actually have higher engagement than video on Instagram! But what if you aren’t an amazing photographer or you aren’t confident in your skills? Fortunately, there are some things you can do to get around that. Both pictures and videos should be edited in order to get the very most from them – this way, you can turn a boring photo into something truly eye-catching. There are a lot of software out there can do the job. The most popular one is Canva. This is also an opportunity to add text, effects, and more. Instagram also now offers basic editing allowing you to add things like effects, or to alter the contrast and shadows etc. This is an easy way to ‘fix’ a photo that perhaps came out a little over-exposed for instance. Video can be edited meanwhile using Final Cut, Adobe Premiere, or even iOS software like Luma Fusion. This way, you can chop together a long piece of footage to be punchier and more exciting. Add some music and colour grading, and you can make your video much more impactful. Another option is to use stock photography! You can find royalty-free photo sites, or pay a small monthly or yearly fee to get access to thousands of photos. Like Envato Elements which l use for my agency. Here, you’ll find huge lists of photos that are available for you to use and even to edit. And that’s the key point because you can edit photos in order to make them unique to your brand. For example, if you have a fitness business, then you can take photos of people in the gym or running on the beach, and then add motivational quotes over the top and some filters. These kinds of accounts are extremely easy to run and maintain, and yet they are highly successful because they tick all the boxes we’re looking at. You can download an image of someone jogging on the beach, turn it black and white, then add some beautiful text with a fancy font on top. It just takes a few moments to learn the editing skills and to get access to the account. The same strategy can work whether you’re selling cars, a dating website, or practically anything else. The best bit? It ticks all the boxes we’re looking for: allowing you to convey your value proposition, create photos that stand out, and help your audience to feel something that motivated them to buy. If you think it is too much work to do and there is not something that you’re interested in doing? Outsource to other people to do it. I help a lot of my clients just to do social media posts. The next trick is to make sure that they are getting found and that they are getting engagement. So how often should you post? A lot of businesses, on average, recommend posting 1-3 times per day in order to achieve maximum engagement. They recommend posting between 10am-3pm for local businesses, or 6pm if you have a global audience. Well, I think it depends on your business. What products or services are you selling. For eCommerce business, yes I would think to post multiple times a day is good. But if you have a consulting business, I think once a day or 1 in 2 days would be enough. The next tip: post in portrait orientation wherever possible. This will increase the amount of space your photo takes up in a vertical feed, and it will increase the amount of time your audience sees it for as a result! Next: use the right hashtags. Instagram lets you add up to 30 hashtags for each image post, and that means you have thirty opportunities to help people find you. Hashtags that are too popular will mean your content gets drowned out the moment you post, while those that are too niche won’t bring enough views in. Aim for that happy sweet spot in the middle, but also use a range of hashtags with a couple at both end of the spectrum. Finally, make sure you engage with your audience using every other available trick. You can pay for sponsored posts and ads, but you actually don’t need to if you focus on answering the comments on your posts, commenting on other people’s posts, and liking their photos. Follow people in your niche too, and try to use hashtags and mentions to get noticed by bigger brands. Follow 20 new accounts, and you’ll likely get 10 follows back as long as they are relevant and especially if you’ve engaged with them in the past. And remember: this growth is exponential over time. Using Instagram’s Live Video and Stories is another way you can engage more – especially as these will sometimes notify users that you’ve just posted. That’s a great way to interact in a more personal and direct manner with your audience, which in turn means that you can build that trust and authority. Finally, work with other creators to do ad swaps and to promote each other. If you do all this, if you are consistent, and if you put real effort into delivering a message to your audience – then there is every chance that you could generate AT LEAST 100 new followers a day. And because this growth is exponential… the sky is the limit! Thank you for joining me today.

One of the most invaluable assets for your business is your email list. However, this is only true if it contains subscribers that are eager to listen to what you have to say and who want to buy your products. According to recent research, the average email open rate is only 32 per cent, but with an effective strategy and smart planning, you can grow your list and keep your engagement rates higher. Here are four practical ways that you can get more qualified email subscribers. Craft a More Compelling Offer The most important and most significant way to increase your subscribers is to make the offer more appealing. While you can change the colors of your buttons, and improve small factors in your email, if you don't have a proposal that converts, you're wasting your time and money. You need to focus on giving your target audience what they really want if you want to get more subscribers. Make the Process as Easy as Possible The simpler you make your opt-in form, the more likely someone will be willing to subscribe. By removing the name field on your form, you'll grow your list faster. Every step that you can take to make your opt-in form simpler will help you increase your subscribers and build your audience. The fewer steps you have between a consumer being interested and them signing up will help your list grow. Encourage Sharing If you have an email that you think will get a particularly strong reaction from your subscribers, you can encourage them to forward the email to their family and friends. You will need to make sure that you have a way for new people to sign up and ensure that those who get forwarded the email don't click on the unsubscribe button. As long as you can include details about these two factors in the email, you can ask your current subscribers to forward the email so you can find more like-minded prospects. Give Users More Control Over the Content Part of your goal when growing your email list is to make sure that people don't unsubscribe. If you start to notice an increase in unsubscribes, it might be because people are overwhelmed. To combat this issue, you can offer a light subscription or even different leveled plans. The idea is to try and keep subscribers on your list, even if they aren't receiving your entire lineup of emails. If you want to start generating great results with your email, then you need to put in the time and effort to build a great list. These four strategies are a great way to get more email subscribers.

When you can learn how to execute a well-planned email strategy, you can effectively create amazing returns in your marketing including repeat sales, customer loyalty, returning website visitors, which helps to improve your search engine ranking and being viewed as a reliable source and expert in your industry. The key to being able to foster and nurture your new email subscribers is through cultivation. By sharing content with your subscribers that offers value, solves problems, and engages your readers, you will be able to move them closer to a buying decision strategically. The messages that you send to your subscribers helps to keep them connected to your brand, and the more value you offer them, the more likely they are going to be not only open your emails but engage with them as well. If you don’t have a strategy in place to convert your leads into customers, it is pointless to spend your time trying to grow your lead count. With the proper nurturing technique, your subscribers will look forward to hearing from you. Here are five ways that you can nurture your new email subscribers, increase engagement, and generate sales with your email marketing. Create A Welcome Series Having a welcome email series that greets your new subscribers will dramatically separate your business for your competitors and put your brand in a good light with your target audience. These emails should be friendly, inviting, and they should give your new subscribers a taste of your brand culture. These welcome emails will set the stage of excellence for your business. This is the time that you want to introduce yourself and how you can help your customers. Take the time to tell your story, with each post building on the last. You might want to provide a 5-part training series or advice regarding your related niche. Your welcome emails can be as unique and creative as you want. This will help you to improve your open rates, and your email list will be much more receptive to upcoming sales promotions and events in the future. Evergreen Blog Posts The content on your blog serves multiple purposes in marketing your business. First of all, it helps your business attract a steady stream of organic traffic from social media, search, and referrals. To achieve the best results, you need to make sure that you are writing evergreen articles and posts. Evergreen articles are those that are created to provide value to readers all year and beyond. The articles aren't based on trends or what's in; rather, they are articles that your reader will always find useful and reflective over time. Each evergreen article should be insightful, educational, and highly relevant to your customer without being news-oriented or date-specific. To help nurture your new email subscribers, create this kind of content and distribute it over social media and other channels and those people who find it useful will continue to share it with their networks. Another reason why you should be creating shareable, evergreen content is that it can also serve as a free, valuable material that you can include in your email newsletter that you can send out to your subscribers. This provides your subscribers with a great reason to come back to their inboxes without coming off too salesy or pushy. Make sure you aren't just sending out the articles the same day that you publish them to your blog post. Instead, try to recycle your best-performing articles to use in your email campaigns so that your new subscribers always receive your best stuff. If you have long content, you can always break it into pieces and offer it up as a series. Offer Content Upgrades In exchange for a visitor's email address, you can offer content upgrades, which are well-targeted pieces of bonus content that is downloadable with a specific blog article. They specifically address the topic that is being discussed in the blog post. For example, if a Human Resource Consultant writes a blog post on the best practices for high performing team leaders, they can turn that post into a short eBook and make it available to download when people provide you with their email address. The content upgrades that you offer your new email subscribers should be useful, highly relevant to the topic, and actionable. You should try to have a unique content upgrade for just about every post that you publish to your blog. While this would mean a lot of extra work, it will be well worth it, because you can capture more qualified leads. If you don't have the time to spend creating unique content upgrades for each of your blog articles, you can also keep an eye on those articles that have a massive readership and create a unique content upgrade for those articles. Publish Monthly Newsletter There are a number of tremendous benefits that you can gain by sharing a monthly newsletter with your subscribers. Newsletters are an ideal platform for keeping your list in the know and connected with what's happening with your company, as well as what's happening in your industry. You'll be able to position yourself as thought leader by sharing articles, both yours and those of authoritative sites, to help you drive more traffic to your site and increase your sales. Creating a newsletter email campaign is a winning strategy that will help you boost engagement, as well as growth for your business. It helps to build an expectation with your audience, and they'll be excited to see your newsletter in their inbox every month. Here are some essential items that you need to remember when putting together your monthly email newsletter. • Use a colourful and compelling design and template that captures attention and emphasis on your brand. • Make sure you use your newsletter to share company news, industry-related content, and customer testimonials. • Be sure to curate content from other writers as a way to highlight the best sources in your industry. • Promote your most popular blog posts. • Include large, distinct call-to-action buttons in your newsletter • If you have team members or employees, showcase them. It can further humanize your company. Segment Your Email List Email list segmentation is a growth hacking trick that can significantly improve the bottom line of your business It has been reported that segmented and targeted email campaigns generate 58 per cent of all revenue generated for a business. Email segmentation allows you to create personalized emails that speak directly to the subscriber that is receiving the email. The idea behind segmentation is that you use the demographic information that you collect on your subscribers to custom tailor an email that speaks to their interests, likes, and wants. By doing this, your subscribers are more likely to open your emails, respond to the content, and take the desired action that you wish to, as compared to a generic email message that you created for your entire list of subscribers. Here are some of the categories that you should consider when creating a segmented email list: • Gender • Age • Demographics – the city, region, state, or neighbourhood where your subscribers live • Career • Past purchases for upselling opportunities • Buyer Personas • Subscriber content interest – pay attention to the kinds of content your subscribers are clicking on the most Segmenting your email list and creating highly targeted emails will increase your open rates and help you to nurture your new email subscribers. To sum up, nurturing your newly built email list is just as important as growing the number of subscribers you have. When you can regularly share useful content with your subscribers that informs them, helps them solve their problems, and inspires them, will help you keep your brand at the front of their minds. When they are ready to buy, they’ll turn to your business because you have been feeding them with continuous value making them want to buy from you. With these tactics, you will soon be able to build a loyal customer base who will refer you and your business to their family and friends. Start with just one or two of the tactics as mentioned above and test them with your list over a period to determine which of the tactics creates the most engagement with your subscribers and the most sales. Keep those strategies that work and refine those that don't. With consistency, you will be able to create a winning formula that will transform your email list into a sales-generating machine.

Ok, now it comes to the purpose of the video. If you want everyone to watch it and go viral, then I will recommend YouTube. Set it to the public so everyone can watch your video. However, if your video is for your training, coaching, membership area, then I will recommend Vimeo. You can do more private settings, and of course, there are some features which you have to pay. The reason I like to use Vimeo for my coaching and training is that there are no ads before, after, or on your video. I just feel more secure with Vimeo as people can’t search or share your video. And of course, there are other video platforms. I also like to use Loom and MeetZippy. I like to see myself in the little circle when I am doing a webinar or presentation style training. The audience can see your slides, and at the same time, they can see you as well. Yes, Zoom is also good, but I will not use Zoom for training. For me, Zoom is more like Skype and is for instant communication. I use Zoom to have my discovery call and strategy call with clients. I use it for my podcast interview if I need to have the visual as well as audio. At the end of the day, it depends on how you are going to use your video for. Just little tips here and hope this can help you to choose the right video platform.

