I have been watching hundreds of coaches struggle to get clients for their businesses. The most common reason for this is not having a marketing plan. Instead, they do random marketing techniques from time to time hoping that one of them will stick and bring in clients. If you do not have a plan, you will not be able to get clients.

Here is a 5-Step Plan that will help you get more clients for your business:

Become Clear About Your Goals

This is really the first question that you must ask yourself, because what you put into your Marketing Plan will depend on what you want to accomplish. Without knowing what your goals and intentions are you will not be able to find the right marketing actions to market your business.

Find Your Target Market

A lot of the marketing that you do will depend on who your target market is. Decide on your target market before doing anything else. As soon as you are clear on who your target market is, it will become much easier for you to market and it will become easier for you to build your list and get clients.

Create An Effective Web Site For Your Business

Your web site is the tool that helps you build your list and sell your products and services. Your web site must have pages specifically for selling your products, pages specifically for selling your services and pages specifically for building your list. By creating pages with a single purpose your will focus your web site visitors’ attention and inspire more of them to take action with you.

Build Your List

Very few people who come to your web site are going to become your clients immediately. This is because they don’t know you yet and they do not trust you yet. People buy from people they know, like and trust.

When people visit a web site for the first time, they forget all about it a few minutes after they leave. This means that they will only come back to your web site and may potentially become your
clients if you are able to remind them about yourself.

Your newsletter is the best tool you have to get your potential customers to keep coming back to your web site.

Drive Traffic To Your Web Site

Now that you have effective web pages that sell your products and services, as well as a large list list, you must bring in web site traffic.

There are many marketing techniques that will help you bring in traffic. Social networking, article marketing, business blogging, and search engine optimization are all great techniques to bring traffic to your web site.

Start with one and learn how to use it to get web site traffic. Once you are comfortable with using it, move on to the next one and master that approach. This way you will master all online marketing techniques one technique at a time.

Having a marketing plan is the best way to start getting clients for your business. Take an hour right now and start creating your marketing plan to create a successful business!

Need help creating your online marketing plan? Learn how to create your marketing plan and use it to get clients for your business at http://www.MarketingSalad.com

Biana Babinsky

http://www.MarketingSalad.com

Some time ago a client had asked me a very interesting question. She said: “If you wanted to start creating web site andbuilding a list immediately and you could only use one online marketing technique, what would you do?”

“Article marketing” was my answer. Article marketing has been my favorite online marketing technique for a very long time. This is because article marketing can bring targeted traffic to your web site as soon as you start using it.

When I just started using article marketing, I saw immediate results. First, I saw increased traffic to my web site from articles that I had posted in article directories. After some time, my articles started getting reprinted on other people’s web sites, blogs and newsletters. This generated even more newsletter subscribers and clients from exactly the same articles.

How do you get started with article marketing? Here is a 5-Step Plan to help you get started with using article marketing for promoting your business, products and services:

Understand The Goal Of Article Marketing

Any time you take action you need to know exactly why you are doing it and what results you are expecting from it. With article marketing, your goal is to start a conversation with your potential customers, to let them know about who you are and what you do and to ask them to take the next step in this conversation — visit your web site, subscribe to your newsletter and buy.

Find Good Topics For Your Articles

To start the conversation with your potential customers (and have them respond!), they need to be interested in having this conversation. If they are not interested in a topic, they will drop the discussion before it even starts.

How do you get them interested in the conversation? By writing articles on topics that they are interested in!

Write The Actual Article

Now that you know what topics you want to use, pick one and write an article on it. Once your article is ready, let it sit for a day or two, and then come back to it to make revisions and changes. If you made any mistakes, now is the time to correct them. You want your articles to have good grammar and spelling.

Create Effective Article Resource Box

Your Article Resource Box is the most important part of your article. It introduces you to your article reader and contains link(s) to your web site. This is your one chance to continue the conversation you started with the article!

Submit Articles To Article Directories

Congratulations on your new article! Now is the time to submit it to article directories to get exposure for you and your business.

Use this 5-Step Article Marketing Plan to start your article marketing campaign and get more traffic and clients! To learn the most effective way to use your articles to build your list join me on the How To Build Your List With Article Marketing Study Guide, that you can register for at http://www.marketingsalad.com/articles.html

Biana Babinsky

Last week I posted this note on Twitter: “Don’t use a marketing technique just because someone else is using it. You are not running their business, you are running YOURS!”

This post has generated a tremendous number of comments from people on Twitter and Facebook. When business owners see their colleagues getting results from certain marketing techniques they decide to use the same techniques in their own business. However, many times the techniques don’t turn out as successful for them, so business owners are left disappointed and unhappy.

