The Advanced Practice Marketing Workshop is a one-day event designed to teach you how to effectively and successfully market your aesthetic or other medical practice through various marketing outlets, including the internet. The workshop is presented by Dr. Cosentino, the President of Empire Medical Training, as well as by Alex Williams, Empires Director of Marketing. The session is mainly lecture with question and answer periods throughout the day. Marketing staff will also be around to help you individually with questions.

The purpose of the workshop is to teach you proven methods and strategies that will increase revenue for your medical practice. This workshop is intended for practice owners that want to grow their practice financially and is not designed for casual business owners. The information given during the workshop is intensive with a focus on aesthetic medical practices. The workshop will teach you specific ways to add revenue to your practice and will also help you to develop a custom marketing plan for your practice. The marketing workshop is not your average Marketing 101 style seminar. The workshop proves that aesthetics can be very profitable if advertised correctly and successfully and will ultimately show you the optimal ways to advertise and market your medical practice.

During the workshop, you will receive a complete course manual that contains all of the information that is gone over during the workshop as well as a CD and DVD training guide that you can refer to after the workshop is over. The workshop will focus on such marketing areas as the internet. Through Facebook, and Twitter as well as other social media sites, the workshop will show you how to successfully market yourself and make yourself available to patients. They will go over the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as well as the importance of ranking high on Google. Another area that will be focused on is the art of up-selling to patients. At least 70% of patents should be up sold on other products in order to generate more revenue for your medical practice. Non internet advertising is another focal point of the workshop. You will learn how to effectively market your practice through local television as well as radio and even direct mailing. The workshop will teach you how to teach your employees to successfully conduct a patient consultation that is designed to generate emotion and leave the patient feeling not as if you need their business but that they need your services. Myths of marketing will also be discussed. Knowing the myths of marketing will help you understand what a successful marketing strategy entails. You will learn exactly what type of marketing strategies to avoid in order to grow and maintain a successful medical practice.

Each topic is discussed in depth to ensure that once you leave the workshop, you will feel confident and comfortable that you can implement new marketing strategies that will bring in more patients as well as generate more money for your medical practice.

With the number of search engine queries numbering in the hundreds of millions each and every day, one thing is for certain, the internet is definitely not short on traffic. It is no secret that, now, when people want to research, they immediately go online and begin entering search queries. For the most part, the results returned are relevant and useful despite the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts gaming of the system. For that reason, search engines and the algorithms they use are here to stay.

For businesses, marketing to search engines is big business. Not to take advantage of the traffic on the web is to literally leave money on the table. For that reason, making good use of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) as part of an overall marketing plan makes good sense. As with anything, having the right tools for the job can make the difference between a campaign that fails and one that succeeds. Here are the top SEM tools needed to succeed in Search Engine Marketing.

The Google Keyword Selector Tool. Keywords are the foundation of SEO and SEM. Without targeting the right keywords, your efforts could be wasted. Think of it in terms of an advertisement on a billboard on the side of a road. What would make more sense? To purchase ad space on a back-country road that sees less than one hundred cars per day or a main thoroughfare or highway that sees constant traffic numbering into the thousands or tens of thousands of cars per day.

Of course, keyword analysis is very important. Just because a keyword has tons of traffic does not mean that you can successfully compete for that traffic. The competition must be analyzed so as to determine the location of the low hanging fruit. Sometimes, the benefits of specific keyword traffic may not be worth the effort it takes to rank for that keyword. The right niche and keyword analysis tool can help.

A Keyword Optimized Website. It goes without saying that a website is necessary. However, a website optimized for the keywords you are working to rank for is essential. A website can be optimized first and foremost by placing your keyword in you site’s title tag. This means making sure that you main index page has your keyword in it whenever you are listed in search results. Additional places your keywords can be listed are in your meta description tags, your meta keyword tags, your header tags, you page copy, your image alt tags. This is know as on-site SEO. Additionally, you can also add your keywords to the anchor text you use when building links to your site. This is know as off-site SEO.

