David Berman Bootstrap Expert

I'd love to find out a bit more about your business - such as what population you'll be serving, where your office is located (i.e. in a building, a strip mall, inside of another practitioner's office), and what your specialty is.

I've owned and operated over a dozen physiotherapy offices and can tell you that there's no boilerplate answer to how to market.

That said - I'd suggest you get very clear about who you plan to serve and be as specific as you can. Once you know who your market is find out where they are and how they are looking for help.

If you message me with more specifics about your business and business model I'll be happy to get more specific with an answer.

Best of luck!

Re-visit your marketing strategy. Which is to say - re-visit your business model (which should very directly point you in the direction of your highest probability marketing strategy).

And (get ready to not like me for saying this...) stop focusing on those numbers. The number of visitors per month and the number of downloads are only relevant as they directly relate to conversions and sales.

And those things are only relevant as they directly relate to bottom line revenue and margins.

It's easy to get caught up in "vanity numbers"... those numbers that "feel good" and provide you with a sense of validation. But until and unless they translate into bottom line income for the business they are just numbers that make you feel good (versus wisely chosen key metrics that indicate the health and viability of your business).

If this was helpful to you please let me know how else I can be of assistance.

1. Learn to network and really connect with people. The people you meet at University will be the people you have in your network in the decades to come. And in my experience as an entrepreneur these friends can be a tremendous asset and one that must be build with foresight.

2. Seek and find mentors.

3. Get started now creating businesses. It's never to soon to start. If you want to learn to be a successful employee - work for a successful business owner. If you want to learn to own successful businesses - become a business owner and learn the "how to" in the greatest school in the world for entrepreneurs... the school of hard knocks.

Best of luck!

To start - congratulations on actually creating a product. Many people have "great ideas" but not many put the effort in to manifest those ideas.

What it sounds like you have discovered is that having a product (even a great one) is only one piece of having a successful business.

If you aren't making sales - and doing do profitably - then you definitely do not have a business.

Here are some suggestions:

1. If you are literally unable to learn to market and or execute a marketing system - then you may have to re-consider your statement "I want to pay a commission to someone to do it for me".

The reason I say that is you are possibly overvaluing your product. And by that I don't mean the value of the product to the market place... I mean the value of it to YOU.

Sure - you created it. And likely you are excited by it and passionate about it. But until and unless you can sell it - all you have is a finished product in your own hands. That's definitely something to feel good about.

Unfortunately how you feel about it means nothing with regards to making money. What matters is how a person who will give you money for it feels.

What effective marketing does in a sound business model is connect that buyer with your product in a way whereby they give you money for it and you make a profit. And it does that over and over again.

If you are still with me... If I haven't pissed you off (and I certainly don't mean to) - then perhaps you will consider these options:

(a) Find someone already successfully selling to your marketplace and make them an irresistible offer. Offer them the chance to sell your product to their customers and give them a huge portion of the profits. You'll have to do the math to see if this makes sense.

(b) Find someone who loves your product AND knows how to market and give them the huge portion of the profits to market it for you.

2. Make the time to learn how to market. It's one of the KEYS to success in business. All business. And therefore it's an invaluable skill. Once you learn how to market you can not only sell your own products (and design them better so the marketplace comes to you to buy them) but you are in a position to be the person others come to for help in marketing THEIR products... Then YOU become the person who gets the huge portion of profits.

Lastly - regarding vetting a company or expert - my advice is: Put them in a position to (1) make most of the money if (2) they can prove their ability to sell your product. If they reject your offer and require a big up-front fee - run like hell.

If these suggestions make sense - let's set up a call to discuss the details.

In any case I wish you the best of luck.

Only go all if if you need to. (And chances are... you don't need to.)

I will say - from personal experience in offline service based businesses - you might be surprised at how little you need to invest to look "professionally acceptable".

This of course depends on your market and their expectations... However you might find that what YOU think is important to "look good" isn't important to them.

Remember that it's all about them. They don't know (or care) how much you invest in your business. They don't even care if you make any money. They care about what's important to THEM.

My advice is to have a plan (aka business strategy). In business you aren't investing if you have no plan... you are speculating - And that means you will be taking on much more risk than you need to.

And by the way... if you are providing amazing service then the reviews will be good ones.

