July 26, 2010

Contact: Allison Bliss, Allison Bliss Consulting: abliss@allisonbliss.com; 510-879-7600, www.allisonbliss.com

Oakland, CA – In response to American workers and entrepreneurs craving more exercise, and less time spent in meetings, this week Allison Bliss Consulting, a San Francisco Bay Area marketing agency, launches a service coupling business-building education with stress-reducing waterfront walks.

With the goal of helping entrepreneurs flourish, the agency’s main consultant, Allison Bliss, takes clients outside for her “Money on the Move Creative Strategy Walks”. During the one-hour, marketing-focused walks, CEOs and business owners are guided to create specific and customized revenue-building strategies – even as they are being soothed by waves, or entertained by pelicans hunting along the Bay Area’s shores and beaches.

Clients who have taken advantage of this unique service have experienced vast business shifts, such as figuring how to create an extra $100,000 in passive income; how to reach an entirely new market to generate continuous revenue; and how to create a comprehensive branding strategy – all while indulging in some stress-reducing exercise.

“When we expand our environmental horizons our creative forces are stronger, and our resistance to business change is reduced. Thus, more success is possible,” Bliss states.

Participants depart with a recorded action-oriented plan to implement business-building ideas generated during the walks, which take place weekdays-only after work. Costs are reduced during the launch period this summer. Details can be found at: http://www.allisonbliss.com/wordpress/money-on-the-move-creative-strategy-walks/.

Agency Profile: Allison Bliss Consulting

2009 Woman-Owned Business Winner (presented by the Women’s Initiative) Allison Bliss Consulting is a Marketing & Communications Agency for companies requiring an outsourced marketing department, creating branding, strategies and promotional materials that incite business growth. One-on-One Marketing Coaching rescues business owners who are completely bogged down with their day-to-day survival, and often lack the knowledge or perspective needed to reach their target market or earn the revenues they need. Allison Bliss Consulting offers strategic marketing planning and resources such as websites, social media, website optimization, promotional materials, connections, sales training and total support. Contact Allison Bliss Consulting at (510) 879-7600. For updated news, special offers or resources, see the agency’s blog at: http://www.allisonbliss.com/wordpress/.

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Asking for help is so hard for most people. It’s easy to give but to ask – ah well, we need help with that. So, this week I’m using this blog platform to give my favorite clients & colleagues a place to test out a request for help.

I have confidence that at least one person will have a significant lead or fulfilled need within one week.

Haven’t you seen this past year’s economic depression cripple so many extraordinarily talented people who have radically struggled in their business? Some have lost jobs, homes, relationships, or their health.

Worse, the really worthy business owners have their confidence erode while forgetting the huge value they really offer their clients. We all go through this at some point in our businesses but to have it last for months depletes peoples’ ability to move forward. So, let’s all help each other instead.

This week let’s be insanely generous and share resources, ideas, actual referrals and connections. All of you who are invited have some genius to offer and are worthy of receiving huge rewards from participating. So, please join in.

WHAT TO DO

In the reply below, spell out clearly what you seek. Let us know how to contact you via email or phone. Bookmark this page so you can return every day this week to help someone or find out if your request was answered. Put out some good karma and participate!

HERE’S AN EXAMPLE   (BE VERY SPECIFIC)

Something I’m seeking: entrepreneurs leading organizations who need more clients or more funding who require help from the marketing & communications consulting (saving companies time & cost, bringing tools & resources) or the marketing services we offer: strategy & planning, websites, SEO, blogs, case studies, social media, promo materials or producing other communications. We have the teams to support companies with the ideal size of $1 million to $5 million (staff of 10-20) who haven’t yet hired a marketing director. We also support one person entrepreneurs with our consulting – details on website. Who do you know who needs our help? We can be reached via email: abliss@allisonbliss.com.

YOUR TURN. . .

ENTER YOUR REQUEST, YOUR LEADS OR SOLUTIONS FOR OTHERS IN THE ‘REPLY’ SECTION BELOW.

With hope & belief in your collective genius!

_____________
WHAT WERE THE RESULTS?

50% got what they asked for just connecting through this blog – you can see for yourself below.

70% got what they asked for by commenting here and also emailing me to get  more specifics on the person they wanted to help, to ask for an intro, phone number, or similar. A few emails initially said they were afraid to ask for what they wanted (from women, not men. no surprise there! men have no problems asking for what they want, it seems to me. ok, that’s commentary).

Take a look at comments below to see what happened. Marketing lesson: be clear what you ask for. It’s harder than you think.
My own story (what inspired this experiment): When I moved my business from San Francisco to the island of Alameda, 7 miles across the bay, I lost several clients just due to attrition. I reconsidered my positioning, services, how our agency’s services were offered, so I could rebuild the company’s revenues.

