Client Magnets Official Blog

Archive for May, 2010

Twitter is one of the most popular social networking platforms today, and is growing in popularity exponentially. More and more businesses are turning to Twitter to make connections with clients, other businesses and potential sales leads. The first step to successfully building your online presence via Twitter is to create a profile on Twitter. What’s the best way to create a profile that will get your business noticed on Twitter?

Firstly,  What is Twitter?
Twitter is essentially a web platform where you can share 140-character snippets with the people who are interested in what you say. In order to see your 140-character updates, people must “Follow” you on Twitter. In order for you to see their updates, you must “Follow” them back. The people who follow you and read what you write are called “Followers,” and the people whose updates you can see you are said to be “Following.”

Pick a Username that Conveys You And Your Business
When you create a profile on Twitter, pick a username that conveys you and your business. If your business has a short name, such as Bike Bandit, you might select BikeBandit as your username.  You can also sign up using your personal name.  Select whatever makes it easy for other Twitter users to find and follow you. If you have a long business name, such as Wintergreen Hospitality Services Incorporated, you might want to use just an identifying word from your business, such as Wintergreen. Pick a short username consistent with your business, and one that your users will be able to find easily.

Keep Your Profile Consistent with Twitter
When you’re building your Twitter profile, keep it consistent with Twitter. Twitter only gives you 140 characters for your bio, so think of a few words or a phrase that summarizes your business. You can also provide a link to your website in your profile, so that gives you a chance to funnel your Twitter followers to a specific page that gives them more information about you. Think of your Twitter bio as a teaser, and point them to a page that will make them want to know more about you via your profile URL.

Using Icons and Backgrounds Effectively
You can upload a picture to represent your business on Twitter, but the size is limited. Some businesses prefer to use a logo; one that’s consistent with other branding; so it’s easy to identify the business. Many people prefer to use a personal photograph, though, because the purpose of Twitter is to connect with other people. A photograph is more humanizing, and makes you more accessible as a person.

You can also put up a background on your Twitter page that followers see when they come to your page. You can use this background for your company logo, or to show your product or important things from your company.

Building a successful Twitter profile is your first step in building a strong Twitter following for your business. Remember that people want to connect with a human, so try to humanize your profile as much as possible. Utilizing your profile effectively makes it easier for people to find you and understand what your business does. If you follow these easy tips, you’ll have a successful Twitter profile in no time!

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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When you’re marketing your product, you must spend some time establishing your product’s value. Before you explore pricing with your sales prospects, you must convince them that your product is truly valuable for them. They need to feel like they want your product, or no price tag will make them buy. If you do a good enough job of presenting your value proposition, you can charge far more than you think you should charge, because you’re letting your product sell itself; you’re not relying on the price to sell your product.

Establish a Problem
First, you must establish a problem that your potential prospects face. For example, one of my students offered pain solutions for back pain sufferers. In her case, the problem that her clients faced was back pain. Think about what you’re trying to sell, whether it’s a seminar, class, or product, and what problem it addresses. That’s the problem you want to establish in your sales material. By introducing the problem that your product solves, you’re setting yourself up to provide the solution.

Show How Your Product Solves the Problem
Once you’ve established the problem, show your potential prospects how your product solves the problem. For my back pain student, her product reduced and eliminated back pain – chronic back pain that her clients simply couldn’t eliminate. Talk about how your product does what it does, and what your client will gain by utilizing your product. If possible, talk about other solutions to the problem, and why your product does it better.

Add Testimonials to Build Value
If you have them, this is a great point to add testimonials. After explaining how your product solves a problem, let one of your clients show the value of your product by including a testimonial about how they had success with your product. For pain sufferers, a good testimonial might be someone saying something like “I had back pain every day before I used this product, but after only a few days, I’m pain free! No more expensive chiropractor visits, endless pain pills, and living every day in pain!” Adding testimonials helps to build the value of your product and add credibility.

Quantify What People Gain
Don’t assume that people will inherently see the value in your product once they know what it does. You have to tell them why your product is good. Quantify what they gain. For back pain sufferers, they gain an end to back pain. But they’ll also be able to stop spending a lot of money on expensive chiropractor visits, pain pills, specialists and other expensive pain-related products. Spell all of this out to your prospects so they’ll see what they gain in writing; don’t just expect them to figure it out for themselves.