People often asked if Facebook ads are effective. It doesn’t seem to work for their business. Facebook ads can be awesome and effective if you do it right. In certain situations, Facebook ads may be counter-productive as far as your overall digital marketing campaigns go. Still, there are many ways Facebook ads can take your business regardless of its size to the next level. There are 5 most effective ways Facebook can make an impact on your digital marketing campaigns. Seriously. Believe it or not, simply posting comments, blogs that use the Facebook comment plug-in can actually go a long way in boosting your brand. Of course, you have to do it at the right time, on the right blogs and with the right content. It's not as straightforward or as black and white as a lot of people make it out to be. Just like anything else in life, just because it sounds simple, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is. The fact is when you start on Facebook; chances are your initial campaigns will not be all that successful. This is called the Facebook advertising learning curve. Whether you are advertising a dropshipping business, a content base business or a purely local or brick and mortar business, you have to pay for the ‘test and learn’. As a digital marketing agency owner myself, I can tell you that we run successful Facebook campaigns because we have done so many that we know what works and what’s not. When we first started with a new niche or with a new client, it takes time for our team to work out the best target audience, the best landing page and the best ad copy. We run the split test, so we know which ad has a better chance of success. We have done so many different Facebook campaigns. Next time, when we have a client in a similar niche, at least, we have a benchmark to follow. Running a successful Facebook ad campaign, a lot of researches and tests are involved. It’s not difficult to run a Facebook campaign, but it is hard to run a successful campaign with a high conversion rate. So, definitely retargeting ad campaigns are going to help. Ok, first of the five most effective ways Facebook can make an impact on your digital marketing campaigns is BUILD A SOLID BRAND IN YOUR LOCAL AREA The first benefit Facebook ads bring to the table is you are able to create a solid brand in your local area. As you are probably aware by now, I talk a lot about building up your brand. Just a quick recap: why is having a brand important? When you build a brand, you don’t have to constantly promote your business. Once your business is recognised as a brand, people will seek you out. Your reputation will precede you-and open many doors of opportunity for you. Why? Well, people don’t like to take risks. With everything else being equal, people would rather do business with someone that they know, they trust, and they have heard of. Best of all, people would pay extra for this sense of certainty. You may think that you're already doing a good job of branding your business or your personal brand. You may have reached out to local business organisations and social groups to publicise your brand. Maybe you’ve sponsored lots of different local sporting teams or local community organisations. All these may well be the case, but you shouldn't stop there. You should look for total local market branding saturation, and this includes the digital space. In the case of branding, there’s no such thing as too much of a good thing. You could always use more branding. Please understand that its more and more of your local competitors find their way on Facebook and other social media platforms. It's only a matter of time until they'd leave you in the dust. I don't mean to scare you, but local advertising in the world now moves at the speed of light. This is one area you cannot afford to overlook or neglect. Simply assuming that it's not going to have much of an impact in your local business is simply burying your head in the sand. It's not an effective strategy. So if you want to leverage whatever brand you've managed to build in your local area, one of the best ways to do this is to run a Facebook marketing campaign. CONDUCT CONSUMER INTELLIGENT ON THE CHEAP Surveying your customers and getting crucial products and service development information from them is an effective way of figuring out what your market needs. The more accurate your take is on the pulse of your customers, the more likely you will roll out a successful product or service. The problem is the traditional ways of getting this type of consumer intelligence can be very expensive. I am talking about phone surveys, paper surveys and focus groups. Traditional consumer intelligence can also take quite a bit of time. Oftentimes, companies would have to run several rounds of surveys to find the information that they are looking for. Also, some surveys need to be run several times to make sure they are reaching the right random sample of people. Traditional offline or phone-based consumer intelligence gathering is pricey, eats up a lot of time, and needs a lot of costly fine-tuning to produce a solid value for businesses. Thankfully with the internet, you can also make the whole process more effective and efficient. Using Facebook ads, you can conduct consumer intelligence in your local area very inexpensive. These are people who already have declared interest in whatever you are offering. Just join those Facebook groups that your ideal customers are going to hang out. Put up a survey there and ask for their votes or opinions on something that you want to sell or to teach. For example, if you want to run a healthy diet program for female entrepreneurs, then you would join female entrepreneur groups and healthy diet groups,weight loss groups or even some keto diet groups. Those are the women you want to connect. TEST OUT NEW PRODUCTS OR SERVICE IDEAS I'm sure you've seen this many times before. You've come up with the product that you think is very hot and then all of a sudden, nobody buys. The best way to do this is to run actual ads on Facebook to see whether your existing customer base are actually interested in the product or service offering that you are so excited about. That's how you really figure out whether your new offerings will add to your profitability. BUILD A MAILING LIST How many times have you heard the saying the money is in the list? It's absolutely true. The money is in the list. The problem is a lot of businesses go through the process in an obligatory way. They basically just go through the motions. They just run a glorified newsletter and not much else. It is no surprise that their mailing list doesn't really deliver the sales that they need to justify the continued existence of the mailing list. There are no two ways about it-mailing lists deliver a lot of value. I’m not just talking about sales here. While lists are great for cashing in on whatever promo you are running, your list can also deliver consumer intelligence at dirt cheap rates. As you probably already know, consumer intelligence is crucial for sound business strategic decisions. Also, your list can do wonders for your business’ brand persona and goodwill building. If you are interested in start building your mailing list, you can go back and listen to my podcast episode#10 on 4 Crucial Things You Need To Do To Build Your List. The bottom line? Mailing lists help your brand get ‘up close and personal’ to people looking to develop a relationship with your business. Treat your list with the seriousness and close attention to details it deserves. Otherwise, your list might quickly turn into yet another business liability. Remember, the bigger your list, the more expensive it is to run. Don’t just focus on growing your list. Monetize it as efficiently as possible. This really is too bad because a lot of local businesses have become very successful and have expanded their operations precisely because they know how to build and work with the mailing list. Well, the good news is, a Facebook ad campaign can help you do the heavy lifting of the most important part of mailing list marketing, which is recruitment. You can get the right ads in front of the right eyeballs so people can click through and end up on your mailing list squeeze page. Best of all, you can do this for a fairly cheap rate. RETARGET YOUR LOCAL PROSPECTS I'm sure you don't need me to remind you that a certain percentage of people who end up at your website looking to buy something, but they didn’t end up taking any actions. They only go to your website once, and you can basically forget about them cause they're never coming back. Well, thanks to Facebook's retargeting, when people go to a certain page on your website, and they go back to Facebook and Facebook's ad network, what do think you they'll see? That' s right. They'll see your ad. When they click on it, they go to the page they left or better yet a page that's closer to the conversion page on your website. Whatever the case may be and regardless of how you set it up, Facebook's advertising system gives you a powerful tool to let your prospects remember that they looked at your website. In fact, Facebook retargeting increases conversions by 40%. Please understand that those are sales that you could have lost for all practical purposes, these are lost sales, but here you are retargeting them, "bringing them back from the dead" through retargeting ads. So, keep the 5 key advantages above in mind next time you consider your digital marketing budget. Remember that whether your business is a brick and mortar, an online consultancy, a solar company or a winery, you have to have a digital marketing strategy. It's only a matter of time until your competitors eat your lunch. Don't let them do it. The good news is it doesn't have to burn a hole through your wallet. Just reach out to me on how to set up a working Facebook advertising campaign even if you are a complete beginner as I offer personal consultation service for female entrepreneurs. It's time you tap into Facebook advertising. You can email me at branding@makemarketingyours.com or visit my website at www.makemarketingyours.com.

Some people are nervous about posting and advertising on social media. I get asked this question very often from my students. For my agency clients, they don’t have any concerns on this as we, as an agency, will take care of it. So, should I delete, hide or respond to comments on my social media posts or ads? When you do posts or ads, you want people to see them, right? So, it’s good to engage with your audience, especially when they leave you their comments. Of course, comments can be positive or negative. If you get positive comments, that’s great! More the merrier! You should reply to every single comment, even if you just say thank you for their time and their comments. It helps with the algorithm. Ok, how about negative comments? Now it depends on what they say. If they swear and talk nonsense, then delete and block them. It’s ok as their comments are not relevant to your posts or ads, not adding any values. On the other hand, other comments are usually not extremely negative. Usually, people want more information about your offers, or they are not sure if your offer is worth the money. This is a good opportunity for you to answer those questions or enquiries. Some comments can be a bit judgemental, but again you can turn these comments into positive. These people were burnt before so they will be more sceptical. That’s ok as long as you can justify why you are offering what you offer and can talk about what’s in it for them. The most important is to focus on the results and the transformation. I am telling you this, at the end of the day, people are going to judge you no matter what you do! So be it. Hope this will help you on how to deal with social media comments.

