Where it can get annoying is when you have already made a purchase from the site that is doing the re-targeting or you just plain don’t want to see their ads anymore. So there is a remedy for this. You can tell Google to turn off the ads. Here is a link to manage your ad preferences.

The sales associate never said, “assembly required.” Stupid me…..I forgot all about this old trick. A Rubik’s Cube in a box for sure. A 16 Page catalog of instructions, at least it was 8-1/2 x 11″ and not micro print and it will only take you about 45 minutes to put it together. But what it did ask for were additional tools like a rubber mallet. (I do not own a rubber mallet, yet). There must be at least 150 to 200 pieces to this desk with all the nuts, bolts, screws etc. Don’t forget the particle board. Oh yeah, the box said “made in China” on the outside.

I must ask myself, how is it cheaper to make a desk out of 150 million parts, make wood out of sawdust, then ship the bloody thing 10,000 miles vs. sawing down a tree here in the USA, putting a saw and some glue to 10-20 pieces of wood and assembly?

I am now making a personal a commitment to self to only buy real wood products, and used if that. No more “new particle board,” I give up. But I have options, I can take the desk to big box store and have it assembled for $100! The cost of the desk is like a $130. I bet I could have gotten a great antique desk on Craig s list or E-BAY FOR LESS THAN $100 and already assembled, don’t you agree?

What was interesting for me when I got the package it contained a box that was made of two boxes taped together. I mean it really was “recycled” not just some lip service company that buys tons of recycled cardboard from a packaging manufacturer. This is different. On top of this it said it was sealed with a “kiss.” OK this is a little cheesey but it is fun. I can’t think of anyone else who sent something sealed with a kiss other than a teenage girlfriend back in the day.

If you are going to be starting a consulting business we have to assume that you have some experience in a certain area of expertise that people will pay for your experience because it will add value to their business.

Small Business Side of Consulting:

1) Focus in a Niche – too often we all get caught up in the “oh I can do my craft for any business syndrome.” I fell into this category and it did not work. The best advice I ever got was from Glenn Livingston, Ph.D. and he said “we have to be niche focused, this is what Google wants and this is what the clients want.” Why? Because being focused on a niche reduces risk in the clients’ minds. A niche is industry specific, i.e. Fly Fishing in Montana, Addiction Treatment Center Marketing are niches. Small business is not a niche, healthcare is not a niche because they are both too broad. Clients want specific areas of expertise and focus.

2) Brand the Consulting Firm – A brand is all about trust. It is delivering on a promise. It is too easy to just go down to Staples and order some business cards and not get a logo and a branded identity. If you are offering professional services you must look like a professional. You can get logos for cheap $300 – $500 at 99Designs.com or if you want to step it up and “do it right” call SpeechRep Media for a professionally executed custom branded identity with all the bells and whistles for $1,500 – $50,000. But seriously, for a consulting business you are going to be more around the $1,500 range. When I hired my branding company I shared with them that I managed a huge successful chess event. I wanted something with a checkerboard precision and strategic meaning of a chess board, because after all consulting is often strategic. We now use this identity on several different websites and in several different colors.

3) Legal – Just like the branding we have to look “professional” and we will need contracts in place so we can set expectations and deliverables. It makes you look a lot more professional if you provide the client with YOUR contract for professional services. I have done business in the past just on a handshake but it does not always turnout like we planned. Here’s a humorous video called “F you pay me” on the value of legal binding documentation as a service provider. In this case they are talking about web designers but it could be just as easily a “web consultant” or any other consultant for that matter. If you are in the marketing and internet space I can recommend an attorney for you.

4) Telecommunications – You are going to need reliable telephony. Make sure you have a wireless smart phone, a conference calling bridge so you can host conference calls (see FreeConferenceCall.com), optional computer screen sharing service for $20.00 per month, a reliable internet connection, get Google Voice which will ring all of your phone simultaneously, get a Skype Account (If you don’t have one you can appear out of the loop). Obviously you can go nuts in this area with office phones but we are assuming it is one or 2 of you starting a consulting business.

