Modern Rules for Working with a Virtual Professional

Modern Rules for Working with a Virtual Professional

by | Feb 22, 2023 | Entrepreneurs

Virtual professionals are one of the relatively few industries that have benefited from the pandemic. While restaurants and exercise studios shuttered their doors, remote work grew by leaps and bounds.

One poll found that 70% of virtual professionals reported an increase in inbound inquiries, and 45% increased their hourly workload in 2020. Labor statistics showed a 41% increase in the hiring of virtual Professionals through offshore agencies, and many agencies increased their staff to keep up with demand.

If you’re exploring remote support, you have more options now. However, you may need guidance to sort through your choices. Brush up on the modern rules for working with a virtual professional.

Hiring a Virtual Professional:

  1. Consult an agency. Hiring decisions can have a big impact on your business, so you may feel more comfortable using an agency if you lack experience. For a fee, they’ll find appropriate candidates and conduct interviews.
  2. Do it yourself. On the other hand, you can save money by managing the process yourself. Browse business publications and websites for tips on writing a job posting, interviewing online, and checking references.
  3. Use online platforms. Many virtual professionals offer their services through companies like Upwork and Fiverr. You may need to sift through hundreds of applicants, but you can find help quickly when you need it.
  4. Search locally. Your virtual professional may live on another continent or down the street. Use local job boards and word of mouth if you want someone close to home.
  5. Think ahead. However you hire, keep your future needs in mind. Look for candidates who may be able to take on more responsibility and help you grow your business.

Working with a Virtual Professional:

  1. Clarify expectations. Misunderstandings can arise among colleagues in the same office. Imagine what it’s like working with someone without any face-to-face contact. Be specific about required tasks and goals. Set boundaries related to spending limits and confidential information.
  2. Document procedures. How-to manuals and video tutorials can explain routine duties and complex assignments. Ask your virtual Professional to write up any new responsibilities to keep your library up to date.
  3. Invest in tools. Technology will make collaboration easier. Shop for software that lets you edit documents and manage projects.
  4. Communicate regularly. Staying in touch may require a more deliberate strategy when you don’t run into each other in the hallways and breakroom. Schedule one-on-one meetings at least once a week. Discuss the best way to reach you with urgent and nonurgent communications.
  5. Encourage questions. New hires may feel pressured to appear competent. Let them know that you’re happy to answer questions when anything is unclear.
  6. Provide feedback. Constructive criticism is essential for learning and high performance. Make your comments prompt, specific, and actionable.
  7. Start small. Virtual Professionals need onboarding too. If time allows, introduce them gradually to their new role and help them to connect with the bigger picture. Make their first assignment something simple that they can excel at.
  8. Respect their time. Maybe your virtual Professional has limited availability or you’re one of several clients. Make the most of your time together by being prepared for the hours they spend with you.
  9. Build morale. Team spirit has more to do with the quality of your relationship rather than sharing the same business address. Create a welcoming environment and promote two-way conversations. Give your new Professional their own company email and send them a coffee cup with your logo.

Your new virtual professional could save you time and enable you to focus on tasks that maximize your strengths. Make your relationship happy and productive by choosing an outstanding candidate for the job and helping each other to succeed.

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5 Ways to Engage with Your Audience on Social Media

5 Ways to Engage with Your Audience on Social Media

by | Dec 10, 2022 | Entrepreneurs, Marketing, Social Media

Social media is one of the most powerful tools in the world today. It helps you reach out to a million audiences across the globe. The emergence of Tik Tok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and other social media platforms has in many ways benefitted the world.

The benefits of social media are widely distributed. It has affected the social, political, economic, religious, cultural, and all other sectors of human endeavor. And in business, it has had a double-edged effect on business transactions, marketing, and publicity.

If you are a CEO or a small business owner, know that providing good content for your audience on social media is essential. Engage them, and get them to like, comment, and share your posts.

These tips will help you to build a perfect brand on social media: 

Identify your ideal customer outlets. It is the first and most important part of your social media marketing. You can only create a lot of leads, close sales, and get your brand out there when you identify where to reach your target audience. How do you do that?

  • You can hire an expert to conduct an assessment on your website to identify the target audience. Tools like Leadsift can help in doing this survey.
  • Another alternative is to create a survey form for your audience on your website. You can decide where to focus your attention based on their honest responses.
  • Then create a social media campaign for your business based on the response. Use Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, Snapchat, or more.

Create engaging content. Now that you have created your social media platforms, you must feed your followers with content. You build trust and increase value by sharing interesting content on your platforms. Ensure that the content you share creates a good image for your brand. 