Building and Optimizing Your Account To get started on Instagram, you’ll need to create an account. Simply download the app, create a username and password, and you’re ready to go! If you have a business, it is better to switch to a business account. So you can see more insights into your account. Profile Picture Your profile picture can be anything you want it to be, but keep in mind that the image will appear small and inside a circle. This will be the first impression that many users have of your account – when they see you add a comment to an image for instance, or if they search for your account/a hashtag you often use. Therefore, there are two strong options when it comes to picking an image. One is to use your own logo. This will help you to improve brand visibility, and it will work particularly well if your logo is able to communicate the concept of your business visually immediately. Think about your value proposition. Think about emotions. Will someone who has never encountered your brand before, be able to tell from your name and your logo that you focus on a particular subject? More importantly, will they be able to tell instantly whether your brand is something they might be interested in? If the answer is no, then the alternative is to choose a profile picture that shows you doing something specific, or that shows a product or activity. In other words, choose one image that will convey the same emotion and tone that you want to achieve with your broader account. As for your biography, you only have a short number of words here to work withIn that short space; you need to be precise of what your page and your brand are all about and again, convey that emotion. You should also think about how you are going to produce more engagement from this. That means thinking about how you can get people to click through to your website or YouTube channel. You can use a tool like Bitly in order to make shorter links that you can place here. That will save you word count while allowing you to convert some of your Instagram fans into visitors and hopefully paying customers. Settings Your Story Settings, which will define who can see and reply to your Instagram stories. You should make sure this is set to everyone if you have an account for business purposes. Of course, you also need to make sure that your account is not private. It’s not a bad idea to turn on ‘hide inappropriate comments’ to avoid abusive or spammy posts. Making Your Instagram Feed Perform Once you have your account, you’re ready to start posting images and video. While there are lots of tips and tricks to help you get more from this, the most important one is simply to hone in on your niche, to hone in on your target demographic, and then to post frequently with a consistent tone and style. So if you have a fitness brand, then that means lots of photos of people training! Having a consistent look for all your images is a slightly more complex and controversial decision. But know that 60% of businesses use the same filter on all their images! Of course, this will hamstring you somewhat in terms of your creativity. You’ll find that by picking a consistent look – especially if you are a photographer or artist – that you won’t be able to branch out and get creative whenever you wish. That said though; it also means that people can quickly decide if they like your content or not, and there’s a high chance that this won’t change as they spend time with your brand. By picking a consistent visual style, you can make sure that your page as a whole looks great: not just the individual pictures. This is something to consider, as it will help your visitors to make the decision as to whether they would like to follow your content or not when they visit your profile. Take a look at the pages of some of your favourite creators in your niche and decide what they’ve done that you like, versus what hasn’t worked. Likewise, using consistent hashtags, and even following leaders within your niche, will all help you to send strong signals to both Instagram and your followers as to what you’re all about and who should and shouldn’t follow you. Defining Your Account If you’re going to be using consistent filters, a consistent theme and more, then you need to think about what that theme is and what you will want to say. This is what will help you to really make a mark on Instagram, and it’s what will allow the whole strategy to ‘click into place’. This may be easy if you are a fitness account – you will likely want to promote a fitness lifestyle, and that will mean posting images of training. Not in good shape yourself? Don’t worry; we’ll come to that (although it is always better if you can act as your own model). Likewise, if you are making an account about travel, then all you need to do is to visit some amazing locations and take stunning photos (or find them elsewhere – again, we’ll get to that). Pick a certain style and a certain schedule for posting, and you’ll gradually gain more and more momentum. These images should each tell a story. The travel pictures should make your audience want to visit a beautiful country. (perfect if you have a travel blog, or you sell travel supplies). But what if you sell life insurance? How can you make this aspirational? What about online business? How can this be visual? The key is again to focus not on the nitty-gritty, but on the emotion. In the case of life insurance, think about what this is really about: family and loved ones. Did you know that #love is the number one most popular tag on Instagram? And family/relationships is one of the most popular niches on the platform. So you can post images of families doing fun things together, and looking cute. Maybe happy babies, or beautiful family homes. As for online business, you can take one of several angles. You could focus on the way that working online makes you feel: like a trendy entrepreneur! That could mean taking photos of desktop set-ups, of people in suits going to meetings, of laptops in coffee shops. If you live this lifestyle yourself… even better! Alternatively, though, you could think about what that kind of business helps you to achieve – post pictures of businessmen and women in hot tubs, on private jets, or relaxing on the beach. Whatever your niche, you should hone in on the feelings that help you to sell in it, and then convey them through this visual medium. Buyer Persona and Owning Your Niche But once you’ve chosen your ‘angle’, you should also aim to stick to that angle. That will also mean defining and sticking to a specific ‘buyer persona’. ‘Buyer persona’ simply means the very typical kind of person who will appreciate your business. Write a fictional bio for that person, and ask yourself their age, interests, hobbies, income, beliefs, personality, and more they might have. Use this to directly target them through your Instagram marketing. For example: is your fitness brand aimed at people who want to get a little healthier? Are you going to show happy people on the beach, or young couples working out at the gym together? Or is the fitness angle you’re looking for going to be more ‘hardcore’? Maybe you’ll target strength culture and post images of gigantic guys with chalked-up hands, grimacing under a barbell. This attracts an entirely different kind of audience, but it’s by owning your specific message and knowing your direct audience, that you will be able to stand out against the competition. Choosing your audience and buyer persona might be easy if you are inheriting this from an existing business: who are you trying to sell to? That is who you will target with these images. Think about how you can stand out against the competition. Think about the kind of content that you want to produce and are honestly passionate about (this is absolutely fundamental to your long-term success), and think about the demographics particularly well represented on Instagram and where there is overlap. With all this decided, all that is left to do is to post frequently like every day, to use smart, relevant hashtags that include a range of extremely popular and less popular terms, and to promote your Instagram account from other platforms. People will find you through search thanks to the hashtags and through your other channels, and the high quality and consistent tone of images will mean they subscribe and share. The Last Piece of the Puzzle – The Social Aspect Posting great quality images and having a well-optimised profile is the first step to Instagram success. But it is far from the only one. In fact, Instagram is a social network, and this is crucial to remember if you want to be successful. Primarily, this is a communication tool, and the way you communicate will greatly impact on your success. By posting on other accounts, by talking to your followers, and by motivating your audience, you can greatly increase your growth and your engagement. Here are a few tips to consider: • Answer your audience – If someone comments on your photo and you ignore the comment, they won’t comment again in future. If you answer though, they’ll get a kick out of interacting with their favourite brand and will likely comment again (not to mention becoming even bigger fans!). • Like and comment on others – If you like or comment on a video or picture in your niche, you’ll potentially gain a new follower in that person (they’ll enjoy the attention and check out your profile, especially if it looks like a business profile). Also, you might gain followers from other people who read the comments, and it further helps Instagram’s algorithm. It’s also a good idea to follow other people. • Run competitors and use hashtags – Reposting photos from users who use your hashtag, running competitions, or asking for help all represent methods you can use to galvanise your following and turn them into a force for growth! • Collaborate – Collaborating with other users is a brilliant way to expand both your audiences. Just send them a direct message and ask if they would like to work together on something. Pick someone with a following that’s a similar size to yours and that way; you will both stand to gain a similar amount from the interaction. There are lots of ways you can do this – post each other’s’ photos, provide a shout-out in a story, or even make something cool together to share (like a short video or cool image). Use these strategies in combination with frequently posting to your account, and your feed will go from strength to strength.

Here is a quick glance at what you need to know about using hashtags: • Use lots – You are allowed up to 30 hashtags, and each one of those could bring in a new viewer searching for something. Think about it this way: each one of your tags is like entering into a lottery. Why would you only enter once if you could enter thirty times for free? • Choose a balance – The best hashtag is one that is popular but not overwhelmingly so. Post an image with the hashtag #babygirl, and you’ll be going up against 60,985,000 public posts! That means that your image isn’t going to hang around in the search results long at all, and will soon be drowned by the volume of new posts. On the other hand, a hashtag with only 10 public posts, then it is not likely to get searched. Something with 30,000 or so searches will hit that sweet spot of being popular, but also specific. Note that you can see these numbers as soon as you start typing out the hashtags when posting your image or video. Instagram will suggest relevant terms and show you the volume of posts for each one. • Use a range – As well as having balanced popularity for your tags, you should also think about using a variety of tags. Including a few massively popular tags won’t hurt and there’s always the odd chance one will go crazy. But by including some smaller ones as well. It’s no harm at all. •Be trendy – Think about trending topics; you can do a simple search using Google Trends (trends.google.com/trends) and also about the most trendy subjects within your niche. For example, fitness is popular all the time, but ‘functional fitness’ and ‘mobility’ are topics that are currently hot in this field. Likewise, food is always a hit, but ‘avocado’ is winning. There are also common hashtags used within any niche that you can ‘borrow’ for your own purposes. Of course, if you can use a trending hashtag that is linked to something that’s been in the news, or the cultural discourse, then even better! • Be consistent – Consistent use of the same hashtags is a good strategy for communicating what your brand is about to Instagram’s algorithms. • Don’t use them in your bio – This won’t make your bio searchable through those hashtags, so stick to using only your own branded hashtags here, if there is any.

I know, marketing could be expensive. Every ad costs money, and you could easily spend at least several hundred dollars on an advertising campaign if you aren’t too careful. Having said that, if you have good ROI, return on investment, then your ad spend is not expensive. If you spent $1 and get $2 back, will you spend $1,000? I am not sure about you, but I will. This is sort of no brainer. We’re talking about 50% of the return. Although a lot of people might say, you don’t HAVE to spend a fortune on your marketing efforts. In fact, if your budget is tiny or you are just starting out, you don’t have to spend a single cent if you don’t want to. It’s just you don’t see instant results and will take longer. So, the next question is, who are you trying to reach? Before you start marketing your business, you need to think about who your audience is. There are lots of ways to market your business for free, but depending on your audience, you may not need to use all of them. For example, if you have a product that is aimed at retired people, the chances are you won’t find too many of them on the social network. Always know exactly who you are trying to reach from the outset; that way, you won’t waste any time using methods that aren’t going to give you a good return. In other words, spend some time to figure out who you are looking for and where you are likely to find them will pay huge dividends later on. Then, putting a plan together. When a digital marketer is investing money in a marketing campaign, they tend to put a lot of effort into it. After all, they want to be sure they are going to see a good return on their investment. But when it comes to marketing a business online for free, some people just don’t put enough effort into it. It’s understandable – after all, you aren’t putting any cash in so it doesn’t really matter if you do something and it doesn’t work. It also doesn’t matter if you forget to do something or you skip a stage when you are too busy with other things. Now, you need to think differently. You need to take the same professional approach to a free marketing campaign as you would if it was going to cost you $10,000. Not only will you learn a lot by doing this, but your business will thank you for it too. Start thinking about what you are aiming to achieve with your free marketing efforts. Start thinking about how you could develop your business in this way. After listening to this podcast, you will soon find yourself starting to come up with fresh ideas and plans that could make you a decent amount of money in the weeks and months to come. Social media is free. They are easily able to accommodate people who have an interest in a specific topic and want to share that with like-minded people. For example, you might have a website that regularly sells USB gadgets. And of course, you would be fascinated by all the different USB gadgets that are on the market, wouldn’t you? So why not share your thoughts and knowledge with all the other people out there who like the same thing and have a growing selection of them? You will be able to have a link to your website on most social media. All you are going to do is share your fascinations and interests with people. They will naturally follow you onto your website anyway, so you won’t even need to try and sell to them. Can you see how effective these social media can be for finding potential new customers? Lots of businesses do this, and it doesn’t cost you anything to get it started. You do need to invest some time in it to get the best results though, and this is where planning ahead really helps. Remember what I said just now about planning your free marketing efforts? This is exactly what I am talking about. You can put in just a few minutes a day on this, so we’re not talking about taking on a full-time project here. But you need to be doing this regularly so that people will come to realise you are around on a regular basis. When they realise this, they will be more likely to follow you and what you have to say – and that can be a very important step towards turning them into a future customer. Another example of why it is worth spending that little bit more time thinking about how you are going to proceed with your free marketing plans. Ask yourself this question. When you think about social media, what is the first one that comes to mind? I think a lot of people will say Facebook or Instagram. That’s understandable because these are the main two social platforms that everyone knows about. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be the ones that are ideal for finding the people you are looking for. So investigate ALL the possibilities before diving in, and don’t spread yourself too thin. You are always going to be better off concentrating on using just one or two social media channels and really making a mark there, at least to begin with. Ok, there is another free technique you can use to help you enhance your marketing efforts. A lot of people simply overlook this one, because it is not perhaps one of the most obvious ways to go about things, and it does take a little more work. It also relies on making connections with other marketers online, and some people don’t appear to like doing this. But don’t knock it! A lot of associations with other marketers can really help advance both your and their business in the long run. So look at this as a long term venture that will help you to promote your business for free AND find a whole new audience in the process. How does this work? Well, there are a number of ways you can do it, but basically, the idea is that you exchange services with another person who is in a similar business to you. Now I know you are thinking that means talking to your competition, but if you do it right, they could become a valuable ally instead. Let’s check out the various ways you can make this happen. 1.GUEST BLOGGING If you have a blog that you use to help you promote your business and find new customers, see how many other marketers you can find in the same business who also have one. Make sure you pick those whose blogs are of a standard that is at least equal to yours – one that you would be happy to see one of your own blog posts on. The thing is, as you know yourself, writing a blog constantly can be tricky at times. You may run out of ideas here and there. You may struggle from time to time to keep it looking and feeling fresh. So wouldn’t it be nice to get an injection of knowledge and advice that is somewhat different to your usual mix? And who better to ask for such insight than a fellow marketer in the same arena to the one you are making your money in? What you need to do is approach them and ask them whether they would be willing to write a guest blog post for your blog. Make sure you confirm that in return you would write one for their blog, and you could both link back to your own websites at the bottom of the post. This gets both of you free publicity for your businesses; and of course, it also means you can tap into an established audience that won’t be exactly the same as the one you already promote to. Let’s suppose for example, that you both have a visitor rate of, say, 500 people a day to your blogs. That’s 3,500 a week. Now there is no way that you are both going to be reaching the exact same 500 people every day. So there is a chance that you could as much as double your reach just by writing a blog post for someone else. And of course, you don’t only expand your connections to other marketers online and open up the possibility of more free marketing chances later on down the line. You can also write for each other’s blogs once a week or once a month if you wish. This turns a one-off freebie into an ongoing event that really builds up your marketing efforts and doesn’t cost a cent in the process. EXCHANGING ARTICLES This is basically the same as a blogging opportunity. Some websites have room for articles on topics that are related to the main subject matter. This may not be a regular item like a blog post would be, but you can still approach the site owner with a similar proposal. And of course, the articles would remain on the site for the foreseeable future too. This means that half an hour spent writing a 500-word piece to go on a website would get you a steady stream of traffic for the foreseeable future as well. EXCHANGING LINKS If you’re not that keen or confident about your writing skills, don’t worry. You can still approach other people with similar websites or blogs and ask them if they would be prepared to enter into a link exchange agreement with you. You provide a link back to their website (together with a one or two-sentence review or description about it), and in return, they do the same for you. If you do this with several other websites and/or companies, you can create a recommended links page on your own site which contains all these recommendations. This has a couple of advantages. Firstly, you will increase the number of places that could lead to your site being found by new visitors. But secondly and most importantly, quality links which lead back to your own website will help your search engine rankings. If you are struggling to rank highly in the search engines, this will definitely be of use to you. And a better search engine ranking will, of course, lead to more visitors and hopefully more sales. And all this happens because you asked for a few links – all completely free of charge. There is no doubt that the above methods will get your free online marketing campaign started. GUEST PODCAST It’s very similar to guest blogging. You can interview people for your podcast. You can invite people in your same industry or someone who offers compliment service to your existing service. For example, I run a full-service marketing agency, so I can invite someone who is good at running an Instagram account, or I can invite someone who focuses on getting the mindset right. Both will help my listeners. They will promote your podcast as they are being invited as a guest, so you can tap into their audience as well. You might end of getting a few new clients. If not, you still have exposure out there and build up your authority in your niche. THINGS TO AVOID You might be tempted to try any number of free ways to get more attention and more traffic to your website. That’s understandable – after all, you want to make sure that your website is seen by the right target audience. But don’t let that tempt you into trying anything and everything without considering the consequences first. For example, link farms area definite no-no. They basically exist just to provide links to peoples’ websites, and Google doesn’t like it. That means you won’t get any benefit from being listed with any of these link farms, and you might actually do your website some damage as well, as far as its reputation is concerned. IN CONCLUSION You are now in a position to drive your online business forward and reach even more people than you ever thought possible. And the great thing is that you won’t have to spend a fortune in doing it. All you need to put into this is time and effort. The same goes for articles and guest blog posts. All it takes is half an hour here and there, and you have something that will send you traffic for the foreseeable future and beyond. So take some time to think about how you would like to promote your business. Generate some fresh ideas and then go about finding the people who would be interested in hearing about them. Remember that not everything takes a huge amount of money to get started. I hope you like this episode.

