Building a mailing list is a fantastic way to make your audience feel as though they are on board with your message and to gain more trust and authority within your niche. But while building relationships with your fans or customers is important, what’s also highly important is that you make a profit in the short term! Most of us can’t afford to wait months or years until we start selling and so sooner or later, you will need to try promoting something that people will want to buy.

The way you go about this is different for emails though as compared with other forms of marketing. Read on and discover how to best go about selling through email marketing and making as many conversions as possible!

The Structure

A good structure that you can use in order to hype and then sell a product over a series of messages is referred to as AIDA. This stands for:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

The key thing to recognize is that when you first contact your new subscribers, they will have no awareness of your products or services and no reason to be interested. You need to start here before you try and get them to really want whatever it is that you’re selling. This allows you to focus on providing value and building that trust initially, while simply mentioning your product in a very subtle way.

This is the same strategy that many film studios will use when they release teaser trailers. We often don’t see enough to be excited by the film yet, but we’ve seen just enough to be aware that it exists.

Interest comes through repeated mention and desire that comes when you start to describe the way in which your product can make your audience’s lives better. It’s when you start describing what it is like to hold your product or to use it and how it will inherently raise the status of the people using it.

The best thing about this stage is that the readers now have to wait until your next message before they can buy. Waiting is a great way to build more anticipation because we always want what we can’t have!

Finally, the action email will be the one where you seal the deal. This is where you will close and get the audience to act as quickly as possible by clicking and buying. Make sure to incentivize their decision, whether with a limited discount or limited stock!

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If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.

Benjamin Franklin

Setting your goal is the most vital aspect of your success. In whatever endeavor you undertake, it is important to ensure that your goal is clear. Generating ideas and concepts is very important but knowing how to achieve them is what matters more.

Here are five things to remember in setting your goal:

• Be Precise – Identify what your end goal is and make sure that you have a clear vision of what you want to achieve. Understanding this principle will serve as your drive and the reason why you do it. It may take some time to develop the skill to eliminate irrelevant and unnecessary details when achieving your goal, but it will definitely help you become precise on what you really want to accomplish.

• Be Ready – Plan every step that will lead to your goal. Conducting a feasibility study or market research can be a good start. You need to gather all the data that may affect or influence your goal. You might also want to check if you have enough funds, manpower, resources, and skills before proceeding with setting your goal. Being ready can help you prepare for the possible risks and challenges you might be encountering while putting your plan into fruition.

• Be Realistic – Reaching a goal requires a lot of hard work and twice that amount of patience in order to get there. At the onset, make sure that you set realistic and attainable goals. Setting short-term to medium-term goals can help you trim down variables and be able to make achievable goals.

• Be Passionate – Nothing beats a person with a heart full of joy in what he or she has committed to. If you really love what you are doing, it doesn’t matter what situation you are in as long as you are working to achieve your goal. If there is a passion within you, the journey you take will surely be meaningful and fulfilling in its own way.

• Be Faithful – Avoid jumping from one goal to another. There might come a time when you will face difficulties while realizing your goal, but do not let this stop you. You will be tempted to give it up, find a new objective, or go in circles, but stick to your plan and understand that failure is a part of the process. If you feel like giving up, go back to number 1, and remind yourself of the reason why you have come a long way now.

There can be more things to remember in setting your goal. However, the success of your accomplishing it is entirely in the palm of your hands.

No one succeeds alone. Setting your goals may include the help of an in-house or virtual assistant. If you have any questions about how we can help you achieve your goals, please complete the form below or give us a call at (928) 692-3235 to discuss.

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If you want to build a solid relationship through email marketing, you must be very careful NOT to commit these five deadly email marketing sins.

• Spamming – Never spam your mailing list. Even though they’ve opted in to your emails, that doesn’t give you the right to send emails and sales pitches on a daily basis. Send emails at strategic intervals.

• Emailing Them Only When You are Selling Something – No one wants to be on your list if all you ever do is sell, sell, sell! The reason people join your mailing list is that they want something of value for being on your list. If they fail to see your value, they will unsubscribe even faster than you can say, “opt-out”.

