Marketing advice for business card? (take II)

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Rob Hudson suggested: <<Let's see. I do proposal, grant, and  
technical writing, so I suppose I could do any of the following: 1)  
URLs to a variety of sites, 2) Editing symbols (though this feels  
outdated), 3) "Action words">>

Possibly, but those seem overly generic. Grant and proposal writing  
are good ones to focus on because these are things most people  
(excluding professional proposal writers such as yourself) hate to  
do. So why not put together a Web page that lists useful tools to  
help people write grant proposals?

For example, you could cite the McKenney (1994) paper (Can. J. Agric.  
Econ. 42:105-112) study that showed the cost of chasing research  
dollars amounted to $0.22 per $1.00 in grant money that was obtained.  
(That's for one very specific context, but it illustrates the point  
nicely, which is why I keep that paper in my literature files.) Could  
you demonstrate that the cost of hiring you to write the grant would  
be less than this amount, thereby freeing up more dollars and time to  
actually do research? Could you demonstrate that a proposal that  
takes a researcher 12 hours to write could be done by you in 6,  
thereby allowing the researcher to procrastinate longer and have more  
time to do their research? <g>

One very useful approach is to present enough information that people  
want to come back to your Web page repeatedly: tips and tricks and  
useful references on how to do the job more quickly and less  
painfully. That keeps them interested enough to return. But since  
many non-professional proposal writers hate doing the work, they may  
take the tip, try implementing it, and then get fed up and ask you to  
do the job for them. See how it works? The site provides enough value  
to keep people interested, but not so much value that all potential  
clients can dispense with your services and do the work themselves.

(fwiw, I've marketed my own book -- see below -- quite successfully  
this way: I answer questions related to the topic of the book, in  
enough detail that people can do the work themselves, but provide  
full details in the book itself for those who need more support.)


----------------------------------------------------
-- Geoff Hart
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
www.geoff-hart.com
--------------------------------------------------
***Now available***  _Effective onscreen editing_
(http://www.geoff-hart.com/home/onscreen-book.htm)

Print version: http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fStoreID=1505747

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