Today I would like to share a bit of my personal experience with my students and my agency clients. Usually in our first meeting, I will try to find out more about their business. What they are currently doing, where do they need help with, what is stopping them and where do they want to achieve or their goals. A lot of time they come to me and want to either starting their business or scale up their business. 97% of them want to get more clients, and 3% of the people want to build up their brand. I would say 100% of them are telling me that they are struggling with marketing. They told me they have done many different things, have been paying for advertising on Facebook, they do a lot of Instagram postings, but no results. They don’t understand why. I have seen so many different cases from my own students and my clients. They usually have good products or services. They have a legitimate business. The only thing is the offer they provide is not unique, which is ok. Sometimes you don’t want to be too ‘unique’, that means there is no demand for your product or service. When your offer is not unique, then why do people buy from you? This is a big question. This is more than just spending advertising dollars. Of course, if you have unlimited budget and your product or service is really good and adding values, you will get customers to buy your product or service. You just have to keep spending and in the face of your ideal customers. If it’s not working in the first 5 attempts, then might be at 20 attempts, you will get them to buy. You just have to keep spending. And in reality, not many people have unlimited budget. So you have to spend wisely. If you don’t have unlimited budget, then you would need to look at building up your personal brand. You have to let people know why they should buy from you, what is your story behind your brand, is your social media or website reflecting who you are? Building up a personal brand is not that difficult, you just need to know how to do it and what should be done. I am creating a mastermind coaching program called ‘Brand Like A Celebrity’. This is a 5-week course targeting coaches, entrepreneurs and business owners or anyone who wants to build their personal brand. If you are interested and wanting to get a notification when the course is ready, then leave me your email by clicking the link below in the show notes. I will send you an email when it’s launched. [ ‘Brand Like A Celebrity’ Mastermind Coaching Program](https://www.makemarketingyours.com/coming-soon30030679)

Welcome back to the Make Marketing Yours podcast. This is episode #15. In episode 10, I talked about 4 crucial things you need to do to build your list. If you missed it, you could go back to episode 10, and I will put the link in the show notes. Today, I am going to talk about ‘Ways To Get Your Opt-in Subscribers To Trust You Quickly.’ Make Marketing Yours Podcast Episode 10 Now I’m based on the assumption that your subscriber list is very targeted. If your list is not targeted and the majority of them aren’t your target audience, then it’s very difficult to convert them into paying clients. To build a good opt-in list, you need people to trust you, for a faster and quicker build up; you need to get your opt-in subscribers to trust you very quickly. If you do have a legitimate business and with expertise, then it shouldn’t be too hard in getting trust. • Show your clients that you know what you are talking about. Provide them with helpful hints and guidelines that let them know what you are selling. For example, talk about how to create images if you’re an Instagram expert. Of course, you also have to manage your own Instagram account. Your own Instagram account is some sort of endorsement for your business. If you don’t manage yours well, then you can’t expect people are coming to you for the Instagram management service. People will check you out before hiring you or using your services. On the other hand, if your potential client sees you as someone who knows what you are doing and saying, they will trust you quickly. They will connect with you. So, make sure you practice what you preach. • Another tip in getting a customer to trust you quickly is to provide them with an escape hatch. Show them that you are not there to trap them. Keep a clean list that would enable them to unsubscribe anytime they want. Elaborate your web form by providing information on how to unsubscribe from the list. Guarantee them that they can let go of the service whenever they want to. Many people are worried that they may be stuck for life. So let them know clearly that they can unsubscribe to your email anytime they want. • Be true to your customers; you can provide guarantees if you believe in your products and services. The more satisfied customers you get, the bigger the probability they will recommend you. Generally, people will trust someone they know. They will go to your website and check it for themselves, and they will also look at testimonials on your website or social channels. If your product is a more expensive coaching course, for example, then you could offer a money back guarantee. So that they know they can get out of it if they think the course does not fit. If you are not sure whether to offer a money back guarantee, maybe you can offer a money back guarantee under certain conditions such as showing you they have tried to apply what you teach but still didn’t work. They have to provide evidence to you before they can get a refund. So, it’s all up to you how to set your refund policy. • Remember that when you get the trust of your clients don’t lose that trust. Because if you do anything with their email addresses like sell them or give them out, you will lose many members of your list as well as potential members. • Regular publishing is important. It can be in the form of a newsletter. You keep on reminding your subscribers that you are still here and is willing to offer them good deals and services. Newsletters also allow you to impress your subscribers. It can show your expertise and knowledge about the topic at hand and the many benefits you can offer them. When you impress people, they will become potential customers, and another great thing is that they can recommend you to their friends, colleagues and family. All of them could very well be customers in the future. If you do not have a newsletter or publishing one for your site, then you may have to consider researching and be well informed on how to publish one. It is not as hard as it seems. Try to take the time to learn what you need to learn and get that newsletter ready and good to attract subscribers to your newsletter as well as traffic to your site. The true quickest way to gain the trust of your subscribers is when you are recommended by someone they trust.

A lot of my clients don’t like to use their personal Facebook profile to post anything business related, especially those in network marketing. In fact, what you can do is to put your friends into different groups. I will put some images in the show notes, so you know what I am talking about. Once you have added someone on your friend’s list, you can click on your profile picture. Then you will see a navigation bar right under your profile picture. Click on ‘Friends’; then you will see all your friends there. Click here for the detailed show notes.

A lot of people, like agency owners and entrepreneurs, are considering or have considered outsourcing. Are you also considering outsourcing but have no idea where to start? In almost every industry, there is the opportunity to outsource at least a few of the common tasks. It depends what niche you are in; some might be able to outsource a couple of tasks while some might be able to outsource quite a bit of task to other people. In either case, outsourcing can reduce your workload as well as an increase in profit. So, you probably will ask, where should I start? I would say to evaluate your daily work activities. The first step in finding ways to outsource is to take a close look at the daily activities you do. Make a list of each of these activities and note any related activities that are typically performed in conjunction with each other. Making this note is important because activities which are typically performed together should either be outsourced together or remain as in-house activities together to maintain the highest level of efficiency. Once you have compiled this list of activities, carefully consider which activities can easily be done by another person and which activities require your personal attention. This will give you a good idea of which activities you could outsource and which activities would not be good for outsourcing. Then, review your list of activities and note how long it takes you to perform each of the activities you could outsource. This information will be helpful later if you decide to search for a virtual assistant to complete these tasks. After you have carefully examined your daily activities, it is time to prioritise these activities. Create a comprehensive list of all of your daily activities in their order of importance. For this list include both the activities requiring your personal attention and the activities which can be outsourced. When you make your decision to start outsourcing some of your daily tasks, start with the highest priority on the list which you believe can be outsourced. Attempt to outsource this task as a test to determine whether or not outsourcing will work for you. If you decide you are comfortable with outsourcing and that it is working for your business, you can continue down the prioritised list. We have already discussed the importance of evaluating your own daily tasks in the process of finding ways to outsource, but it is also important to consider tasks completed by your virtual assistants. Administrative tasks are often tasks which can be outsourced, so examining these tasks will give you a good idea if you can increase the efficiency of your administrative assistance by outsourcing some of their responsibilities. Activities such as data entry, transcription and other activities often handled by personal assistance are all example of activities which can easily be outsourced. Also, there is a lot of qualified virtual assistants available to fulfill these tasks. The industry of virtual assistants has become a booming industry with many savvy entrepreneurs offering their skills in these areas as a consultant. For outsourcing activities, I’d suggest outsourcing your social media to your virtual assistants, for example. You could start with asking them to come up with images for your FB and Instagram posts. But of course, you have to provide training and also let them know what your expectation is. Think about in a normal working environment. The organization will usually provide an induction for their new staffs. They will have regular reviews on your performance. So that is exactly what should be happened to your virtual assistants. Treat them as your staffs. Even if they just do the social images for you, you’ll just save so much time. Again, training is important. You have to go into details like your brand colours, your fonts, your tone, etc. What you will never use. Then, the next step and the most important step is to develop a plan for managing outsourced activities. This plan should include the following: How to select your virtual assistant to handle outsourced work How to oversee the work done by your virtual assistants How to evaluate the work done by virtual assistants. If you are considering outsourcing some of your work for the first time may be feeling overwhelmed and hesitant about the concept of relying on someone outside of your business to complete work-related tasks. You feel that way because you are not familiar with the outsourcing process. I will guide you on how to select qualified virtual assistants, establish project requirements and enforce a deadline for project completion. To find the right virtual assistant for the job, place advertisements outlining the job requirements and preferences and carefully review each application which is submitted. Immediately disregard applicants who are not qualified for the position. Then review the applications of qualified candidates carefully and select a small group of the most promising candidates. Next, interview each of these candidates and verify their references and past work experiences to learn more about these candidates and their abilities and work ethics. Also, through the interview, you’ll get a feeling whether you can work with them. Trust your first instinct. Some people are good on paper and sound very smart, but difficult to work with. Some are not particularly smart, but they are humble and willing to learn. I’d rather work with people that are humble and open to ideas or suggestions. After interviewing these candidates, it is time to make a decision regarding hiring one of the final candidates. Do not be discouraged if none of the final candidates seemed right for the job because you are under no obligation to hire any of them. You can continue your search for a qualified candidate by placing your job advertisement again. Don’t rush. Make sure you give clear requirements. When outsourcing a project or tasks, it is important to clearly define the project requirements. This is critical because it is important for the virtual assistant to fully understand the tasks which are being outsourced to ensure he or she is fulfilling all of the requirements and completing the task in a satisfactory manner. Otherwise, it could lead to a lot of problems when outsourcing a project. The virtual assistant may feel as though he has completed the project as it was outlined ,but you may disagree. When this happens, there can be delays until the issues can be resolved. Make sure you have given a firm deadline. This is important to avoid misunderstandings and to prevent late submissions of work. Setting milestone goals is also important because it gives you the ability to evaluate the progress of their work during different stages of the project and to ensure it is proceeding according to schedule. Ideally, the deadline should be established before you hire someone. This enables the virtual assistant is available for the duration of the project. The schedule should be discussed early in the process of selecting a candidate to avoid selecting an ideal candidate only to find out he is unavailable when his services are required. Now, you might ask where to find a good candidate when you are not making a lot of money from your business, but you really need to outsource. I would suggest you check out GenM. I have put my link down below. It is more like a digital marketing apprentice company rather than a freelancing or virtual assistant company. The candidates on their lists are their former students. They are helping students to gain skills and experience by lining up with businesses like yourself. But be aware, they are apprentices, so they work a maximum of 10 hours a week. The apprenticeships are a maximum length of 3 months. After 3 months, you can consider hire them as your employee or choose another apprentice, and start the training again. You have to promise to provide relevant training to these apprentices. I think it’s a win-win for both. They can have actual work experience, and at the same time, you don’t have a big financial commitment. You have a small monthly fee to pay, but honestly very little. If you use my affiliate link below, you’ll get $25 discount straight away. I am very happy with my apprentice, and I recommend you to check it out. http://bit.ly/apprentice-vanessachoi

