Tips for Using Articles to Build Your List

February 28th, 2010

Writing articles relevant to your target audience is a great way to build your list. By providing potential clients with content they can use, you’ll give them a reason to visit your sign-up page. Here are three tips for effectively using articles to build your list.

Tip #1: Survey Your Target Audience First
Fusing the needs and wants of your target audience into the titles of your articles will ensure what you’re writing is relevant. Take time to find out what they really want to know, what kind of information you can offer that will have them turning to you for more.

An effective way to find out what they want is surveying, and there are some great tools available. Two popular, easy to use tools are AskDatabase.com and SurveyMonkey.com. Ask the people in your target audience what issues they struggle with, and then tailor your titles and content accordingly.

Tip #2: Create Your Article
As you write your articles use key words and content that will demand the attention of your target audience.  Some of us enjoy writing our own articles, but if you don’t, you can still create great content. Buy a digital recorder and record yourself answering the questions your target audience is asking.

You can also record yourself whenever you give a talk to a group. Once you have some recordings made, hire a transcriber to transcribe your audio. At that point, you can either edit the transcript into separate articles yourself, or hire a copy editor to create the articles for you.   By recording yourself and then having a good copy editor create articles from your transcripts, you’re more likely to meet the requirements of the editors on article directories.

Tip #3: Submit Your Articles
Once you have articles ready to submit to article sites, take advantage of article submission services to do that for you quickly and easily. Submitting articles yourself is time-consuming and distracts you from doing things only you can do for your business.   Be sure to provide a link back to your sign-up page.  As people read your articles, they should be directed back to your site.

Put Your Article Strategy in Motion. Writing and submitting well-written articles filled with useful content relevant to your target audience is an effective way to build your list. Consistently creating and submitting articles won’t build your list overnight, but great articles can definitely drive traffic to your sign-up page. If you haven’t tried article submission, it’s time to add it to your overall marketing strategy.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Tips for Using Articles to Build Your List

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Posted in Advertising, Business Networking, Business Success, List building, Marketing, Money Making Ideas, Motivation, Niche Marketing, Personal Productivity, target audience | 2 Comments »

Four Things You Must Have to Build Your List

February 9th, 2010

Having a list of engaged clients is the best insurance policy your business can have. Your client list will sustain you through hard times, if managed correctly. With a strong list, you can always reach out and make an offer to your prospects and clients when you need more cash flow in your business. That’s why it’s so important to build a solid client list, and there are four things you must have in order to do so.

I. A List Manager
Before you make a big push to build your list, make sure you have a program in place to manage it. You may think that’s an unnecessary expense, but the time you’ll spend, or pay someone else to spend, adding, deleting and correcting client contact information will cost you plenty.

There are some great automatic list management applications out there. 1ShoppingCart.com is one of the best; it handles your online sales as well as keeping track of your list and managing email campaigns. There’s also Aweber.com, an application many online business owners use to manage contact information for their clients.

Whichever one you choose, it’s going to save you money because you won’t be bogged down by manually updating client information instead of building your business.

II. A Strong Sign-Up Page
If you’ve had an Internet business for awhile, you remember the days when all it took to get people to sign up for your newsletter or free report was a little box in the corner of your home page. If you’re still relying on that little box, you’re probably disappointed with the size of your list.

These days, most online customers are suffering from “In-box Fatigue.” Everyone in the online world seems to be offering a newsletter or free tips. Because they are, it takes a pretty compelling reason for someone to voluntarily receive another piece of information by email.

To persuade prospects to take action and want to be part of your list means being much clearer about the benefits of doing so. Consider creating a full page for your free offer, instead of a sign-up box on your landing page. Use this page to make an irresistible offer that makes them want to know more.

No matter what you’re offering in exchange for their contact information, make sure you take the time to create a strong, compelling sign-up page if you want to grow your list quickly.

