Marketing – Page 14 – Business Plus Baby

April 28, 2011May 11, 2011

Advertising Ideas For Mumpreneurs

If you’re a new business owner, the chances are that advertising is the first marketing tactic that comes to your mind.

That’s partly because we’ve been exposed to TV and print advertising all our lives and we’re already really familiar with it. But it can feel strangely comfortable too, because it’s hands-off. It takes confidence to stand up and talk about your product, but if it’s in print then you don’t have to speak to anyone!

The trouble is that advertising can be expensive if you’re a tiny business. Very expensive. And I’m not just talking about the cost of placing a single advert, either. The chances are that one advert probably won’t do the trick because it needs to be part of a campaign which builds familiarity and visibility. Continue reading “Advertising Ideas For Mumpreneurs”

November 19, 2010November 21, 2010

Before You Hit “Send”: Email Marketing Dos and Dont’s

Effective and affordable, email marketing can be a great tool to promote your product or service. It’s also easy to do from home, making it a form of marketing that enables you to balance your business and your baby. However, this type of business writing has to be done right to be effective, or else all your efforts will go to waste. Here are a few do-it-yourself email marketing tips to follow when embarking on an email marketing plan. Continue reading “Before You Hit “Send”: Email Marketing Dos and Dont’s”

November 3, 2010July 4, 2011

Why selling your time by the hour is a bad idea (and what to do about it)

If you’re selling your time by the hour, you may find you’re working really hard but not earning as much as you want. Why? Well, if you’re working part time around children you may only have twenty hours a week to work. Once you’ve lost up to half of that time doing your admin and marketing you may only have ten hours left. You need to be charging a lot per hour to make much money from ten hours a week.

And even if you do charge a high hourly rate there will always be a limit to how much you can earn because there are only 24 hours in a day.

A big advantages of this type of business are that you can get paid faster than other businesses – you don’t need to manufacture anything – and you don’t need to buy or store stock, so it’s a great way to get a business off the ground. But to grow your business (and your bank balance) you’ll need to think of other ways of increasing your income.

How about setting up another income stream that doesn’t involve selling time? If you’re a complementary therapist, you could sign up with a direct selling company and sell health, beauty or environmental products, for example. It won’t cost you much to get started, you don’t need to buy much stock and the direct selling company will provide you with things like brochures, order forms and posters.

Can’t find what you want in direct selling? There are lots of creative mums out there, look around for one who makes a product that your clients would love.

Or how about selling an e-book or on your website? You don’t even need to write it yourself, you could become an affiliate for someone else’s product. Being affiliate means that you tell clients, or even friends and family, about a product and you get commission for every sale you make. Look at products you already use and like, then take a look at the seller or manufacturer’s website for how to ‘become an affilliate’ (it’s sometimes called a ‘reseller’ or ‘rep’ instead).

If you’d like to know about more ways you could boost your income as a mumpreneur, take a look at my e-course Earn What You Deserve as a Mumpreneur.

Photo credit: Katerha

November 1, 2010November 1, 2010

Mumpreneur Monday Challenge: Get Out There!

Welcome to week two of the Mumpreneur Monday challenge!

How did you get on with last week’s challenge? If you missed it, the Monday challenge was to Promote Your Blog.

The internet is a wonderful thing but nothing beats meeting real, live people in the flesh. Too much time on your own in front of a PC can drive you a little bit crazy, so this week your challenge is to…

Get out there!

Here’s how you could do it:

Go to a new networking group

Pick one that suits your style – structured, informal, for mums, for women… take your pick. Stuck for ideas? Ask people you know where they network and what it’s like. Also, ask if you can join them as a guest.

Want to take the little ones but there are no mums networking groups in your area? You could start one of your own! Take a look at Mums The Boss and Mums Business Club.

Have an informal meet-up (or a Tweetup*)

If you don’t want to start a networking group, you could just ask around if anyone knows any mums in business in your area, then arrange a time to meet up in the local park with the kids.

(*Tweetup = A gathering of people who use Twitter.)

