Contacting Entrepreneurs for Marketing Advice

What comes to your mind when you think of marketing?  Spending money to advertise? During my education of marketing I can tell you that you can leverage the cost with time.  If you have more free time you can get free or very cheap marketing.

I do spend wisely and pay up when I recognize value even if it’s to educate myself.  Although a recent investment frustrated me beyond my normal threshold of average human frustration. I’ve paid an entrepreneur handsomely (over a thousand dollars) only to receive 30% practical advice and 70% suppositional stuff (praise, bragging, demos).  This guy sold me with his tactical copywriting and supremely positive attitude but left me hanging in the end or literally not responding to my questions.  Also he proposed critiquing my progress yet has not done so. (Comment if I should reveal this entrepreneur’s identity or if it’s a bad idea).

Your alternative method is to take the time to seek out people you want to learn more instead of following an ad or promo.  It’s the better route for those who have more time on their hands.  I actually hired a virtual assistant to seek out entrepreneurs for me to compiled a list, so it’s in between the two routes.  Boy am I glad at the results because it wasn’t my first virtual assistant, but definitely one who followed my instructions and communicated frequently.  (Two key things to establish with virtual assistants).

The other prospective assistant didn’t pass my qualification question.  I politely informed her that her answer was not applicable by pointing out a source of what I expected.  She refuted that her answer was more than appropriately enough because my the source (wikipedia) is inaccurate.  This is coming from a person who’s online resume states years of “assistant” experience including web HTML/CSS, yet her resume was published online on a free ad-filled domain with unformatted text spanning from edge-to-edge of the browser window.  Not to get off-topic but please do qualify any virtual assistants you might hire.

I wasn’t expecting to get responses from every entrepreneur and that’s normal, but I learned a tactic that increased my response rate to 30%.  The quickest responses were very pleasant and from wealthy entrepreneurs.  I became interested in 47hats.com because of Bob Walsh’s book on Micro-ISVs and involvement in The Micropreneur Academy.  Not only that but he has an awesome live chat tool called Snap Engage.  I took up Bob’s consultation offer and he fired away answering all my questions.

I showed him my online service to get his opinion.  First he questions the integrity, where I am the matchmaker of producer to most-fitting user.  He also  critiqued the design and the content as well.  All sound advice.  Even by reading many books, there are somethings you psychologically can’t harness on your own work.  That’s why I recommend getting consulting or at least an opinion from expert leaders.  Just remember, initially you want to offer value first otherwise you may not get a response.