Why does this happen? Many times business owners see others using a marketing technique effectively, so they jump in and start using the technique without proper evaluation and planning. As a result, the technique does not work for them and they are not able to get clients using it. Before starting to use a marketing technique, spend some time on evaluating how it is going to fit into your overall marketing plan.

Here are three reasons why a marketing technique that others are using may not be working for you and how to correct this:

#1: The marketing technique you are trying to use isn’t helping you reach your target market and isn’t bringing in clients as a result

For example, let’s say you are a dating coach. You have a colleague who is a business coach and who has been gaining a ton of clients by speaking at many Chamber Of Commerce meetings. You try to speak at the Chamber Of Commerce meetings to bring in clients, but are getting no takers.

This is happening because people who go to Chamber of Commerce meetings are in a business coach’s target market, but not in a dating coach’s target market.

How to correct this: Speaking is a great technique to promote your business. Look to speak at meetings for groups/associations/chambers for your target market and you will start seeing results!

#2: You are not using the marketing technique effectively and are not seeing the results others are seeing from using the same marketing technique

For example, I see many coaches using article marketing and trying to immediately get coaching clients with it. Truth is, it is very hard to convert someone who has just read your article for the first time into a coaching client. It is much easier to convert this article reader into a newsletter subscriber.

How to correct this: Instead of concentrating on immediately getting a client from a marketing technique, concentrate on getting newsletter subscribers and then using your newsletter to turn your subscribers into clients. You will see much better results this way.

#3: You do not have all the pieces of puzzle. Many times business owners hear about someone else using a marketing technique effectively, and they jump in and start using it without any kind of a plan

Just using a marketing technique is not enough. You need to know what results to expect, how to track them and what infrastructure you need in your business in order to get these results.

For example, if you are using article marketing, you need to know what types of articles to write, how to structure an effective resource box, how to use the article to get newsletter subscribers, etc.

How to correct this: Before starting to use a marketing technique, get all of the pieces of the puzzle. Do research to learn exactly how the marketing technique is used, what kind of results to expect and how to apply it effectively for your business.

Remember, you are running your business, not someone else’s! Before jumping into using a marketing technique do research to make sure that you know how to apply it so it will work for you! Get the
step-by-step instructions for applying online marketing techniques to your business in the How To Get Clients Online Home Study Guide at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zmarketing

Biana Babinsky

Article marketing is a great technique to use to build your list. In fact, each of your articles can bring you dozens or even hundreds of subscribers if your article and Resource Box speak to your target market. Here is your 3-Point Plan to build your list using article marketing:

Step 1. Write an article that is of interest to your target market.

Step 2. Create your Author’s Resource Box that convinces your article readers to subscribe to your newsletter.

Step 3. Submit your article to Article Directories, so that your articles are seen by your target market. Once your target market reads your article, your Resource Box will convince your target market to subscribe to your newsletter.

I have read hundreds of articles written by business owners and it is clear to me that many of them are making a mistake in Step #2. Some don’t spend any time on their Resource Boxes, and as a result, are not getting any of their article readers to subscribe to their newsletter.

Writing effective Resource Boxes is crucial to your success. If your Resource Box does not convince your reader to visit your web site and subscribe to your newsletter, then your article marketing efforts are a big waste of time because they will not produce the results that you want.

Here is how to create a Resource Box that will get results:

- Set aside time to create effective Resource Boxes. For many business owners a Resource Box is an afterthought that they spend just a few minutes writing. Don’t make this mistake. Your Resource Box is the most important part of your article. Take the time to create an effective Resource Box.

- Create a few different Resource Boxes to use with your articles.

- Test your Resource Boxes to see which ones produce the best results.

I have spent a long time testing different Resource Boxes, both for myself and on behalf of my clients. In the Build Your List Home Study Guide, you will see the examples of effective Resource Boxes and we will also talk about how to rewrite your current Resource Boxes to make them extremely effective. Get the Build Your List Home Study Guide at http://www.EffectiveListBuilding.com

Biana Babinsky

As you know, I am a bit proponent of using article marketing to market your business. This is why I am very excited to interview Christopher Knight, the CEO of EzineArticles.com:

Biana: Many of us have had careers before getting into online marketing. What is your background? What did you do before starting EzineArticles.com?

Christopher: Before EzineArticles I was the Founder & CEO of SparkLIST, a permission-based email newsletter hosting service provider. I’ve been involved in several dot com companies since the mid 1990s ranging from website design, web hosting, running an ISP and an email newsletter advertising network.

Biana: Please tell us how EzineArticles.com got started. How did you get the idea for it? When did you launch it? What inspired you to start it?

