Internet Marketing For Solopreneurs

Many coaches have told me that they want to be authentic when marketing their coaching business online. One of the best ways to do that is by creating a blog and using it to promote your business. Learn more about how to make your authentic self shine through and get clients in this article:
Read Get Clients With Your Blog By Being Authentic Article

Biana Babinsky

Why are you trying to get people to come to your web site? Obviously you want them to come to your web site and take some kind of action - you want them to subscribe to your newsletter, buy your products or contact you about your services.

But what if people come to your web site, but they are not taking any action? No one is buying, they just leave your web site?

Click Here To Read My Article On How To Make Your Web Site Visitors BUY

Biana Babinsky

About two weeks ago we had what seemed to be the last really warm day of the season and decided to go to the lake. Going to the lake is one of my favorite outdoor activities when it’s not too cold.

The walk around the lake was gorgeous. The usual blue lake and blue sky were additionally enhanced with trees with bright red and yellow leaves. Some of the leaves were falling down, but the ones still in the trees were contrasting very nicely with the blue color of the water.

That day we also met some friends for lunch. The conversation around the table turned to the gorgeous weather we were having that day, and how soon this nice weather is going to give way to cold and snow. If winter is coming to your area soon and you want to market more online and less in person, start learning about article marketing and how to use it to get leads and clients for your business!

Article marketing is a great marketing technique that you can use to get clients from the comfort of your office. There are three steps to doing article marketing:

- Write An Article. You do need to write an article in order to start using article marketing. The most effective articles are the ones that are of interest to your target market.

- Create A Resource Box For Each Article. A resource box is what comes right after the article; the 2-4 sentences that include your bio and a link back to your business web site.

- Submit Your Article To Article Directories. To get as much exposure for your article as possible, you need to submit your article to many article directories.

For more information on Article Marketing, join me for the Article Marketing For Service Professionals Teleseminar Series, http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zarticles

Biana Babinsky

The “How To Make Thousands Of Dollars With Membership Web Sites” Home Study Guide is available for you at
http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zmembers

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- Do you want to help hundreds or even thousands of people with your expertise?

- Do you want to work with clients in groups?

- Do you want to work with people who can’t afford your one-on-one services, instead of having to turn them away?

You can do all of that and much more when you create a membership web site for your target market. Here is how:

- Your membership web site will help you promote your expertise to hundreds and even thousands of people

- Your membership web site will enable to work with people in groups

- Your membership web site will enable you to let people who can’t afford your one-on-one services to work with you at a much lower price point.

There are lots more benefits to running a membership web site, and I discuss them in the “How To Make Thousands Of Dollars With Membership Web Sites” Home Study Guide.

Click Here To Learn More About “How To Make Thousands Of Dollars With Membership Web Sites” Home Study Guide

If you are a life coach, should you call yourself a life coach? Or should you find a different title for yourself?
I think you should call yourself what is comfortable for you AND what would get you the best response from potential clients.

I have worked with many life coaches, who became “Business Coaches”, “Relationship Coaches” or “Career Coaches” as they defined their niche and decided who they wanted to work with.

Another thing that we can try doing is talking about what we do in terms of clients’ benefits. When you outline what you do in terms of clients’ benefits, more of your potential clients will be interested in what you have to offer. You will get more clients as a result.

Instead of saying “I am a life coach” you can say “I help my clients find the job that they really want.”

Potential clients respond better when you describe what’s in it for them instead of just telling them that you are a life coach.

Want to learn more about promoting a life coaching business? Get the FREE Report, “Top Strategies To Get Life Coaching Clients Online” at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/free_report.html

More on marketing for life coaches

Biana Babinsky

So, what’s a conversion rate? A conversion rate is a ratio of how many people took an action (in this case subscribed to your newsletter) divided by the total number of your web site visitors.

So if you have 100 web site visitors and one of them subscribed to your newsletter, the conversion for you is 1 in 100 or 1%.

Of course you always want to increase your conversion rate. You would like to get as many of your web site visitors as possible to subscribe to your newsletter. How can you do that?

- Give your web site visitors a compelling enough reason to subscribe. You should offer a free gift, as someone else pointed already, to convince more of your web site visitors to subscribe. Doing this will help you increase your conversion rates.

- Put information about subscription and subscription box on every page of your web site. If you want people visiting your all of your web pages to subscribe to your newsletter, you need to have the information to be very visible on all of your web pages.

So to increase conversion rate I recommend:

- Create a free gift to promote to your potential subscribers.

- Make your subscription information VERY visible on your main page.

- Include your newsletter information on every page on your web site.

Want to learn how to get more newsletter subscribers? Get my 5 Steps To Growing Your List Home Study Guide.

Biana Babinsky

If you outsource all of your online marketing efforts, you don’t need to know anything about marketing, right? WRONG!

Even if you outsource all of your online marketing, including search engine optimization, newsletter publishing, article marketing and everything else, you should still know how different marketing techniques work.

