February 6, 2013 by 3 Comments

Can a Virtual Assistant Increase Your Revenue and Productivity? – Part 1

By Jennifer Goforth Gregory

Many business owners find their to-do list overloaded, but may not have enough capital or even enough work for a full-time employee. One solution that many owners are increasingly turning to is the virtual assistant. According to the International Association of Virtual Assistants, “Virtual assistants are independent contractors who (from a remote location, usually their home or office) support multiple clients in a variety of industries by providing administrative, creative, and technical services.” What better way to keep up with your small business’ emarketing campaign?

Rosie Can a Virtual Assistant Increase Your Revenue and Productivity? Part 1

How a Virtual Assistant Can Help

Companies use virtual assistants for a variety of tasks, including scheduling, spreadsheets, editing and client communication. Often the specific tasks that a virtual assistant performs depends on the industry and the assistant’s experience. For example, a VA with an accounting background may do bookkeeping, while someone who is a skilled writer may write the monthly newsletter or update your blog.

“I use a virtual assistant to help me with basic research assignments that would allow me to jump into the meat of the project,” says Matthew DiGeronimo, a mergers and acquisitions specialist. When he was representing the sale of an internal medicine practice in Hawaii, part of the project was to send letters to all medical schools offering internal medicine programs. “I focused on writing the letter and had the VA create a list of 100 schools,” says DiGeronimo.

He also uses his VA to update his contact list, which syncs to his phone, by entering information from every business card and email he has received.

Virtual Assistant: Real-Life Benefits

Using a virtual assistant allows you to eliminate the overhead of a full-time employee, such as medical benefits and office space. At the same time, you and your staff will be freed up to focus on other things. “Having a VA has enabled me to shift focus away from non-revenue producing tasks and spend more time on cultivating direct relationships with my clients,” says Jack Klemeyer with GYB Coaching.

Other businesses find that they are able to increase their offerings by hiring a VA. Laurie Erdman, founder of Chronic Wellness Coaching, has gotten twice as much work done and increased her revenue by 300% after hiring a VA two years ago. “I have been able to offer twice as many offerings (products and courses) as I was before by being able to delegate,” says Erdman “My VA would do all the back end implementation while I could focus on creating content.”

Will a Virtual Assistant Increase Your Productivity?

If you are considering using a virtual assistant, do a cost analysis to determine the benefit to your company. “In the months leading up to hiring, make a daily list of the tasks you are doing that are not the best use of your time or skill set or those that you really hate doing,” says Erdman. She says that you can later use this list as a job description for your VA.

Then write down all of the things that you would be accomplishing with the extra time and determine the amount of revenue that these tasks could bring to your business. Be sure to factor in reduced overtime wages or just general quality-of-life issues as well. Calculate the cost of a virtual assistant, which typically charge $30 to $60 per hour depending on the specialty, and compare the cost to the increased revenue you could bring in by delegating these tasks.

In part 2 of this series, we’ll look at how you can begin your search for the right virtual assistant. 

For ways to grow your leads, download Infusionsoft’s e-book “Magnetic Appeal.”

Filed Under: Small Business Technology Tagged With: , , ,
January 7, 2013 by 2 Comments

All-in-One Listings Sites for Small Businesses and Service Providers

By Carla Turchetti

Consumers rely on the Internet every day to help them make decisions about where to spend their money. They expect searches to deliver everything from the address of a business to pricing structure to other customers’ opinions in one click.

While review sites like Yelp and Google+ reveal what others have to say about a particular business or its services, a new kind of site goes even further and allows prospective customers to begin interacting with businesses and entrepreneurs right away. Medical marketing ideas can take the form of all-in-one websites like ZocDoc, for example.  It is an all-in-one medical site that enables potential patients to search for doctors by geography, specialty and insurance; to read reviews and research physicians’ educational and professional backgrounds; and even to book appointments online.

Founded in 2007, ZocDoc has become wildly popular, with more than 1.9 million visitors each month. Patients like the breadth and depth of information they can get with a single click, as well as the ease of scheduling an appointment without having to pick up the phone. A mobile app facilitates making scheduling changes on the go.