Christopher: EzineArticles.com started in November of 1999 and our team acquired the site from its original owner as part of a 30 site roll up. I had raised VC and went on a buying spree to acquire sites that provided value for email newsletter publishers. EzineArticles was one of the 30 sites.

The site was largely ignored between 2000-2004 due to other competing priorities and then in August of 2004 our team scrapped the entire site and started all over again. The old model for the site included only the article title, author name and article summary…and our site visitors had to give up their email address in order to get access to the full article. Seemed like a smart idea in the late 1990s but no longer a smart idea in today’s world.

Biana: How many authors/how many articles do you have at EzineArticles now?

Christopher: As of this interview, over 150,000 expert authors in 570 different niche markets have registered and we’re hosting a little over 1.25 million unique/original articles.

Biana: Why is it important for business owners to write and submit articles online?

Christopher: Business owners gain market credibility, exposure and traffic back to their website in exchange for writing and submitting short 450-700 word articles centered around their expertise.

They are essentially exchanging content for highly pre-qualified visitors/traffic back to their website.

Articles are usually ‘how to’ or do it yourself informational type articles and they are followed by a “resource box” at the very bottom of each article. The article body is where the expert gives of their expertise; the resource box is where they get to promote themselves and give a link to their website.

Example: If an business owner is an expert in Vacation Rentals and wrote articles about various beach, cottage and vacation rentals; the visitors who come to the expert authors website are already interested in the topic they are reading… hence they are pre-qualified visitors (the best kind!).

Biana: Can you give your top three tips for business owners who are just starting with writing and submitting articles?

Christopher: CONSISTENCY: Know article writing & marketing is not a one shot strategy. It’s important to be consistent over time. It’s a lot like advertising where you market your business every single month.

QUALITY: Your articles should be easy to scan, include bullet points, numbered lists and proper spelling, grammar, punctuation and sentence structure. Articles must be original and unique / exclusive to the person who wrote the article, but does not have to be exclusive to EzineArticles.com (means you can also use your articles on your own website).

QUANTITY: After you master writing quality original unique articles, the only way to really succeed with this strategy is to build your article inventory over time. Every article you write is what I call an “article agent” that sells for you. More article agents = more articles out there attracting traffic for you. Build your article inventory into the dozens, then hundreds and eventually thousands of high quality articles.

Biana: Once we submit our articles to EzineArticles.com, how can we make them stand out among other articles?

Christopher: Considering less than 15% of our members write more than 10 articles; the easy way to immediately DOMINATE your niche is to enter yourself into the top 15% club of expert authors who write more than 10 articles! Yes, it’s this simple.

On the quality side, make sure your articles offer unique tips, tricks, strategies, and ideas that are not the same rehashed tips you see in every article written by a lazy expert copying some ideas found elsewhere.

Be sure to include your author photo and extended bio as this builds more credibility and gets you access to more exposure within EzineArticles.com as we restrict certain features to authors with their photo uploaded.

Biana: What’s ahead for the article marketing industry in the next 1-3 years?

Christopher: Every month the quality standards continue to raise and that means low quality thin content writers will find it harder and harder to get their content accepted by the best sites.

It’ll continue to take a higher volume of articles to make the same impact that a lower volume would do today. This is largely due to the rising content supply and competition… but again, remember that only a minority of expert authors publish beyond 10 articles. You should aim to be the expert author who writes way more than 10 articles.

There will continue to be a shortage of really high quality original & unique articles. Ultimately, there are no easy short-cuts to produce high quality work. You can stand out easily in the crowd of fellow experts by only putting out high quality work; but don’t be paralyzed by writing for perfection. Perfection is not necessary. Massive writing & article submitting action is if you want to be really successful.

Every time I review traffic coming to my blog, I see a lot of traffic coming from search engines. How do search engines bring traffic to my blog? Here is how:

- I come up with a post idea and write a blog post.

- I optimize the post for search engines and post it on my blog.

- The post gets indexed in search engines.

- People who have never heard of me before use search engines to find information. They see my blog post in the search engine, visit the post and read it.

Search engine traffic is very useful - if I look further into my statistics, I see that some people who come to my blog from search engines subscribe to my blog feed, subscribe to my newsletter and become clients. And search engine traffic is free - it does not cost me anything to get this traffic to my blog.

So how can you capitalize on this and bring free search engine traffic to your blog? Here is how:

Come Up With Good Topics For Your Blog Posts

It is not enough for people to find your blog posts using search engines. When they come to your blog, you need to convince them to stay and read. And this is done by writing interesting blog posts.