An Autoresponder. Finally, you need to capture and harness the targeted traffic that SEO and SEM bring you. If you do not do this, odds are your visitors will never return. To have the ability to invite your visitors back over and over again and to have the ability to sell to them over and over again, you need to capture their email address on their first visit. An auto responder with a free offer is the most effective way to do this. A quality autoresponder can make the difference.

That being said, all of these tools are meaningless without the most important part of this entire equation.

So, you’ve got your business plan laid out and you’re ready for the customers to start rolling in – but where are they? With new businesses blooming everywhere, including the Internet, how do you get traffic in your doors or on your Web site? Read on for some marketing tips to help you get your start-up off the ground.

Stay focused on your main product or service. It’s tempting to see what your competition is doing and want to get in on that too. But you need to stay true to what you got into business for in the first place. This is particularly important in markets that are rapidly growing. Now this doesn’t mean you can’t expand your product line or services, it just means to focus on one product. If you use poster printing to get the word out and your poster touts three or four different products, all with the same amount of poster space, people won’t know what you do best.

Know your competitive edge. You need to research your competitors and know what benefits they’re touting. You then need to compare your competitors’ benefits with yours so that you can offer something that different and unique. If you don’t know your unique selling point, it’s going to be hard to grab a piece of market share. You can use a custom poster printing company to help you create poster printing pieces, brochures and other print materials that will highlight your selling point and to create materials that will help you stand out from your competition.

Know your customers. Of course targeting your customers is important to any marketing plan, but how well do you know them? You really, really need to know them. What kind of house do they live in? What is their income level? What kind of cars do they drive? Do they have kids? You need to figure out what is important to your customers and what motivates them to buy certain products. Then you can use that information to cater directly to them.

Be flexible. It’s hard to know what’s going to happen in the market – even the best market forecasters only have educated guesses. So, if you decide to market to one audience and that audience isn’t responding after six months, switch your focus to another audience. If one marketing tactic, like your direct mail pieces, isn’t drawing people in, try some custom poster printing. If you are using catalogs, but customers mention how easy it would be to order from a Web site, create a Web site. Go with the flow and give the customers what they want, how they want it.

In the prior article, I covered what I refer to as the basic steps to take in order to own and operate a small retail business. These are the steps that take you to the point in the process where it’s nearly time to open your doors to the public. Now it’s time for the next stage of the process, or what I call Advanced Basic Training. This is the stage that requires even more due diligence than the basics as a lot of key financial issues are discussed here.

Remember in the first article that we named our business, stocked and priced our shelves and sales floor, and established our hours of operation. So now it’s time to move into final three stages, which are:

o Guidelines for staffing

o Wages and benefits issues

o Developing an effective marketing plan

In the basic steps I discussed in the first article, I tried to focus on some of the pitfalls you are apt to encounter during each stage. I made recommendations on the positives and negatives in this process based on my own personal experiences with various endeavors. And I’ll be doing the same with the above three steps as well. The big difference this time is that the financial aspects of your business really come into play in these three steps.

Guidelines for staffing

How many people will it take to staff your business? This is difficult to calculate when you’re initially starting. My biggest headache was always hiring the right people that would benefit the business. Let’s face it folks, the “employment pool” as I call it is pretty damned shallow — not a lot of talent to choose from like there used to be. The hiring process is still a pain for most business owners, and it’s going to be even tougher for you as a rookie business owner, especially if you are lacking the experience in this area. But don’t fret, here are some recommendations that will help you get through this process.

Don’t be overly judgmental of a person based on their appearance. Boy, this is really the tough one and I feel it is the single most important recommendation of the bunch. Good looks, proper hair length, and the person’s physique are not always quality factors; in fact you might even say that perfection in these areas constitutes a minority of individuals in society today. Not every person out there is photogenic enough for the cover of People magazine, longer hair has become an acceptable standard today, and most people today need to lose a few pounds anyway. If a person appears neat and clean in the hygienic aspects of grooming, this is an indication that they care about themselves and how other people view them. So flush that mentality before you find yourself running your business from open to close seven days a week all by your lonesome.

