Internet Marketing For Solopreneurs

Hi,

As you probably know, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced on December 1st that we have been in recession for about a year. I am sure that you, as a business owner, have seen the signs of recession before the National Bureau of Economic Research made the announcement.

I have been seeing the signs of recession as well, because I have been getting emails from dozens of business owners every single week asking me about marketing in recession. To help these business owners, I decided to write an article on how to get clients during a recession.

However, as I started to write this article, I saw that I wanted to say much more than I could fit into a one-page article.

So instead I wrote a report: “5 Keys For Getting Clients During A Recession” and it is available for you, FREE, at
http://www.EffectiveOnlineMarketing.com

Get the report and discover:

- - How to find a target market filled with people hungry for your products

- The best marketing techniques to use in recession

- Five keys to building your list easier and faster

- Two questions to ask yourself to make your social networking extremely profitable

and much, much more.

Download the report, FREE, at

http://www.EffectiveOnlineMarketing.com

Biana Babinsky

One of the most popular questions I have been receiving this year from clients, colleagues and online friends (some of whom I met on social networks) has been Is Social Media A Fad?

I even had a discussion on this same subject at a non-business event a few months ago. One of the participants found out what I did for a living and we had a great discussion of social media, how it affects the way we do business and if it is here to stay.

As someone who has participated in social media and social networking online for the past fifteen years and recently taught a social networking teleseminar, I know that social media is not a fad. However, I can see why this question keeps coming up over and over again. Social media and social web sites have become the “it” things on line in the past 6-8 months, just like blogging did a few years ago. And because of their “it” status there have been many articles in mainstream publications about social media and how business owners use it for business development.

As a result of those articles, many people who have never used social media before decide to give social media a try. But since they are new to the social media scene, they are not sure how long social networking is going to stay around for. They do not want to spend their time on something that may just be a fad, so they are looking to make sure that social media and networking are here to stay.

And from what I have seen in my many years online, I can tell you that social media is here to stay. Social networking started as soon as people started using the Internet. I remember communicating on Bulletin Boards, then through mailing lists, then message boards. I started using social networking as soon as I got online. The very first social networking medium that I ran was a message board.

Since then I have joined and left countless mailing lists, message boards and social networking sites. While the media that I use changes with time (new networking sites, new mailing lists, etc), social networking stays. While we might not use the same social networking websites five or ten years from now, we will still be using social networking. Just like I used it fifteen years ago. And this is why social networking is not a fad and is here to stay.

More social networking articles:

- Getting Results From Social Media Sites

- What To Do With Your Social Networking Traffic

Biana Babinsky

P.S. What do you think? How do you use social networking?

I am sure that by now you have heard about social media and social media sites. Lots of people are networking on them, talking about them and using them to promote their businesses.

Because there is so much information about social media and social networking everywhere, I have been getting lots of questions about social networking from my clients, members of my mentoring program and web site visitors.

Everyone wants to know how to get results from social media web sites. And by saying results the majority of business owners mean “more clients”.

So how can you, a coach, consultant or other business professional, use social networking to get more clients for your business?

What you want to use to use social networking for is to meet and connect with your target market. Just like with any other marketing technique, you want to get your target market to know you, so that they can do business with you.

My recommendations for using social networking effectively are:

- As always, look for where your target market is and go ahead and meet it! There are tons of groups on many different networking sites, and you can start by participating in a few different groups that your target market frequents. Don’t join every single group that you see - there are thousands, if not millions of those, and you will never be able to use all of them.

Instead, find groups where your target market hangs out and networks. Increase your visibility by participating in the groups.

Everyone knows the leader, right? The best visibility comes when you are the leader of the group, so start your own group where your target can hang out and you can demonstrate your expertise!

- What’s the next step for your target market? What step should people in your target market take in order to get into your sphere of influence? They subscribe to your newsletter!

Make sure that you offer people plenty of opportunities to get on your list.

- Explore social networking sites and use the available resources. Different social networking web sites have different resources for you to use, and some are not so obvious. Some offer resources to post your upcoming events, post your articles and blog posts, etc. Use the available resources to get more visibility and exposure for your business.

