Internet Marketing For Solopreneurs

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

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

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

Don’t forget to join me for FREE Avocado Consulting Affiliate Marketing Training tomorrow! It takes place tomorrow, Tuesday, May 6th at 5pm Eastern (NY) Time / 2pm Pacific (CA) Time. If you register, but are not able to attend, you will receive the audio recording of the call.

The call is free to attend but you need to be Avocado Consulting affiliate in order to join us. If you are not an affiliate yet, you can become an affiliate at
http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zsaff

Once you become an affiliate you will receive information on how to attend the training.

Biana Babinsky

P.S. The call is tomorrow, Tuesday, May 6th. Make sure that you can join us on the call — register for the affiliate program now at

http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zsaff

A few weeks ago I wrote an article on how to stay in business and get clients during an economic downturn. One of the recommendations I made in that article was to create products, such as e-books, classes, audio, seminars and more that you can offer for sale to those who don’t want to spend the money on your services.

Your products cost less than your services, so when your potential customers are not willing to spend money on your services during the downturn, you can offer them your products. This way, both of you win! Your potential customers will still get help that they need and you can still make money with your knowledge.

The products will also help you create multiple streams of income for your business, so that you do not have to rely just on your services to bring in revenue.

After that article came out, I have been getting many e-mails from readers. Quite a few of you asked
me what to do if you are not ready to create products yet, but you do want to create multiple streams of income in your business.

The answer is to use someone else’s products through an affiliate program.

So how do you pick affiliate programs to join? Here are some tips:

- Pick an affiliate program with many different products that will be of interest to your target market.

- It is even better if you already used a few of those products, because that way you will be able to recommend them.

- Join that program, learn a bit about the products, and start promoting them.

Need an affiliate program to join? I would love for you to join my affiliate program and use my popular products to create passive income streams for your business. You can sign up for my affiliate program absolutely FREE and for every sale that you refer you will earn 40% commissions. Register for the affiliate program, FREE, at
http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zsaff

And when you register for the affiliate program you will also receive an invitation to a no charge training session I am doing for my affiliates on May 6th. During this session you will discover the step-by-step process to use my products to create many passive income streams for your business. I will teach you about which products to promote and how to promote them, so that you can save time and not have to learn everything on your own.

To get an invitation to the training session, register for the affiliate program, FREE, at
http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zsaff

Biana Babinsky

Is your business in balance? Or are you working on 25 projects and 15 marketing initiatives at once, all while thinking: “I should really be using this brand new social networking site that I just heard about!” ?

If that sounds like you, it is time to re-think how you do business and see if you can prioritize your actions, while still accomplishing everything.

Here are some of the things I do in order to achieve more balance in my business:

- Automate everything that I can. Lots of things can be automated online - scheduling of blog posts, automatic product fulfillment, ezine software, etc.

Take action: Take advantage of technology to automatically get people subscribing to your list, downloading your products, registering for your classes, etc.

- Outsource tasks that I don’t enjoy doing and can’t automate.

Take action: Take a look at everything you are doing and see which ones can be outsourced.

- Long term scheduling. I always know what’s coming up for my business for the next 6+ months. That way I can plan the tasks I need to do, marketing I need to do, etc.

When you know what’s coming up long term, you can schedule backwards. For example, if one of your goals is to have an ebook written by the end of October, 2008, you know that there are tasks that need to get done every month/week/day in order for this to happen.

Take action: Create your marketing plan!

- Multiple streams of income. Creating products, such as seminars, ebooks and my mentoring program has really improved my work/life balance.

I can have as many or as few one-on-one clients as I want. (I usually have 3-7 clients at any given time), and I don’t put my marketing efforts into getting one-on-one clients.

Instead, my marketing is concentrated on getting leads for my business.

Take action: Create multiple streams of income for your business!

Biana Babinsky

About Biana Babinsky: Biana teaches coaches, consultants, virtual assistants and other business owners how to get more clients, create multiple streams of income and run a successful online business. Join her mentoring program at http://www.MarketingSalad.com to discover how to create a successful online business.

Back when I just started teaching, I realized that different students learned differently. Some came to every lecture and wrote down every word said by the teacher and used their notes to study later.

Others never took any notes — instead they just listened intently in class. Yet others never bothered showing up at the lectures and read the textbooks instead. Some articles I have read recently report that now students rely on audio/video recordings of the lectures…

Continue Reading Your Clients Want Different Formats

I have been getting many e-mails from readers lately, asking me how to create and teach profitable teleseminars. My Make Thousands Of Dollars With Teleseminars Home Study Guide shows you the step-by-step process for creating profitable telseminars, but here are three points that should help you create an effective (and very profitable!) teleseminars:

- Find a topic your target market is interested in

- Create an interesting, effective teleclass around this topic

- Promote the teleclass so that you can get participants for it!

My clients have the most trouble with #3, so here is how to promote your teleclass to get more participants:

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

- Announce your teleclass on your web site.

- Announce your teleclass to the groups, where your target market participates.

- 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.

I discuss how to market teleclasses in my Make Thousands Of Dollars With Teleseminars Home Study Guide that you can get at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zteleseminars

Biana Babinsky

Many professionals I know have found a new approach to solving an old problem that their target market experiencing. Once they turn this approach into a program or book or a class, the question becomes how to sell this brand new approach to their potential customers.

Do you market and sell it by concentrating on the approach? Or do you do something else?

I recommend that instead of focusing on the new approach, you should focus on what your customers get when they learn and apply this new approach.

Always remember that your customers want to know what’s in it for them, what the value is of what they will receive and what the benefits are going to be. They are much less interested in a brand new revolutionary approach; they are much more interested in the results they will receive get when they use it.

My recommendation to you is to market using benefits, and explain about the new approach and how it works after you have explained the benefits.

This is how I teach my clients to create winning sales letters - first you explain the benefits of whatever you are selling. Only after you explained the benefts you should explain what you are offering (new approach, e-book, seminar, etc). Benefits always come first.

Biana Babinsky