Can the job applicant carry on a reasonably intelligent conversation? Don’t laugh; this is a very critical factor in the hiring process as well. If they can’t talk to you, do you think they’ll be able to talk to your customers? I look for a few key “hot spots” such as how well they maintain eye contact during the interview, are they too fidgety when trying to respond to your questions, do they lack self-confidence in their answers, are they overly confident to the point of bragging — just to name a few. You can safely construe these as warning signs and reasons to shy away from these types.

Trying to find someone with experience is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Are you ready to be discouraged? Then this one will definitely do just that. I have discovered over the years that this can be very frustrating. It’s not necessarily that hard to find someone with retail experience; but it’s difficult as Hell to keep them. Let’s face it, the only jobs lower on the wage scale than retail is flipping burgers for Ronald McDonald or working in Guy Patterson’s father’s appliance store. Remember the movie “That Thing You Do”?

Look for an individual that you and your business will benefit from. During your interviewing process, get into the habit of always asking the job seeker this question – “Why should I hire you instead of another applicant?” Again, listen for some of those key hot spots (see the paragraph above about intelligent conversation) when they respond to this question. Here’s another helpful tip. Listen for the key words customer service in the conversation; it means that they are a “people person” and will relate well with your customers. This is a must in any retail business.

Employing the use of a good labor matrix (or labor formula) enables you to staff the operation properly, and helps you reach a level of profitability within that 12 month parameter. What does it take to develop the right formula? Here are the variables you need to consider:

o Fixed and variable expenses (wages, rent, utilities, advertising, cost of goods)

o Coverage (i.e., the number of bodies needed for sales, customer service, shipping and receiving, store sanitation, merchandising, point of sale issues)

o Average monthly cost of inventory (this of course varies with sales volume)

When you’re just getting started, you need to calculate the total of the first item above so that you can calculate what it costs you daily to keep your doors open. Once you’ve established a rough idea on this then you’ll have a better idea on how to start controlling this part of your overhead. The key here when it comes to adding additional employees is the customer service factor. When you can no longer handle certain aspects of store operations (e.g. customer traffic, customer service, shipping and receiving, stocking and merchandising), then it is time to think about hiring another employee.

Wages and benefits issues

What does it take to find and keep good employees? The immediate consideration is a decent wage package at each level of employ. If you study the retail industry nationwide, most successful companies are multiple location types of operations or chain stores. Managers are usually salaried and receive an override based on a percentage of the total sales volume. Additionally, monthly or quarterly bonuses are sometimes paid based on net dead profits of the store.

Assistant Managers are salaried or hourly depending on the company. Sometimes they are afforded a smaller percentage of the profits as a monthly or quarterly bonus, but this is rare. Most salespeople are paid an hourly wage and on rare occasions afforded a small commission on their sales as well. Warehouse personnel are paid an hourly wage.

Initially, you will not only be the owner, but the store manager as well since you probably won’t be able to shell out management wages to begin with. However, it would be a good idea to hire and train someone that you could trust running the store in your absence. And you’ll need to pay them a bit more than your regular employees. So keep that in mind, unless you feel like being in that store seven days a week testing your sanity levels.

You will probably start out as a 3 or 4 person operation, depending on size of the store, breadth of your product assortment, and your customer flow. If you start off as a 3 person operation, there are you, that assistant I urged you to hire, and a combination person. By combination, I mean someone who can work shipping and receiving, merchandising, and customer service. If you can afford to be a 4 person operation, there are you, the assistant, a floor person who can help customers and assist your warehouse person when needed, and a warehouse person.

With all this being said, I would urge you to formulate job descriptions for each level of employee in your store, yourself included. This way, you’re not babysitting people all the time, and can attend to your own duties as well. Heck, you may even be able to take a break once in a while, take the wife out to lunch, or even take a day off. And trust me; at some point in time, that day off idea will look pretty tasty when you start examining those sanity levels I spoke of.

In addition to the job description sheets, here are a few more strong recommendations. First and most importantly, drug test everybody that you decide to hire. This one aspect will save you countless hours of grief down the road. I hate to be stereotypical, but 9 out of 10 “druggies” are not in control of their lives — the drugs are. Theft has the tendency to become an issue as well.

