Internet Marketing For Solopreneurs

Have you heard this expression before? “Do You Eat Your Own Dog Food?” usually means “do you use your own products?”. When it is used in tech circles, it usually refers to a company using the products that it has created.

When I adopted this phrase to use with my coaching clients, I usually use it to discuss if the client walks his or her own talk. For example, if a financial coach who teaches others not to have debt is in a lot of debt himself, he is not eating his own dog food. And if a relationship coach teaches others how to find a fulfilling relationship, but does not have a fulfilling relationship herself, she is not walking her talk either.

It is extremely important to walk your talk and to be authentic when you are in business for yourself. When you are not walking your talk your potential customers will realize that you are not being authentic with them and will not be able to trust you. And if a potential client does not trust you, how can they do business with you?

This is another reason I only teach online marketing techniques that I have tried myself and that I know work. If you want to be successful in business, you must be authentic and always do what you say.

Now you. Do you eat your own dog food? Share with us how you use your authenticity in your business.

Biana Babinsky

After last week’s post on Three Step Online Marketing System For Getting Clients, I got a few questions from coaches who tell me that they are using a similar system to promote their business already. They now want to leverage the system to increase the number of clients they have, and they are wondering which step they should be working on.

First, let me remind you what the Three Step Online Marketing System For Getting Clients is:

Step 1: Identify your target market and drive your target market to your web site.

Step 2: The web site visitors that you have acquired in Step 1 are now browsing your web site. Turn them into leads!.

Step 3: Turn your leads from Step 2 into clients.

So, which step do you work on if you would like to add more clients to your business? Well, there are a few different ways to look at it:

You turn your leads into clients in Step #3. Let’s say that typically you get 1 client for every 150 leads that you get. This means that for the next 900 leads you will enroll 6 clients. How can you increase the number of clients you enroll?

- If you keep the same rate of turning leads into clients, you will need to get more leads in order to get more clients. If you get 1,800 leads instead of 900, you will be able to enroll 12 clients instead of 6.

- Or, you can work on improving your closing techniques, so that you can enroll a client per 100 leads. That way, without increasing the number of your leads, you can get 9 clients out of your current 900 leads, instead of just 6.

- You can also improve the quality of the your leads. The more qualified your leads are, the fewer leads you will need to work with in order to enroll a client. If you have 900 more qualified leads, you may be able to enroll 9+ clients instead of the usual 6.

The bottom line is that there is always room for improvement in your system for getting clients for your business. If you do not have all the clients that you need yet, review your online marketing system to see which steps you can improve upon to enroll more clients.

To learn how to create an effective marketing system that helps you get all the clients that you need, join me for the How To Get More Clients Online Teleseminar Series that starts tomorrow. Register for it now at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zmarketing

Biana Babinsky

I have seen thousands of business owners do it. A business owner, let’s call her Carol, offers a great service, and she designs a whole system for her clients to get through her service and achieve amazing results. Carol sees the amazing results her clients are getting and, quite correctly, attributes the results to the system that she has created for them.

However, when it comes to her own business, Carol resists setting up a marketing system. Instead, she just tries using different marketing techniques, hoping that one of them will turn out to be the technique that will bring her all the clients that she would ever need.

She tries blogging, article marketing, social networking, search engine optimization, using each technique for a few days and then moving on to the next one. She starts her own list for which she now has 24 or so subscribers.

None of the techniques have really brought in customers, so three months later she goes back and starts from the very beginning - blogging, article marketing, social networking, search engine optimization, again for a few days each. Her list is now at 39 subscribers, but again, nothing is happening.

This is exactly what I have seen many business owners do. They rapidly switch between many marketing techniques hoping that one of them will provide all the clients that they need. None does, so they start over again, still hoping for clients….

The problem here is that they have no system in place for using online marketing techniques effectively. It is not enough to just apply the techniques; you must have a clear understanding of why you are bringing people into your sphere of influence, what happens with those people and how can you continue to communicate with these people to turn them into customers.

Here is a Three Step Online Marketing System For Getting Clients that you can use:

Step 1. Use online marketing techniques to identify your target market and drive your target market to your web site.

In this step you will apply online marketing techniques such as social networking, article marketing, business blogging, etc. But you need to apply them effectively, so that your target market will recognize that you can help them and visits your web site.

Step 2. Turn the web site visitors into leads. The web site visitors that you have acquired in Step 1 are now browsing your web site. Now either they will leave your web site and never come back or you must turn them into leads on the spot. You can accomplish this by offering them something of value in exchange for subscribing to your newsletter.

Step 3. Turn your leads into clients. Again, you must have a system in place for this - you must have an effective follow-up system that helps you turn your leads into clients.

Create an Online Marketing System for your business today. The System will make a difference between doing the same thing over and over again and not seeing results and actually starting to get clients from your online marketing efforts. I will be teaching how to create an Online Marketing System for your business during the How To Get More Clients Online Teleseminar Series. Register for the Teleseminar Series now at
http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zmarketing

Biana Babinsky

After I announced the How To Use Twitter To Promote Your Business Teleseminar, I started getting questions from many business owners asking me how can one promote their business in 140 characters or less.

