Internet Marketing For Solopreneurs

Happy New Year! Today, on the first day of the new year, I wanted to take a look back at 2008 to see what we would like to take with us into 2009:

- Social Networking. Social networking has been around since the Internet was around. I have been participating in discussion groups and forums ever since I got online.

But 2008 was the year of Social Networking. Social networking has finally come of age - everyone started talking about it and using in 2008. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn - seems that everyone, including people who have never used a discussion forum before were jumping in. Social networking has helped me meet some great people, create business connections and get new clients for my business.

I am looking forward to hearing more about social networking in 2009 and, of course, using it as well.

- Learning New Things. I believe that we should never stop learning. I learned many new things in 2008 and am looking forward to learning even more in 2009.

Join me in learning! Decide what you will learn this year and take action! Pick up a book, find a few blogs you like to learn from, subscribe to a few newsletter, attend teleseminars or workshops.

- Cooking More Food. Well, you knew that I will mention this, didn’t you? Cooking is something I love to do, so when I am not teaching marketing, I am probably cooking or reading about cooking.

I even started a cooking blog in 2008, that I am looking forward to updating more in 2009.

- Creating Products. I have created a few different products in 2008 and I have plans for creating more products in 2009. One thing that is very clear to me about 2009 is that it is going to be more important than ever to offer products in the new year. Many people are slashing their budgets, which means you will see many potential clients in 2009 who will not be able to afford your services.

To still be able to help these clients, you must package your expertise into products. Your products will fit your clients’ budgets when your services won’t. So join me in planning (and creating) new products in 2009.

- People. This list would not be complete without thanking all the wonderful people of 2008. Thank you all - my clients, customers, colleagues, friends on social networks, blog readers, newsletter subscribers, and more. Thank you for making 2008 so great and I look forward to connecting with you in 2009.

Now it’s your turn - comment on this blog post and let us know what you are taking with you into 2009!

Biana Babinsky

P.S. Don’t forget to get your New Year gift from me, FREE Teleseminar 3 Most Important Keys For Building Your List

In the past few months, many business owners have asked me about what a business should do in order to make money and get clients in a recession.

My answer is very simple. If you want your business to be extremely successful at any time, you must continuously market it. Marketing is not a one-time event; rather, it is a continuous process that will bring leads and clients to your business on an ongoing basis. If you want to be healthy, you can’t only take good care of yourself sometimes; you must eat healthy, exercise and practice healthy habits when you are sick and when you are well. In business, whether you are succeeding (even despite a recession) or struggling, the prescription is the same.

Here are my five strategies to help you make money and get clients during recession:

- Create A Marketing Mindset. Many business are not marketing their business, because they feel that marketing is somehow sleazy. However, as the economy gets worse, you will have to market even more in order to get clients.

Remember, you are not trying to sell people what they don’t need. Your potential clients have real problems and they need real help. When you market, you let them know that you can help them. What can be more valuable than that? You are not trying to sell them something they don’t want, but something they want and need!

- Build Your List! The most important ability that a business can have is the ability to contact many people in your target market at once. You want to be able to share your expertise and information about your new offerings with many people at one time. Doing this is the best way to get service clients and product buyers.

In uncertain economic times, the ability to contact many people in your target market at once becomes even more important, because doing this is still an extremely effective technique to promote your offerings.

When you have a large list, with subscribers being members of your target market, you will be able to fill up your teleseminars and get more clients by just sending an email to your list.

- Offer Products In Addition To Services. It has always been extremely important to offer products in addition to services, because it is easier to convince your potential customers to spend $20-$50 on a product rather than $200-$500 on a service.

In today’s economy, it is even more important to offer products in addition to services. Many of your potential clients still need the solutions that you offer, but they may not want or be able to pay for your one-on-one services given the current state of the economy.

However, since they need what you have to offer, they will be more willing to pay for your products, such as seminars, teleseminars, and e-books.

Having products and services in different prices ranges will help you introduce your expertise to a wider audience, reach more people, and, ultimately, gain more clients.

I discuss how to make money and get clients during recession in-depth in my FREE Special Report, 5 Keys For Getting Clients During Recession that you can download at http://www.EffectiveOnlineMarketing.com

Biana Babinsky

This article is an excerpt from the “5 Keys For
Getting Clients During A Recession” Special Report, available for you, FREE, at http://www.EffectiveOnlineMarketing.com

I have taught hundreds of business owners how to market online and get clients. What I always find interesting is that some people who have hired me to work with them didn’t need to be taught marketing. They knew a lot about marketing, what kind of marketing techniques were available and how to apply them.