Secondly, without fail, investigate their prior employment history. Believe it or not, people are not always honest on their applications, and they can really massage a resume so it sounds exactly like what you want to hear (oh, say it ain’t so). Pick up the phone, call that former employer, and remember that legally there are only 3 questions you can ask, and these are:

1. How long was this person in your employ?

2. What was their wage or salary?

3. Would you consider hiring this person again? (This is the biggy. If the person you’re talking to says “no”, you cannot ask them why. However, it is safe to assume that there is a valid reason for that employer not rehiring that person. On the other hand, if they answer “yes” you can ask the next question.)

4. How would you describe this person’s performance?

Does this help? I sure hope so. I am telling you all this from past experience, and believe me, you want to take all these things into consideration. The livelihood of that new business is dependant upon these issues. So please save yourself a lot of headaches and nightmares and reread through this part again.

The next topic here is benefits, and there’s a good possibility that the only one who will have medical, dental, and vision coverage is you. At some point in time, once the business is deemed profitable and successful, a benefits package needs to be considered for full time employees, with part time employees being included with medical benefits. In most instances, benefits are considered more critical than wages if you want to entice and keep good employees for any length of time. A well-rounded benefits package usually includes the following:

— Health insurance including dental and vision plans (after 90 days)

— 401k or some form of retirement plan (after 90 days)

— Vacation pay (after one year of employment)

— Sick pay (after 90 days)

Bear in mind that your employees are insured through your Workman’s Compensation Insurance, but that only covers them if they are injured on the job. And you are required by federal and state law to have this.

Developing an effective marketing plan

“The man, who on his trade relies, must either bust or advertise” was a quote that came from the 1700′s at the onset of advertising in this country. And there is no greater truism where marketing your business is concerned. I want to say that the quote comes from Thomas Payne, but I wouldn’t swear to it. But, it had such an impact on me when I first became interested in the advertising and marketing industry that I have never forgotten it.

This is the area of the six step process that I always enjoy the most and have a lot of fun with, not from a comical standpoint, but because this is my primary focus of financial endeavor. I’ve been around the advertising and marketing sector for over 17 years now and have really gotten my feet wet in the three major media, (i.e. print, radio, and television), and now I’m becoming well versed in the online sector as well — and not because I’ve wanted to, but because I have had to.

Once it is public that you have opened (or are opening) a new business, be ready for another one of those shark attacks. You are about to be bombarded by reps from every media imaginable, telling you that their’s is the best avenue of advertising in the world. (There’s this word that starts with “bull” that oftentimes comes to mind here.)

Here are a few suggestions when considering where to advertise. At the outset, only look at print advertising, such as your local newspaper and telephone book. Realize that for the time being, radio and television advertising may not be affordable, so you may want to put those media on the back burner. As far as the phone book is concerned, stick with a liner ad in the white and yellow pages (categorized).

When you’re considering placement for your ad in the newspaper, think about the different sections in the publication and where your business fits the best. You can start with a sixth or eighth of a page ad for three months and do just fine. But don’t think that you can advertise a month or less and start doing a land office business. In most instances, it ain’t gonna happen. Here are some things to consider when it comes to spending your money on advertising.

Advertise for a minimum of 60 to 90 days. It will take that long for the buying public to get used to your business being there. And once they know you’re there, you need to keep your name visible. It’s called “market awareness”.

Change your ads often. Run a different special each week, otherwise your ad gets stale and people won’t pay attention to it any more. Remember variety is the spice of life.

Advertise heavier when business is slow. What??? Am I ought of my mind??? Absolutely not. The typical mindset amongst business owners is that advertising is an expense, not a necessity. So when times get tough, that’s one of the first things they pull the plug on. Here’s a tip, if most of the retailers out there do that, and you keep advertising, it looks like you’re still in business when the other ones have flown the coop. Gee, what a concept — market awareness. You have to keep your name out there.

Search engine optimization is increasingly recognized as an important and crucial part of the marketing plan recognized. Due to the significant increase in costs for other forms of online marketing is for entrepreneurs, it becomes almost inevitable, SEO incorporated into their marketing mix.

It is therefore not surprising to see that professional Search Engine Optimization is now a GroES combining business with this industry will grow rapidly. However, there are many different types of SEO agencies in the market and most reliable service available, can be a daunting task.

