Internet Marketing For Solopreneurs

Are you having a hard time explaining what coaching is to potential clients? Many of my clients ask me how I describe what coaching to my own potential clients and connections. Every few weeks I have a client, who is a coach, ask me how I deal with explaining what coaching is to someone who I want to become a client.

Well, first of all, I do not explain what coaching is to my potential clients. And I don’t recommend that you do that either. It will take a lot of time, your potential clients will get confused, and most importantly of all, they are not interested in coaching.

Your potential clients are interested in what’s in it for them, in what you can do for them. They are interested in results they will achieve when working with you.

For example, at networking events, I tell people I network with that I help business owners get more clients for their business. This is short, very much to the point and makes the person interested right away. This is because I just told them how they can benefit from working with me.

Notice, I didn’t start explaining what coaching is, how it works, etc. What I want the person to remember is how they will benefit from working with me. That’s it.

Take the focus away from yourself and tell your potential customers who you work with and how you can help them. For example, if you are a parenting coach, people you are networking with would much rather hear that you “help parents get along with their teenagers” than hear a long explanation of what parent coaching involves.

Having a clear message about what you do that you can deliver to potential customers is going to make a huge difference to your business. When your potential clients hear about benefits they can get from working with you, they stop and listen. And if they like what they hear, they hire you.

My How To Create A Marketing Message That Will Get You Clients Audio Recording gives you the step-by-step process for creating a marketing message for your business. You can get it at http://www.marketingsalad.com/marketing-message.html

Biana Babinsky

I received this question from a coach recently:

“I am a career coach and have been coaching one-on-one for the past few years. I decided to start creating group programs and a few months ago I offered a Coaching Group option to my newsletter subscribers. Basically, I envisioned it as a group of 5-10 people who would get together on the call twice a month and ask me questions about their careers. I promoted this a lot - through a networking group, my newsletter, web site, seminar sites - but could not get a single participant. What am I doing wrong? How can I get people to sign up for my coaching group?”

Biana’s Answer: What strikes me from your description is that you are just offering a Career Coaching Group. That is not enough for me to make a decision if I need your group and if it would work for me.

Is the group for people in their 20’s, just starting their first jobs? Is it for people in middle management trying to move up? Or is it for people trying to switch jobs? Or maybe it’s for people who are unemployed and need help landing a job asap?

As you can see, there isn’t much information about who exactly you are doing this group coaching for, so your potential customers are not sure if it’s for them. And if they are not sure, they will not sign up.

So how can you create a better group coaching offer? Don’t just call it a coaching group, name it something meaningful, name it something that will communicate value and give people an idea about who it’s for, so that they can self-select either in or out.

For example, my How To Make Thousands Of Dollars With Teleseminars program tells you right there, in the name the value and who it is for. It teaches people how to create extremely profitable teleseminars. So, if you are in the market to learn how to create effective teleseminars, you will know from the name that this program is for you.

So do not call it a coaching group. Instead, create a very specific program for your target market that helps your target market solve one of the problems that they are experiencing. To get the most people register for your group you will need to offer them something they really want. For example, if your target market are college students looking for their first job, how about a program on landing a great job right out of college.

The next things you want to do is to create a compelling sales letter for your program. And then you need to create a good marketing plan to market the program.

You need to give your target market enough information about your program, so that they can say: “This sounds like a program that will help me solve the problem that I am experiencing. I really need the solution and this program offers it to me!”

Once you get your target market to think this way, you will get many members for your group!

For step-by-step directions for creating effective and extremely profitable group programs that your target market needs, grab my How To Make Thousands Of Dollars With Teleseminars at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zteleseminars

Biana Babinsky

I was asked on one of the calls I did recently about what steps I would recommend to take for a coach who wants to take their coaching from a part-time hobby to a full time profitable coaching business.

It takes time to re-adjust and what you need to re-adjust the most is your way of thinking about what you do. When you have a hobby, your priority may not be making money. When you run a business, your priority is to have a profitable business that brings in income.

You also need to re-adjust the way you think about marketing. Marketing is the cornerstone of your business and helps you bring in clients. If you are not marketing your business you will not be able to have a successful business, it’s that simple.

Here are some marketing tips to help you take your coaching from a hobby to a successful coaching business:

- The very first thing to do is to decide on a good target market for your business. Before you can bring in clients consistently, you need to decide on WHO these clients are. After all, if you do not know who your clients are, how are you going to bring them to your business?

Make a decision about who your target market is. Knowing your target market will help you make other decisions and will help you simplify your marketing. And we all want to simplify our marketing :)

- Decide on marketing techniques you’d like to use to market your coaching business. It is great if you want to use blogging, and social networking, and article marketing, and public speaking, and e-mail marketing to promote your business. However, don’t start using them all at once!

The best way to market your business is to pick one technique, master it, start using it on a regular basis and then move on to the next one.

And remember, you don’t have to use every marketing technique you have heard about. For example, I have clients who enjoy public speaking, who speak often and for whom public speaking is one of the most effective techniques for getting clients.