ZocDoc is free for patients, and physicians pay a monthly fee to be listed. Is this a business model that crosses into other industries as well? Here are some examples of similar all-in-one sites that, like ZocDoc, offer listings for a fee.

DentistDirectory.com

This dental-focused site operates similarly to ZocDoc. Dental patients go to the website to search for dentists by proximity and specialty. The site also offers reviews from other patients and the opportunity for the searcher to click through and book an appointment online. Just as on ZocDoc, dentists pay to be listed as search results.

Betterfly

Betterfly bills itself as a place to match up with pros who will help you learn better, feel better and look better. Searchers go to the site looking for everything from cello teachers to standardized test coaches to estheticians who specialize in Brazilian waxes. Customers post what they are looking for and connect with profile pages set up by small business owners. Those pages include contact information, pricing and  reviews left by other customers. The small business owners pay to be listed on the site. It’s a one-stop research tool for customers who want the searching process to be quick, easy and online.

Stay tuned for part 2 of our series on all-in-one listings sites, in which we’ll look at a free site tailored to lawyers — as well as give tips on what kind of information businesses and entrepreneurs should be sure to include in their listings.

Check out “The Infusionsoft Guide to Sales and Marketing” for tips to get your marketing strategy right!

 

 

 

Filed Under: Dental, E-Commerce, Health and Fitness, Industry Best Practices, Legal, Sales and Marketing Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
November 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Inbound Marketing 101: What It Is and Why It Matters

By Natalie Burg

It’s every small business owner’s dream: small business marketing solutions that inspire customers to find the business, not the other way around. It sounds like fantasy, but then again, a couple of decades ago, so did a tiny computer you could carry around in your pocket and make phone calls with.

inbound outbound marketer Inbound Marketing 101: What It Is and Why It MattersInbound marketing is just that — promotional methods that cause customers to seek out your business. While the Internet has become the platform on which most inbound marketing methods have been developed, not all online marketing can be called inbound marketing.

What inbound marketing is, why it’s important and how to make the most out of it is what the Inbound Marketing 101 series is all about. We’ll begin by finding out exactly what the term means before turning to how you can utilize it in your business, and how it has worked for other entrepreneurs.

What Inbound Marketing Is

There’s not much difference between a billboard on the highway and a popup ad on your computer. The viewer will either read it or she won’t, and it will quickly disappear from view.

“Inbound marketing focuses on earning, not buying, a person’s attention,” writes Lauren Drell for Mashable Business, ”which is done through social media and engaging content, such as blogs, podcasts and white papers.”

When that viewer comes across one of these things online, it’s more likely to make him take pause, interact and — hopefully — seek out the creator of that content for more.

“This content is interesting, informative and adds value, creating a positive connection in the eyes of the consumer,” Drell says, “thus making him more likely to engage your brand and buy the product.”

What Inbound Marketing Isn’t

Billboards and popup ads are just the tip of the traditional outbound marketing iceberg. Eric Markowitz says on Inc. that outbound marketing ”represents a company’s traditional advertising and PR campaign.”

In other words, it’s everything a small business was probably doing before the Internet came along. This would also include direct mail, email spam, television advertising and telemarketing.

Why Inbound Marketing Matters

According to Mashable Business, those marketing techniques are just not working like they used to. Two-hundred million people have placed themselves on the FTC’s no-call list. Eighty-six percent of people skip through television commercials. On the other hand, 57% of businesses with a blog have acquired a customer that way, and 42% of companies on Twitter have leveraged a client by tweeting.

Dev Basu of Powered by Search suggests to the Globe and Mail why inbound marketing techniques have been so successful.

“Your customers are now smarter and more equipped with choices than ever before,” writes Basu, “and they are readily turning to online resources such as search engines, blogs and social media to choose who they do business with.”

Convinced? It’s one thing to get excited by such great statistics; it’s another to execute a great inbound marketing plan and become one of those positive numbers. Next time, we’ll look at how to do just that.

Filed Under: Sales and Marketing Trends Tagged With: , ,