Present a Value Proposition for Every Product
You must present a value proposition for every product you sell. Whether you’re selling e-books, coaching programs, seminars, workshops or physical products, you must always establish a value proposition. If you do it well, your product will sell itself – you won’t have to convince people to buy, because the product will convince them!

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Michael Dunlop is the successful young entrepreneur behind such blog sites as www.RetireAt21.com and www.IncomeDiary.com. His sites have upwards of 200,000 visitors each month.

How does he do it?

In his words, “It’s all about creative content.”

When you post a blog with unique content or present standard content in a creative and engaging way, you attract more people. The people who are attracted to your content will then link to it or tweet about it. This is what’s called link bait or tweet bait.

For example, Michael posted “the top earning websites in the world.” He listed what each site earned in the last year, and then broke that down to how much they made in a second. When people see that Google made $691 a second, it catches their attention and they link to his site or tweet the information.

This strategy can work in any niche. Whatever your area of expertise, you can post lists of top earners or “10 best …” Those readers who already follow you will share the information with their network, attracting even more people to your blog.

To save you the time of researching these types of lists, you can use a service such as www.TaskUs.com, which will do the work for you. They will provide you with all the information you need, which you can then copy and paste to your blog. For a reasonable fee, you can see a return that is worth thousands.

You can also post lists that reflect your own personal opinion. For instance, you might post a list of people who have influenced you in your career, or the top ten reasons why it’s great to work in your field.

Since a list of the best of anything is really subjective, some readers might disagree with your choices. Don’t be upset if that happens. It means that they are paying attention to you. The more comments that people post, the more conversation you’ll generate.

The point is to be creative. People are drawn to lists because they present interesting tidbits of information that are easily shared. David Letterman discovered that years ago – his nightly top ten lists have long been shared around the world.

When you offer creative content in the form of link bait or tweet bait, you will begin to attract more readers to your blog. As the number of people linking to your site increases, so does your internet ranking. And it happens instantly. So start thinking creatively about some lists that will give your readers information that they simply can’t wait to share.

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IMAGINE THIS: You need to transfer water from one location to another. So, you set about filling a bucket with water from the hose…but straight away, you notice that the bucket isn’t holding water. A series of holes are allowing the water to quickly drain out.

Now you have two choices: you can continue on with the Swiss-cheese bucket, running as quickly as you can to get from point A to point B, while retaining as much water as possible; or you can take the time to plug each hole, one at a time, until you have an implement that saves you trips, time, and wet feet.

Your business is that bucket. If you pour money into finding the one big thing that will draw in a stampede of people, you will waste much of your investment.

But, if you take the time to give attention to each detail of your business, find flaws, and plug those flaws (one at a time), you will arrive at an effective system for making product sales and booking reservations for your next live event.

Maybe you’re carrying out many of the necessary points, but they need to be tweaked for effectiveness. Or, maybe there are areas that you haven’t even thought about. No matter your booking saboteurs, here’s a list of strategies for plugging your bucket’s biggest holes:

• Follow up: Following up with every website visitor (specific to their buying or non-buying activity) can be indispensable in establishing connections that result in future bookings.

• Ask for feedback: When you know why someone didn’t book a seat for your workshop or buy your product, you can apply that information to future marketing efforts. People aren’t going to offer feedback unless they’re prompted to do so.

• Make yourself available by phone: Use an open phone line to quell fears, answer questions, and to make yourself available to the portion of the public that doesn’t feel comfortable booking or purchasing online.

• Simplify your sales page: Everyone that considers opting in (via the web) isn’t going to have a PhD. Make it easy to sign up, and keep the language simple enough for a 10-year-old to understand.

• Use a stick strategy: When taking reservations for seminars that are weeks or months into the future, stay in regular contact with your customers, to avoid buyer’s remorse (which may result in cancellations).

Those are the biggest plugs for buckets leaks, but here are some smaller, yet still important, remedies for common leaks:

• Establish a database: If you operate on the assumption that you simply need to put the information out there, and people will buy, you will lose bookings and sales. Know who you’ve marketed to, and use that information to implement the five major bucket leak fixes.

• Use a case study: Your first successful event or launch might be the hardest to accomplish, but once you do it, be sure to showcase it. Use it as example of what your future clients and attendees will experience.

• Plug holes before working on visuals: Too often, business owners spend money on having logos designed, images uploaded, and catchy headlines written – all before they have a solid marketing plan in place. It’s always more cost effective (and generally effective) to find a plan that works, and then wrap your public image around that.