On the other hand, I have a client who says that she would never ever do public speaking, it’s just not for her. Her favorite marketing technique is blogging, she is good at it and she uses her blog to generate interest in her business.

Pick the techniques that you enjoy applying and you will be more successful with them.

- Have a marketing plan! Create a plan for bringing in more clients, marketing your business, etc. You are much more likely to take action if you create a plan and put it on paper.

Members of my online business mentoring program have access to thousands of dollars worth of resources on creating a marketing plan, picking a profitable target market and using online marketing techniques to promote their business. Get immediate access to all these resources by joining us at http://www.MarketingSalad.com

Biana Babinsky

After reading my my blog posts on list building, many coaches have asked me what comes next. Once you get some people on your list, how do you leverage your list to get clients, make money and improve your business?

Just like with using any other marketing technique, in order to get the best results from your newsletter, you need to create a plan to get clients, make money and get results with your newsletter list.

Here are some things to think about and include into your plan:

- You Need To Bring In More Subscribers Every Single Day. Your target customers subscribe to your list and they also unsubscribe. Your goal for your newsletter list is to have as many people as possible see your message and learn about your business. Therefore the more people you can attract to your list, the better.

- Publish Your Newsletter On A Regular Basis. Your subscribers will not do business with you and will not buy from you unless they hear from you. The only way they will know about your expertise and about what you have to offer is by reading your newsletter issues.

Research shows that people need to hear from you on average 7 times (sometimes many more!) to buy something from you.

If you want results from your newsletter, such as more clients and more money, you need to publish! Publish your newsletter on a regular basis with useful information that your subscribers want to know about AND promo’s of your own products and services. A win-win for everyone.

- Create Products In Different Price Ranges. While lots of people are interested in coaching, the vast majority of them will never become your one-on-one coaching clients.

Some can’t afford one-on-one services, others may be able to afford them, but are not at the stage where they can justify the money they are going to spend.

But many more people would be willing to pay for group coaching, ebook, audio and other products because they cost much less than one-on-one service packages.

Create your own products and offer them to your list - that way you are using your list to build passive income streams for your business.

In my Grow Your List Home Study Course I discuss how to use your list to get clients, make money and create passive income streams. Check it out at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/znews

How do you use your list to get clients?

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

If you are not getting the results from your blog, you are not alone. Many business owners have told me that they are not getting results from their blogs. After reviewing many blogs, here are the top three mistakes that I see business owners repeating over and over again:

- Not defining the results you are looking for BEFORE starting to blog. What are your objectives for blogging? What do you want to achieve with your blog? Be crystal clear on what you want to achieve and keep this information in mind as you are starting your blog.

- Not picking the blogging software that is right for you. If you pick blogging software that you are not sure how to use or if you have blogging software that is difficult to use, you will not use it. This means that you have a blog, but you are not actually blogging.

If you are not blogging, you can’t use your blog to get clients. Having blogging software that works for you will solve many of your blogging problems.

- Not optimizing blog posts for search engines. Search engines have sent me many thousands of blog readers, some of whom have turned into clients.

In fact, search engines will send you some of your most targeted readers. The more targeted the readers are, the easier it is to turn them into clients. Start using search engines for every blog post. Doing this will help you gain more traffic and clients.

- Not capturing e-mail addresses of your blog readers. I have had many business owners tell me that they have blogs and that they have many people reading their blogs, but they are not turning any of the readers into customers.

The first step that you must take to turn your blog readers into clients is capturing their e-mail addresses. If you can’t connect with your blog readers by e-mail, you will not be able to turn them into clients.

The How To Make Thousands Of Dollars With Your Blog Home Study Guide teaches you how to create a blog and use it to get more customers for your business. Learn more about it at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zbt

Biana Babinsky

Many of my clients have been asking me for free marketing techniques to bring more targeted traffic to their web sites.

There are quite a few methods to spread the word about your web site for free or inexpensively. However, I recommend that you first decide WHO you want to bring to your web site. This will make a big difference on how you apply marketing techniques later on.

Once you have decided who your target market is, you need to use online marketing techniques to drive your target market to your web site.

Here are my favorite online marketing techniques. All three of them are free to use to bring traffic to your web site:

- Article Marketing. Article marketing consists of writing articles that your target market is interested in reading. Once you have created these articles, you need to submit them to article directories.

Every time your article gets published in an article directory, or it gets re-published on other people’s blogs and web sites, it gets published with a link back to your web site. Thus, every single person reading your article can click on the link and visit your web site. This will help you get more web site traffic.

Read articles on Article Marketing: http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/articles/articles.html

- Business Blogging. Blogging is really big now, and this is because lots of people are now either blogging or reading other blogs, or both. Blogs are also popular because you can use them to communicate with current customers and attract new customers to your business.

Start a blog that is of interest to your target market. Post to it often. Make sure that your blog is listed in blog directories and that you optimize your blog posts for search engines.

Read articles on Using A Business Blog To Market Your Business: http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/articles/blog.html

- Search Engine Optimization. A lot of people are using search engines to find what they need. Make sure that each page on your web site is optimized for search engines, so that people who are looking for the information available on your web site can find it.

