In my Sunday blog last week ‘Are you earning what you are worth in 2012?’ I shared with you  some ideas for starting to change some of the barriers that may prevent you from maximising your earnings this year.  I also promised to reveal this week some of the great time and money saving solutions I’ve discovered to help automate and delegate those crucial marketing activities that you must be doing.

Some of you who have attended our powerful workshops already will know that I’ve spent many thousands of pounds and even more hours working out what really makes a difference in marketing our type of business.  So save yourself a lot of time and money and try these tried and tested approaches!

7 of my top tips for time and money saving marketing of your training business:

1. Work out what you are really good at and enjoy when marketing your training business.  For example, don’t outsource your copywriting just because you know a good copywriter.  If you enjoy writing then devote a bit of time to learn how to write compelling copy and then do it yourself.  You know your business, its ethos, its brand and its target market.  A copywriter, however good, may not. Make sure you outsource the areas that drag you down – in my case that’s payroll and IT!
2. Get yourself a flip camera that you can take with you when working and capture those testimonials on video at the point when your delegates and clients are most delighted with your services.  You can then plug these types of cameras straight into your pc. Upload to Youtube and you can have great video clips on your site very quickly.
3. Set aside time regularly for social media activities and ‘batch’ tasks such as tweeting and blogging.  There’s loads of free options out there to pre-schedule your communications and to help you quickly analyse their effectiveness
4. Consider having a virtual team to help you as and when you need it. I have people all over the world work for me on an ad hoc basis, and I have found them to be a lot cheaper, more responsive and more motivated than many of their UK counterparts.  It’s sad in a way to say this, but I’ve found it to be true.  I had a guy work for me on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s day because I needed a tight turnaround on a project and there was no extra charge.  I mainly use Odesk.
5. Don’t waste time on numerous Invitations To Tender unless you are in a very powerful position and confident you will win them.
6. Think very carefully about your return on investment likely to be gained from local networking events. Many business clubs only have small business representation and these types of networks are unlikely to be very rewarding unless your target market is small, local business.
7. Don’t waste huge amounts of time travelling to visit ‘prospective’ clients.  We have a great discussion thread on this on our LinkedIn group ‘How to market training’ so why not join and get some other great marketing tips for free from me and other trainer group members there!

So there you have it, just 7 of my very many time and money saving tips for marketing your training business.  Want to know more?  Then please check out what’s on at www.howtomarkettraining.co.uk or attend one of our upcoming events.

Have a good week.

Kind regards

Alison

Alison Miles-Jenkins FCIPD

Founder, How To Market Training and award-winning consultancy Training To Achieve

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