• Make special offers that are specific: Discounts offered to the general public don’t make anyone feel special, but when you offer free items, or discounts, to an exclusive group, they’ll feel like parts of the club (and more inclined to be parts of your workshop).

Often, entrepreneurs are so busy with attraction methods, that they forget how to treat prospects once they’ve attracted them. Work on your bucket list. Tackle one hole at a time, repair it, and then move on to the next. Before you know what happened, you’ll be carrying bucket loads of clients and bucket loads of money!

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Event registration can be a nerve-wracking process. Registration is typically a cyclical period of peaks and valleys that can be both inspiring and depressing. With the right mindset and some insider techniques, you can safely navigate the event registration cycle and reach your target number of attendees.

Approach Registration with a Positive Mindset
Event registration is a cause for apprehension in both experienced event planners and newcomers to the event world. No matter how many times you host an event, there’s always a question of how well-received the event will be, and whether you’ll get enough attendees. Over time, you learn the normal cycle of event registration, and the peaks and valleys in registration matter less. But the key to dealing with the event registration process in a rational way is to approach your event with a positive mindset, and the confidence that you can successfully market your event.

Dealing with “the Dip”
There comes a point during every event registration cycle where there’s a dip in registration, and numbers aren’t where you want them to be yet. It’s normal at this point for doubts to creep in. Event organizers may wonder if they’ll get the numbers they want for registration, or whether the event itself is worthwhile. The key to successfully navigating “the Dip” is to maintain a positive mindset, and recommit to marketing the event.

When the dip happens, get creative with your marketing. Send out another touch. Try using a different marketing avenue to reach potential clients you haven’t touched recently. Recommit to marketing your event, and the dreaded “Dip” will sort itself out. And remember – this is a normal part of the event registration cycle.

Consider a Preview Tele-seminar or Event Materials
If registration isn’t quite where you want it to be, consider a creative way of reconnecting with your audience and convincing them to register. One thing you can try is a preview tele-seminar. During a tele-seminar, you can talk about things you’ll cover during the seminar, or invite people who have attended a previous seminar to come on and speak about their experience. A preview tele-seminar can generate the buzz you need to overcome a lull in registration.

Alternately, or as a companion to a tele-seminar, you can review the materials you’re including with your event. If you’re planning a low-budget event but you’re giving away a lot of manuals and handouts, it can actually suppress ticket sales. Conversely, if you’re planning a high-budget or multi-day event, you’ll want to provide a thick, chunky manual so people feel like they’re getting a value in what’s being delivered. Consider adding or subtracting event materials to boost registration.

The keys to successfully navigating through the event registration cycle are to maintain a positive attitude and get creative with marketing. Don’t let a dip in registration discourage you; instead, re-commit to marketing your event in creative new ways. By adding new touches, you can boost registration and reach potential attendees you might not have encountered previously. Most importantly, keep telling yourself that you can throw a successful event, and you will throw a successful event!

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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You are in the perfect place at the right time, and you were given your talents and your life experience for a reason.

Of this, I am positive. And you need to be positive about it too.

Do you recall the devastating tsunami in Sri Lanka at the end of 2004? There was a Swedish woman on the beach that day who became known as “the angel on the hill.”

She noticed the first part of the tsunami – the warning. She observed that the tide went out really quickly and was revealing the seabed. It so happened that years before, she had been working as a journalist and had done a broadcast in Hawaii about the impact of tsunamis.

At that moment, she was one of the few people that recognized and understood what was happening. She was able to warn many people to get off the beach immediately. Who knows how many lives she saved just by that action?

After the two waves subsided, people were in shock, and many badly injured. They assembled for safety on this hill, where this same Swedish woman tended to many injuries. It turned out that she had completed two years of a medical degree a few years earlier.

Though she wasn’t a qualified doctor, that two years of training had given her just enough knowledge to save many lives.

And, here’s what I want you to take away from this true story.

She had been a journalist and that hadn’t worked out. She had gone to medical school and that hadn’t worked out. And quite possibly, up until that day in her life, she may have had well-meaning friends and relatives and colleagues saying to her, “You’re in your 30s now. When are you going to get your act together?”

She had obviously tried a few different careers that hadn’t played out in the way she probably expected them to. But, from another perspective, she had the perfect training to save lives that day.

So, stop being so hard on yourself. Stop lamenting the things of your past or thinking they were a waste of time, or that you’re a failure for not following through on them. So what if you’ve lost interest in a promising hobby you might have had as a child. It’s no big deal if that musical instrument fell by the wayside when you got older.