Hey everyone. You might notice a bit of background noise as I am on the go today. I don’t want to miss the recording, so I have decided to jump on and do my 3-min Wednesday quickly. A lot of entrepreneurs want to rebrand or to build a website. They always come up to me and ask me how much do I charge. You know what, this question is a general question, but it is a board question as well. There are too many variations. In general speaking, a website can be ranging from $500 to $10,000. Usually, with a standard website meaning around 5 pages and with a built-in contact form, it will be around $2,000-$4,000. Can it be cheaper? Yes, if you’re happy with using a pre-built template and do minor changes. The good thing is the investment will be lower, but the disadvantage is your website might look similar to others. If you provide all the images and content, again, it will lower the investment. You get what you pay. You have to understand and cannot ask for a $6,000 website by just paying $2,000. I hope it all makes sense. There are many things involved at the backend for a website building. We have to spend a fair bit of time to get it up and running and do all the testing on different devices. From my own experience, after I have built so many websites myself, I’m currently using WordPress for my podcast page only as people can leave comments there. But my website, which is a simple 2 webpages, are now on ClickFunnels. The reason I am doing it because I will be building different sales funnels for my offers, my coaching courses. So instead of having a website and a funnel platform, I’d instead do it all on ClickFunnels. I know it is not ideal from the SEO perspective, but that is not my concern at the moment because I am building my mailing list. What I am trying to say is, with my marketing agency, we tailor-made website for our clients. We present a quote based on the clients’ requirement and budget. So, there will be a way to work around your budget. I encourage you to contact me if you would like to discuss your best option and get a no-obligation quote, then please email me at branding@makemarketingyours.com.

Hey welcome back to another episode of Make Marketing Yours. So, on Wednesday, I talked about 4 crucial things you need to do to build your list. One of the crucial things is the landing page. What is a landing page? The landing page is a standalone web page designed to attract visitors to take a specific action. Visitors come to a landing page after clicking on an ad, like maybe FB ads, Google ads or from your email list. Why the landing page is important because it is the first impression of your business or your offer, you might want visitors to provide you with their email address or navigator to your online store and buy, and a good landing page can increase the chances of conversion. So I highly recommend having a different landing page for each of your campaign, offer or promotion. And I usually know for entrepreneurs, you don't have the time or resources to create multiple ad campaigns, funnels and landing pages. If that's you, don't worry! There are a lot of platforms in the market which can help you build a landing page. A lot of them already have templates there for you to use. It can be a landing page for opt-in, for a webinar, for high ticket sales and consulting. Of course, there are others for different objectives. As a marketer myself for so many years, I have tested quite a lot of different platforms. All have their strengths and weaknesses. Again, it all depends on your objective and budget. If you are interested in finding out what I use or what I recommend, let me know by emailing me to branding@makemarketingyours.com or comments on this podcast so that I can do a podcast on this topic. Usually, we use a landing page for lead capture and sales page. Before you can market yourself and your products/services, you need to gather leads, so that you can sell to them later. You can offer freebies in exchange for their email address. You need a lead capture page also known as a squeeze page. This is the first page of your sales funnel. Once you have captured leads, you can then market to them through email or nurture them through email and sell to them later. So your freebie, which is your lead magnet, has to be good and can provide values to your target audience. I know some of you struggle with coming up their lead magnet. The main reason is you don't exactly know what your target audience is or don't know what they want. You need to go back and start from basic. Do the research and look at your avatar. Can you find any similarities between people visited your website and people interact with you on Facebook and Instagram? Some things, such as age, gender, and location, might be easy to notice; others may be more complex. Draw as many parallels and conclusions as you can from your research. Once you have this sorted, you'll find it's so much easier when you create your lead magnet, your landing page and craft your sales copy. Also, the lead magnet doesn't need a complicated one. It can be in the form of video, a webinar, a blueprint, checklist or cheat sheet. Something easy to put together. If you're not sure what should be included in the lead capture page, I've got a checklist for you to download. I will put the link down below. http://bit.ly/leadscapturepage So what is a good landing page? BE SPECIFIC Your landing page should be specific. Highly specific landing pages outperformed generic pages. LESS is MORE Creating short landing pages and to-the-point is essential. Depends on the goal of your landing page. If it's a lead generation landing page with a free ebook offer, you'll probably want the page to be short and concise. Selling higher-priced products on a click-through landing page generally needs a more extended explanation to convince people to buy. We called it a long-form sales page. The trick is finding a balance between pages that are too short that people aren't motivated to convert vs. pages that are so long that visitors are distracted or lose interest. Once you have a landing page posted, start split testing which elements on your page are working and which aren't. The best part is you can split test anything! Headlines, content, CTAs, forms, offers, design, colours, and testimonials are all significant elements to test.

Today I am going to touch on 4 Crucial Things You Need To Do To Build your List. As more and more businesses go online, the need to develop new marketing skills and knowledge is needed. More and more marketing strategies are being discovered and developed. The demand for online marketing tips and strategies have grown so much. While there are companies that spent a lot of money on online advertising, there are a few ways to build up your client based for free or at a very low cost. That is email marketing. You build your list by offering freebies to people who interested in your offer. It can be in the form of newsletters, catalogues, cheat sheet, blueprint, ebooks. All sent through e-mail. People give you their email addresses in exchange for your freebies. That’s why a lot of people say ‘Money is in the list.’ The more email you sent, the more sales you will get. Yes, it is true, but of course, your offer has to related to your customers and is something that they want. Also, have to be consistent. You can’t sell graphics for Instagram one day, and then water bottle the next day. From your list, you will get your targeted customer; this is a good list since they already have shown interest in what you have to show and sell since they have opted in for your list. These are the people who have liked what they have seen on your webpage or website and have decided they want to see more and maybe even purchase your other offers. Many people would think that building their lists would take hard work and a lot of time to build and collect names and addresses. This is not really, but it takes a bit of patience and some strategies but in building your list. Here are the 4 Crucial Things You Need To Do To Build your List Put up a good web form on your website or create a landing page to capture people’s name and email addresses. If you run ads, it’s better to create a landing page. You don’t want people to come to your website and then click on different pages and then forget why they are there. On the other hand, if you are not running ads, then it’s ok to put an optin form on your website. If people like what they see and want more, then they will subscribe. This web form will automatically save and send you the data’s inputted. As more people sign in, your list will be growing. Make sure you have good descriptions on your homepage. Straight away, people know what your business is about or what you offer. Make sure your website is easy to navigate. Do not expect everyone to be tech savvy. Invest in having good programming on your site, make your graphics beautiful but don’t overdo it. Don’t waste your time making the homepage too large megabyte wise. Not all people have dedicated connections; the faster your site gets loaded, the better. You can check your site loading time using this link, and I will put into the show notes. https://gtmetrix.com/ Provide good service and products. A return customer is more likely to bring in more business. A happy customer will recommend a business always. With more members on the list, the more people will get to know about what you have new to offer. So, make sure your offer provides values. Keep a clean and private list. Never lose the trust your customers have entrusted you. If you provide e-mails to others and they get spammed, many will probably unsubscribe to you. Remember, a good reputation will drive in more traffic and subscribers as well as strengthen the loyalty of your customers. Never sell your list to any third party.

