Diane Helbig is an internationally recognized business and leadership development coach, author, speaker, and radio show host.

As a certified, professional coach, and president of Seize This Day Coaching, Diane helps businesses and organizations operate more constructively and profitably.

KIMBERLY: What do you think are the specific challenges that you see with marketing your clients?

DIANE: Messaging I think is probably one of the biggest problems I see with them. They do not know really know how to craft a clear and compelling message that their target audience will hear and I think it is partly because they do not know who their target audience is so they do not know how to talk to them. Then they do not do it consistently, they do not really put the energy behind marketing that they really need to in order for it to have an impact.

KIMBERLY: How do you help them keep consistency on things?

DIANE: I am a strong believer in systems, so we sit down and really craft a plan of action that starts with them identifying what their value is as the other person sees it, then creating that message and where should they be marketing, what should that look like? Then we create a schedule, a system for this is when they are going to do the things or they are going to hire someone and make sure that person is doing those things.

KIMBERLY: How do you coach your clients about allocating budget money for marketing?

DIANE: We go about it in terms of first defining who their target audience is and where they are so we can figure out where they should be spending that money. Then it is a matter of what do they want to be accomplishing with their marketing and helping them understand how long it is going to take.

We were talking about consistency. It is important that they know that marketing really does take time, you have to be in front of them for a long time. What do they want to get out of it? What do they hope the result is? Then based on all of that, we then determine where they should be, what that is going to cost them and how we are going to make that happen.

KIMBERLY: So it is a specific strategy for each person?

DIANE: Right. Because it is different for everyone, depending on their industry, target audience, it is going to vary what they should be doing and therefore the cost could vary dramatically. I think that is what escapes people: they dabble, they try something over here, they try something over there, they will start to do something. You have to have a strategy around marketing if you really want to see the results of it.

You could do social media marketing where you did not really do anything other than time or maybe a little boosting a post here and there, it is really cost effective. But if you are not doing it consistently and with a goal, a strategy of what you are going to say, when you are going to say it and what you hope to accomplish with it, it is not necessarily going to matter whether you spend nothing or tens of thousands of dollars.

KIMBERLY: so you have done more of a traditional publishing instead of self-publishing. How was that experience?

DIANE: Interesting thing, when I did it, this guy had this whole interesting setup, I did not pay a thing for it, it was really interesting. He bore the cost of really the lion’s share of it. he does not do it that way anymore, so as I was getting ready to do this other book, which is for my radio show, I was going to do the self-publishing and was going to do it on Create Space. I got an editor, so I would send her chapters and she would edit them. A guy contacted me on LinkedIn and said, “Are you working on a book? Are you thinking about writing a book? We would like to talk to you.” So I emailed them back and told them I am in the process of a book. It was a publishing house, and they said, “Yes, we would love to do that book!”

KIMBERLY: All from LinkedIn?

DIANE: Yes. LinkedIn is invaluable. It has got to be the best business tool there is today.

KIMBERLY: As a coach and as your own business owner, is there a particular software, process, hardware that you would recommend to your clients to keep them organized or just anything you see invaluable in the business world?

DIANE: Where do I even begin? I believe that everyone should have some sort of CRM system, there are some really good ones out there. Sales Forces is the one a lot of people know. ZoHo is good, a lot of people like it. 17 Hats is really a system designed for a very small business owner who wears 17 hats to keep them organized. I use Waves Apps for invoicing. Once again there are a lot of different platforms for invoicing.

What I typically tell my clients is, “Here are various tools, an Outlook could be perfect for someone, the key is to really learn it, understand it and use it to the best, fullest capability because you want to be able to access whatever you want to access wherever you are.”

I use Carbonite to save documents to the cloud, to save everything to the cloud frankly. For the video, I used something called Freemake that you can download. They have a downloader that you can download videos from YouTube and you can edit them or you can use the regular Freemake where you can take video or even audio file and you can convert it to Wav, MP3, MP4 and send stuff anywhere. It is an incredible software. Currently, I am using something called Sync 2 to sync my Outlook Calendar to my phone until I switch phones. It syncs it to the Google Calendar, and the Google Calendar is on my phone. That is how that works. It is sort of endless, for me the key is really that people find the system that works best for them because a system and software is only as good as the operator.

KIMBERLY: It sounds overwhelming, you are trying to run a business and you have to stop and learn the software. That is again why a lot of times as coaches we can show you the shortcuts, we have already been using it and implementing it.

DIANE: Exactly right. But it is another reason to really explore virtual assistants because they already know this stuff.

KIMBERLY: Virtual assistants are invaluable!

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