5) Financial – Set up 2 bank accounts, a business account and a payroll account. Make sure you have both a bookkeeper and a CPA. Bookkeepers can save you a ton of fees vs. a CPA. Recommendation is to use Quickbooks Online because both your book keeper and CPA can see your books online, this saves a lot of back and forth as well as file versions and FTP’ing large Quickbook files which never seems to be a smooth process. Get a payroll processing company to do your payroll. I use Citibank and their payroll processing is $25 per month flat fee to process as many payroll checks for one employee per month. ADP and Paychex are two other payroll processing companies that work with small businesses. Expense recording, I use – Shoeboxed.com by mailing all my receipts to them and they image them then post them online and my bookkeeper can then import them into Quickbooks, this service is very reasonable. Getting Paid – this is of course a very big deal so we need to make it as easy as possible. So start with the Intuit Payment Network which is the next best thing to a wire transfer but only costs $0.50 per transaction. Wire Transfers – Make sure you know your ABA # and your bank account #. I printed them on a label maker and put them up on my computer screen border because I refer to them so often. Take credit cards, a lot of clients like to pay using credit cards. You can either get a merchant account and/or definitely get a Paypal Account. Paypal is not only a great way to receive money it is also a great way to pay vendors. Keep in mind that credit cards are expensive this is why the Intuit Payment Network is such a great deal. I would also encourage you to get a Paypal Business Debit Card so you can spend the funds without waiting the 2 days it takes to transfer them to your bank account. You can also import the transactions into Quickbooks online.

6) Product – In the consulting business the “product” is you. Some folks will tell you, that you need to be certified. I think that this “depends” on the field you are in. If you are the “product” then you need to start writing. Write white papers and write reports. Write articles for your blog. Write for other people’s blogs. Write for magazines. You have no idea how much this will make a difference in your business. It creates authority and it creates visibility. You probably already have a bunch of older papers or proposals or documents that you can re-edit and make your own and re-publish in some sort of a generic way in your niche.

7) Marketing – This will not come easy for many, but you have to keep the phone ringing with new inquiries all the time. The first two most important things you can do is 1) build a list of potential prospects, 2) get press or PR both of these two things offer the most leverage for any small business. Next get a website professionally developed, as a matter of fact if you have more than one niche I could get a handful of websites. SpeechRep Media can produce a SEO ready and serious lead generating website that you can update yourself for as little as $1,500 and $250 per month to maintain. You only need a few good calls every month to keep the business rolling along to profitability. An example of a niche consulting site is Addiction-Rep.com where all I do is put my services on the site and nothing more. The reason is, too much information actually will confuse the prospects. I only get about 250 visitors per month to the site, but the phone does ring from those 250 visitors and I do get business from them. Once you have your “professional website(s)” deployed and you are continually adding great content to it you can now drive traffic to it.

8) Driving Traffic to Your Website – Hopefully you already have a couple of clients but if you don’t there are some ways to deliver traffic to your business/site immediately. I would use Google Adwords to make your phone ring immediately, you can do it yourself or you can hire a professional. I would and do hire professionals like PPC for Small Businesses. The long and short term play is SEO or Search Engine Optimization. The problem I see for many businesses is that 90% of all websites are developed not to be found by the search engines but to please the owners’ egos. Doing this the right way the first time can be absolutely critical. You have to get the tracking mechanisms in place so you can see how users use your website as well as track the incoming calls and how many you are actually getting from each website. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and LinkedIn are also great ways to drive more traffic to your website(s). Of course you can also buy banner advertisements on other people’s websites but that can be expensive and unless it is an exact match as far as niches go it might be a stretch. What I do know works is writing on other people’s blogs and websites and getting them to link your author profile back to your website. Many subject matter experts do this for the Huffington Post as an example. Another great way to go is using direct mail postcards and driving the prospects back to the phone and your website. We take this one step further with Postcards-Rep.com when we give the prospect a personalized landing page that we can track their visits on and then we can have them opt into our e-mail list, Facebook Fan Page follow us on Twitter etc. PR or public relations is the absolute best bang for your buck because you can do it yourself. There are 3 PR Podcast training calls here that will help you navigate a newsroom like a PR professional. E-mail is another great way to drive traffic back to your site. You can use Aweber, MailChimp or Infusionsoft which is what I am using.

9) CRM and Automation – This is the place where you can get a lot of leverage. Chet Holmes said in his book The Ultimate Sales Machine that he spends a portion of his time working on systems and automation in making his small business more productive. The allotment can be different for each of us but if it is an accounting system, marketing system or CRM system it is important to keep improving our efficiency using systems. One small business CRM and Marketing automation system that fulfills this is Infusionsoft.