Hello, welcome back! Today I am going to talk about the different between affiliate marketing and network marketing. Do you know the different about these two? Well to me, they are very similar. I don’t have control over the cart like checkout page. I can’t change the product or edit the product. I can’t put in my own product or offer. The only thing I get is the affiliate link in affiliate marketing or distributor link in network marketing. From the sales prospective, they are very similar. The reason why I want to talk about affiliate marketing and network marketing is because I found that a lot of people are doing affiliate or network marketing or thinking of starting one. Some of them doing it as full time, but a lot of people are doing it part-time. They want to earn passive income. I also got the data from my podcast, I have the most downloads from episode #5 which I talked about ‘How To Succeed In Network Marketing.’ I don’t want to focus on network marketing, but I am coming in from a marketing prospective here. Yesterday I went to a social gathering lunch with friends. There were people who I have not seen for quite a while, so it is good to catch up. People know that I am now running a marketing agency, so a couple of them came up to me and asked me about my business and my service. I then realize that they are in network marketing. They all have similar issues about recruiting downlines and getting customers. The thing is if you are selling your product as everyone else, then there is no different in choosing you over someone else. I am not here to ask you to change your product, I am here to tell you how to create an offer for MLM. As I mentioned it before at my last 3-min Wednesday podcast, make sure your offers are related to health, wealth and relationship. For example, if you sell cosmetic or skincare product, what are you promising here? Health, wealth or relationship? Some people say relationship, some people say wealth and some people say health. And you know what? It can be any of them. The sales pitch will be a bit different, but the key thing is you only PICK ONE! If you are talking about relationship, then yes, we are promising people have the relationship through feeling good about themselves. If people want wealth, then yes, they can earn money from selling cosmetic or skincare. If people want health, then yes, the product can make their skin looks good and shine. It is self-health. We are focusing on the outcomes here. People do spend money in these 3 areas – health, wealth and relationship. Now who we are targeting? It is much more easier to target women who are already spending money in cosmetic. You don’t want to target women who don’t even put on makeup, right? Well, I mean you can, but it is so much harder to get sales. Are you with me? I will not target these women. Next, what you need is the hook – your headline for your product! You have to think of something that can touch the nerves. Think about some false beliefs or objection of your product as sub-heading. Remember no matter what you sell, you need to have a story behind it. You need to show a promise here of what your product can do. Something like ‘how to.’ Address the biggest fear and false belief they have and a promise to get around it. Like ‘how to do ____without ____’. In my show notes, I will share the link to my new eBook on ‘100 Attention Grabbing Headlines.’ It’s free, so head to my webpage, put your email in and download it. It will help you with writing your headlines. http://bit.ly/100attentiongrabbingheadlines In fact, there is a bootcamp you can join. It’s called 100 Days To Turn Affiliate Commission Into Your Full Time Career. Yes, it’s 100 days! But don’t you think it’s worth it if you can reach your dream goal in only 100 days? The program is called Affiliate Bootcamp. There is nothing to buy, just the commitment. A commitment to register, to show up and to implement. I am not saying you have to do affiliate marketing, but there are a lot of things you can learn and then implement in your own business even though you are not in affiliate marketing or network marketing. You can learn some of the basic marketing principles. When you register for free, you will get access to 15 videos of Super Affiliates that show you step by step what they would do if they lost everything and had to start over again. So you can learn from all these super affiliates of what they will do from scratch. I will put the link in the show notes down below. Feel free to check it out. http://bit.ly/vcaffiliatebootcamp If you are currently in network marketing aka MLM, then you don’t want to miss this powerful book. It shows you how to use sales funnels to grow your team and your downlines, so you only have to talk to people who are so super interested in what you’re selling that they actually raise their hands and ask you to sign them up! Again, I will put the link in the show notes for you. http://bit.ly/networkmarketingwithvanessa This book is free, you just need to pay for the shipping. Remember, make sure your offers are related to health, wealth and relationship. People are spending a lot of money in these 3 areas and are willing to spend.

Hey there, today I am going to talk about ‘Characteristics of a Successful Ad.' There are some common mistakes small businesses and professional service providers do when designing and posting the ad, which leads to the failure of the ad. First, do your research. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Look at those successful people or businesses in your niche. I am not saying copy word for word, but try to learn how they word the ad, how they connect with their targeted audience, how to offer their products or services. Now in the market, there are three areas that people are really interested in. Make sure your offers, products and services are related to health, wealth or relationship. If your offer falls into any of these three categories, you are half way through to success. People are looking for things that are related to these three categories. Remember, health, wealth and relationship. Make sure you, Write a good headline for your ad Tell your back story. Why are you selling what you are selling Show the transformation. Why they need your offer. What do they get after they opted-in whether it is a free offer or paid offer. Tell your audience what kind of support they'll get after they buy. It could be free consulting, tech support, free servicing, etc. This may also answer some of their buying questions ahead of time. People don't want to buy products without knowing you will be there to help if they have problems. The two main ingredients you need in any ad is a way to grab people's attention and show them how they can benefit from your product or service. You can do this with attention grabbing headlines and good benefit bullet points. I’ve got an ebook for you to download for free. It gives you tons of fill-in-the-blank examples you can add to your sales letters, email ads, blog posts, video ads, Facebook ads, etc. Those are the headlines I use myself in my business. Just click the link in the shownotes and it will take you to an optin page. Leave me your email address. I promise you I will not spam you. I will share marketing tips with you and any new marketing updates with you. And surely, I will also send you the offers that I think will benefit to entrepreneurs, coaches and consultants. Remember be open with new tools or system. The good ones can help you save times, be more productive and grow your business. Free eBook – 100 Attention Grabbing Headlines http://bit.ly/100attentiongrabbingheadlines

Hey there, welcome back! Today I am going to talk about ‘How to use social media to build a list.’ You have heard a lot of people saying, ‘money is in the list’, and that is true. Social networks have made building and widening your social contacts extremely easy. In the past, you might have had to attend numerous functions and paying for food and dressing up nicely just to show up and hand out a few business cards that later got tossed. With online social networking, the costs of networking are zero, but the rewards are immeasurable. Creating a list of social contacts online can lead to opportunities worldwide, something that local networking could never do for you. Instead of trying to push people into getting to know you or your company, wouldn't it be great if you could get up each morning and find seven to ten new people wanting to befriend or follow you? This is completely doable with social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Once you establish a profile and a following, just your everyday activities online can draw people to you without you having to go out and find them. Even if you do choose to find people first, it's still far easier to connect with them online and far less intrusive than trying to schedule a meeting or a phone call. Some people might ask which social network you should join. The answer to that is that you can and should join at least three of these networks, depending on your demographic. The more you join, the better and the wider your exposure; however, not every social network will match up to your business profile. Instagram, for instance, tends to be visited by a younger crowd than Facebook and Twitter. If you're marketing to young teenagers, then Snapchat is a great place to network, but if you're more into college-age professionals, then Instagram and Facebook will be a better match for you. LinkedIn is for any working professional, although some people use it to find jobs when they're in the market, not a lot of people know LinkedIn is actually a search engine. Twitter is in a class all by itself. It can appeal to many different groups of people, and it is relatively easy to generate a large following on. It may take a little while to get used to it, but getting on Twitter can help you create a large social network in as little as one month if you do it right. Imagine having close to 1000 followers in little more than a month? If only 1/10th of those people look at your services or offerings when you post, you will have 100 new eyeballs to market to. But marketing or building a list on social network must follow some guidelines. Social networks have special rules that you must follow to keep your account active. Spamming people with unsolicited emails and other types of commercial activities are just not ok. If your goal is to build a list for commercial purposes, it's still doable; it just must be done correctly. Self-promotion is allowed, but any time you take an email off from someone's social networking site and add it to your email autoresponder campaigns, you are spamming them, unless they offer you permission to market to them first. That doesn't mean that you don't want people to befriend or follow you on these sites. It means that you must take care as to how you end up getting their email addresses. Just because someone befriends or follows you doesn't mean that they are open to your marketing campaign and want to receive your offers or promotion. In fact, if you do send them things without consent, they're likely to report you as a spammer, and you can have your account closed. So the best thing to do is to start by building your lists within the network. You can still post status updates that promote your business or offerings, but direct emails will have to wait until later. You should have a webpage ready to capture their email address later. It can be a blog that allows them to subscribe. It can be a website with a newsletter opt-in form. It can even be some content marketing site where they can land, read some more of your content, and then follow the resource links back to your website. You can then offer a free report, cheat sheet or blueprint in exchange for their email address. Well, you might ask how to market to your social networking connections then? I am glad that you ask. You will want to create a highly targeted list of friends and followers. You don't just want to build a large list of people who have nothing to do with your market niche; you want to have a list of people whose interests mean that they might want to buy your products and services later. You can do this by carefully crafting your profile that appeals to your demographics and updating your status with information that draws attention from that demographic. As you continue to do these two activities, more and more people will find you, and you will have a wider exposure. Social networks are excellent mediums for creating targeted lists because it's easy to see what people's interests are via their searchable profiles, and they can see yours too! You should use your profile to attract the right demographic. First, make sure to have the right image and interests in your own profile. To do that, you want to fill out the profile as completely as possible. You also want to use your real name, as this profile should be as authentic as possible. For Facebook, for instance, you would want to add as many details of books or movies relevant to your market niche to attract the right demographic. In Twitter, you would want to give as many keywords that are relevant to the niche you are marketing as possible in the 140-character description of your profile. In LinkedIn, you would also want to give a good, accurate description of your interests and accomplishments as they relate to the market niche that you are marketing to. Once you've got your own profile filled out, you can start searching via the keywords you've used to find others who are in your market niche and invite them to follow. In Facebook, they track everyone with similar interests, so all you must do is to click on the link in any of the categories in your Info tab, and you'll get a listing of people who have similar interests. On Twitter, it's just as easy to find people who have similar interests by using the Twitter search engine and looking up keywords. The Twitter search engine is separate from Twitter and can be found at http://search.twitter.com. You can find people via their profile keywords, but also via their tweets. Facebook and LinkedIn also have groups that you can join, that can lead you to people with similar interests. You can even create your own group if that's something you want to do. By networking with people who are in the same group as you are, you will be able to build your list quickly. People like to network with people of similar interests, and this works well when you are trying to market to a specific niche. You will want to build up your list as big as possible within each network. The reason for this is that the bigger your list, the more possibilities to market to later. Also, a big list has a magnetic effect on other people who will join just to find out what is all about. Start with people who you already know. They can be work colleagues, neighbours, friends, and family. If you can get them to befriend or follow you back, you have the basis of a good start. Once you have a few of those, you will start to target people better so that your list can be used for marketing purposes later. The other way to build your list is to befriend your friend's friends on Facebook. You can go to any friend who is within your market niche and look into his/her friend's list if he/she hasn't made it private. From there, you can befriend those friends and see if they return the favour. You can also do this on Twitter by following someone within your market niche, which has many followers and just going down the list of their followers and befriending them too. You’ll get about 20-30% to follow back by using this method. If you get 20 to follow you each day, within a month, you get 600 people on your list! That's a real accomplishment and can really zoom your business to heightened levels of exposure! Is this starting to sound like a lot of work? Well, it is. But if you want to build up your following, then you must do it. Of course, there are many automated tools out there in the market that can help you follow and unfollow people. You just have to pick one that suits your needs and budget. Now we are going to talk about how to use Facebook for list building First, we are going to touch on Status Updates. Your profile on Facebook has a place called the Wall. There, you will have a box with the question” What’s on your mind?” printed inside it. This is the status update part of Facebook, and it allows you to post links and comments so that your friends can see what's going on in your life and business. The good thing about the status update is that people can comment, like and share it with their friends too. When another person does any of these actions on your status update, their circle of friends who aren't on your friends list also see your status update. That means, when you send out a status update, it has the potential to reach many more people than just the people who are in your circle of friends. You can post several times a day and should stay active. Also, when you post, there is a little drop-down menu next to your news feed. You can choose who can see your posts. I have categorised my Facebook friends into a different list. I have a list, especially for business builders. When I post something that is related to my business, I will pick my business builder list as I know they are my target audience. If I want to post something that everyone should know about, then I would post to my public list. Every time someone comments on your status update, reply with your own comment. This way, it will keep it up and active on more people's news feeds than if you didn't reply to them. Then you try to find groups within your market niche and join as many as you can. You want to befriend with the people in the groups too. Contribute to the conversation but find out who these people are who are in your group and get to know them better. When someone joins you on Facebook, send a brief message to him or her just to build up a relationship. If you choose to create your own group on a topic about your niche, you will be able to attract people from all over Facebook, not just from your immediate circle of friends. That's because Facebook will list it as its own entity, and people will join based on the topic and not on your personal profile. Remember to clearly state your group rules and ask a few questions and find out why people want to join the group. Like ‘what do you want to achieve from joining this group?’, ‘what are your struggles right now?’ and ask them to leave you with their email address so you can send them updates on special offers and launches. Some people will then think all of these social activities take time, and if they should hire a social media expert to handle all these. Some people just don't want to spend any time learning social networking platforms or posting their offerings on status updates. They would prefer if someone else did all that, while they just sit back and get the emails that result from these activities. While that's a perfectly reasonable scenario, you do have to be aware that just about anyone can call himself/herself a social media expert, and you should take pains to hire someone who can produce results and not just hire pretty looking profiles that waste your time and money. You will want to see if this person is active on social media. Do they at least post regular content on their selected social media channels? How many followers do they have? You want some idea of his/her credentials and his/her accomplishments in his/her field. One thing that I never do is to pay for followers. Some people post a job on a freelance board and pay for building a list based on follower count. This is not a good way to do it, as it doesn’t really target the right people, and it is not an organic way to grow your list. Make sure they understand what it is that you are paying for, not just counts of people who are being added to your list. It should be highly targeted people who are interested in your products and services. On the other hand, I don’t have any issue with using bots to follow, like or unfollow people automatically as long as it is highly targeted and well managed. At the end of the day, you still need someone in overseeing your social media channels and make sure your list is highly targeted. Once you start getting a large number of followers, you will start to get a steady flow of people who are going to sign up for your free offers and giving permission to market to them. You must be ready for this and create a central list for all these people who are coming from different social networks and websites around the Internet. If they're all in the same niche, they should all be on one central list. Later, you can start to separate them out into category lists. There is so many email platforms out there in the market which can help you collect and develop email campaigns so that you can track click-through rate and open rates. Then later you can fine-tune campaigns to create income from all these people on your list. they can also do split testing so that half of the people on your email list get one version of an email and the other half get a different version. That way, you can see if there is any improvement in the open and click-through rates, and which version appealed more to your mailing list. For example, MailChimp is a popular one to start with. It’s very easy to use. Aweber and Active Campaign are also very popular. After you get the hang of email marketing, you'll want to create multiple lists and campaigns for different segments of your demographics. Maybe you want to market lower-priced products to your low-income group and more expensive products to your higher-income group. You can do this with most of the email platforms in the market. Good luck with your list building. If you have any question, please feel free to send me an email to branding@makemarketingyours.com. Or if you want to work with me 1 on 1, I do offer coaching package working with you on your business and guide you through how to set things up. Simply send me an email to branding@makemarketingyours.com.