Optimize Your Blog Posts For Search Engines

Do research and find popular keywords that you can use in your blog posts. Then, use these keywords to optimize your post. Use a keyword in your blog title and use it in your blog post’s text.

Warning: do not use the keywords too many times in the blog text. A few mentions are ok, but too many will adversely affect your search engine rankings.

Get Links To Your Blog

Using keywords is not enough. In order to get good rankings in search engines, your blog must have other web sites linking to it.

There are lots of different ways to get links to your blog. You can participate in blog rolls and use article marketing and social networking sites and do many other things to get links to your blog.

Monitor And Make Changes Accordingly

Monitor your search engine traffic and analyze the keywords that search engines use to drive traffic to your blog. You may find keywords that you are not using yet in your statistics. Start using them to drum up even more traffic.

Keep refining your search engine optimization strategy based on what you learn in your statistics. Doing this will help you get more search engine traffic to your blog.

I discuss how to get traffic to your blog in the How To Get More Traffic & Readers For Your Blog Study Guide. Get it now at http://www.marketingsalad.com/blog.html

Biana Babinsky

If you have been reading this blog, you know that I am a huge fan of article marketing. I have been using article marketing for many years to build my list, get clients and get web site traffic. Many of my newsletter subscribers and clients have found me by reading my articles in article directories, blogs and on other people’s web sites.

I often receive questions about article marketing that have to do with duplicate content. When you submit the same article to 10, 20 or 30 article directories, you have exactly the same article appear on multiple sites. This constitutes duplicate content.

Many business owners have seen that duplicate content does not rank as high as original content in search engines. Because of this many business owners have been asking me if it is still worth it to submit articles to article directories, if they will not rank that high.

The answer is that even with duplicate content you should definitely submit articles to article directories. Your articles will still show up in search engines - they just won’t rank as high as more original content.
However, when you submit your articles to good, popular article directories, you will receive traffic boosts in two different ways:

- First, when your articles are published in these article directories, they will have links pointing back to your web site(s). When people click on these links, you will get very useful web site traffic that you would not have received otherwise.

- Blog and web site owners use article directories to find articles that they can re-print on their web sites, in their blogs and in their newsletters. When you submit your articles to article directories, they get re-printed, thus, providing you with more exposure and more traffic.

And, when you have many articles appear in many directories, your potential clients see immediately that you are the expert at what you do.

Therefore, even if your articles that you submit to article directories don’t rank that high in search engines, you will still benefit from using article marketing.

Want to know the best places to submit your articles to get more web site traffic? In my FREE Report, “How To Get Clients Online” I have listed my 10 favorite article submission directories.
You can get the report at http://www.AvocadoConsulting.com

Biana Babinsky

I publish a weekly newsletter on getting clients online and I am often asked how this newsletter helps me and my business succeed.

There are many ways that my newsletter helps me:

- My newsletter positions me as an expert

- My newsletter helps me showcase my expertise

- My newsletter helps me build relationships with my subscribers, every single week

- I re-use the articles that I write for the newsletter on my web site to get more traffic

- My newsletter brings in more clients and more sales. Every time I send out my newsletter there I see many product sales.

All of this from just sending out a weekly newsletter!

It is no wonder that when I discuss the above with my clients, they want to take action and start their own newsletter! So their next question is how to get more newsletter subscribers.

I use many strategies to get subscribers. I believe that the best to get subscribers is to have a system in place for using online marketing techniques to get subscribers.

First in the system is your free gift - a gift that your target market would love to receive. Offer this gift to everyone who subscribes to your newsletter.

Next, tell everyone about this free gift, so that they subscribe to receive it! For example:

- If you are doing an off line speech or a presentation, pass around a sign-up sheet to enable participants to receive your gift and get on your list.

- If you have a business blog and are blogging, have your gift offer prominently displayed on your blog.

- If you are writing and distributing articles, make sure that everyone who is reading your articles is able to sign up to receive the gift.

Share the information about your free gift with everyone in your target market! You can dramatically increase your product sales and build your client roster if you have a large list full of your target clients, ready to hear from you.

If you don’t have a system of getting people on your list yet, I recommend that you sit down today to brainstorm how to create such system and how to use all the marketing that you are already doing to build your list.

Want to learn my favorite strategies for building a list? Join me for the Top 5 Strategies To Build Your List Teleseminar at http://www.marketingsalad.com/build-list.html

Biana Babinsky

After I published FREE Web Site Traffic Series Part 1: Article Marketing, I have gotten emails from some of you asking for more information on driving traffic. Today I am discussing how to use your blog to get more free web site traffic:

- Use Search Engine Optimization To Drive Traffic To Your Blog. Search engines bring a lot of very targeted traffic to my blog posts, so I always recommend using search engines to drive more free traffic to a blog.