10) Hire Professionals – I think Red Adair said it best, “if you think it is expensive hiring a professional wait until you hire an amateur.” In my experience I would much rather take less profit and hire someone who knows what they are doing so they will hire me back multiple times in the future.

I’d love to hear your ideas that would help make a consulting business better and more productive for you and your clients.

Disclaimer: In this article are the opinions of one person who has been marketing on the Internet since 1995. There are probably 100’s of other Unwritten Rules and these are just a few. I’d love to hear yours and your comments to the Rules below.

I think of this primarily for website development and website marketing. There are several unwritten rules that I will attempt to put into writing in plain English so there is an understanding on what one might expect.

Rule #1) There are no guarantees. Just like buying a used car from a stranger internet marketing has no guarantees. In the internet marketing game what works for one website or one business does not necessarily work for all. What needs to happen is your marketing team needs to develop a plan and an execution strategy that can be tested and changed over time. Some of your experiments may fail. You may lose money. You will lose money. But you will gain insights on what does and does not work so you can concentrate more resources on what does work. You will also make money if you have a product or a solution that solves a pain problem for customers are willing to pay for it.

Rule #2) Ongoing work means ongoing work, look at the contract. We (marketers) do not pause or stop work at the end of every 30 days. The internet and the web do not sleep. Successful internet marketing does not happen quickly, and requires a commitment of at least 6 to 12 months. If this is too big of a nut to swallow then you may be better served buying newspaper ads, television, radio or some other type of short term media.

Rule #3) Email is a lousy form of primary communication. It often gets misinterpreted, lost, stuck in a spam folder and loses a lot of communication momentum compared to inflection of voice or face to face body language. Email is a great form of supporting documentation and communication to personal face to face and telephone communication.

Rule #4) Change: If your competition is successful and you are not, then they are probably doing something that you are either not doing or not willing to do. At the same time, the rules would be reversed if you are successful and your competition is not. This is simple to fix but there are 3 points to this bullet.

1. Research your competition and find out what they are doing that is successful and mirror it. For example if there are 2 gas stations on a busy intersection corner then chances are that a 3rd will also do well on that busy corner.

2. Stay focused on your business and give what your clients are asking for vs. focusing too much on your competition. Yes, we want to know what they are up to but 98% of our energy needs to be focused on what we can control and that is our business.

3. If you competition is spending money on marketing to get people to their business then you know what you need to do as well.

Rule #5) Know how to ask the client for money. This can be a delicate endeavor. A lot of times if this is not done correctly relationships can crumble. It is a matter of communication and understanding of each client constraints and needs. Some businesses have a lot of bureaucracy and paperwork that need to be processed in order to be paid. Once those processes are adhered to it usually works out. In other cases some clients have cash flow issues and in the marketing business we have direct control and can have a positive impact to assist with this. Putting additional pressure on a client to pay invoices when you know they are struggling will only put more strain on a relationship. At the same time there comes a point that we have to either fish or cut bait with the client if they cannot pay their bills. We know if the client is generating enough cash to pay their bills, then knowing this helps a lot as far as strengthening the relationship. From a client perspective if a supplier is consistently difficult when it comes to money they will find a new supplier.

Rule #6) Momentum counts. When marketing it is helpful to keep momentum going. If you are building content and buying PPC ads don’t suddenly stop. Google does not like this. If you pause your PPC campaign often Google, in my experience, will punish you if you do it too frequently. They like rich campaigns that keep filling their bank accounts on a regular basis, so too on the organic side they want to see more original content filling their index. Google wants to know that your website(s) are active and maintained, and that high quality content is always being added to the site and other people are sharing it. If you stop this momentum you are sending a red flag to Google that your “website” might be abandoned at some point. I think you are much better off on slowing the momentum vs. stopping it abruptly.

Rule #7) Management of Relationship Management. Watch what people do vs. what they say. I find this very telling early in business relationships. Often if they say they will get back to you by such and such a date and that date comes and goes without communication, you can likely expect more of the same throughout the relationship. (A leopard does not change their spots). This is true with all relationships, but especially true in business and more so in the business of internet marketing. If the client or boss does not follow through on their promises then that needs to be noted. At the same time when they do follow through on their promises that too needs to be noted because the chances are you have found a really good long term partner that you are going to want to keep.