• Rushing your Emails – When you are doing a promotion, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is that you rush your emails to the point that the mistakes are spotted by most of your subscribers. Having too many mistakes in your emails will make you look unprofessional. It is quite embarrassing when you spell a person’s name wrong (the word {first_name} appears instead of the subscriber’s real name) or worse…messing up your links!

• Not Emailing Your List for a Long Time – This is the opposite of spam. If you don’t keep in touch with your subscribers for a long time, they will tend to forget who you are. That will severely damage the relationship between you and your subscriber.

• Not Relating to Your Subscribers – When every new product launches, there is a tendency to mail your subscribers at the time while forgetting that the product doesn’t relate to the subscribers at all. You don’t want to sell cat food to people who don’t own a pet! So, segment your mailing list into categories. That way the emails are more targeted to the interests of your contacts.

Now that you know the five deadly email marketing sins, you also know how to avoid them.

If you have questions or need help with your email marketing, complete the form below or give us a call at (928) 692-3235.

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Online marketing has developed a sudden surge these past several years, but many in the know have felt its rise even from way back when. The need to develop new marketing skills and knowledge based on this medium has exploded. More and more marketing strategies are being discovered and developed to cope with the changing face of business in today’s business world.

The demand for online marketing tips and strategies has drastically grown. While there are companies that are all too eager to help your site and business build a clientele for a fee, there are also many ways that can spread the word about your site’s subsistence in a more cost-free way. One of these is Opt-in email marketing, also known as permission marketing.

Opt-in marketing requires the permission of a willing customer or prospective customer to subscribe to your marketing materials. These take the form of newsletters, catalogs and promotional mailings via e-mail. The more opt-in marketing mail is sent, the more chances there are sales. To do this, you must build a list of all those who want to subscribe to your opt-in marketing list.

From your list, you will get your targeted customer. They already have shown interest in what you have to sell and have willingly opted in. These are the people who have liked what they have seen on your site and have decided they want to see more and maybe even purchase whatever product or service your company and site have to offer.

4 Important Things You Must Do to Build Your List

1.) Put up a good web form on your site that immediately follows the end of your content. While some may say this is too soon to subscribe for a website visitors application, try to remember that your homepage should provide a quick good impression. If somehow a website visitor finds something that he or she doesn’t like and turns them off, they may just forget about signing up.

A good web form for subscribing to an opt-in list is not hard to do. Then there should be an area where they could put in their names and e-mail address. This webform should automatically send you an email that someone has subscribed.

2.) As mentioned in the first tip, make your homepage interesting and impressive. Have well-written blog posts and descriptions of your site. Depending on what your site is all about, you need to capture your website visitor’s interest. Make your site useful and very easy to use. Do not expect everyone to be tech-savvy. Invest in having good programming.

3. ) Provide good service and products. A return customer is more likely to bring in more business. A satisfied customer will recommend your business. Word of mouth and
recommendations are worth more than an expensive ad. With more members on the list, more people will get to know about what you have new to offer.

4.) Keep a clean and private list. Never lose your customers’ trust. If you provide e-mails to others and they get spammed, many will probably unsubscribe from you. A good reputation will drive in more traffic and subscribers as well as strengthen the loyalty of your customers.

You’re busy and overwhelmed already. When you’re ready to have a professional and experienced team help you with your real estate support needs, complete the form below and we will contact you. Likewise, you can also email us at pamela@vaforrealestate.com.

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If you want to make a big impact on social media, one of the key factors is to have strong branding and an excellent logo.

One of the big roles of social media is to help you promote your brand and increase visibility. At the same time though, a great logo will also help to make your brand appear more professional and it will ensure that there is consistency between all of your different channels. If the same professional-looking logo is used everywhere from your Twitter account to your Facebook account, these will become linked in the minds of your visitors and that will send a clear message. In order for your message to be a positive one, your logo needs to look the part.

How do you go about designing a great logo for your social media campaign?

Quality
It starts by ensuring that your logo is high-quality and that it looks professional. To accomplish that, you either need to have the right tools and know-how yourself, or you need to hire someone who does.

One thing that is crucial here is that your logo is made with a vector file. These are files that are easy to edit and that don’t lose any quality when they are resized. It’s what will ensure your logo always looks maximum quality.

