I have heard it many times. Many coaches who have been in business for a year or two have told me that even though they are in business, they are not actively marketing it.

When I ask why not, it always seems like they are waiting for something before they can start marketing:

- Waiting to get yet another professional certificate

- Waiting to …

These people have been waiting for over a year to start marketing their businesses. Since they haven’t marketed their business yet, they do not have many clients and they are not able to support themselves with their business revenue.

Waiting for something to happen before you start marketing actually sabotages you and your business. If you are waiting for something to happen before you can start marketing I have a challenge for you — go ahead and get started. No more excuses of not having enough certificates or not having finished your web site re-design. The faster you start marketing your business, the faster you will build a successful business where you have as many clients as you need and where you work at times that are convenient for you.

Here is a plan for you to get started with marketing today:

- Do a comprehensive marketing review of what you have already accomplished. Do you already have a newsletter? Have you done some search engine optimization? Have you already written effective web site copy?

Don’t re-invent the bicycle. Make sure that you put to good use all the marketing materials you have already created. Doing this will save you time going forward.

- Create a marketing plan for your business. Based on what you have discovered during your marketing review, create a plan for going forward with your marketing. If you haven’t done that much in terms of marketing yet, I recommend concentrating on three marketing areas in the beginning: create an effective web site that sells your products and services, get more newsletter subscribers and write and publish articles online.

If you have already done some marketing, your plan may include more advanced techniques.

- Make a commitment to marketing. Marketing is not a one-time action; it is a process that you need to participate in every single day in order to see results. This is why I am asking you to make a commitment to following your marketing plan and promoting your business.

Once you put some time into marketing your business, you will start seeing results.

Stop waiting for something to happen before you start marketing. Create your marketing plan and start marketing today — doing this will make your business more successful and will help you earn more money. Learn how to create a marketing plan for your business in the How To Get More Clients Online Home Study Guide

Biana Babinsky

Last week I posted this note on Twitter: “Don’t use a marketing technique just because someone else is using it. You are not running their business, you are running YOURS!”

This post has generated a tremendous number of comments from people on Twitter and Facebook. When business owners see their colleagues getting results from certain marketing techniques they decide to use the same techniques in their own business. However, many times the techniques don’t turn out as successful for them, so business owners are left disappointed and unhappy.

Why does this happen? Many times business owners see others using a marketing technique effectively, so they jump in and start using the technique without proper evaluation and planning. As a result, the technique does not work for them and they are not able to get clients using it. Before starting to use a marketing technique, spend some time on evaluating how it is going to fit into your overall marketing plan.

Here are three reasons why a marketing technique that others are using may not be working for you and how to correct this:

#1: The marketing technique you are trying to use isn’t helping you reach your target market and isn’t bringing in clients as a result

For example, let’s say you are a dating coach. You have a colleague who is a business coach and who has been gaining a ton of clients by speaking at many Chamber Of Commerce meetings. You try to speak at the Chamber Of Commerce meetings to bring in clients, but are getting no takers.

This is happening because people who go to Chamber of Commerce meetings are in a business coach’s target market, but not in a dating coach’s target market.

How to correct this: Speaking is a great technique to promote your business. Look to speak at meetings for groups/associations/chambers for your target market and you will start seeing results!

#2: You are not using the marketing technique effectively and are not seeing the results others are seeing from using the same marketing technique

For example, I see many coaches using article marketing and trying to immediately get coaching clients with it. Truth is, it is very hard to convert someone who has just read your article for the first time into a coaching client. It is much easier to convert this article reader into a newsletter subscriber.

How to correct this: Instead of concentrating on immediately getting a client from a marketing technique, concentrate on getting newsletter subscribers and then using your newsletter to turn your subscribers into clients. You will see much better results this way.

#3: You do not have all the pieces of puzzle. Many times business owners hear about someone else using a marketing technique effectively, and they jump in and start using it without any kind of a plan

Just using a marketing technique is not enough. You need to know what results to expect, how to track them and what infrastructure you need in your business in order to get these results.

For example, if you are using article marketing, you need to know what types of articles to write, how to structure an effective resource box, how to use the article to get newsletter subscribers, etc.

How to correct this: Before starting to use a marketing technique, get all of the pieces of the puzzle. Do research to learn exactly how the marketing technique is used, what kind of results to expect and how to apply it effectively for your business.

Remember, you are running your business, not someone else’s! Before jumping into using a marketing technique do research to make sure that you know how to apply it so it will work for you! Get the
step-by-step instructions for applying online marketing techniques to your business in the How To Get Clients Online Home Study Guide at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zmarketing

Biana Babinsky

If you are looking for the best way to sell more of your products and fill up your teleseminars, an affiliate program is the answer.

