Finding New Opportunities for Your Mobile Notary Business
As involved business owners we are always thinking of ways to both protect and expand our business.
What too many of us learn the hard way, is that relying one specific revenue stream or one specific client, can come back to bite you in the rear. A big client is a big score, but what happens if you lose their business, whatever the reason?
If you don’t have enough other clients, it definitely stings.
Traditional Methods
We’re not going to go over these in too much depth, as they have been discussed at length for years. But, some are still effective.
You can always prepare by learning how to set yourself apart from other mobile notaries, that way you can capitalize on any marketing efforts.
Methods like cold calling still do work, if you have the confidence. But, realize, you are always selling yourself, in any way, and cold calling is just another avenue you do so with.
Joining your local chamber of commerce can also be of help, especially with the boom in new small businesses we are now seeing across the country. If your business is small, the fee to join the chamber is usually quite reasonable, especially if you are outside a major city.
Keep Track of Local News
Opportunities knock, if we keep an eye on the door.
Keeping track of your local market is a great way to do so. You can sign up for news alerts via google, or you can be more actively involved in what is going on.
The fact is you need to be ready to jump. There is no better time than when an issue is already in the news. You can piggyback on that attention to great effect, if you are ready to act quickly and decisively.
Looking through recent news, we can see several opportunities. You can read quite a bit of it in our mobile notary blog archive. When there is an issue involving people having issues getting docs notarized, when a group of people is being taken advantage of, I think you get our drift.
Taking Advantage of the Opportunity
All of you should have a basic press release ready. There are all kinds of templates you can download online, and you can check out other companies releases on a site like PRweb to see how they are.
Find the problem and come up with how you can solve it. Send out your solution with your press release template. Start with the writer who wrote the article, and add in your local officials, plus any other officials named in the news, who are involved with the process.
And then you jump on social media to further spread awareness.
Let’s give an example.
So there is a story in the news right now about property tax in a large city. There are ways to become exempt, but it requires a notary signature, except for a select few who could not travel.
The biggest argument made was that this group of people had trouble getting access to proper notaries. And that should set off all kinds of marketing bells in your head.
How do I help this group of people, as well as grow my business, and get positive press all at the same time?
Will you always have a perfect answer?
No. But, other cases will give you the angle you need to market your business in a positive way.
So How Do I Execute the Plan?
If you don’t see the answer in your normal business plan, maybe it is time to think outside the box.
In this case, there are groups of people, mostly located near each other, in need of notarial services. So how can I, as a mobile notary, take advantage of the situation?
Well, traveling expenses are often a sticking point. And in this case, state laws regarding notary fees may also be a factor.
So, what if we took a few hours, or a day, helping all of these people get their affairs in order? Maybe we can charge a distributed fee for travel and expenses, or maybe we realize that if we can generate media attention, that is worth far more than our traveling costs.
This is why we have to be ready to move.
So we come up with a plan, send out press releases to anyone involved who has an email we can find. We then use social media to spread the news, and how you plan to help fix it. And when we do so, we use popular tags. So jump on tags for your posts like #notary #insertcityorstatehere, etc. This way you will receive maximum visibility that you might not with your own term.
We are not saying to not create your own term. If you do that and it becomes popular, it can take on a life of its own. We recently ran into that ourselves with what we dubbed the #shastasigning. It ended up gaining traction and bringing thousands of new eyes to our website and blog.
Continuing Education
Learning never ends. We must constantly improve ourselves to stay at the front of the pack. Now some people do online courses, others watch webinars or pay for very expensive coaching.
But, have you ever thought about your local community college?
The vast majority of our community colleges offer a wide variety of continuing education, usually for a very reasonable price. There are such a wide variety of skills you can acquire to help your business, and they are tax deductible as a business expense.
You have basic to advanced business classes. Marketing, social media, the list goes on. You might even find classes that fit you and might allow you to offer a wider array of services.
Heck, I learned how to drive a forklift because I thought it would be cool (it was).
Marketers are Brave
Yes, you are putting yourself out there as a marketer. And some of us are more comfortable with that than others.
But, it is an important part of any business. If people don’t know who you are, how are you supposed to get business?
We’ve heard our fair share of tame ideas, as well as crazy ideas over the years. But the best marketers we have found are brave. They aren’t afraid to come up with a selection of tame and crazy strategies.
A lot of them get spoken about and tossed, but some of them have been used to great effect.
Sometimes you just need to stand out.
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