Design
The design is also very important and in an ideal scenario, you will ensure that both the image itself and the name of your company together tell a story of what your brand is about. For example, if you are a real estate brand you need to make sure that’s immediately apparent. Not only should your viewers be able to see that you’re a real estate brand, but they should also be able to see what kind of real estate brand you are. What’s your mission statement? What’s your Ethos? (An Ethos is an argument that appeals to the audience by emphasizing the speaker’s credibility and authority.) What kind of person will like this?

The aim is to create a logo that when viewed with any one of your posts, makes the right kind of person instantly make you subscribe because they feel that it’s exactly the kind of thing that they’re going to enjoy. If you can manage that, then you should expect to see a huge increase in traffic and better engagement from the fans that you already have!

• Logo Designer Tools
• Canva
• Free Logo Design

If you need help creating a logo, Facebook cover, blog and article graphic or something else, contact us. We can help!

The post Creating a Great Logo for Your Social Media Brand appeared first on Second Self Virtual Assistance.

What is a Business System?

A business system is nothing more than documented processes and procedures that allow your business to run without you. One of the most successful companies that utilize systems is McDonald’s. They have managed to run a successful and profitable business for more than 60 years because of the fantastic business systems that were put in place. Their operations manual covers everything from hiring to product delivery to customer interaction.

Why You Need Systems in Your Business – Unfortunately, many small business owners are caught in a catch 22. They have no time to work on their business because they are too busy working in their business. They can’t take time away from their business because they haven’t taken the time to develop documented systems and processes. Along with saving you time, there are many benefits of implementing policies in your business.

Lower Labor Costs – Putting documented systems in place will help to improve efficiency in your business. Doing so results in a reduction in your labor costs. When an employee leaves, they may be the only one knowledgeable of how to perform their required job functions. Without documented systems and processes, you run the risk of losing knowledge and valuable company resources.

Improves Consistency – Having documented systems and processes in place ensures your employees are working with the same information as everyone else. They don’t have to rely on their perception of how a process should operate. Systemization also prevents them from working with the instructions that are outdated, which could lead to costly errors.

Enables Scalability – Implementing systems in your business provides you the ability to expand. Systems and documented processes allow you to replicate your business in different geographic areas for yourself or through franchising or licensing the rights to your business.

Build a Valuable Asset – The day may come when you’ll be ready to sell your business. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to sell it for a nice profit? Without documented processes and systems in place, this can be extremely difficult to accomplish. Putting systems in place will help you build a valuable asset because they allow the company to continue to run without you. A lack of business systems can not only hurt the daily operations of your business, but it can make it extremely difficult to sell when the time comes.

Creating business systems is a great way to build uniformity and consistency in your business. When your systems are in place, everyone knows how to better perform their job. When there’s turnover (and there will be turnover), the person stepping into the vacant spot will know exactly what is expected of them and how to do their job efficiently and effectively.

Start systemizing your business today so you can reap all the rewards in the future. We’d love to be part of your systemization plans. Complete the form below to get a free 1/2 hour Plan of Action Consultation. We will discuss your plans and see how we can help you achieve your goals.

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How Does a Business System Work?

One of the most overlooked aspects of running a successful business is the business system. A business system is nothing more than documented processes and procedures that allow your business to run without you. One of the most successful companies that utilize systems is McDonald’s. They have managed to run a successful and profitable business for more than 60 years because of the fantastic business systems that were put in place.

Why You Need to Implement Systems in Your Business
Unfortunately, many small business owners are caught in a catch 22. They have no time to work on their business because they are too busy working in their business. They can’t take time away from the company. Along with saving you time, there are many benefits of implementing policies in your online business.

Lower Labor Costs
Putting documented systems in place will help to improve efficiency in your company, resulting in a reduction in your labor costs. When an employee leaves, they may be the only ones knowledgeable of how to perform their required job functions. Without documented systems and processes, you run the risk of losing knowledge and valuable company resources.

Improve Consistency
Having documented systems and processes in place ensures your employees are working with the same information as everyone else. They don’t have to rely on their perception of how a process should operate. Systemization also prevents them from working with the instructions that are outdated, which could lead to costly errors.