Rule #8) Be easy to do business with. Yes, we all would like the ideal business relationship where we can maximize our time and our dollars, but let’s face it, chances of finding the “perfect” relationship let alone many perfect relationships will be a challenge, we need to accept this. I have accepted it. I have one business partner who makes it so easy to business with that I will stay with her through thick and thin. She never complains, always is cheerful, always flexible and understanding my weaknesses and flaws. She is never judgmental at least from my vantage point. I will always want to do business with her because she has my back.

Rule #8a) Eliminate risk for your clients. Trust is what converts into dollars. Make their decisions easy. Give them your cell number. Be accessible. Show up in the Google search results with your name. Get LinkedIn recommendations. Get Google Places and Google Plus recommendations. Get published on other blogs and websites. Get cited by industry leaders and web sites. All this does is show your authority in your niche. The more authority the less risk in the buyers eyes.

Rule #9) Get a Paypal account and connect it with your bank account. If you plan on doing business on the Internet then Paypal is a must. It is an easy way to pay people and get paid. See Rule #8. Even if you don’t have the immediate need for Paypal today go ahead and get an account today because it takes some time to set up and get approved depending on your online banking configuration. NOT having a Paypal account screams “I’m a NEWBIE take advantage of me because I’m new to the Internet.”

The USA collective population has been mesmerized by the NFL ever since, for better or for worse while the debt soars, the education system declines and the politicians and Wall St have their way with us nothing short of debauchery. But I only bring to you this simple idea that we could apply to our businesses and possibly see a similar result? I guess we need to think outside the box a little bit and we might have our own little MNF on our hands.

Lastly it is all about execution. So great ideas are a dime a dozen….we need to execute on our ideas and see them through.

Getting this latest postcard in the mail today verifies that he was right and now the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is doing something about it. But probably not enough. They said it was our choice to do business with them. Which means to me that what they are still doing is perfectly legal.

At the same time you can find many dissatisfied people with Compliance Services just type their name (Compliance Services Scam) in to Google.

compliance services scam

It is bad enough that Skype, Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger, Anti-Virus Updates, MS Updates have these little pop up’s in my lower right hand corner but now this? Social Media in Outlook? WTF? Talk about NOT getting anything done today. Maybe I should go into the lawn mowing business.

In the online advertising and direct response marketing world we are all trying to hit some moving targets and it can become a real challenge especially if the client is not as experienced as we are in the marketing game. Let’s face it not every marketing campaign we execute on will work well or work at all. The key is to test for as low a cost as possible and drive as many impressions and clicks or calls to our business and figure out what works. The plan is then to do more of what works and kill or change what does not work.

As a recent client said to me, “Jim it all sounds good but…..how will I know -fill in the blank-?” The true answer is we won’t know until we actually execute. What we can share with you is generic data and conversion rates with similar projects. This data hopefully will assist you in making a more informed decision.

Below is a short note recently written to a client requesting their understanding and participation in a lead generation web project that includes a new website overhaul and a professional PPC campaign. The website will be prepared and optimized for SEO but SEO is not a focus as it is a long term play and the client has a requirement for immediate results.

Just to set your expectations on this project:

1) I am going to require some writing from you (about 5-10 pages about 400-700 words per page) I will tell you what to write about
2) The assumption is we are thinking the cost per click is about $5 per click. If this estimate is off it could get more expensive quickly. But our experience tells us we are probably correct.
3) You are going to have to answer the phone on the first or second ring
4) We are expecting to generate 200 website visits for the first month
5) Out of the 200 visits we think we will get 3-5% call rate (If we are off on this then costs go up to get more calls).
6) We are expecting half of the calls to be unqualified, the other half we are expecting you to close them on a “free 20 -30 minute consultation.” If you can do this then you can qualify and sell them to make sure that they are a paying client
7) We will need to run this project for 3 months. After 3 months we will re-assess. If you want to continue forward after 3 months we will formalize with a 6 month contract.

This will be an intense project and I am expecting you to follow my lead. I am confident we will have success. The hardest part is keeping the phone ringing and the good news there is it only takes money to do so. If that is done everything else should take care of it self.

While Google technically is not a “direct response company” they really are a direct response marketing business delivering back to the user the most relevant search results. By delivering relevant results Google can see the responses based on Google Analytics things like on page site time and number of pages viewed and bounce rates. Google uses typical direct response techniques, testing and tracking and then modifying based on the results. This is pure math, if it works they do more of it, if it does not work they change it or cut it. All of use in our own businesses need to do the same thing, test and track and make changes. If something works and we get the desired results or what I like to call MER then we can feel confident that we can roll it out.