What is an affiliate program? An affiliate program is a special program in which you (owner of products, programs and teleseminars) pay your affiliates for sales of your products, programs and teleseminars. People who sign up to sell your products, programs and teleseminars through your affiliate program are called your affiliates.

When your affiliates sign up to use your affiliate program, your affiliate program automatically generates special links for them to use. If they refer sales through these special links, they will earn commissions.

An affiliate program is a win-win for both you and your affiliates. You win because you are able to reach more people and sell more of your products and services. Your affiliates win because they can offer products for sale and make money with them without having to create their own products.

So why should you, a business owner, have your own affiliate program? Here are three reasons to do that:

- Acquire New Customers. Customers who are referred to your web site by your affiliates are typically first-time customers who didn’t know about your products and teleseminars prior to clicking from the referring site.

You must acquire new clients on a regular basis in order to stay in business. Having an affiliate program helps you get new customers through your affiliates.

- Get MORE Product Sales. When you have an affiliate program, you have more sales of your products, programs and teleseminars. It’s that simple! If you do not have an affiliate program, you are missing out on hundreds or even thousands of dollars in additional sales.

- Pay For Performance. How many times have you paid for advertising and did not generate any results? Traditional advertising does not necessarily increase sales, but you have to pay for it upfront. You incur the expense whether or not the advertising campaign was successful.

With an affiliate program, you pay for performance only. When your affiliates generate sales, they earn commissions. No sales - no commissions. Think of your affiliates as online commission-only sales people.

As you can see, there are many reasons for having an affiliate program. Here is a plan of action for you to jump-start your affiliate program and start using it to generate sales:

- Start an affiliate program if you don’t already have one.

- Offer help to your affiliates. Let your affiliates know where and how to get their affiliate links and how to use them to earn money.

- Keep in touch. E-mail your affiliates on a regular basis to let them know how they can earn more with your affiliate program. Doing this will help your affiliates promote you more and sell more of your products.

Ready to use your affiliate program to bring in more sales? Join me for the How To Sell Your Products And Teleseminars With An Affiliate Program call, during which I will discuss the step-by-step process for turningyour affiliate program into a sales-producing machine. Register for the call at

http://www.marketingsalad.com/affiliate.html

This question comes up from time to time on forums that I participate in. Many people want to know if you can really get clients from your web site. And the answer is “Yes!”.

Over 98% of my clients come to me from my web site and I have worked with many coaches, consultants and business people in many other industries who also get a high percentage of their clients online.

Here are some tips to help you get clients from your web site:

- Not everyone who comes to your web site is going to become a client immediately. Design a few different paths for your web site to work with for your web site visitors. Let your web site help your web site visitors subscribe to your newsletter, buy your product, attend your teleseminar, etc.

- Create very clear paths for your web site visitors to take. If you don’t understand how your web site visitors are using your web site, how are they going to use it? Design separate pages for lead generations, sales, coaching services, etc.

- Test, test, test. You will not know what works online until you test different methods of marketing, different web pages, etc.

- Drive traffic to your web site. You will not be able to get clients form your web site, unless you have traffic coming to your web site every single day.

Use online marketing techniques such as social networking, blogging, article marketing and others to drive traffic to your web site.

- Always try to turn more web site visitors into leads and clients. If your web site visitors leave your web site without taking action, you will lose them forever. Work on turning as many of them as possible into leads and clients. That way you will be able to continue working with them.

For more information on getting clients with your web site grab my FREE Report, “How To Get Clients Online” at http://www.AvocadoConsulting.com

Biana Babinsky

It has been just twelve days since we launched the FREE 5 Keys For Getting Clients During Recession special report, and we have already had well over 2,500 downloads!

My goal is to get the report in the hands of at least 5,000 business owners this December, to help them change their marketing mindset and get clients during these economic times. That way they will be ready to get the ground running and start getting clients once January starts!

This is where I need your help. I would love it if you could share the information about the free report, “5 Keys For Getting Clients During Recession”, with other business owners. And I would like to give you a gift for doing that. Keep reading for more information.

Here is how you can share information about the report:

1. Recommend the report to a few of your contacts by letting them know that they can go to http://www.EffectiveOnlineMarketing.com to get the no charge report, “5 Keys For Getting Clients During Recession”

2. Click here to reprint one of my articles. You may reprint articles in your blog, in your newsletter or on your web site. Each article provides valuable content for your readers, so you will be sharing useful marketing information with them. The Author Box contains information about the report.