Don’t beat yourself up over it.  Stop looking at these things as though you are a quitter or that you lack commitment.

How about looking at them from a different perspective? How about seeing everything that you’ve done in your life, and every single thing that has happened to you up until now, as the perfect training for adding the most value to your life today?

What greater value could that Swedish woman in Sri Lanka have had than to save the lives that she did?

You are in a position to add value, too. Don’t use your past as an excuse or justification for not moving forward. You need to look at your past in a different way. You have the perfect training to get started on what you want to do in your present. Your past experiences are all signposts leading to the next step, the next place you need to go.

You have a brilliant foundation to build upon right now.  So Step UP!, take action and move forward to where you truly want to be.

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Lists are a big part of marketing a product or event. Your list consists of everyone with whom you have marketing contact, either in the form of mailing addresses, phone numbers or email addresses. If you have a limited list, you have only a small pool of ready marketing contacts. However, you can still plan a successful event without a big list by partnering with people who have good lists.

Find a Joint Venture Partner with a List
If you don’t have a big list, you don’t have to avoid planning an event or selling a product; you just have to get creative about how to do it. For example, if you’re planning an event but you don’t have a list, partner with someone who does have a list and who can help promote your event. You might ask someone with a good marketing list to speak at your event, in which case your guest speaker will promote the event to their list.

Select Someone Whose Audience is Complementary
One of the best ways to promote an event with someone else’s list is to select a partner whose audience is complementary with yours; not necessarily in competition. A competitor probably won’t want to share his audience with you, because then there’d be nothing to prevent you from swooping in and taking the audience away. However, a complimentary business owner might be happy to cross-promote your event to his audience, because it is another way for him to provide value to his audience, and he may find it to be a money-making opportunity.

For example, if you’re planning an event on teaching businesses how to effectively utilize the Web for marketing, you probably won’t want to partner with a competitor who offers the same information to clients. Instead, you might want to partner with a more traditional marketing firm, who can then offer your Web-specific information and services to their clients. Or if you make and sell artist’s painting supplies, you might want to partner with someone who sells canvases; not someone else who makes or sells supplies. Think about who might have complimentary lists, and contact them about partnering in your event.

Be Clear about Terms
If you do bring on a partner to help with list marketing, be clear about the terms of your agreement up front. You’ll need to negotiate commissions and percentages on your joint venture. Have a proposal ready when you begin your discussions with potential partners, and know how much you’re willing to negotiate. If you’re not clear enough up front, you may find that you miss out on an opportunity to build your own list, maximize your income from your event or find yourself in the middle of a disagreement with your new partner. Know how much you and your event are worth, and make sure your new partner can respect that!

Even if you don’t have a big list yourself, partnering with the right person can give you plenty of instant contacts, and help you build a list of your own. Don’t let a lack of a list hamper your marketing efforts. Find a good partner with a good list, or even multiple partners, and move forward to make your event a success!

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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Value is a subjective term, a relative feeling.  If someone perceives the value of a product or a service to be high, he or she will naturally be willing to sacrifice more (time, money, etc.) to take advantage of its value.

So along that vein, if you want to build the price tag of your teleseminar (and I’m sure you do), you must increase its perceived value.  Consumers naturally think in a “what’s in it for me?” manner.  When you create a belief that what they’re getting from your teleseminar will greatly outweigh their investments of time and money, you have managed to increase the perceived value of your event.

Here are some ways to accomplish that high-value factor:

• Promise to disclose secrets. True secrets would be those things that aren’t common knowledge.  Or, even better, they are those things which you have discovered; things which you invented or uncovered that can make your teleseminar participants’ lives better.

• Promise to divulge your mistakes. Some failures, especially small ones, are inevitable, and can be instrumental in learning for success.  But if you can share the mistakes that you’ve made, to save your audience the time and grief that can come when they make those same mistakes, you will increase the perceived value of your teleseminar.

• Save your audience some time. When the information that you have compiled for disclosure on your teleseminar will save your participants hours, days, or weeks of research, you move them toward their goals more quickly, which is for most, invaluable.  For instance, if you can offer succinct, successful methods for doing something on a 30 minute call, for which people would normally spend 2 or more hours researching, you have created value.

• Quantify the cost. Ask yourself how much it would cost participants to unearth the information, on their own, that you’re planning to convey.  Consider resources they would have to buy, the traveling they might have to do, the phone calls they may have to make, and the time away from revenue-building that they would have to spend.