See someone you know you should meet

Have you been bouncing emails around with someone when you know you should go and see them in person? It’s not always easy to getting around to meeting people face-to-face. This week, set the date and go and see that person.

Look for business events in your area

Sometimes you just need a breath of fresh air into your business. Look around for local business events and workshops where you can meet new people and get some new ideas. See Woman’s Work, you local Enterprise Agency or Universities, Business Link, or your local Chamber of Commerce.

Turn to Jelly

Have you heard of Jelly? It’s where groups of home-workers gather together and work in the same space for a few hours (but without networking). There are Jellies popping up all over the world and quite a few are in the UK.

If you’re a Twitter user, the hashtag #Jelly will keep you up to date with all things Jelly.

Go for a coffee, girls’ night out or whatever you fancy.

Between family and business it’s easy to forget that you’ve not been out just for fun for a while. So go out, enjoy yourself and recharge those batteries.

Drop me a comment and let me know how you get on!

October 28, 2010March 24, 2015

What’s on your business card?

I run an online business, so I don’t use business cards that much. But now the little Lindops are getting older I’m finding a few more networking events are coming my way. My current set of business cards have my old green-and-orange logo on them, so it’s time for a new set. Maybe even a nice printed lanyard, too!

I was cheerfully putting my new logo on my business card template at VistaPrint when I realised that I had no idea what my job title is!

I own a blog, so I’m a blogger. But I publish articles, so I’m a publisher. Hang on though, I’ve written a book – and I’m soon to be a regular contributor to a family magazine – so that makes me a writer. And I’m about to launch an e-course based on my e-book Earn What You Deserve as a Mumpreneur. That means I’m still a trainer, too.

Job titles for self employed people are not as straightforward as they first appear. So what should you put on your business card? Here are some options:

Be the boss

If you’re a one-woman business (and most of us are), you could give yourself any job title you want including ‘Director’. While that would be technically true, I think most people will quickly sniff out the fact that you’re director of a company of one. There’s nothing wrong with the fake it ’til you make it approach. Up to a point, anyway. You can make your website look every bit as professional as a large company, even if you’re just one person. But pretending to be a ‘we’ when you’re actually an ‘I’ is generally going a step to far.

I’ve seen ‘proprietor’ too. To me, that felt a little old-fashioned, but I guess it depends on your business.

Describe the job

You could keep it simple and call yourself a ‘web designer’, ‘tutor’ or ‘accountant’. For some professions, that could be absolutely fine and expected. In fact, for some it could be against their professional code of conduct to do anything else.

But if you’ve created yourself a job, why not create yourself a job title too? The aim of your business card is to get you business, so if creative works for you then why not try it?

Say nothing (and do something different)

Do you need a job title at all? Most of us have a business name/strap line, logo and URL that describes what we do.

Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income (a great blog if you’re into making money online, by the way) wanted to get a set of business cards printed for a big blogging conference. He wanted to stand out, so chose an unusual card size and picked an eye-catching graphic design. On the front he put his photo, name, Twitter ID and his blog’s URL, on the back he put a link to a welcome video and podcast he’d put together for the conference. You can see photos of the cards in his post How to be a business card ninja.

Of course, this approach wouldn’t work for everyone or every business. But that’s exactly the point – now that you can print business cards cheaply in small batches, it really is possible to print a set that will only be useful for a week. A business card is a part of your marketing literature so why not make it both stand out from the others and tailor it to your audience. The only reason traditional business cards look the way they do is because you had to get thousands printed at a time. The design had to last as you’d be stuck with them for a few years.

The photo at the top shows the design I finally chose. Is it the best one? I don’t know, but I only ordered the minimum number (250) so it won’t be a big deal if I’ve got it wrong.

*Update 21 August 2013*

The original photo of my business card in this post disappeared when I updated the WordPress framework here at Business Plus Baby. Since I’ve had at least three different business cards since I wrote this post, here is a photo of my most recent one…

Thanks for prompting me in the comments, Natalie!

What’s on your business card? Leave me a comment and let me know!

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