3. If you are on Twitter, please twitter about the report by letting people know they can download it at http://www.EffectiveOnlineMarketing.com

4. If you use social bookmarking tools, you can bookmark the blog post I wrote about the report,
http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/marketing/c/2008/12/04/609

If you take any one of the steps above (or you can do all of them!), I would love to give you my “How To Turn Your Visitors Into Customers” special report at no charge. This report sells for $17 on my web site, but it is yours at no charge for helping me spread the word.

Once you let people know about the 5 Keys For Getting Clients During Recession special report, fill out the contact form at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/contact/ and let us know that you have shared the information and we will send you the link to download your copy of the “How To Turn Your Visitors Into Customers” special report. No proof necessary; we are doing this on the honor system.

Thank you very much for helping me help 5,000 business owners get clients! I really appreciate it. And don’t forget to get your own copy 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

Many business owners are very concerned about their revenues in today’s economy. They usually have only one source of revenue - their services. So when just a few of their clients stop paying for their services, their revenue takes a big hit. If your revenue will take a huge hit if just a few of your current customers stop doing business with you, listen up! You must create more income that you can
add to your revenue model. Doing this will help you shield yourself from revenue going down dramatically when just a few of your clients decide to stop doing business with you.

Here are other income streams you can add to your business immediately:

- E-books. An e-book is a digital document that is anywhere from 30 to 500 pages. Create e-books on topics that are of interest to your target market and increase your revenue with every e-book sale.

- Teleclasses. Teleclasses are classes that taught over the phone. Teaching teleclasses is a good way to demonstrate your expertise and increase your revenues at the same time.

Material taught and discussed during teleclasses can be reused to create special reports, audio and other products.

- Audio Products can be delivered in two different formats. They can be instantly downloaded from your web site any number of popular audio formats, or you could burn them onto a CD and physically ship the product.

Either way audio products will help you increase your revenues since many people like listening to
information instead of reading it.

- Affiliate Programs. Even if you do not have your own products yet, you can still increase your revenue by promoting other people’s products. You can do that through affiliate programs. When
you register for someone’s affiliate program, you can promote their products and receive commissions every time you sell a product.

You can earn 40% commissions on my very popular products when you sign up for my affiliate program at http://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zsaff

- Multimedia Products. You can create a large multimedia product by combining a few different formats of the same product. For example, when you teach a teleseminar, you can bundle together the teleseminar, its audio recording, a transcript, etc, and create a large multimedia product that you can sell.

- Advertising. You can sell advertising on your web site, blog and in your newsletter and create yet another income stream.

- Brainstorm and get creative! There might be another product that I haven’t mentioned but that you can create and use as an income stream for your business.

As you can see, there are many different products you can create for your business. Having many products and many income streams will help you keep up your revenues in any economic times.

Join my online business mentoring program to discover how to create different products and make money with them. You can start your membership for just $7 at http://www.MarketingSalad.com

Biana Babinsky

When I got online in the 90s, the Internet became a hobby of mine. I discovered e-mail and the web, forums and social networking, and really enjoyed the Internet. As I was using the Internet, I saw huge possibilities for doing business online. I started looking into running an online business. After some time my hobby became a business.

I love my business - I help business owners get more clients and make more money online. My business model is creating multiple streams of income, by offering both products and services to my clients.

As my hobby became a business, I was in need of a new hobby. In early 2000’s cooking became my new hobby. It started with me wanting to replicate different foods that I had tried at restaurants. But as I started cooking, I started to really enjoy it. I also realized that being able to cook meant that I could create food that was both healthy and delicious. Cooking has been my hobby for some time, and in this time, I have given out a lot of cooking advice and taught many people how to cook, and, more importantly, how to enjoy cooking.

And after a while of enjoying cooking as a hobby, and becoming passionate about it, I am doing it again! I am turning my hobby, cooking, into a new income stream. I just launched a new blog, Tasty Galaxy, Easy Cooking For Busy Professionals, to help busy professionals cook healthy and delicious meals. I am looking forward to developing this blog in the next months, and turning my passion into an income stream, using my online marketing expertise. Just saw that the blog is already getting traffic from search engines, and this is after being launched just last week!

I will be documenting the steps I am taking to turn this blog into an income stream for members of my online business mentoring web site, MarketingSalad.com.

To get access to all the information on how I am turning the blog into an income stream, register to become a member now at www.MarketingSalad.com

And now that my passion for cooking has just become an income stream, I will be looking for a new hobby to take up :)

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