Search engine optimization for your blog consists of three important parts: doing keyword research, using the keywords in your blog post and getting links to your blog.

First, you need to find keywords that your target market uses when searching for materials on the same topic as your upcoming blog post. You do not need too many keywords for one blog post.

Next, you need to use a few of the best keywords that you find in your blog post.

And to get better search engine rankings you need to have links leading to your blog. You can do that by exchanging links with other bloggers, listing your blog in blog directories, etc.

- Make Each Blog Post’s File Name Descriptive. Different blogging software behaves differently, but some will call your blog posts 2.html, 3.html, 4.html, etc. As you can see, that is not very descriptive and not particularly helpful to either people or search engines. When you create a post called How Coaching Helps Business Owners, calling it how-coaching-helps-business-owners.html is a much better title than 5.html.

Make sure that your blogging software creates descriptive file names for your blog posts; it is better both for human readers and search engine spiders and doing this will help you get more traffic to your blog.

- Get Links To Your Blog. More quality links means more more traffic, it’s that simple. Work on getting quality links pointing to your blog.

- Get Your Blog Listed In Blog Directories. Blog directories are a great source of getting links to your blog. Sometimes blog directories will give you a unidirectional (they link to you, but you don’t link back to them) link, other times they would exchange links with you.

- Use Article Marketing To Get Traffic To Your Blog. As I mentioned in the FREE Web Site Traffic Series Part 1: Article Marketing post, article marketing is a great way to drive more free traffic. And you can use article marketing to drive traffic to your blog by using your article’s Resource Box to link back to your blog.

I share my system for using my blog to get free traffic and clients in my How To Make Thousands Of Dollars With Your Blog Home Study Guide that you can see at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zbt

More articles on getting free traffic:

- FREE Web Site Traffic Series Part 1: Article Marketing

Biana Babinsky

Lately I have been getting many questions from coaches on how coaches can get more web site traffic to their coaching web sites. I am going to do a series of posts on my favorite online marketing techniques to get web site traffic.

Today I want to discuss article marketing, one of my favorite online marketing techniques (for my step-by-step plan for doing article marketing, you should also see the Article Marketing Home Study Guide ). I get traffic (as well as leads and sales) from my articles every single day. The best part about articles is that you need to write and submit your article once, and you will be able to get traffic and sales from it for a very long time. I am still getting traffic from articles I submitted to article directories years ago.

I like to use article marketing, because when you use article marketing, your articles perform triple duty. When you do article marketing, you will, as expected, bring more traffic to your web site.

But, article marketing will also help you promote your expertise. When you write articles your target market will read them, get to know you and get to know your expertise. When you write, you are seen as an author and an expert.

The third benefit you will get from article marketing is better search engine rankings. It is no secret that having lots of links from other good sites pointing to your web site will improve your rankings. When you submit your articles to article directories, the directories will publish the articles, giving you links back to your web site. In addition to this, every time your articles are reprinted, you get back links from the blogs and web sites that reprinted them.

And the best thing about article marketing is that it is absolutely free to apply. Writing articles, submitting them to directories, all of that is free.

Here is how to maximize the power of article marketing and use your articles to get free web site traffic:

- Write Effective Articles. Effective articles are the articles that will do the triple duty for you: they will help you get more traffic, promote your expertise and help you with search engines.

In order for your articles to promote your expertise and be read by your target market, they need to be on topics that your potential customers are interested in reading. If your potential customers find your article useful, they will visit your web site after they finish reading it.

And in order for them to be reprinted they need to be of interest to people who republish articles on their blogs and web sites.

- Create Article Resource Boxes That Maximize The Amount Of Web Site Traffic You Can Get. Your article resource box is extremely important. A Resource Box is the paragraph about you that comes right after the article. You need to make it interesting in order to get people reading your article to click on the link in your Resource Box and visit your web site. After all, you are writing the article to get free traffic, right?

To maximize the traffic, make sure that your Article Resource Box is benefits-oriented and that it compels people who are reading the article to take action and click on your link.

- Submit Your Articles To Article Directories. By doing this you are offering your article for reprint to other people, who are going to reprint it on their web sites and their blogs. When your article appears on their blogs and web sites, your name, expertise and web site address are exposed to more members of your target market.

Now repeat these three actions with 10, 20 or even 100 articles and see your traffic and sales increase dramatically.

Want my step-by-step action plan for doing article marketing? It is available in the Article Marketing Home Study Guide at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zarticles

More articles on getting free web site traffic:

- Get Free Web Site Traffic By Blogging

Biana Babinsky