Mark Satterfield [Mark Satterfield] - The One Week Marketing Plan: The Set It & Forget It Approach for Quickly Growing Your Business

MARK SATTERFIELD is the founder & CEO of Gentle Rain Marketing Inc. For the past 20 years, hes advised entrepreneurs, consultants, advisors, and business owners on how to attract consistent streams of brand new prospects and turn large percentages of them into paying clients.

Marks the author of eight previous books, including the best selling Unique Sales Stories: How To Get More Referrals, Differentiate Yourself From The Competition & Close More Sales Through The Power of Stories.

Prior to founding Gentle Rain Marketing, Mark held executive positions with PepsiCo and Kraft Foods, in addition to having served as the Director of Career Services for the Graduate School of Business at Emory University.

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A MARKETING SYSTEM is much like a mosaic. You take bits and pieces from many sources, and combine them into a system that works for you. The One Week Marketing Plan would never have been possible without the insights, perspective, and assistance from many people, including the following:

Jay Abraham

Andrea Albright

Erin Alli

Matt Bacak

Annette Bau

Larry Benet

Bob Bly

Ali Brown

Jimmy D Brown

Brendon Burchard

John Carlton

Hollie Clere

Terry Dean

Dave Dee

Ryan Deiss

John Doerr

T. Harv Eker

Roxanne Emmerich

Ken Evoy

Mike Filsaime

Vinnie Fischer

Michael Fortin

Bryan Franklin

David Fry

Michael Gerber

Jeffrey Gitomer

Bill Glazier

Bill & Steve Harrison

Jeff Hayzlett

Greg Herlean

Sally Hogshead

David Horsager

John Jantsch

Andy Jenkins

Sheree Keys

Dan Kennedy

Frank Kern

Nate Kievman

Jeffrey Lant

Mitchell Levy

Christina Littrell

Alex Mandossian

Perry Marshall

Ann McIndoo

Rick Miller

Brian Mittman

Armand Morin

Alexis Neely

Eben Pagen

Natalie Petouhouff

John Rees

Jennifer Russell

Marlon Sanders

Lisa Sasevich

Greta Schultz

Mike Schultz

Joey Smith

Alicia Tucker

Chris Vandersyden

Mike Volpe

Jeff Walker

Alan Weiss

Jane Wesman

Al Zuckerman

Mahesh Grossman and the Authors Team for their invaluable help in organizing this work.

And finally to Glenn Yeffeth, Jennifer Canzoneri, and the team at BenBella Books for their suggestions, advice, and support.

THE ONE WEEK MARKETING PLAN is easier when you outsource at least some of it. I highly recommend you hire someone to do your website design, and you may want to outsource some of the other activities as well. The biggest issue is going to be your budget.

Lets spend a few minutes talking about different resources you can use to outsource some or all of your marketing, and some tips on how to make it a productive relationship.

The least expensive resource is Fiverr.com, where freelancers take jobs for five dollars. There are certain jobs that make a lot of sense to farm out to Fiverr. Ive mentioned them throughout the book, particularly in the chapters on blogging and video.

The one strategy I would recommend with Fiverr is to give your first job to three people. Then you can develop an ongoing working relationship with the person you decide is the best. You can also try to use the advice below for the other outsourcing services I recommend, though people who are working for just five dollars may not be as likely to give you as many answers as those who you are paying significantly more money to.

For more substantial projects, the two companies I like best for hiring freelancers are Elance (Elance.com) and Guru (Guru.com). They make it easy to hire people for fixed fees, instead of hourly, and they offer escrow programs that protect both you and the freelancer. That makes it easy to get your project started without having to pay the freelancer up front. Instead, you put the money into an escrow account managed by the service, and they release it when the freelancer reaches a particular milestone. If there is a dispute, there is a process to help you resolve the disagreement. You are also able to rate your freelancers on a scale of one to five, with five being the best. That gives you another tool to make sure they treat you fairly.

Your first step is to join one of the services. My personal recommendation would be to only use one service at a time. If you dont get the quality of freelancer you want, then try the other one. The reason I recommend this approach is that youll probably get a lot of responses to your listing, so if you post on both sites, its really easy to get overwhelmed.

The next step is to develop a budget for the project. You can search on either of the sites for jobs similar to yours, which will give you a rough sense for the going rate. You can also search freelancers in a variety of categories without posting a job. If you look at their profiles in detail, youll be able to see what they charge and what theyve been paid. The particulars are a bit different between Guru and Elance, but with a little research you should be able to develop a very appropriate budget.

Youll notice that talent overseas tends to be less expensive than comparable resources in the United States. There are pros and cons to hiring vendors from other countries. The advantages are that youll spend less money, the quality is generally quite good, and the person you interface with will have a decent command of English. However, theres a difference between being decent and being fluent in English. My experience with overseas vendors is that they are frequently extremely direct and literal when it comes to English. It can require an enormous amount of patience to communicate with them, and you have to be willing to convey your instructions in great detail. If youre the type of person who says, You know what I mean, youll likely get frustrated. If, however, you can say, I want this in blue, and I want this box moved from the upper right-hand corner to the lower left, youll be fine.

While Ive found that the people Ive hired from overseas have strong technical skills, most of them have great difficulty in writing persuasive copy. I wouldnt outsource writing sales copy to them. Some people do, and when you read whats on their website, you can usually tell.

Next you need to come up with a job description. The more detailed you can be, the better. Heres an example: Im looking for a WordPress site that includes a squeeze page with a form for prospects to input their name and email address, and a tab for a blog. The form will be attached to 1ShoppingCart as the auto-responder. Familiarity with Google Analytics will be important as well. Here are some websites that are close to what I want. Then list two or three examples.

Ive added one sentence to job postings that significantly increases my response rate. That sentence is, Im looking for a long-term partner. The truth is, people who use Elance and Guru are not that good at marketing themselves. Once they complete a project for a client, they have to find another job, so they continually have to respond to posts for work. If you communicate that you are looking for a long-term relationship, youre likely to see an increase in both quality and quantity of applications. (It should go without saying, but Ill mention it anyway: You shouldnt say youre looking for a long-term partner if youre not.)

You will find that some freelancers send out the same canned response to everyone, without regard for what your job posting says. Thats why I add the following sentence to all my jobs: If you just use a cut-and-paste response, it will be obvious and Ill delete your submission immediately. Adding that sentence will cut down considerably on the spammy responses that youll tend to get otherwise.