I discussed many more ideas for using social networking to promote your business during the How To Create Social Networking Plan That Gets You Clients Teleseminar last month. You can get the audio recording of the How To Create Social Networking Plan That Gets You Clients Teleseminar at http://www.marketingsalad.com/social-networking.html

Biana Babinsky

Many years ago I was working on a web site project for a client. It was almost done, but there was an important part that I needed to completely finish the web site. The client needed a programming script for the web site. I wrote her a script that did everything but one thing that she needed.

It took me a long time to troubleshoot the script, but I still could not get that one thing to work. I really wanted to be done with the web site, so that I could move to the next project, but before I could be done, I needed the script to work. After spending another week on that script, I finally asked another web developer about the issue I was having. In about an hour I had a working script!

I was very excited, as the project was done! I billed the client, we checked and released the web site and I moved on to the next project.

As you can see, taking the next step is great and liberating. If you are stuck trying to figure something out and you can’t move on, here is what I recommend. Take some time and decide what this next step should be. Then, decide if you can take the step on your own, find an expert to ask questions about taking the step, or hire someone to help you with it.

For example, take a look at the next step that you should take in marketing your business. You may want to start a blog, but aren’t sure which software to use. Or, you may want to do article marketing, but aren’t sure how to get started. In this case the best way to take the next step is to find an expert who can answer your questions and recommend the best way to do that.

For the past few days I have been helping members of MarketingSalad.com, my online business mentoring program taking the next step to accomplish their goals. I am dedicating this week and next week to this task, so if you need help in finding the next step to take, come join us at http://www.MarketingSalad.com!

Biana Babinsky

About Biana Babinsky: Biana is the online business coach, expert and author who teaches coaches, consultants and other online business owners how to get more web site traffic and clients online. Join her Online Business Mentoring Program at http://www.MarketingSalad.com to learn how to market your business better online!

Do you need more clients for your business? Getting more clients is a goal of many business owners, but not all of them are able to bring more clients to their businesses. This is happening because many business owners are not using the right marketing techniques for getting clients.

Many business owners market randomly, instead of concentrating on effective marketing strategies that have been proven to be able to bring in clients over and over again. I recommend that you use these three marketing strategies in your marketing plan no matter which marketing techniques you use and no matter what kind of marketing you do. Doing this will result in more clients for your business…

Continue Reading 3 Keys For Getting More Clients

Are you afraid to market your business because:

- You don’t think anyone will take your seriously?

- You don’t think that potential clients will ever pay your rates, even though your rates are reasonable?

- You are not confident about what you are offering and you think others can do it much better than you?

Continue Reading Become More Confident! Article

If you have been reading newspapers, watching television or reading online news sites, you have probably seen articles noting that the US economy is not doing as well as before. Consumers are not spending as much money as before, and they are buying less. This means that many business owners are not able to generate the same level of revenues…

Continue Reading Getting Clients During An Economic Downturn

I am sure you have heard many times from many different sources that having a large e-mail list is going to help you increase your revenues and be more successful. What I haven’t seen discussed nearly enough, though, is the process for going from having a large list to actually getting more one-on-one clients and selling more products.

Having a large list is great, but you need to be able to get what you actually need from your list: one-on-one clients and product sales. There is absolutely no point to have a list of 10,000 subscribers if you do not know how to turn them into customers…

Continue Reading Turn Your Subscribers Into Clients

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

Are you a coach, consultant, virtual assistant of any other service professional? Chances are, services that you offer come with a high price tag, and it is hard to convince someone who just
met you or came to your web site to buy those services.

If a service you are offering is expensive, it is not an impulsive purchase for your clients. When you are selling your services you need to convince potential clients that they really need what you have to offer. The best way to do that is by building a relationship with them.

People buy from people they know, like and trust. You will have more opportunities to convert potential clients into actual clients the more potential clients you have who know, like and trust you…

Continue Reading 2-Step Plan To Get More Service Clients