Average Resume Writer Profile: Marketing/Advertising/Public Relations

Speaking of marketing and public relations support, our “average” resume writer has a couple of thoughts on the process.

She’s been in the Yellow Pages for years, but her ad isn’t as big anymore. That’s because the kinds of calls she gets as a result of the ad aren’t as good as they used to be … there seems to be more price-shoppers and tire-kickers than before. Her Yellow Pages rep keeps trying to sell her an upgrade to an “enhanced” online listing, but she’s not convinced by the numbers he’s throwing out.

Online is the place to be, she thinks, but I think I can do more with my money on my own. She’s got a website. But it’s mostly an “online brochure,” and she updates it about once a year. She’s got some information about the services she offers, the logos for the professional associations she belongs to (even the ones that she used to belong to – whoops, forgot to take the logo down when the membership lapsed). Organizations change, but her website is stuck in time… there’s a reference to the Professional Resume Writing and Research Association (PRWRA) – now Career Directors International, and she followed Wendy Enelow’s advice to put the Career Masters Institute logo on her site … but now it’s “The Alliance” and she still has the CMI logo on there … even though she forgot to send in her renewal last month (or was it the month before that?)

She’d like to build her network, but who has the time? She’s sure there are some groups out there she could speak to and possibly get some business out of, but has no idea where to start the contact process. She did one speech last year to a Kiwanis group, but it seemed to be a lot of self-employed folks (insurance agents, doctors, lawyers) and she didn’t get any new clients from it.

She’s heard PR (public relations) can be a good way to increase her profile with prospective clients, but when she sent out a news release last year, they didn’t print it – but she did get a call from someone in the newspaper’s advertising sales department, wondering if she’d like to run an ad. Come to think of it, though, they did run a short item in the “Business Profiles” section of the paper when she got her CEIP certification, and while her neighbors noticed it, none of the prospects who called in the next few weeks mentioned it. There was also the call from the reporter on her voice mail message after she got back from a four-day weekend, but when she called him back, he said the story he was interviewing for had already run.

One of her biggest challenges (after generating leads) is converting prospects into customers. When people call on the phone, they seem really interested, until she tells them the price. Some of them do decide to buy, but a lot of them say they are just starting the process and aren’t ready to buy yet. She thanks them and tells them to call her back when they’re ready to get started (but she usually doesn’t get their e-mail address or phone numbers). If she does get their e-mail address, she sends them information about her services, and some of those people end up calling her back to engage her services.

But she’s tired of justifying her prices to people who call her, so she per her prices up on the website and created a PayPal link so people can just order online instead of calling to ask her how much she charges. No one has ordered using the link yet, but she just put it up a few months ago, so it’s still new.

Next Time: Average Resume Writer Profile: Professional Conferences