  • You can hire a social media promoter who will share your posts periodically. Create your post along with trending issues or recent events.
  • For instance, during the World Cup season, all your posts could be related to football and the update on the world cup. It will encourage more traffic on your platforms.
  • Also, share links to articles, videos, and infographics posted on your website on your social media outlets. You can also share posts from other businesses and add your comment to them.

Use strategic hashtags. Hashtags will expand your reach behind a regular following because it increases likes, comments, shares, and retweets. It will give your post more visibility. Hashtags will increase your social media engagements and attract new customers.

  • Using hashtags is the best way to group conversations around a specific topic. It can simply mean putting your company names or a tagline into a hashtag.
  • For instance, Dewalt Group of Companies sponsoring a television show can create a hashtag like #DewaltBeautyShow, or #DewaltCrownQueen.

Show off customer testimonials. Seeing is believing. An effective way to let your brand speak for you is by sharing positive customer feedback. Imagine receiving a good comment from a client such as this:

  • “Hi, thanks to Doreen from Ambicionz for your outstanding efforts to provide a good customer experience. My business has benefitted immensely from your consultation.”
  • Sharing genuine feedback like this can win you wider recognition on social media.
  • Many businesses also hire celebrities as influencers and brand ambassadors for their products.

Be consistent with your content. Consistency is the surest way to assert your dominance in the social media arena. Individuals go on social media almost every day. These people scroll to consume content available to them.

  • You can have your company’s brand glued to their thoughts when you are widely seen on social media.
  • People may forget about you if you fail to give a regular update. Increase your followers by engaging them. Give interactive posts on trending issues. It will get them talking and sharing your posts.

Social media impacts businesses positively. It facilitates brand recognition, customer engagement, revenue, and customer service. Put your business across various social media platforms and watch the positive impact!

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Marketing and Pricing Your eBook

Marketing and Pricing Your eBook

by | May 27, 2015 | Authors, Marketing

Ambicionz - When determining the price your eBook Remember...You have FINALLY done it!  You’ve written and compiled your first eBook and now you are ready to market it to your potential customers. But first, you have to decide how much to charge for it. Finding the right price is essential to the success of your product. If you charge too little, people will think it’s of little value, and they won’t purchase it, or if  they do buy your book, you will have to sell thousands of copies to get to the point where you can begin to see a profit. If you price your eBook too high when compared with your competition, you will find yourself steadily lowering the price, which will cause you all kinds headaches. For example, if you sell your eBook at first for $39.99, and later reduce it to $24.95, don’t you think the people who bought it for $39.99 are going to be PISSED?

Choosing the right price off the bat for your eBook is one of the most critical parts of the marketing process. The first rule of pricing eBooks is to never underprice. Determine the highest price your potential customers can afford, and then if you find your book isn’t selling, you can always reduce the price. However, before you take that step, make sure you are promoting your book online like crazy via a sales page, your blog, joint venture partners blogs, social media and any other median you have access to. The price of your eBook should be aimed at bringing in profits, but you should never forget that price is one of the factors that people use in judging the value of your eBook prior to buying it. So always start with the highest price, and then launch a mega-marketing campaign.

Pricing an eBook is particularly difficult since they are digital. Which is why the value of an eBook is very confusing to many. Let’s look at the difference between a book in print and an eBook. A printed book is an object you can hold in your hand, store on your bookshelf, even hand down to the next generation. It is priced on factors such as paper stock, design and production costs, as well as marketing.  An eBook however is electronic and can be read either on an electronic device or printed and there is no paper stock or production costs.  However you still have design and marketing costs.

The biggest factor that unites eBooks and print books is that they are composed of ideas. It is the ideas in these books that have the ability to change, or possibly transform, people’s lives.

What do you think an idea is worth when evaluated against the cost of paper and ink?

IDEAS are valuable! I repeat…IDEAS are valuable! That is how you determine the cost of your eBook.

What should I charge for my ideas?

There are many different formulas and methods for determining the correct price for your eBook. Let’s begin with honing in on your ultimate goals.

Decide if your goal is to get wide distribution and maximum exposure.  If it is, your goal is to draw potential customers to your business or service, or to establish the credibility of your reputation. If this is your main goal, you should aim to keep your price on the low side. Some authors have even priced their eBooks at a profit loss to draw a high number of new customers. The key is to find a price that maximizes your profits and the number of books you sell.

This is an excellent pricing strategy if you are looking to acquire long-term customers. Long-term customers are extremely likely to buy from you over and over again as long as the first eBook they buy is of exceptional quality and beneficial to them.

However, if your book contains valuable and most importantly, NEW information, references, or techniques, then you should aim to price it on the high end.