What they actually needed help with was changing their marketing mindset. Many business owners feel that marketing has an aura of sleaziness around it. They feel that marketing is somehow dirty and an honorable business owner should not be engaged in it. They don’t feel that they should market - they feel that their customers should just find them and come to them.

Unfortunately, customers can’t just find you on their own. They need to know that you are out there, that you are an expert at what you do, and that you can help them with their problems. You must market to communicate all of that to them.

The good news is, though, that marketing does not have to be sleazy or dirty. Marketing can be fun, honorable and ethical and still be effective. And the first thing that you need to do to market ethically and effectively is to change the way you approach marketing.

You need to create a good marketing mindset. This kind of mindset will not sabotage your marketing efforts, and it will help you get the best results from marketing. It will also help you identify marketing techniques that will make your marketing authentic, as well as effective. What’s better than that?

Here is how to create a marketing mindset that will help you get clients, fill up your teleseminars and multiply your profits honestly and ethically:

- Be honest with yourself. Understand that you must market to get clients and be successful. You will be able to pick how you market, but you must do something to bring in clients.

- Understand what marketing is. Marketing is a process designed to introduce your target customers to your business, to invite them to request more information and to get to know you.

- Realize that you are not pushing things on people that people don’t want. Rather, your potential clients need your help and your expertise enables you to provide that help.

Your potential clients have real problems and they need real help. When you market, you let them know that you can help them. What can be more valuable than that? You are not trying to sell them something they don’t want, but something they want and need!

- Find marketing techniques that you enjoy the most, and start using them! Of social networking, article marketing, search engine optimization, blogging, which ones do you like the most? You will get better results, make a difference for your clients and enjoy marketing in the process!

Make your mindset work for you - you will help more people, get more clients and will be happy about the way you market your business!

For more information on how to market your business in today’s economy, download my FREE report, “5 Keys For
Getting Clients During A Recession” Special Report, at http://www.EffectiveOnlineMarketing.com

Biana Babinsky

What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving? No matter what you are thankful for, don’t just be thankful around Thanksgiving. Make it a habit to say thank you every day of the year. Take the time and say thank you to your clients, vendors, colleagues, mastermind group members, and all of the people who have helped you make your business successful.

Here are four ideas to help you say “thank you!”:

- Offer A Referral Bonus. Everyone likes to be thanked for something they have done, but what they like even more is getting something in addition to the thanks. If you have people who send clients your way, why not say thank you with either a monetary bonus or a gift? People love receiving unexpected bonuses and will be more likely to refer more clients to you in the future.

You may want to set up a formal referral system to offer referral bonuses and get more clients referred to you. You can also set up a formal affiliate program or you can do this informally. If you offer products such as seminars, teleseminars, e-books, etc, an affiliate program can greatly increase your sales.

- Offer An Unexpected Testimonial In Social Media. Did you receive exceptional service from someone you are connected with on social networking web sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or others? Thank them for their help publicly instead of privately.

That way you will help the person who had provided great service for you to get more clients. This is the best way to thank them.

- Thank Your Clients By Underpromising And Overdelivering. You like your clients and you want to help them as much as you can, right? You can do that by underpromising and overdelivering on everything that you help them with.

- Just Say Thank You. This is a very simple, yet very powerful technique to thank someone in your business or life. Thank your clients, your coach, your assistant, everyone who in any way is responsible for your success.

Take a moment and thank someone today! You will be glad you did.

How are you thanking people in your business and life? Post a comment and let us know!

Biana Babinsky

I recently heard from a business owner who said that she watched TV for just an hour and it left her very scared of the state of the economy and how it was going to affect her business. My first recommendation was to turn off the TV and concentrate on her business and her customers instead.

But then I started thinking - what could she have in that one hour instead of watching the news that would have helped her with her business? Here are 10 things that take just 1 hour to do and that help you market your business:

1. Write an article that you can submit to article directories to market your business.

2. Spend an hour on Twitter networking and getting to know your followers.

3. Review your web site statistics to learn how your web site visitors are using your site.

4. Write a blog post.

5. Approve and welcome new Facebook friends.

6. Listen to a marketing teleseminar or audio recording. Here is one marketing audio recording for you to listen to: 5 Keys For Creating Your Online Marketing Plan Audio Recording.