Let me know if I can be of assistance. In any case I wish you the best of luck!

Choose the platform where your market is. And quickly figure out your cost of customer acquisition so you'll know how much you can afford to invest in marketing so your business model has a chance to be viable.

That either sounds obvious (and I can hear certain readers already saying "Duh...") or it sounds confusing.

So before you write it off as too obvious or too complicated - let's examine it the statement and I'll show you where the value is.

First - WHO is your market?
What will you be blogging about?
Why should they listen to you?
What value do you provide that they can't get elsewhere?

Once you figure out who your market is you'll be better able to figure out where they are.

And I don't just mean "online"... I mean specifically WHERE the are online (and by the way you really better make sure they ARE online before you even start an "online business"). Do they even have a twitter account? Do they read blogs on linkedin? If they visit linkedin but don't read the posts there - it wouldn't make any sense for YOU to post there.

Again - this might sound simple - but rest assured that many new and experienced business owners make this mistake all of the time.

The (faulty) "logic" goes like this...
"100 million people visit (whatever the site of the week is) every day - and even if I get only 1% of those people to click my article/post/ad - that would be 10,000 click! And if I could get only 1% of those people (100 of them) to spend $10.00 on my entry level product then I'll make $1000.00 per day which comes to $365,000 per year!"

If you don't get WHY that's nonsense - you really should find a business coach or mentor ASAP.

Bottom line (specifically regarding the question you asked): Deciding on a marketing platform before you know which market you are going to try to serve and how you are going to monetize your business is backwards.

I hope this was helpful. Let me know if I can be of assistance. And best of luck to you!

Congrats on an excellent start to becoming an entrepreneur! Being here (on Clarity) and jumping in and asking a question (versus just lurking) is a great sign that you are willing to take action.

Here are some of my initial observations and suggestions...

1. Begin with letting go of any assumptions or hangups you may have (or may think other people have) about your age.

2. Consider that the money is only one of your resources. Now write down all of your OTHER resources before you start putting a plan together.

3. Answer these questions (for yourself AND the next time you post a question try to be more clear):
What does "realistically" mean? And in what time frame? And how much risk are you willing to take? And increase by how much?

The best advice I can give (though unsolicited) is this:
When asking a question - make sure you are very clear about what you want AND make sure you are providing sufficient information about your goals and situation.

Best of luck to you!

Check out my answer to a similar question:
https://clarity.fm/questions/1212/trade-show-experts-what-are-some-good-practices-in-pulling-in-some-people-to

I am a business owner and have extensive personal experience at tradeshows. Let's set up a call if you'd like to discuss specifics that might make sense for you and your budget.

I currently own and run all of the online (and offline) marketing for a 15 year old PT practice. I've also owned and operated several other health and fitness related practices. So I'm very familiar with your situation.

Business expansion and exit strategy planning can be excellent reasons for any business to consider branding and other components of marketing. Re-naming is not something to be taken lightly so it's wise of you to consider the implications.

The short answer to your questions..
1. Will re-naming the business affect its branding?
It can if the name is congruent with your marketing strategy.

2. Will re-naming the business affect organic online ranking and search results?
Again - it can. The bigger concern might be your decisions regarding your URL and factors such as website optimization, keyword selection, and proper use of local search strategy and execution.

The bottom-line: it's worth the effort if the investment and effort have a high probability of helping you accomplish your specific goals (which you did not explicitly state) AND if it's a part of a solid business strategy. By itself re-naming is not likely to have a significant positive impact on your bottom line and if poorly executed could result in confusion to your patients (past, current and future) and a negative impact on ranking and search results.

Let me know if I can be of any assistance. I wish you the best of luck!

There are several accepted ways to put together a valuation of a business. I'm personally familiar with 5 methods.

In my experience I find that most sellers choose the method that generates the highest sale price and most buyers choose the method that generates the lowest one. So there's no such thing as "accurate".

The bottom line will come down to what price / payment arrangement you are willing to accept for the business and what and how a buyer agrees to pay.

If you are in the market to sell your business right now I'd strongly suggest you find a business broker who has experience brokering deals in your specific business sector and preferably also in your geographic region. They can help you properly price your business and make sure you get what you want and need in the sale.

Best of luck!