An online marketing agency used different methods to achieve high rankings Fri sites and not all practices are regarded as morally perfect. Given the increasing number of “Black Hat” SEO companies (companies that use unethical and unfair methods and techniques to manipulate search engines) and the fine line between ACTUAL “Black Hat” – and “White Hat” SEO Optimization practices, it is crucial to inform before placing the order over the methodology, the company intends to use your website Fri.

Here are eight simple tips that will help in the evaluation and selection of a trustworthy and professional search engine optimization service provider:

1. Become familiar with the basics

Make sure that you have done your homework carefully trained before you dare at the appointment of a search engine optimization service provider. It is imperative that you understand in advance exactly what a company FR can do and will keep you in a position to einzuschtzen correctly. There are several online resources that deal with the topic of search engine marketing and search engine optimization and to take the time to understand the basics and learn, will pay off.

2. Pricing structures and budget

There is no standard pricing structures, and most companies instead offer a range of packages. A package can turn a variety of services such as keyword research, optimization include a specific number of pages, directory registrations, etc.. When selecting a company should not only be about the costs. A company that demands more, not necessarily be better in SEO and also it may be that a company that requires less, you do not necessarily provide the same benefits. Let caution when entering the price models and the risks behind it. One possibility to decide how much your budget should be is to zunchst specific Bedrfnisse your site and your company to identify a package for mazuschneidern these requirements and then compare the pricing models of the companies in order to arrive at a realistic initial budget .

3. Gre and characteristics of the company

Reagence of the size of your site and the needs of your company, it may be advisable berprfen whether the Internet marketing agency About verfgt sufficient staff and how their customer / SEO team ratio looks like.

Another important point is to ensure that the company has specialized in all areas of SEO and beschftigt a team that is experienced in all areas einschlielich design, development and the actual programming and savvy.

4. Location

The location of the company hngt largely on your comfort level. It may be that a local or at least in your country prefer ansssiges company or do you prefer it, the whole process in another country To outsource to take advantage of its lower cost. There are also some companies that use a mixed offshore Geschftsmodell in marketing and customer support is based in one country and the ACTUAL design and development work is durchgefhrt in another. The combination of low costs and good customer service this coming of available, well-balanced model provides a good alternative to be considered dar.

5. Customer testimonials and references

References are a good starting point and should be free of available. If you have not provided you ask for it and be sure to use it to find out exactly how reliability and glaubwrdig the company is really based on the experiences of their frheren customers.

6. Guarantees

Most companies do and can be no guarantee top positions. It is acceptable that a company will guarantee to increase memory traffic or rankings Opposite to improve the gegenwrtigen positions. But if an SEO service promises you a specific position / ranking of a particular case of a search engine, you should read the fine print in the contract file.

7. Ethics / spam

Ethics hchster is important if you auswhlen a search engine optimization consulting firm. There are a number of unethical practices that may establish a company that from the time the contract up to the application of specific methods to optimize your site rich knnen (berflssige keywords, cloaking, etc., to name a few). Be sure to provide as many questions as mglich, particularly with regard to the methodology being used. If the company can no plausible explanations of the optimization process Fri enter your sites, you should probably look for another provider.

8. Reporting and monitoring

Some of the Schlsselfragen, you should ask are: How long will it be before results become visible? What types of reports will provide the SEO company and how often? How is success measured? A maintenance plan included?

It hngt grtenteils up to you to define the target and the degree of success of your SEO campaigns. This can be compared in an increase in traffic to your site, potential referrals from Mailinglisteneintrgen or sales made with the previous year. Remember to discuss your objectives with your SEO agency and to articulate and come to an agreement before you hire them. However, it is important to set realistic expectations. Unlike PPC and other forms of paid advertising is a SEO zeitaufwndiger process, both as regards the implementation as well as the results.

In summary, LSST be said that the commission can have an effective search engine optimization SEO company has a significant impact on net profit of your business. The decision to work with a particular SEO firm should, but only after a carefully trained berprfung the company and to the development of the bases, which are necessary to place you in the goal for the project to help.