After you figure out your goal, you must figure out what your potential customer’s need is for your eBook. For example, does your book solve a particular problem? If it does, and solves it in a way that hasn’t been written about in one hundred other eBooks, you will be able to achieve high sales at a high price. If your book solves a problem or answers questions in a new and unique way, you should price your book as high as you can go. You will achieve larger profits this way, but bring in fewer customers. Just make sure the question or problem that your book solves is one that is important and relevant to the majority of your market audience. If your ideas are not common knowledge, or you are presenting a brand new technique, you will be able to sell books at a high price. Just be prepared for your competition to undercut you on price as soon as they hear about your book.

Keep in mind that the above pricing strategy is temporary. Eventually, you will cease to sell books at this high price. So figure out in advance how long you plan to offer your eBook at this high price, and when that time is up, change your pricing strategy.

If you want to see large profits over customer draw, aim for an audience that is looking for easy solutions to their problems at a low price. If your book is aimed at solving one particular problem rather than general advice, then you can charge more. Start at the highest price the market will bear to bring in the largest profits, and plan to discount the book a number of times throughout the year.

Marketing Strategies

Ambicionz - Market Your eBook Online Everywhere!The key that unlocks the sales potential of your eBook is to find a single sentence that becomes your selling handle. This sentence states what question or problem your book answers and the benefits your eBook can provide. Then be sure to use that sentence in every piece of sales and promotional material, and every time anyone asks you about your eBook.

Besides promoting your books assiduously online, there are several other strategies that can help you sell more books.

One is to give something away for free with your book, such as a valuable bonus item. Or bundle several eBooks under one price, which lowers the price for each eBook if they were sold separately.

An effective technique for figuring out a price is to send out a survey to your current customers. If these customers have already bought an eBook from you, ask for their opinion in terms of price. Do this by creating a sales page for the new book, but don’t include a price on that page. Instead, add a number of links to survey questions that ask pointed questions to aid you in assigning a price to your eBook.

Another strategy is to test out prices by creating a number of duplicate sales pages with different prices on each page. Make sure your sales copy is exactly the same on every page, and includes your selling-handle sentence. Then figure out for each page the conversion ratio between visitors to your site and sales of your book. This will tell you what your optimum price is.

Ultimately, if you’ve written a book that solves a problem or presents a new technique, your book will bring in both traffic and profits. So be sure to write that selling-handle sentence that sums up what problem your book solves and what the benefits of your book will be to the customers who purchase it. And then watch your market come to you!

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7 Benefits to Using an Online CRM System

7 Benefits to Using an Online CRM System

by | May 23, 2015 | Entrepreneurs

Ambicionz - CRM GraphicToday it takes more than a rolodex to build your customer relationships, you need a good Customer Relationship Management System more commonly known as CRM.  With technology at the core of everything we do, A good CRM system is critical in getting, as well as keeping, customers.  Your potential customer or client’s perception of your services and treatment decide your chances of making or keeping the sale.

When choosing a CRM, I recommend you use one that is cloud based or online.  Why an online CRM system?

  • Improved Efficiency – Missing or duplicate data leads to inefficiency. An online CRM systems help avoid this error because every time an employee enters new information, it automatically updates all relevant data and shared across departments; giving your team up-to-date information at all times.
  • Better Monitoring of Your Sales Pipeline – With accounting software incorporated into a data management system, an online CRM system allows you to view your sales metrics in one place, giving you an instant report that is easier to understand. This allows you to deliver more effective marketing campaigns.
  • Increased Sales Revenue – Analyzing marketing data for new sales, opportunities for up-selling, and spotting new market trends and services is made easier with an online CRM tool.
    Provides a Tool for Improvement – Sales and marketing is a constantly-changing process. To keep up with these changes, your online CRM system can help you ramp up for these changes through its training modules, reports and graphical displays.
  • Accurate Planning, Trending and Forecasting – Checking your business overall performance is a breeze because tools are integrated in your CRM system for added convenience. This allows accurate planning, trending and forecasting based on current market trends captured by your CRM system.
  • Facilitates Team Cohesion – With an online CRM system, sales and marketing teams have access to the same timely, accurate data. This means your team functions as a cohesive group, delivering better customer responsiveness and less frustration among the team.
  • View company stats in real time – When it comes to marketing, having up-to-date customer information is vital; an online CRM tool is instrumental in providing you with real-time information regarding the success or failure of your marketing efforts.

From lead generation to the closing of sale, your online customer relationship management tool will help you determine your company’s most lucrative marketing strategies so you can better focus on the ones that work.

With so many online CRM’s available, I recommend you do your due diligence when choosing the system appropriate for your business needs.

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