7. Submit an existing article to article directories. You can submit it to 10-15 directories in an hour.

8. Reply to your e-mail.

9. Review one of your sales letter to improve conversions.

10. Do keyword research and find good keywords to use on your web site, so that you can get more search engine traffic.

So here are my 10 things you can do in just 1 hour to promote your business. I am sure there are many more - what are the things you recommend doing to promote a business that will only take 1 hour?

Biana Babinsky

Lately, I have been hearing from many coaches and consultants who are experiencing a slowdown in their businesses. They are reporting to me that it became much harder to get one-on-one clients and that even product sales have slowed down.

There are many reasons for this to be happening. It could be that many potential clients are taking summer vacations instead of working. It could be that customers are concerned about gas prices and the economy and are trying to save money by not getting professional help. Or it could be the regular business cycle - there are many different reasons for a business slowdown.

I recommend that you do not concentrate on finding out why there is a slowdown. Rather, you should concentrate on how you can bring more clients to your business. Here is what I recommend:

- Review Or Create A Marketing Plan For Your Business. Summer is the best time to review your marketing plan. Are you accomplishing what you have set out to accomplish? Are you filling your marketing funnel? Are you marketing every day? Are some of your marketing strategies bringing more customers to your business than others?

A marketing plan review will help you streamline your business and bring in more clients.

If you do not have a marketing plan now is the best time to create one. Your marketing plan will help you organize your marketing actions and spend less time on marketing while getting better results. Your marketing plan is your map to getting clients and creating a successful business.

When business is slow the businesses who survive are the ones who can do more and better marketing in less time.

- Do More Of What’s Working. As you review your marketing, you will see that certain marketing actions bring in more potential customers than others. There is no reason to do things that only bring in a few customers. You want to find actions that bring in the bulk of clients and repeat these actions over and over again. So when you find something that is working for you and your business, do more of the same.

For example, if networking with your target market online brings in great results, increase your networking time or find additional places to network. When you keep doing what’s working, you get more clients, it’s that simple.

- Bring In More Prospects. In slow business times it helps to bring in more prospects to your business. It could be that in the past you were able to convert 1 out of 20 prospects into a customer. But now it could be that you are able to convert only 1 out of 30 prospects into a customers.

If you need to get 10 clients for your business, in the past you only needed to bring in 200 business prospects. In order to get the same 10 clients now you will need to bring in 300 prospects. You will be able to do that by using marketing strategies that will help you attract more prospects to your business.

The best way I found to bring more prospects to my business is by getting more targeted traffic to my web site. I will be discussing how to bring more of your perfect clients and prospects to your web site during this Thursday’s teleseminar, How To Get More Clients To Your Web Site. You can register for it at http://www.marketingsalad.com/clients.html

Biana Babinsky

I am sure that by now you have heard about social media and social media sites. Lots of people are networking on them, talking about them and using them to promote their businesses.

Because there is so much information about social media and social networking everywhere, I have been getting lots of questions about social networking from my clients, members of my mentoring program and web site visitors.

Everyone wants to know how to get results from social media web sites. And by saying results the majority of business owners mean “more clients”.

So how can you, a coach, consultant or other business professional, use social networking to get more clients for your business?

What you want to use to use social networking for is to meet and connect with your target market. Just like with any other marketing technique, you want to get your target market to know you, so that they can do business with you.

My recommendations for using social networking effectively are:

- As always, look for where your target market is and go ahead and meet it! There are tons of groups on many different networking sites, and you can start by participating in a few different groups that your target market frequents. Don’t join every single group that you see - there are thousands, if not millions of those, and you will never be able to use all of them.

Instead, find groups where your target market hangs out and networks. Increase your visibility by participating in the groups.

Everyone knows the leader, right? The best visibility comes when you are the leader of the group, so start your own group where your target can hang out and you can demonstrate your expertise!

- What’s the next step for your target market? What step should people in your target market take in order to get into your sphere of influence? They subscribe to your newsletter!

Make sure that you offer people plenty of opportunities to get on your list.

- Explore social networking sites and use the available resources. Different social networking web sites have different resources for you to use, and some are not so obvious. Some offer resources to post your upcoming events, post your articles and blog posts, etc. Use the available resources to get more visibility and exposure for your business.