In so doing, I realized just one thing: I only wanted to work with “smart people”. I didn’t care their industry, financial situation, demographics, psychographics, or even geographics. So, I just started asking friends, colleagues, people I met at networking events or conferences and clients to please refer smart people to our agency. Sounds naive, right?

Well, 9 years later and another move to Oakland, we still only work with smart people. Why? Because when you truly respect your clients & they appreciate you, everyone has success.

If you’re a marketing pro and now want to slap me for this experiment, I defy you to try it and email me your own results. You just never know! abliss@allisonbliss.com.

Here’s my free 50 minute lesson to start making Social Media (twitter, facebook, linked in) work as part of your overall marketing.

If you want the full Social Media Action Tool, it’s got lots more tips, tools and resources. Have some great ideas of your own? Please share them with us in comments below! Or maybe you have questions or quirks using specific Social Media platforms that you want help figuring out? Let us know and we’ll try to get you an answer.

After all, ignorance is frustrating, but Knowledge is Bliss.

Thanks to Xplane’s terrific video on Social Media for this information which I believe is changing our ‘world order’ in marketing communications. Here are my ‘clif notes’ but the full video can be seen here: From Xplane: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8&feature=player_embedded#t=30.

Here are my clif notes pullled from this video:

This year advertising is in steep decline:

• print down 18%
• TV down 10%
• radio down 11%
• magazines down 14.8%

the number of unique visitors each month for major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS):

10 million

Meanwhile, digital advertising is growing rapidly:

• cel phone ads are up 18%
• internet ads are up 11%

The number of unique visitors each month on Social Media (YouTube, Facebook and MySpace):

250 million

If you want the full report, watch the video.

WHEN YOU’RE READY TO LEARN HOW TO MAKE THIS WORK:

Take a look at our action tool to show you how to set up social media to attract clients who need you! http://www.allisonbliss.com/services.htm#socialmedia.

I loved my Joanne Black’s recent article on sales and social media, reminding us that human interaction is more important than bandwidth:

http://www.nomorecoldcalling.com/blog/back-in-the-black-newsletter/why-social-networks-won%E2%80%99t-build-your-business-september-back-in-the-black-newsletter/

We’d like to hear your comments on what your experience is with this?

May this knowledge bring you bliss.

Sharing Marketing Tips, Resources and ideas is what business is all about and what this blog strives to offer. Marketing Coach & Consultant, Allison Bliss (www.allisonbliss.com), helps you find articles, services and tools to increase profits, save time and grow your business.

TAKE A LOOK AT OUR NEW WEBINAR PRODUCTION PACKAGE. Now you can demo products or educate your market with our complete package. Record the webinar & sell it on your website!

Allison Bliss Consulting is a Marketing & Communications Agency for corporations requiring an outsourced marketing department, creating branding, strategies and website, social media & promotional materials . Marketing Coaching rescues business owners who are completely bogged down with their day-to-day survival, and often lack the knowledge or perspective needed to reach their target market: Resources, Websites, Optimizing, Promotional Material, Connections, Sales training, & total support.

After all, ignorance is expensive, but “Knowledge is Bliss.“

So, you’ve done some great SEO (search engine optimization) to build traffic to your website. (If you haven’t, take a look at the bottom)**

But are you making the sales or growing your clientele? That’s what ‘conversion’ is all about. Converting visitors to take action, to learn more, and to make purchases of your products or services. (for marketing coaching or services from our marketing agency, email us exactly what you need).  But for converting visitors to buyers, here are a few tips we use and some we’ve learned from a few experts this week:

1. Be certain to add Google Analytics to your site so you can measure where your visitors come from, which pages are most popular, which percentage of visitors actually purchase items from you & other critical factors that can be analyzed to convert traffic to sales. Sign up for free at: http://www.google.com/analytics/sign_up.html. If you need our programmer to add this code to your website, just email us a request.

2. Build your Social Network outreach (twitter, facebook, linked in, etc.). It’s free, but you should devote a half hour daily to learn to maximize it’s potency for your business. We’ve a tool to save you dozens of hours by showing you exactly how to set up your social media to make it work for you: http://www.allisonbliss.com/services.htm#socialmedia. Is it worth 50 hours of your time to learn top techniques in social media? If not, you can get this action tool for only $17.

3. Create a blog, free report, ezine, downloadable pdf with instructional info, or free ecourses to test which work best to get your web visitors converting to purchasers?

Why?

If you add up the long term value of a typical client, you may find for small professional service businesses that they’re worth $4,000 over the course of a year.

