This article is a friendly warning about the perils of neglecting your marketing. It’s one of those things, like brushing your teeth, you really should do every day. And yet, when we get busy and stressed and run off our feet, our marketing calendar is usually the first thing we drop. And that would seem to be perfect sense. After all, if your business is doing so well, why do you need to hunt for MORE business?

I’ll tell you a little story, about a writer named … Suzie. Suzie had been copywriting for small business clients while working a full-time job at a local charity, as well as writing a few blogs, partaking in several hobbies, and leading a very active social life alongside her rather handsome husband (he was a drum- I mean, he played the tuba). Over the last couple of years, Suzie’s clients were asking her to take on more and more work, and she was at the stage where she could cut back at her office and make a real go at being a full-time freelancer. This would mean Suzie wouldn’t have to work so many evenings and weekends, and would have much more time for hanging out with her friends and headbanging to her husband’s band at the local … jazz club.

Read On…

If you’ve spent any length of time around writers, discussions of “voice” will inevitably arise. “I’m writing in the first person, but I’m finding the voice a little tough,” or “I really admire the richness of Margaret Atwood’s voice” or even, “I’m trying to fit my voice into a male character, and it’s just not working …”

But if you try to corner one of us to ask exactly what we mean by “voice”, you’ll find we stammer some half-arsed answer, cry “look, a man wearing an enormous novelty mustache!” and scamper away when you back is turned. “Voice” is a concept writers understand innately, but we struggle to describe.

But “voice” is a concept that’s vital for any business owner to grasp, as it’s an integral part of your brand. And since I’m a writer who works predominantly with small business owners, I thought I’d do my part to demistify the concept of voice and why it’s important for your business.

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When it comes to online conversion rates, email still dominates. Email is the vampire of the online marketing world – old-school, eerily seductive, and packs one hell of a bite.

The recent numbers from the DMA show email’s conversion rate is still the highest, bringing in $40.56 for every dollar spent on it this year. Although this is down on previous years, it’s still miles ahead of the next highest converter – search-based marketing, at $22.24 per dollar spent.

Email marketing is a powerful thing. When customers give you their email addresses, they’re giving you permission to send your message into their home. Emailing a customer is a bit like walking into their home and glueing your business card onto their cat’s forehead.

NB: I don’t advocate glueing business cards to felines as a viable marketing tactic.

But you can’t just go emailing people willy nilly – you have to get their permission first, much like a vampire can’t enter a home without permission. Vampires are gentlemen – they only go where they’re wanted. Your business is like a vampire …

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It’s a lazy, sunny Sunday here in New Zealand. My husband and I have just purchased a 4 acre lifestyle block – eeee! – and it is sucking away every moment of free time we have right now. It’s wonderful to be spending so much time outside, doing physical labour, feeling the satisfaction of dirt under your nails and a sun on your arms. I haven’t had such restful sleep in years! We have a lot of work ahead of us before we can even begin to build our dream home, but we’re excited about building our future in this place.

Since it’s a lazy Sunday, and you might be spending the day thinking about your business and catching up on your Internet reading, I thought I’d link you up to some of my most recent articles for writers and small businesses around the web:

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The handmade movement is booming all over the world, and is becoming a real force in the market. Aimed at countering mass-produced consumerism, “buy handmade” has become a mantra of many disenchanted consumers, and owners of small handmade businesses are benefitting. People want less stuff, and they want to feel connected to the stuff they DO buy – they want to know things are ethically produced, they want to feel as though they KNOW the person who created an object. They’re tired of mass-produced crap.

But handmade businesses just can’t compete with the prices of goods from China, and the economies of scale for larger companies mean most small business owners are struggling with increasingly small profit margins.

As an example: two brightly colored wool hats sell in a clothing store for $30. One hat was made in China, shipped to the country and sold to the retailer by a large hat-buying chain for $15. The retailer makes $15 and that hat-buying chain makes $8. The costs of shipping, storage, freight and packaging add up to $7.5 and the Chinese hat maker earns about .50c.

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