Jennifer Lancaster

September 17, 2014

Promote Yourself – Five Easy Ideas

Many small businesses are wasting fruitless energy on pursuing mass marketing tactics — aiming to blanket their local area. In addition to newsletters, there are plenty of other ways to promote yourself and your services to a narrower, more interested audience. 1. Publicity in the local newspaper, if you are new in town, have just joined another partner business, are hosting a seminar, or are in the midst of inventing something. 2. Putting on a low cost event that resonates with your target market or a free seminar night at your office. (Or at Redcliffe Hive / event hire space). 3. Ask a supplier or a noted author/blogger to feature your story on their website, if your goals and markets align nicely. 4. For those who write articles, there is a wide range of digital magazines cropping up which you…

December 23, 2020

Book Writing

Who is your Book’s Reader? Create a Reader Profile

It’s sometimes the obvious things that you miss when you’re caught up in excitedly writing your book. Along with defining the theme, having a specific reader profile in mind can really help in the formation of your book, and later, its marketing. Sure, you can write at a higher level because you know all about your subject… but should you? Because writing a bestselling non-fiction book is about connecting with your reader, not showing off your experience. If you are open and explain in the Preface that you did start off with a struggle in this area, it actually builds a rapport with the reader much better than if you start “preaching from the top”. You’ll notice I said book’s reader (not readers)… this is because it’s much easier to bring out your true writer’s voice when thinking of one…

December 13, 2020

Personal Branding

Show Me Why You Shine in Your Elevator Pitch

Folks, I’ve been to a lot of networking groups in the past six years. As an observer of words, I find it interesting what people say in their 60-second elevator pitch. A lady at a group today said something like “Men and women are talking about anti-ageing and I help you discover how to prevent anti-ageing”. Never mind the baloney, because she said the opposite of what she meant. You want to prevent ageing / wrinkles. People who go to the network marketing events tend to pick up certain lines and re-use them, and soon enough, you’ve heard them before. Even worse, they are very generic. GENERIC is the kiss of death in relating to people. Do you know what people like and relate to? Is it a pitch they’ve heard before…. or is it the Authentic you? Can you…

June 26, 2026

Self-Publishing

Self-publishing in Australia – a 360 degree View

Clear-thinking author Clea Saal, espouses, “we believe, because we want it to be true”… This applies whether talking about self-publishing or anything else. Any writer working hard to write and promote their book has high expectations… and the self-publishing author assistance companies play on that hope in their marketing. Some authors truly believe that they will get an offer at Hay House by publishing through Balboa Press, for example. After all, BP say they are a division of Hay House all through their website. No mention of probabilities. (Find out more in Penny’s ‘authors: are you being scammed’ article at Huff Post). Self-publishing in Australia is no different to America and rest of the world. Thousands of hopeful authors (fiction or non-fiction), few traditional publishers accepting unsolicited submissions, and a fight for bookshelf space and online eyeballs. A perfect storm…

July 16, 2014

Book Marketing

Newsletter Choices for You

You might be considering the launch of a newsletter for clients and prospects to read at their leisure. One benefit is, you can re-use any blog article we’ve written and with just a little jigging, put them into your newsletter. Some businesses are sitting on a goldmine of client contacts, but alas do not have a method of regular, informative communication. Format 1: Print or PDF. Our ABC newsletter is laid out in Adobe InDesign, based on a prepaid template to save time (view Newsletter ABC JULY). Compiled for the Australian Business Club, the articles are written by members for the benefit of their clients. The print copies are around $1.50 each for 4 A4s (1 A3 D/S), thanks to Redcliffe Office Supplies. Format 2: Email (HTML). Mailchimp, Aweber, et. al. make this easy by providing umpteen templates (incl. mobile)…

March 7, 2017

Selling eBooks and Media

Landing Pages are Good for eBook Marketing

You might have this preconception that building Lead Generation landing pages are just for selling events, courses, online systems, etc. But any B2B owner or marketer can utilise an easy landing page builder to giveaway an ebook or video course so as to interest a target market. This could be in the form of a Long form page (i.e. it allows for more points, headings and images than a standard lead capture page). As the page contains more copy, leads can thus be attracted via SEO (search engines) rather than pay per click or pay per lead advertising. It can also be shorter but be directed there from your Facebook marketing or LinkedIn profile. Video and White Paper on Long Form Landing Pages. Simple eBook Sales Pages You can also use Landing Pages for simple eBook marketing. I love landing pages because it keeps…