If you’re only getting 1 out of every 100 web visitors to convert into a client you’re not making your ‘conversion tools’ work hard enough. Let’s say you test different tools (i.e.; a webinar instead of a free report, or ecourse instead of an ezine, for example) and increase your sales to a 3% conversion. You’ve just turned $4,000K into $12,000/yr. (thanks to internet expert & trainer Tom Antion for this lesson!).

4. Build your Affiliate income. Let’s say you’re a writer and I’ve got a great service that benefits your clients or web visitors so they  stand out from the crowd (that’s called “positioning” in marketing parlance). Perhaps you’d want to offer them this “Knowledge is Bliss Positioning Package” of ours for sale on your website – you’d help your clients so that your writing would be even more effective – without guessing at the positioning, too!

For each package sold through your site, you might receive a $200 commission. And best of all you helped your clients at the same time. Win-win, right? And you didn’t even spend 2 minutes doing any work. Ahhh, now you get the picture!

FREE TIP: The top affiliate sales experts recommend that the best affiliates sell ongoing ‘residual or continuous’ sales products – like classes or subscriptions for which people pay large monthly fees. That way, you get continual monthly commission payments. And over time, this adds up! But I suggest you start with products or services you personally recommend and know will help your clients.

So, who could you partner with that has these products on their site that you could be selling? Maybe you work with a transcriptionist who could help your legal clients. Or maybe you sell a series of CDs that train people on dog behavior tips and know a vet who would love to sell your CD’s on their website. Put some brainstorming into it and watch your income grow. Need help with that? Of course you can call us!

FREE TIP: if you need a super inexpensive, easy-to-operate shopping cart to make this work, I recommend this one. And I’m an affiliate so if you sign up through that link, I’ll get a small commission.

**still haven’t done the  SEO to build traffic on your website? Take a look at our 2 packages that help you:
Full service SEO package
Custom Website Review with Recommendations for Marketing Overhaul
What is your favorite income-building tip this month? What have we forgotten to mention that you feel is critically important? Let us know. We’d all like to hear your opinions.

Go forth and prosper: Follow Your Bliss . . .

Allison Bliss Consulting
“Knowledge is Bliss. Ignorance is Expensive.”
Marketing & Communications Agency, Marketing Coach
1514 Gibbons Dr.
Alameda, CA  94501
Phone Number http://510-864-8500

Email mailto://abliss@allisonbliss.com

As a Marketing Consultant and Coach, I’ve spent about a year trying to figure out if Social Media is worthy or a time-waster.

I’ve spent hundreds of hours learning, testing and tearing my hair out to learn Social Media (twitter, facebook, linked in) and taken workshops from the experts in the field in order to figure out how to make it work in one’s marketing.

Today, I launched an action tool that puts it all together to show you how to make Social Media Work.For about $17 you can learn, too: www.allisonbliss.com/services.
Let me know what you think, or what suggestions you’d like to add. After all, ignorance is expensive, but Knowlege is Bliss.

Friday, August 8, 2008

Twenty years in business and I still find myself in the ‘entrepreneur’s dilemma’ – I have the time to make changes to my website, but not the money. Or when I have money pouring in, I’ve no time to improve my business.

I might get stuck on this issue and not do anything if I’d not seen it crop up and slap me in the face so many times. I’ve now learned to slap back.

While I put cash in reserves to try to resolve this dilemma, there just always seems to be more need than cash.

So, today I’m starting something new: I’m spending the money on items I need to improve at the same time I’m starting to put ‘out to the universe’ a request for more cash or income. I’ll let you know what works, if anything does.

And I’d love to hear how you handle this, too?

from my old blog: Friday, July 31, 2009

WHAT IS YOUR EXPERIENCE?
What is your experience on the value of Social Media to your company (linked in, twitter, facebook, etc.)? I’ll share a tally of what I deduce from people’s responses here if you participate. Here are some of my thoughts: http://www.allisonbliss.com/newsletter/connections-and-internet-marketing.htmI’m dying to hear people are actually gaining business, not just branding, from all the time spent on Social Media.

MAGIC MARKETING PILL
We all want a magic pill for our marketing to burst through the roof, but the closest I’ve found so far is super smart, experienced, resourceful, action-based Marketing Coaching. There are those who swear a good website is all you need, or fabulous customer service, or the cutest logo – but that’s not the only answer, and in fact just too narrow-minded.

But if you find that magic pill that works for all businesses, by all means prescribe it for me.  After all, knowledge is bliss – but pills are easier to swallow :0
 UPDATE: we found people were wasting lots of time trying to learn social media, so we created an action tool to help them get on track: www.allisonbliss.com/services