Here is a list of 7 things you can do to promote your business on Twitter:

1. Use Your Profile To Display The Link To Your Web Site. It will help you get more traffic to your web site and it will let others on Twitter learn more about you.

2. Share Information About Your Events. I had 473 people register for my Online Marketing Plan teleseminar last week. Some of the people found out about the teleseminar on Twitter.

3. Share What You Do. But don’t keep saying “Hire me!” - doing this will not get you any clients. But naturally sharing what you do and who your perfect clients are will get you great results.

4. Post Your Blog Posts To Your Twitter Account. You can automate this part, or you can post your blog posts to your account manually. When your friends on Twitter are able to read your blog posts, they will be able to get to know you and your business better.

5. Help Others. Re-tweet messages of others that resonate with you, let your followers know about your friends’ events, etc. When you help others they remember it and, in turn, will help you.

6. Use Your Name. People like to talk to a person, not a business name. Use your name either as a handle, or at least have your name listed in your profile.

7. Promote Your Brand. Put up your logo, change your page colors to your web site colors, etc. Do as much as you can to promote your brand with your Twitter page.

So here are 7 things that you can do on Twitter to promote your business. There are many more things you can do - please use the comments to add to the list!

And for more information on promoting your business on Twitter, get the How To Use Twitter To Promote Your Business Study Guide.

Biana Babinsky

As registrations are rolling in for the How To Get Clients And Build Your List With Social Networking Teleseminar Series, I am having conversations with business owners about social networking.

One question that I have received a few times is:

How Can Coaches Use Social Networking To Promote A Coaching Business?

This is a great question, because I think social networking is one of the best media for coaches to promote their businesses. Sadly, I see many coaches under-use, mis-use or not use social networking at all.

Here are three steps to help you get coaching clients using social networking:

#1: Describe Your Coaching Business On Your Profile.

Don’t just say that you are a life coach, a business coach or a career coach. There are thousands (or even millions!) of other life coaches, career coaches and business coaches using social networking web sites. How is your potential client supposed to know which one to hire if everyone is a life coach?

Instead, use your profile to discuss the benefits that your clients will receive when they work with you or buy your products.

For example, many times I don’t even mention “coaching” or “consulting” when talking about what I do. Instead, I concentrate on clients’ benefits. I tell my potential clients that they will be able to Get More Clients Online when they work with me.

#2: Share Your Free Gift On Your Profile.

I am sure that you would like everyone you meet on social networking web sites to immediately become a life coaching client. Unfortunately, that will happen very rarely.

When your potential clients just encountered your profile on a social networking web site, they don’t have a relationship with you yet. Because of that they do not know that you are an expert at what you do, and they are not willing to invest into coaching with you (yet!).

They are, however, ready to get your free gift and subscribe to your newsletter. Make sure that information about your free gift is VERY visible on your profile. That way you will get more subscribers.

Don’t have a free gift for subscribers yet? Create a free gift now, because a free gift can triple the number of newsletter subscribers without increasing your web site traffic. Once you have your free gift in place, start offering it to people you meet on social networking web sites.

#3: Create Information Products (And Share Information About Them!).

Once your target customers opted in and downloaded your free gift, start sharing information with them and building relationships. As you are building relationships, make sure that you mention what you have to offer.

Many coaches only offer coaching services, and they mention this in every newsletter. However, very few people will be interested in your coaching services. From what I have seen with many of my clients, fewer than 1% of subscribers are interested in one-on-one coaching services. For some people it is the issue of pricing (one-on-one packages cost a lot of money), others are more interested in other ways to learn (e-books, audios, group coaching, etc).

Therefore, if you are only offering coaching services you are leaving a lot of money on the table. Many of your subscribers and people you meet through social networking will not work with you one-on-one, but are interested in buying your products.

Start creating information products to increase your revenues and get more clients through social networking.

Biana Babinsky

I like using Facebook for social networking (if you are a member of Facebook, add me as a friend. Just let me know that you read my blog.). It has been great at helping me connect with members of my target market, find affiliates and create joint ventures and other opportunities for my business.

I like learning more about people and visiting new and old friends’ pages to see what’s new in their businesses, on their blogs, etc. Unfortunately, sometimes I have to leave the pages without learning anything about the friend’s blog or business. This is because some people on Facebook have so many applications on their profile pages that it takes them forever to load.

I know that it is hard to resist to add an application that helps you send someone a hug. Or send someone flowers. Or offer someone a drink. Or add unicorns to your page. Or….

Remember, though, every time you add an application to your Facebook profile page, it becomes bigger. This means that it will take the page longer to load. People are impatient, so if your page isn’t loaded instantly, they will just go on to another page without looking at yours.