III. A Motivating Offer
As we’ve already discussed, motivating prospects to part with their contact information takes more than a sign-up box in the corner of a webpage. It also takes a motivating offer to capture their attention.

Rather than simply offering a free newsletter, it’s better to give prospective customers something of obvious value right up front. After all, they’re sharing their contact information with you, so you definitely need to make it worth their while.

Some people have found great success offering e-courses. Send a series of five or six messages with a section from one of your courses in each to whet their appetites for your products. Just remember to send something of value with each message. You can do the same thing with audio clips from one of your recent courses.

On the other hand, if you’re currently breaking up your free tips or reports over several messages, and aren’t happy with the results, you might want to try sending the link to a high-quality PDF report in the first response message. Those PDFs can be dressed up so that they have a higher perceived value than a plain text report.

Offering something of value to capture prospects’ interest is one more essential ingredient in building a strong list.

IV. A Way to Attract Prospects to Your Sign-Up Page
There are many, many ways to attract prospects to your sign-up page so that you can motivate them to join your list, but here’s a quick list of methods that won’t cost you money.
• Do reviews on Amazon for books your target market reads.
• Participate in online forums where your target market hangs out.
• Give testimonials for related products your target client would use.
• Run contests with existing clients for referrals to your free offer page.

Building your prospect and client list is the single most important thing you can do to build your business. Take time to develop these four ingredients and your list will be on its way to ensuring your future success.

Four Things You Must Have to Build Your List

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Posted in Advertising, Business & Money, Business Plans, Business Success, List building, Marketing, Personal Productivity, Success Secrets | 2 Comments »

How To Reach Your Target Audience

January 26th, 2010

Where do the people in your target market hang out? That’s a question you’ll want to answer in order to grow your business quickly. Online or offline, people with similar buying habits tend to read, join and discuss in the same places. By doing some research, and creating a list of established points of connection, you can affordably reach more people in your target audience.

Where Do Your Target Prospects Flock Together?
The old saying about “birds of a feather” really applies when it comes to people likely to buy your product. They probably read the same publications, hang out on the same websites and belong to the same associations. What’s more, they’re likely hanging out together in significant numbers.

This is where good research pays off. Once you learn where your target prospects congregate, you can find ways to leverage relationships other people have with them.

For example, if they’ve paid to subscribe to a magazine, there’s a relationship established with that publication. Someone else might already be selling their products regularly to the same group of people.  Many members of your target audience may also belong to the same trade associations.

The point is, any way you might be able to connect with your audience through an existing connection should be added to your list. Media contacts, possible joint venture partners, associations, and online discussion groups are all valuable assets to be leveraged while growing your list.

If this sounds like a lot of legwork, there’s some good news. Once you begin to find these places where your target audience congregates, a snowball effect will kick in. You’ll talk to one or two people, and then learn of more and more connections. Rather than painstakingly tracking down each place, your new prospects will begin to show them to you.

Find common connections between the people in a specific market. Look for books and publications which give lists of trade magazines or associations.

Ways to Reach Your Market
Remember, the key is to gather information on your list that allows you to reach your market. That means not starting from scratch trying to sell to your audience if there’s another way in.

You might choose to advertise in that magazine your target audience likes to read, or submit some editorials. As you research your list make notes about who accepts advertising, articles or editorials.

A joint venture with a company already selling products to your intended market is another good way to break in. Look online at companies you might once have considered your competitors. If your products complement theirs, a joint venture could benefit you both.

Another possibility is to offer to give talks to the groups you find your market tends to join. Keep notes on who needs guest speakers, how often they meet and whether you can sell from the back of the room.

Again, all this will take some research on your part. Even if someone else could tell you exactly where members of your target audience hang out, they don’t know your product like you do, so do your own homework.

A final tip about reaching your audience: don’t waste your money trying to reach your market through large publications. The expense to advertise in national, regional or even large local publications is enormous, and you’ll be paying for circulation beyond your audience. Target niche magazines and newsletters, instead; your return will be much more profitable.