While I enjoy marketing, I do have clients and colleagues who are not nearly as excited about marketing as I am. But I recommend to everyone to know the important things/techniques on marketing their own business.

You need to know your goals. You need to know your strategies. You need to know which techniques you are using, how to use them (at least in theory) and what the expected results should be.

For example, let’s say you decided to do article marketing to market your business, and you hired someone to do it for you. If you don’t know what article marketing is, what your goals are with respect to applying it and what the expected results are, you may have really high or really expectations of the work that will be done on your behalf.

And as you learn these things, who knows, you may decide that you like marketing much more than you thought ;) I had clients who went from “I hate marketing” to “I dislike marketing” to “I like marketing” as they learned what marketing really is.

You can learn more about marketing and how to use it for your business at http://www.MarketingSalad.com

Biana Babinsky

Many of my clients have asked me how to get started on having a web site. Should they create a web site themselves? How should they do it? Should they hire someone else to create a web site for them? What makes a good web site?

I usually recommend stepping back from an idea of a web site, and creating a list of what you actually need. You do not need a web site per se; what you really need is a process for getting clients online. Your web site is one of the main pieces in this process.

So, what do you need your web site for? Ask yourself these questions about your future web site:

- Do you need a place to promote your services?

- Do you want to create a hands-off system for getting clients online? Do you want to be able to build your list and use online marketing techniques to do that?

- Do you want to sell products such as ebooks, teleseminars and others?

- Do you need a membership web site?

- Do you need an automated system to get people to your web site and promote your services to them?

What to include on your web site and how to design it will depend on the purpose your web site will serve. If you don’t know what you need your web site to do, don’t hire a designer, as you will waste your money.

Only when you know what the web site needs to do, hire someone to create it for you.
Also, there is no reason to have a web site, unless you are going to use it and other online marketing techniques to attract more clients. If you will not use it for marketing, it will just be another business expense that will not pay for itself.

If you do want to use your web site to market your business, decide what you need your web site to do, before doing anything else. Doing this now will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

I have helped many clients to save thousands of dollars on their web sites - by helping them create a web site plan to get their web site right the very first time they design it or outsource to have it designed for them. You may want to join my mentoring program at http://www.MarketingSalad.com to learn how to create a plan for your web site.
Biana Babinsky

So you went to a networking event and met three people who are in your target market, and who can really use your services. Or you just attended an online networking event and want to keep in touch with a few people you met there. Or a colleague introduced you to a potential customer who you would love to work with, but who isn’t calling you back.

What should you do? How much should you follow up with these people? And, most importantly, how should you follow up with them to ensure a positive response?

If these people are in your target market, but they haven’t expressed specific interest in hiring you now, I would not spend too much time on following up with them. I meet dozens (sometimes more) target customers every week, so it is impossible to keep following up with all of them until they get back to me.

What I do is follow up once with information about my newsletter and the gift they will receive when they subscribe to my newsletter. Subscribing to my newsletter is a no-brainer for them - there is no charge to subscribe and they receive a gift when they do.

It is much easier to convince a prospect to subscribe to a newsletter than to buy your services. When you meet people in your target market, work on getting to that first step, having them to subscribe to your newsletter. Selling them your products and services will come later.

Getting potential customers to subscribe to your newsletter is great for you - now you are able to follow up and build relationships with potential customers without having to follow up with each person individually. As you send out your newsletter and build relationships, potential customers get to know you and are much more willing to buy your services and products.

Following up using a newsletter is extremely effective. A big part of my business comes from people who have been my newsletter subscribers for some time.

I recommend that you start a newsletter and use your newsletter as your automatic follow up program. This way you can follow up with hundreds, or even thousands of prospects, all at once.

Learn more of my tips for following up with clients - join my members-only online business coaching program at MarketingSalad.com

Biana Babinsky

Online networking can be extremely rewarding, if you know exactly the results you want to get and how to get them.

Here is a plan I recommend following for effective online networking:

- Make Your Networking Goals Clear To Yourself. Until you know exactly what results you need to get out of your networking efforts, no one will know what they are either. It is extremely important to know exactly what you need to get out of networking. Do you want to meet certain kinds of people? Promote your expertise? Gain more clients?

- Find Appropriate Networking Groups, Web Sites and Forums To Participate In. After working with many clients I have found out that the majority of people who have complained about not getting results from networking online have been networking in the wrong groups. When you network with people who are not in your target market, you will not accomplish your goals.

To find the right groups to network in, look back at the goals you have set for your networking. What kind of people do you need to network with to reach these goals? Once you know the answer to this question, find the networking groups where the majority of participants are these people.

- Network With Your Goals In Mind. Participate in discussions, share and help others and show your expertise at the same time. This will help your target market notice you and it will help you reach your networking goals faster.

For more information on how to use online networking to get clients, join my members-only web site, MarketingSalad.com to be coached by me on using online networking to get clients.

Biana Babinsky