• Limit participation. If you limit the number of spaces on your teleseminar to 10, for instance, you will increase value.  Registrants will know that they won’t have to compete with 100 other people during question-and-answer time, and they’ll attach a noted value to that opportunity to have a voice.  You may have only expected to get 10 people on your call anyway, but by making a statement of limits, you increase perceived value.  This not only ensures that you get 10 people who are very interested in your topic, but will allow you to convert a stumbling block into a selling point.

• Offer extras. Gifts like transcripts, reports, templates, memberships, e-mail support, participation in a follow-up question-and-answer session, critiques of participants’ work, etc. will add perceived value and increase your revenue, as long as the gift you’re giving doesn’t out-cost your price tag differential.

Remember, if you create a high perception of value before your teleseminar, you must deliver on your promises.  Some of your best teleseminar customers will be repeat ones, so you’ll want to make sure that you do everything that you say you will, or your offerings will be viewed as fraudulent.

Success with higher price tags is all about perceived value.  Offer your audience what they’re looking for in a teleseminar, and incorporate the tactics outlined above.  Doing so will raise their perceptions of value…in a direct, upward relationship to your bottom line.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

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Recently, my friend and mentor, Kevin Nations, was offering a teleseminar.  Since he’s been such a great help to me, I passed the word along to my list of people.  But some who were reaching the web page to sign up for the call were having technical problems and unable to use the signup form.  They started emailing to find more information and to complete their signup.  I couldn’t help but think what a great offer he had – so great that it compelled people to take the extra steps to overcome a technical problem to get signed up!  Would they do that for your offer?

Just a few years ago, it was so easy to build a list of potential clients using online resources.  A little signup box in the corner of a webpage that offered a few free tips worked well for list building.  Soon the tips grew to a free report.  Is your list continuing to grow?  If your list isn’t growing as it once did, it’s time to take a fresh look at your offer.

We call that offer your ethical bribe.  You’re giving people something of value to them in return for their name and email address, which is of value to you.  And you’re not just getting any old name and email.  It’s someone who’s showing, just by the nature of your offer, that they have an interest in your product.  They are the perfect person to sell to – someone who’s receptive to your product.  But is it time to sweeten the pot?  Are you offering enough that someone would take an extra step to get the free offering?

Since building a list of potential clients is key to building your sales, you need to make sure that you continue to cultivate your list.  What were once tried and true methods for list building may now be growing more lackluster.  If you’re not generating results as you once were, take a fresh look at what you’re offering.  Is it compelling with enough value that people would take an extra step to get it?

One tried and true sales method is to create a sense of urgency, and this is the same for creating a valuable ethical bribe.  That may the reason that free reports don’t work as quickly and effectively as they used to – there’s no sense of urgency.  It’s still going to be there next week or next month.  On the other hand, a teleseminar has a deadline, it’s taking place on a certain date, so by its very nature it has the deadline to create urgency.  It also has scarcity in that there are only so many lines available for the call.  Together, the deadline and the scarcity create the urgency you need to compel people to act.

Think about your ethical bribe – does it have a high enough perceived value?  Is it enough that people will take an extra step for it?  Keep it fresh and compelling to keep your list, and therefore your business, growing.

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Video Marketing Secrets: this is a huge opportunity right now, and is THE way to establish yourself as an ‘overnight expert’ online. And it’s easier than you think. How you can get started, why you don’t need expensive film crews or equipment.

How to create EFFECTIVE videos that work like

TRAFFIC MAGNETS

to attract targeted traffic to YOUR site.

My Next “MARKETING* MASTERMIND Call…”

Tuesday, 25th May, 2010

8:00pm UK Time (3pm EASTERN, 12 noon PACIFIC)

TOPIC:  *Video Marketing Secrets*

This call is FREE for my hundreds of Marketing Mastermind and Stepping UP! members. They also get the CD and transcript of this call at no extra charge, plus a ton of other member benefits – such as access to our online members forum.

Not a member?  Then join the Marketing Mastermind Group today so you can take advantage of this call and all the other member goodies each and every month.

I look forward to “meeting” you on our call.
Best Wishes

Bernadette Doyle
www.clientmagnets.com

PS – Even if you can’t make the call, all Mastermind members receive a FREE CD of the call as well as a digital version of the audio and transcript! Take advantage now: http://bit.ly/SellingSuccess

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