Published monthly, on the 15th of each month
Published and edited by Angela Booth

In this issue:

Editorial: News!

Cold, Hard Fact: Market Regularly, Or Close Your Business [Article — A. Booth ]

Holiday Season Gift: our Digital-e ebook special

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Editorial: News!

The holiday season is almost upon us. This means sending cards and gifts to your favourite clients, starting now.

We're all busy at this time of the year. In Australia, the December/January period is the summer holiday season, so magazines shove their deadlines forward so that issues can get to the printers before the printers close for the break.

When everything's running on fast-forward, it's hard to remember marketing. However, you MUST remember marketing every day. I hope that our article this month helps to explain why this is important.

Our new blog

If you haven’t visited our latest blog, it's at:

Angela Booth's Writing Blog:

http://copywriter.typepad.com/copywriter/

Drop by and leave a comment on one of the posts.

Enjoy this issue. Please let me know if you have a topic you'd like addressed in CSB in 2005.

All best wishes from

Angela

Copyright © 2004 by Angela Booth. All rights reserved.

Marketing is the lifeblood of your business. This can be hard to remember when you're working steadily. When you've got a stream of incoming work, doing the work seems to be of utmost importance. Why bother to tout for more business, when you've already got more than you can handle?

You have to keep in mind however, that everything changes, all the time. No matter how busy you are, you must make time each day for marketing.

How much time?

If you're moonlighting in your own business, make sure that you spend a couple of hours each week marketing. If you're working in your own business full-time, spend an hour a day marketing. Every day.

Almost everything you do counts towards marketing, so this is easy. Here's what I call marketing:

• Research on the Web: create a GOAL for work first, don’t browse aimlessly, and stay out of chat rooms;
• Mini-proposals: these are ideas I sent to current clients, and to clients I'd like to attract;
• blogging;
• phone calls: catch-up calls to clients I haven't heard from in three months, and cold calls.

I like to vary my marketing efforts, because I get bored easily

Remember that all marketing takes around 90 days to start to pay off, so if you're sending out 500 mailers today, you won’t see the results for a while.

Remember to follow up on activities like mailing out news releases and brochures. Here's an article that will help —

http://www.digital-e.biz/articles/art_marketing10.html

Keep a positive mental attitude — enthusiasm is vital

Even more important than doing at least one marketing task each day is your attitude. I know it's hard to stay positive when you're just starting your creative business. Please remember that it takes at least three months for your consistent marketing efforts to start paying off.

Realise: your efforts will pay off. And the more effort you put into marketing, the more they will pay off. You just need to stay excited and positive while it seems as if nothing is happening.

Remember that marketing is a numbers game. If you've ever done anything like door to door sales, or telemarketing, you know that this is a simple fact. The more people you contact, no matter what your offer is, the more business you will get.

So please, at those times when you think that all your phone calls, faxes and letters and are dropping into a deep dark hole, don’t despair. You will get a response. Then you'll be worried that you don’t have the time to do all the work.

Make a note in your diary or Personal Information Manager: MARKET DAILY.

Do it.

The holiday season starts early at Digital-e and Pro Write.

Seasons Greetings from Birgitt and Angela. Let us help you to kick your writing career into overdrive in 2005 with our fantastic holiday season ebook special:

http://www.digital-e.biz/specials.html

Until January 6, 2005 all four of our ebooks are reduced as our holiday gift to you.

Buy one, or buy them all. Make 2005 your best writing year EVER. Remember, each ebook is a complete writing manual, with information you can use, right now, to help your writing career.

You'll find information about the books on Digital-e Specials' page. Click "more info" to get complete details on each book.

However, YOU MUST ORDER FROM THE SPECIALS PAGE to get the books at the Holiday Season price, so please make sure that you click back to the Specials page to order

http://www.digital-e.biz/specials.html

Happy Holidays! Seasons Greetings to you and yours, and all best wishes from

Birgitt and Angela