I discussed many more ideas for using social networking to promote your business during the How To Create Social Networking Plan That Gets You Clients Teleseminar last month. You can get the audio recording of the How To Create Social Networking Plan That Gets You Clients Teleseminar at http://www.marketingsalad.com/social-networking.html

Biana Babinsky

When I did an informal survey last year on why many business professionals are still not blogging, many business owners told me that they don’t feel they can find the time to commit to blogging.

One of the responses I heard was: “I don’t think I have another 40 hours/week to dedicate to blogging.”

Truth is, you don’t need to spend 40 hours/week on your blog. You don’t even need 15 hours/week.
If you organize your blogging and if you know what you want to talk about on your blog, blogging should not take that long. Here is how you should organize your blogging:

- Decide on how often you will blog. I blog 2-3 times a week and sometimes even less. You do not have to blog 3-5 times a day for your blog to be successful and bring in clients.

- Create a list of blog topics that you can use. It takes a while to come up with a good blog topic, so if you do not have any topics lined up, your blogging can take time. Instead of searching for
topics when you actually need them, create a running list of topics. Every time you read or hear something that may make a good blog topic, add it to the list.

When you need to actually write a blog post, go through the list and pick a topic you feel like writing about. Having a topic list will save you hours every time you need to write a new post.

- Re-print other people’s articles. If you like an article that someone else wrote, contact them and ask permission to post it on your blog. Posting someone else’s article won’t take very much time at all.

Don’t overdo this, as your blog readers would like to hear from you. But reprinting other people’s articles once in a while will help you build relationships, offer a different perspective to your readership and save time on blogging.

During the Make Thousands Of Dollars With Your Blog Teleseminar Series you will discover many
more ideas that will help you spend less time on blogging, and still be able to use it to get clients and promote your business. You can register for the Teleseminar Series at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zbt

Biana Babinsky

I just finished reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, a professor at MIT.

Since I tend to read everything from a marketing perspective, it was interesting to see that many of the things he discussed were applicable in business and online business. For example, one of the first examples that he discusses was how different choices for an online subscription will influence buyers’ decisions.

Other discussions that I found interesting were that many people would prefer something that is free (versus something better, but not free), why we are willing to spend a lot of $$ on a cup of coffee, and why paying more money for pain medicine will make you feel better.

A very interesting look into why consumers behave the way they do. Check out the book at Predictably Irrational

Biana Babinsky

I have heard many business owners say: “I want a nice looking web site for my business.”

They find a web designer and the web designer delivers exactly what the business owner asked for - a nice looking web site. The business owner really likes the look and feel of the web site, but after a month or so the business owner notices that nothing is happening with the web site. No one is using the web site to find out about the business and contact the business owner about his products and services.

It seems that when a business owner says: “I want a nice looking web site”, what the business owner really means is “I want a nice looking web site that brings in clients and markets my business”.

Once the business owners realize that their nice looking web site does not deliver clients, many opt to hire another designer for a re-design. I have talked to quite a few business owners, who have had their web sites designed and re-designed many times, all without producing the desired result (services and book/product sales).

The truth is, having a nice looking web site is just not enough to get sales. In addition to having a nice looking web site you need to heavily market it - optimize it for search engines, have a newsletter list, write and publish articles, start a blog and more.

Getting a web site designed is just like getting a brochure made for your business. It is nice to have a brochure, but until your potential customers see it and decide to buy your book, nothing will happen.

Exactly the same is true for a web site. Until you start getting your target customers to come to your web site and stick around long enough to buy your products and services, nothing is going to happen either.

Some web designers may include some marketing into their design package, but many don’t. This means that it is up to you to get your web site marketed. Here is what to do:

- Make sure that you know who your target market is. Your web site should speak to your target market, so your first step is knowing who your web site will be speaking to.

- Design a marketing plan for your web site. Yes, you may not have a web site yet, but knowing how you will market it will help you in the long run.

- Decide what you will need on your web site in order to market it properly. This may include a blog, pages optimized for search engines, articles, etc.

- Now, talk to web site designers and pick the one that will help you not only with design, but with marketing of your web site. It is very important that your designer is aware of your marketing plan, and will be able to implement the web site-related pieces of the plan.

Need help creating a marketing plan for your web site? Join my online business mentoring program to discover how to create a marketing plan for your web site.

Biana Babinsky

About Biana: Biana Babinsky is the online business coach, expert and author who teaches coaches, consultants and other business owners how to get more clients and make more money online. Join her online business mentoring program at http://www.MarketingSalad.com for online business coaching, support and masterminding with other members.