Hey there, today I am going to talk about Facebook Pixel Seasoning. This seems to be a hot topic in digital marketing. Everyone has a Facebook page, and everyone can’t wait to jump into Facebook advertising. Have you heard about pixel seasoning? It is basically to train your Facebook pixel to find you exactly the leads or customers you want. Facebook pixel is to understand who visited your website or who interacted with your business before so that you can retarget them. For example, let’s say if you have a lead magnet which captures your ideal customers’ email address. If they have given you their email addresses, they surely are interested in what you have to offer. So they are your ideal customers. In this case, you would try to get your pixel to understand it needs to serve more ads to people who are similar to those ones who have opted-in or downloaded your lead magnet. And that is why you need a Facebook pixel. It is a unique set of code for your business. So how long does it take to season a pixel? Ideally, I would say around 20-30 conversion events are the minimum on your pixel before you change your optimisations to conversions. What it means is just do link clicks to start with at the ad set level until you have at least 20-30 purchases, then your pixel has enough data for events that you want to track or optimise before conversions. Some people will ask, ‘do I really need to season my pixel?’ My answer is yes if you know how to do it because seasoning your pixel can actually bring down your cost per event. In fact, not a lot of people are doing it. For a brand new ‘unseasoned’ pixel, it has no previous data on it. When you ask Facebook to look for your ideal customers who might interest in your offers, Facebook doesn’t know where to go, so it’s more like a trial and error, so it will take longer to find them and meaning more expensive for you to find them. With a seasoned pixel, Facebook already knew who bought your products or services, so it ends up reducing your cost. Also, you can leverage your data by creating an audience that looks similar to the people who opted-in and bought your products or services. This is so-called a lookalike audience. This is a perfect strategy for the business which looks at scale up their business. If you would like my help in implementing this and other strategies to sell your high ticket products and services, get in touch with me at branding@makemarketingyours.com, and we will go from there.

Hey there, welcome back! After I published the last podcast, not the 3-min one but the one before, I’ve got a few messages from some ladies in network marketing or planning to join a network marketing company. They wanted to know when the next episode will be live. They wanted to find out the secrets of finding success in their business. Just to put things into context. I was with two other MLM companies before this current one that I am with. When I started my first one, I had no idea what I was doing. My upline wasn’t very helpful. I mean she’s great as a person, but she approached the business in a traditional way like go and after your friends and family. She could help me with an actual demonstration and sell. A lot of face to face approach, but that was all. No, follow up. She didn’t teach me how to follow up, or do I need to follow up? What to do next? That was my first one, so I didn’t even know how to do the whole thing. I ended up with one downline, who is my friend. That was about 7 years ago, and I still have the products with me! The second one was about 3 years ago, and it was way better as my upline is the top leader in Australia, so she already got a team built up. She has regular online live training for her team. She is more tech-savvy, and she sends out email regularly, like once or twice a week through MailChimp. The only thing is, that is a niche market. It’s a niche. It’s a crafting MLM business. Don’t get me wrong. A lot of people are doing it and have great success. It’s just me. It takes so much time to finish a product, and then you have to write a blog or showcase it by doing a video. So time-consuming and it’s just can’t scale up quickly. And also, I realise that it’s a product that good to have, but not a necessity. So for me, it’s a bit difficult to sell. There is something missing there, and I’m going to talk about it later. Before I go into all the details, I would highly recommend you order this book called Network Marketing Secrets by Russell Brunson. If you’re new in the digital world, he is the founder of Click Funnels. In this book, he talks about specifically for people in network marketing. I’ve got my affiliate link here in the show notes for ordering this book, and yes so I probably get about $1 for each book that you order. The book is free, and you only pay for the shipping. It’s definitely worth the money. http://bit.ly/networkmarketingwithvanessa So now, I want you to ditch your idea about MLM. No matter what you think before. Get rid of your perception of network marketing. I want you to listen to this podcast with a clean slate. Some of you might aware, or from my last episode; I love using essential oils. I bought them through an MLM company. I do have my reasons behind why I use essential oils if you go back and listen to my last podcast. I’m very passionate about it. If you want to be successful in network marketing, first of all, you have to love the product. You’re the product of the product, does it makes sense? Don’t be nervous about what you do. Don’t feel embarrassed about what you sell. You have to feel comfortable with what you’re selling. Otherwise, I would say choose another company. You have to believe in the product yourself. Secondly, picking the right MLM company is important. You want recurring income, so you want people to re-order. Some people join MLM that sells supplements, for example. Once people start taking or using it, they become addicted. They want more and more every month. They want to keep the supply. They would probably stay on it for 3-6 months. Also, the range of products is also important. I tend to look for a company which has a different product range. Ideally, the products they sell can benefit my whole family; then it’s awesome! Like if they have products for mums, dads, children and even pets. How good is that? This is the criteria if I need to choose an MLM now. I actually look at the product range. Some products are good for teenagers; some products are good for pregnant women, some are good for babies. If I can have everything under one roof, that will be great. Also, from a sales perspective, average customer cart value will be higher if you can offer something not just for them but also for their family. So, there is a strategy behind even choosing a company. And this actually leads the conversation to my next point. Don’t treat MLM as a side business, treat it as your core business if you’re going down that path. This is what I learnt from experience. You have to operate as a real business. You have to be able to scale your business, so you need a system in place. What do I mean by system? Do you have an onboarding system? If you recruited 1-5 people, you could still sort of manage. You can still able to answer their queries. How about when your team grow to 20-30 people? Will you be able to provide the same attention to every one of them? The people on your level 1, for example, will get the training from you directly when you first recruited them. How about in level 2, 3 and 4? Are they receiving the same training as your level 1? Are you the only one who is doing the training? All these can limit your growth, and you won’t be able to scale up. You have to solve a lot of follow up problems. Fourthly, do not recruit everyone. If you’re in the MLM industry long enough, you’d know some are just going to be customers, no matter what you teach or what you sell. Some are going to take their business to the next level and become a distributor or a leader. You have to know your downlines. They need different messages from you. Interestingly, this is what I learn from Steve Larson, he is a king in MLM, and you can go and check him out. He said, ‘don’t sign up someone who needs to but sign up someone who wants to be in it. That actually makes a huge difference, which I totally agree with. If you beg someone or say to someone that you need to do this, come and join me, then you become a life coach after they signed up. If people want to join you, then you become a business coach after they signed up. Do you get what I mean? Does it make sense to you? It’s the whole motivation thing. If people really want it to be successful, they’ll kind of chasing you and ask you for more and more. They’ll always ask you for the next step. I personally think in the MLM world; people are not using digital marketing at the full potential. Selling is what happens face to face. Marketing is how to get people to your face. If you don’t have the people, you can’t sell. Ok, now you think you kind of understand how it works, but you want to know exactly how to do this, right? Alright, let’s go in and talk about how to actually stand out from everybody in network marketing. Let me use an example. Since I love my oils, my example will be oil related, so bear with me. It’s a Lavender essential oil, a very common product. Basically, everyone in the essential oil business will get access to Lavender oil no matter which company you’re with. What is the difference between your lavender oil from company A compare to your friend’s lavender oil from company B if both are 100% pure essential oils? Probably not much different, just different in branding and label. Usually, people buy from people. What makes your lavender oil better than the others? It’s your story behind your lavender oil. Why do you start using it? Why do you like lavender oil? What are the benefits you find? Share your back story. Engage and connect with your ideal customers. Once you’ve your back story, you’ll connect with people that resonate with you. Build up your personal brand. I can’t address enough of how important this is. Do you want to sell like a celebrity? ‘No matter what they sell, people buy’ kind of concept. People buy from you because they want to look or live like you. So make sure you have your branding right, so you’ll attract the right customers. Keep publishing. It can be in the format of FB lives, Instagram lives, on YouTube or podcast. It doesn’t matter. It builds up your authority in your niche. Onboarding system. Top leaders in the MLM groups usually have their own community. What I mean is at least have an onboarding system. Like your first 21 days or 30 days, whatever the number is. So you prepare your new recruits. When they first signed up, they don’t know what they’re doing. So an onboarding system is like a guide for them to follow. Let them know what sort of bonuses that they can’t miss if they want to maximise the money coming in. They don’t know what they don’t know. You don’t want them to miss any cash bonuses. Also, have a frequently asked questions area for them. There are always similar questions come up from new recruits. What are they? Try to lay them out and answer them. Teach them how to deal with objections. Build up your community. You should have your community setup, meaning you should have materials like FB post, Instagram post ready for them to use. I’m not talking about those stock photos provided by the company. Otherwise, you are no different from other MLMers in your industry. So start creating your own assets and share with your downlines. If you start from these 5 points that I just talked about. You’re halfway through to success in your MLM business. If you are not sure, go back and listen again. I do offer 1 on 1 coaching package on teaching you how to stand out from the crowd in network marketing. I am basically working with you on your business and guide you through how to set up everything that I just talked about. Send me an email if you’re interested in finding out more, you can connect with me at branding@makemarketingyours.com. Network Marketing Secrets by Russell Brunson http://bit.ly/networkmarketingwithvanessa

Hi, today I am going to touch on the sales copy. If you pay close attention to FB ads, for example. A lot of the ads are about the products or services they can provide to you. More like what they do instead of about what’s in it for the customers. You’re talking about your company, what you are doing, what your objectives are, or what you want. But for your ideal clients, they look at what’s in it for them. Put yourself into their shoes when you write sales copy. What makes you buy things online? You look at the benefits, right? People want to know the features, but they also want to know about the benefits and the meaning of having your products or services. For example, if I’m selling handmade photo frame, I will talk about the features like it is an aluminium frame, with solar LED lights around it, a switch at the back, etc. Then the benefit for my customers is a practical photo frame with a WOW factor, comes with the LED lights. It’s handmade, so it’s unique. It’s different from other ordinary photo frames that you get. The meaning will be it is a unique photo frame which captures great memories. The person who has this photo frame will remember you every day when they see it. This is very simple. I am painting a picture for my customers. It’s all about them. Make sure you're not focused only on features, but also benefits and meaning. You’re framing everything of what’s in it for them. If you keep this in mind, I promise you and you’re going to do well. Alright, that's all for today! Talk to you next Wednesday.