Read articles on Search Engine Optimization: http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/articles/seo.html

Biana Babinsky

Here is a conversation I’ve had with more business owners than I can count:

Business Owner: I created a great new product that I love, it is going to do great! I just need some help with getting the word out about it. Once people hear about it, this product will sell itself!

Me: That’s great, so you surveyed your target market and found out they everyone in your target market needs this product?

Business Owner: Hmmm, I didn’t survey anyone.

Me: Ok, so who is the target market for this product?

Business Owner: Everyone! This is a great product, and everyone needs it!

Me: So if you haven’t done any market research, have you created a marketing plan to promote this product?

Business Owner: Hmmm, no. But I think once I get the word out about this product everyone who hears about it will want to buy it.

…..

I have had these conversations with business owners too many times. The issue is that the business owners are so excited about the products they are creating, that the product creation takes up all of their time.

Marketing is forgotten about, or the business owners think that the product is so great that it will sell itself. The truth is, nothing sells itself. Behind every successful product there is a good marketing plan, good marketing people and lots of marketing and promotion.

So if you want to bring a product to the market and make it into a best-seller, here is what you should do:

- Find a target market for your product. And “everyone” is not a target market. A target market is a group of people who want, need and can afford your product.

- Do market research. It is not enough that you think that your product is going to sell great. Your target market has to want your product if you want to make money with it. Do research and survey your target market to find out if your product is going to sell.

- Spend the time and money on creating your product ONLY if there is market for it. Don’t spend time and money on creating something if you don’t know if it is going to sell. Only bring the product to market if there is enough demand for it.

- Create a marketing plan for the product BEFORE you actually create the actual product. If you want to make money with your product, marketing should be one of the first things you start doing. So create a marketing plan and start promoting your product BEFORE you even have the product for sale.

Need help bringing your product to market? At MarketingSalad.com, only business community for business owners I teach business owners how to create, market and sell extremely profitable products.

Biana Babinsky

Since I have been teaching teleclasses for a long time, I get questions on a regular basis on how to get started teaching teleclasses. I love teaching teleclasses - it is very rewarding to teach them and they provide a lot of information and value for my students!

If you are starting out with teaching teleseminars/teleclasses/teleseries or webinars, here are three points that should help you create an effective (and popular!) class:

- Find a topic for your class. The best topics are topics that your target market is interested in learning more about.

- Pick one of the topics your target market wants to learn more about and create an interesting, effective class around this topic. Decide on how long your class will be, what the format of the class is going to be, how much material to include, etc.

- Market the class so that you can get participants for it! I usually recommend creating a marketing plan for promoting your teleseclasses/teleseminars. That way you will have a marketing template every time you want to teach your teleclasses in the future.

Your marketing plan should include different venues for reaching people in the target market and promoting your class to them.

My clients usually have the most trouble with the third action item, promoting the teleseminars/teleclasses and getting more participants for them. Here is how to promote your teleclass to get more participants:

- Publish a newsletter for your target market and use your newsletter to announce your teleclass to your subscribers.

- Some of your target customers visit your web site. Use your web site to announce your teleclass to your web site visitors.

- Are you using social networking web sites? Some of them allow you to post your teleseminars and events for other members to see. Announce your teleclass to these groups and watch your teleseminar attendance increase!

- Use article marketing, search engine optimization and other online marketing techniques to get more newsletter subscribers. Once you have more subscribers, you will have more people to promote your teleclasses to.

It is extremely important to have a clear marketing plan when marketing your teleseminars or any other classes. When you have a marketing plan you will be more successful and you will be able to get many more people to attend your classes.

Need help with putting together and marketing your teleclasses/teleseminars? My How To Make Thousands Of Dollars With Teleseminars Home Study Guide teaches you the step-by-step system for creating and teaching extremely profitable teleseminars. You can see it at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zteleseminars

Biana Babinsky

Many times my clients ask me how defining a target market has helped my business grow. I have been working with my target market for a long time. My target market are service professionals - coaches, consultants, virtual assistants and other service professionals. I help them get more web site traffic and more clients online.

Defining a target market has been extremely helpful and profitable for my business. Once I knew exactly who my target market was, it became much easier for me to find my target market online, network with it and bring my target market to my web site.

Here is some advice for you if you are struggling with defining a target market or a niche for your business:

A target market are people who need, want and can afford your products and services. Remember, all three have to hold — they people you want to work with have to need, want and be able to afford what you offer.

I have seen many business owners making a mistake by using two out of three — they find people who need and want, but can’t afford what they have, or they market to people who don’t necessarily want what they offer, even though they need it.

Another consideration I recommend looking into are the people you like to work with. Look at your past clients and see which clients would you like more of.

These are usually the clients who you enjoyed working with, who got results from working with you and who had no problem paying your fee. These are usually the clients you want more of. So start
looking at them — are they a part of a specific group?

Where can you meet more people from this group? How can you market to people from this group? Once you answer these questions, you will have a target market, and some ideas about marketing to it!

Need more help defining your target market? Get my How To Find A Profitable Target Market For Your Business Audio Recording at http://www.marketingsalad.com/niche.html

Biana Babinsky