Also, since you are on Facebook to bring more clients to your business, think about what those hugs, drinks and unicorns applications say about your business.

Here are three tips to make your Facebook Page more effective:

- Make Your Profile Page Load Fast. If your page takes a long time to load your visitors will go elsewhere and no one will ever find out about you and your business.

Make sure that your Profile Page loads fast on both fast connection and on dial-up. Yes, some people still use dial-up, so you want your page to load for them, especially if they are in your target market.

- Add Business Applications To Your Page. Some of the Facebook applications help you display your blog posts, promote your business web site, promote your newsletter, etc. These are exactly the applications you want to use on your profile.

I myself use applications to display my Free Report on getting clients online, to display my blog posts, etc.

- Decide If You Really Need Non-Business Applications On Your Page. As yourself, since you use your Facebook page to market your business, do you really need non-business applications on it?

You may want to add one or two that you really like, but stop there. You are serious about building your business, so make sure that your Facebook profile reflects that as well.

Want to learn more about using social media? Join me for Social Networking Teleseminar Series at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/znetwork

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

Some coaches I know have 2-5 clients, have a few people subscribing to their list every month and have 100-500 web site views every month. Of course they would like MORE - more clients, more subscribers and more web site visitors.

How can they go from 2-5 clients to 15-20 clients, to hundreds of people joining their list and to thousands of web site views every month?

Here are my thoughts on this:

First off, congratulations! If you have a few clients, people are joining your list every month and you have steady web site traffic, it looks like some of your marketing is working!

The next step is to track which marketing is working, because it is very important to know what is actually producing results. So my first question is: Are you tracking your efforts to find out EXACTLY which of your marketing efforts are bringing in the results?

If some efforts are already working, why not increase these efforts and see if they bring you more results? Marketing is not about creating breakthrough, award-winning campaigns. Marketing is about finding out what works for you and your practice and using what works to get MORE clients, subscribers and web site traffic.

My next recommendation is to streamline your marketing and create a marketing system that you use to move people around your marketing funnel. Create a system for getting people to your web site ==> getting them to subscribe to your newsletter ==> using your newsletter to offer them coaching and your other products.

You can do this by:

- Driving qualified traffic to your web site. Article marketing is great, but you need to use it consistently in order to get more web site traffic. I recommend my clients to submit at least 5 articles a month to article directories.

Other ways to drive traffic include search engine optimization, having your own blog and blogging on a consistent basis, participating in online networking where your target market networks and more.

- Once your get the traffic to your web site, make sure you can convert it into newsletter subscribers. Create a nice free gift that you can give away, such as a free report, audio recording, etc and promote it on EVERY page on your web site. Doing this will ensure that no matter where people have entered your web site, they can subscribe to your newsletter.

- Use your newsletter to promote your services and products. Now that you are adding subscribers think big about what they need, create products that they need and offer them to your subscribers.

As you are working through your online marketing strategy, see if you want to publish your newsletter more often. When you publish your newsletter every two weeks, or even weekly, you will be able to share more with your subscribers, get them to know you better and get them to buy your products and services.

Need more help? Check out more blog posts on list building:

- How To Use Your List To Get Clients

- Coaches, How Often Do You Send Out Your Newsletter?

- What To Do With Your Social Networking Traffic

More information on list building is available in the Grow Your List Home Study Course available at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/znews

Biana Babinsky

Every once in a while I receive a question from a coach who has heard that newsletters are old news and web 2.0 is the way to go. Here is a question I received recently:

Question: Biana, I have been a life coach for about 4 years now. I have been publishing my newsletter for about 2.5 years. About 6 months ago I started reading articles and hearing from everyone that newsletters are outdated and that I should start using web 2.0 exclusively.

Did I make a mistake? Should I have been publishing my newsletter instead of starting the blog and doing social networking?

My answer: First of all, I LOVE web 2.0. Blogging and social networking has been bringing leads and clients to me for a very long time. However, your newsletter is a foundation of your marketing strategy. Before you blog, before you use social networking sites, you MUST have a newsletter.

Let me explain. Your newsletter helps you build long term relationships with people in your target market. It is your most important piece in your marketing strategy. When you meet people in your target market - in person, through speaking or networking, or online, though social networking, article marketing, etc - you need to invite them to get on your newsletter list.

Once they get on your list, they will be able to receive your newsletter, get to know you and become aware of products and services that you offer.

The best way to use web 2.0 is to use it to get more people to subscribe to your newsletter. When people are reading your blog, make sure that you invite them to subscribe to your newsletter. You can do that by using an invite in the blog header, including a newsletter subscription box in your menu, etc.

And when you are using social networking, make sure that your personal pages on different social networking sites promote your newsletter. That way you can use your newsletter to continue building relationships with people you meet at social networking sites.

So I recommend that you continue using your blog and social networking sites, but you should also find a way to continue building relationships with people you meet through those means.

I talk a lot about using your newsletter to get clients in the Grow Your List Home Study Course that you can see at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/znews

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