I’ve seen people asking for Marketing Tips and Tricks on my social networks, and being the busy little do-gooder, I spent at least an hour composing a response. I thought I’d post it here. Cause frankly, my business is thriving while so many other coaching practices are suffering with the economy. I’m very lucky, and I thank my good fortune every day. And I work HARD to create that good fortune:

I spend a big chunk of my time marketing. This blog, my emails, facebook (it’s invisible marketing–I just make friends and make myself visible without actually “selling” anything), Joint Ventures (I’ve been approached a LOT for those), radio/magazine/teleclass interviews, taking classes and making friends.

Some of my marketing does itself through the re-use of my material: people re-publish my articles for their blogs and e-zines. If you’re reading this here, you probably know what I’m talking about. I just have to monitor them to make sure I get attribution. Along the same lines, free publicity comes to me when magazines or radio shows approach me. But it’s still a lot of labor.

And I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars this year on websites, copywriting (though one scoundrel took $6,000 and didn’t deliver. ouch), and placing myself as an “official expert” on selfgrowth.com ($3,000), new photos, business cards, product design, e-books to give away on my website.

In past years I paid $15,000 a year on a publicist. She was worth it.

Last year I travelled the globe teaching classes and signing books at bookstores.

I take classes in SEO. I’ve been checking keywords and trying to optimize my pages and blog posts. I discovered stumbleupon and Digg, and I spend time stumbling and digging friends and asking them to reciprocate.

Last week I took Ali Brown’s Online Success Blueprint Workshop. Boy did those new business cards pay off! I didn’t have to say a word, and people asked for them. They didn’t even care what I did; they just wanted a card with me on my back, in a red dress.) Next month I begin Alex Mandossian’s class on making money with teleclasses.

I’ve even marketed on behalf of my coaches, interviewing them for teleclasses, editing and publishing their articles and bios on my blog, sending out notices to my friends on facebook, tweeting everything…

Networking meetings don’t do that much for me–they’re inefficient. I just go to them for the comeraderie.

Marketing is a fulltime job. I don’t think people have a clue (until they read this post) how much I invest in marketing my business. Aside from learning to be a killer coach, marketing is the single most important element of being a professional coach.

Heck! Even my email signature has my photo, an invitation to my e-book, and a testimonial. Ali Brown taught me that. And my email address is shows my website url.

And this is the year it finally paid off. I have never, ever, made as much money as I have in the last three months. I’m selling the right thing at the right time; and after all those years investing in marketing, my visibility counts.

I don’t believe five hours a week on marketing is enough, not if you’re serious about your business’s survival. And this is true of any business these days. Marketing IS your primary business, so that you have the PRIVILEGE of coaching clients.

Copyright 2008 Morgana Rae… Obviously. If you want to use this in your blog or newsletter, contact me first.