Hey there, welcome back to my third podcast episode of Make Marketing Yours. About this podcast: In this episode, I’m going to talk about why I am doing what I am doing now. I get asked this question quite often. For many people, they think the idea of leaving a job and starting a business is amazing, but at the same time is very risky. Not a lot of people are actually put this into action. So I wanted to share my entrepreneur journey with you so that you get to know me more. I have been in the corporate world for more than 20 years. That’s what I always wanted to do or to be told what I should do. A very typical Asian story, I guess. Study hard, get a good job, get married, have children and live happily thereafter. This is so good to be true. Now, I’m taking you back to my university time. I’ve got an Economics degree and a postgraduate diploma in Business Administration, but my true passion is in marketing. I didn’t realise it until my last year in University. And you know, I went down to a so-called ‘normal career path’ after graduation. I started working in a bank, and I hated it. After a couple of years, I decided to move on to marketing. I don’t mind to start as a marketing assistant or marketing officer as I was young back then. I just wanted to get the foot into the door. Luckily, I found something, and since then, I have been in marketing. After I have my boy, my husband and I decided to move back to Australia. Better work-life balance and more space. I remembered I have to start everything from scratch, really from scratch. Unemployed for 8 months before I found a job in a call centre. Again, I hated it! It’s not what I wanted to do. I couldn’t find a job even though I have the qualifications and many years of marketing experience. It was tough as a migrant, I guess. A lot of tears. I was then lucky enough and finally got back into marketing at some points. Very sweet! I thought I finally got back into what I wanted to do. Guess what happened? It was like drama after another drama. I was made redundant because the organization is centralizing the marketing team in another place. It was devastating. I cannot describe how bad it was. I keep asking myself ‘what did I do wrong to get this? Why this happened to me?’ I asked so many silly and unreasonable questions. Tried very hard to find a job. Again, nothing happened. My confidence level was at the lowest. Back then, my husband has to work on two jobs to support the family. I didn’t see him very often as he would be out most of the time working. I felt bad. I wasn’t able to bring income to the family and make contributions. Remembered I used to be the main income earner in the family. We couldn’t go anywhere, not even a short local trip during school holidays or weekends. We were on a very tight budget. I remembered at one point; I have to use a calculator on my phone in a supermarket which I have never done it before. I had to make sure I have enough money to pay for my grocery shopping. And for the first time, I actually used the scale in a supermarket. I had to make sure those grapes were within 1kg which I could afford. Oh, …it was so tough. I was stuck. I couldn’t find a job, not even part-time. What should I do? What’s the next step? But to other people, I have to show that I am doing well. I’ve got this. Things will be fine. What can you say? You can’t spill all your pains to everyone you met, right? One day, I suddenly had an idea. Since I have so many years of marketing experience, then I think maybe I can start my own agency business and help others in their marketing. I’m sure someone out there needs marketing support, right? I didn’t niche down back then because I had a lot of experience in offline and online marketing, above the line and below the line promotion experience. I think I can help everyone. I was very excited and started building my agency website, created a logo, tagline, set up FB page, Insta page, set up my email platform, think of my company name and doing so many different things, but only one thing that I didn’t think of at the start. How am I going to get clients? How do they find me? Or how do I find them? Entrepreneurship gets me very exciting, but no one else told me how difficult it is to actually get clients. How much money I need to invest at the beginning or how much should I have in the pocket to sustain my business. All the people around me at the time were all employees, and no one actually sat down with me and told me what’s going to happen. Welcome to the new world! Ok then I think I might start by telling my friends and hopefully, they will like my FB page. So I sent out the page invitation. I remembered one of my best friends sent me a message on FB saying ‘Vanessa, I’m not going to like your page because I’m not interested in your services and I don’t think I will benefit from liking it.’ Ok, I left it like that. I didn’t even bother to say your friends will see what page you like and maybe your friends are interested in my services or your friend’s friends they might be interested. I just felt very hard to comprehend. Please ladies, if you have a friend who is starting a business, please give him or her an encouragement. Please show your support. It means a lot to startup businesses. So I have started what other people do even though I don’t have money. Go online and register for a thousand of different courses. Jumped into affiliate marketing because ‘the guru’ says it’s easy when you don’t have a product. You don’t have to invest a lot of money to get started, and you can earn a commission. I even paid thousands of dollars to get 1 on 1 coaching with a so-called ‘affiliate marketing guru’. I bought so many software, and they’re still sitting on my desktop. I guess you know where I ended up, right? Nowhere! As you can imagine, no jobs, sitting in front of the computer all day long, no income, and I was very emotional. I didn’t even want to hang out with friends, so no social life. I didn’t want people to ask me how I was doing because there is nothing to talk about. I didn’t want to know where they’re going on holiday next and what car they’re going to buy. They’re not entrepreneurs, and they don’t know what I went through. They don’t understand how difficult it is to build a business because they don’t have to worry about it. They have a fixed income coming in every month. It was like that for maybe 4-5 months. I just couldn’t get out of that circle. Because I spent so much time in front of the computer all day, I met some wonderful ladies in the network marketing industry online. I’m telling you. It’s very important to surround with positive and supportive people. They’ll just lift you up. Then I met a mum from school, and she spent a lot of time with me, guided my heart to God. I guess at one time; I was to the point that I think I need to do something. I couldn’t find a job, so I have to find a way to make my business works. And I was very focused, blindfolded, no matter what happened out there, I don’t care. I started to do 1 on 1 coaching for the startup entrepreneur. It’s more like working alongside them in their business, step by step. I tailor-made materials for them for their business. I helped them to identify their ideal customers, to build their brand (both business and personal brands), show them how to do FB ads, setup email automation, etc. They know I have practical experience in marketing, so they trusted me, and also I am not charging them a fortune. Because they’re starting up, they don’t have a lot of money to pay me. That’s ok; I need money to pay my bills. Since then, I started to build up my confidence, get rid of my internal struggles, get rid of shiny objects syndrome, break free from the past and created a new ME. Just focus and look forward. I have to say thank you to God as he pointed me in the right direction and guided me. Thank you for the lady I met online. Heidi introduced me to essential oils to help and balance my emotion. I’m still using essential oils every day. I just can’t live without them. I need oils to boost my day, and I need oils to give me relaxation at night. I even have a diffuser in my car! Yes, I am one of those oil ladies. Because of Heidi, I started to understand how people build a successful business. You’re your brand. People see you and work with you, not your business. People buy from people unless you have a unique product that only you have it. I started to get clients (I mean good clients) to my marketing agency. For me, it’s a complete transformation bringing me from A to B. A lot of people hate MLM network marketing and don’t even want to talk about it. But I am telling you when you take a step back; you can actually learn a lot from the network marketing business model. I’ve learnt a lot by working with one of my agency clients, and she is in network marketing and selling skin care products. How you can stand out from the crowd when everyone is selling pretty much the same products? I’m going to share some secrets with you next time. It’s time to wrap up for today. I hope you like my back story, which I never shared it with anyone publicly. If you can resonate with me, please drop me a line. I would love to hear your story. There’s always a story behind you or your business. You can reach me at branding@makemarketingyours.com. Have a lovely day no matter what you’re doing. Enjoy and bye for now. See ya!

Hi, today I am going to cover FB 2020 Forecast. For FB, there are a lot of new changes coming to our way. I'm going to talk about one of them here. Messenger The platform itself will turn into heavily a message platform FB encouarges people to chat in small groups. Normally only 16% of people on your list can see your posts. So if you want your posts to be seen by people, you'll need to start chatting to these people on FB messenger, then they'll see your posts. So use your FB messenger more and especially when you're about to launch your products or services. Messages on FB will be encrypted like whatsapp and snapchat. Messages will disappear in 24 hours. Messenger will not store your messages. They'll disappear. You probably won't got back to the thread and look for the link. In the future, you won't be able to do it. Don't freak out as FB won't make the changes right now. It'll be sprinkle out. Alright, that's all for today!

Hey there, I am Vanessa Choi and welcome to the very first podcast episode of Make Marketing Yours. I have to say thank you to those who have been encouraging me to get this podcast off the ground. It has been a huge learning curve for me. You won’t know how hard it is until you’ve been through it, so thank you for taking the time to listen. About this podcast: For some of you don’t know who I am, I’ve been doing marketing for more than 16 years. I experience the transition from offline marketing to online marketing. I see the trend switching from TV ads, radio ads, billboard advertising to Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Google Adwords, etc. It’s a big shift. For the past few years, I’ve been focused on digital marketing, and have my own marketing agency, AuBiz Consulting. Obviously, I’m a big fan of digital marketing. I’ve also found great success for my clients using different social media platforms and online marketing strategies outside of social media marketing, like building sales funnels. So this podcast is going to dive into smart and proven strategies when it comes to marketing a business online, so basically, everything that is marketing related. I’ll share the good, the bad and the ugly. In this first episode of the Make Marketing Yours Podcast, we’re going to dive into basic marketing 101. A lot of business owners and entrepreneurs jump straight into FB ads because it’s a relatively affordable and could get results pretty fast if you do it right. What I can see from many facebook groups or even from my agency clients, they always say I have set up my FB business page, set up my Instagram business account, start blogging and social posts and even starting FB ads, but it is not bringing me any client. Not many people are commenting or following. And then they’ll start questioning what’s wrong with the ads? Was that to do with my posts? Was that the design that’s converting? Was that my product or offer not good enough? They have so many questions. But a lot of people are actually missing the basics. They haven’t built up the foundation. Victoria Beckham, she is an influencer, she writes books, she owns her own record labels, she has her own fashion line and perfume line. She is about to launch her Victoria Beckham beauty later this year. And her husband David Beckham currently has 30 perfumes and colognes under his fragrance label. What? Kim Kardashian has over 29 million followers on Instagram and 31 million followers on Twitter. Many people, including myself, are asking why? Why she is so successful? No matter what she puts out there, people buy! She stands up against bullying. She stands up for positive body image, and she normalises what is actually normal. People create a connection between her image and the products she is trying to sell. Her talent is in marketing. I’m sure her new makeup line KKW will make a big success. What do they have in common? Is this all because of the products they sell? Are they selling something that we can’t get it from someone else? Why do people want to get products from them? Yes, you’re right - BRAND and IMAGE. People are buying from V. Beckham and K. Kardashian because of who they are. People want to be like them. People will buy the products that they recommended. So it’s not too much to do with what they actually sell. So for the usual people like you and me, how to sell your products and services? Yes, we should be ‘Selling Like A Celebrity!’ How? That’s the basic marketing 101, create your personal brand. Create a brand that resonates with your target clients. Be consistent. I am not just talking about logos, colours and fonts on your website. Don’t get me wrong; they’re part of it. I am talking about consistent messaging no matter where you are, what platform you’re on, or who you’re talking to. Yes it does take a bit of time to build up your personal brand, but running a business is a long game. Once you built up your personal brand, you’ll find it so much easier to sell your products or services and help others and change their life. I won’t be able to deep dive into branding in this episode, but I will be talking more on this. I promise. Please leave me feedback and comments and let me know what do you think about this episode so I can learn and if I should spend more time on this topic or not. Remember to tune in to my next episode. See ya!