Enables Scalability
Implementing systems in your business provides you the ability to expand. Systems and documented processes allow you to replicate your business in different geographic areas yourself or through franchising or licensing the rights to your business.

Builds a Valuable Asset
The day may come when you’ll be ready to sell your business. Without documented processes and systems in place, this can be extremely difficult to accomplish. Putting systems in place will help you build a valuable asset that can run without you.

Creating a systemized business that is capable of running without you is something most business owners often dream about. Systemizing a business the right way does take time. Hiring the right people to implement your systems or (better yet) have created their own, will give you the freedom to do what you do best; sales, marketing, networking, etc.

If you need help implementing your systems or hiring someone who already has systems in place, give us a call at (928) 692-3235. We help real estate professionals bridge the gap between real estate sales and marketing tasks. Or, you can complete the form below and we will set up a free Plan of Action Consultation to discuss your current needs and goals.

The post Must-Know Business Systemization – How It Works & Why You Need To Systemize appeared first on Second Self Virtual Assistance.

It’s important to understand your audience, differentiate yourself from your competition, be a problem solver, and increase your curb appeal. Market yourself through blogging and promotion, consistently utilize your email lists, and be the best in your field.

Watch this video to learn seven things you can start doing to stand out among your competition. Be the one your prospects think of when they need your services.

If you need help standing out among competitors, we can help. Let’s get started today. Complete the form below or give us a call at (928) 692-3235.

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Feeling gratitude has been shown to have significant positive effects on an individual’s health and happiness.  When we’re grateful for all things big and small, it shows in our relationships with ourselves and others.  Having an attitude of gratitude helps our business relationships, too.

Increased Happiness and Satisfaction – When we incorporate gratitude into our daily lives, we have a more positive outlook on everything we do.  We are more appreciative of everyday things including our profession.  Aspects of business are often disappointing. Gratitude lets us see the brighter side of those disappoints; learning lessons and ways to improve our business.

Increased Self-Esteem and Optimism – A high level of self-esteem builds confidence in our ability to succeed.  In turn, we experience more optimism. We all know that optimistic someone (maybe that’s you) who always bring light with them into a room.  Their confidence is contagious. Surrounding ourselves with confident, optimistic, and successful people automatically makes us strive to do better.

Increased Levels of Success – Those with a grateful attitude are more likely to achieve their goals faster. Those who hold managerial positions report that showing genuine appreciation and thanking their colleagues and clients improves productivity and motivation.  Grateful people are more likely to be willing to help others succeed.  Their generosity extends beyond materialistic things and what’s in it for them.

Being grateful for the opportunities we have to build a successful business, provide support to our family and co-workers, and help those less fortunate than ourselves translates into everything we do.  It enriches and transforms our lives as well as those we work with.

Start a journal and write down at least three things every day that you’re grateful for.  It might be hard in the beginning or on especially difficult days,  but persistently doing this on a daily basis will transform your life and your business.

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It’s easy to spend a lot of time and hard-earned dollars building your client base.  Cold-calling, social media, and other digital marketing are some ways to build your client base.  The best way is to get referrals from your previous clients.  They know you.  They’ve done business with you.  They already have a positive impression of you.

Here are several big tips you can use today to start building your referral base:

Ask

Have a system in place that reminds you to ask for referrals.

Create an email your past client can use to send to the referral.

Send your client a thank you note or give them a thank you call for their referral.

Timing is everything. Ask for referrals after your client has commented on being pleased with your work.

Ask again. Remind your clients that you welcome their referrals and feedback.

Advertise 

Add a link in your emails to a form on your website for referral submissions.

Ask clients to pass your business card on to others, who might need your services.

Create a Facebook post about your services and urge your clients to share on their page or tag their friends.

Care

Build relationships with your clients. They will more likely to send you referrals if they know your relationship is based on more than just a sale.

Comment on your client’s Facebook status or blog.

When you services end, include a card or small gift. Remember future special occasions like birthdays, home anniversaries, etc.

Keep your past clients in the loop by adding them to your monthly newsletter.

Stay in touch with your past clients by dropping a line or making a call to see how everything is going.

Past clients who feel they are important to you beyond the sale, will be most likely to refer you.  Use these tips to build your referral base today.

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