Devote some time to researching where your target market hangs out and keep your eyes open for opportunities to leverage existing relationships. Expanding your list of marketing prospects will become much easier once you multiply your impact through these avenues.

How To Reach Your Target Audience

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Posted in Advertising, Business Networking, Business Plans, Business Success, Direct Mail, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Joint Venture, List building, Marketing, Niche Marketing, Online Marketing, Success Secrets | No Comments »

Mining the Gold of Repeat Business

January 1st, 2010

Going through the work of identifying your target audience, really getting to know them and developing products to meet their needs can be very rewarding. If you want it to be financially rewarding, you’ll also need to learn the art of making repeat sales. Repeat sales generate eighty percent of the profits for a successful business. When you’re ready to move beyond the one-time transaction, here are some ideas for mining the gold of repeat business.

Breaking the “Find New Customers” Cycle
It’s difficult to watch someone work very hard to build a business, only to leave the additional income from repeat business on the table. That’s what happens when you’re constantly chasing new customers and making one-time sales to them, rather than offering new products and services to existing clients.

If you think about it, it’s actually easier to sell a product to a satisfied client, isn’t it? So it doesn’t make sense to get caught in the cycle of “go out and find more clients and sell them the same old product.” In order to boost your income considerably, you must, instead, begin creating new products that meet the needs of your existing clients.

Once you make up your mind to pursue additional business with existing clients, you can step off the never-ending cycle of chasing new clients and watch your income move up at the same time.

Learning What Your Clients Need
You may be asking yourself, “But how do I know what my existing clients need?” You can actually use the same process that you used to create your original products. Here are some helpful steps:

• Look at your client base as a target market.
• What questions are those existing clients asking?
• What additional needs continue to be unmet after they buy your product?
• What add-on products complement your original offerings?
• How could your product line be expanded naturally to meet more needs?

Here’s an example that illustrates how a one-product company can create add-on sales to its existing customers. A hypnotherapist specializes in smoking cessation hypnosis. She has lots of clients who come to her for that service, but once they stop smoking, she doesn’t ever see them again. She’s spending a lot of time and money in marketing to attract new clients.

Because her existing clients know her smoking cessation sessions work, they’re the perfect prospects for additional services. By listening to her current clients’ concerns, she learns many of them are ready to take on new challenges in life, now that they’ve quit smoking. She offers to help with visualization sessions so they can focus on their new goals.

By expanding how she sees her existing client base, and focuses on their needs, she has opened the door to a whole new level of income. You can do the same thing. If necessary, take some time off from marketing to new target audiences and turn your complete focus on your existing customer base.

Develop the habit of listening to your clients’ questions and determining what needs still exist. Turn those needs into products that fill them. Not only will your clients be grateful, you’ll also see your income multiply substantially.

You will always have to do some marketing to bring in new clients, but there’s far less pressure when you’re making repeat sales of new products to existing clients. Once you stop chasing new clients and focus on building more products to help your customer base, your whole business will turn around. Learn how to mine the gold of repeat sales to build a strong, sustainable business and a solid base of satisfied customers.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Mining the Gold of Repeat Business

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Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Direct Mail, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, List building, Marketing, Motivation, Niche Marketing, Online Marketing, Small Business Marketing | 3 Comments »

Focus on Fertile Ground to Grow Your Business

December 24th, 2009

Have you ever tried your hand at gardening?  Some spots are so perfect for gardens, the ground is fertile and ready for seeding, the amount of sunshine is just right.  Other spots are next to shade trees, they don’t get enough light, planting is so difficult with roots in the way, and nothing seems to grow there.   If you had to focus on one area to cultivate, which makes more sense? The fertile ground or the shady spots?  Obviously it would make more sense to focus your gardening efforts in the fertile area.

Now consider your business – which area would make more sense to focus on for building the business?  The fertile ground or the shady spot?  Of course, it makes more sense to build sales on fertile ground, the area that’s ready, willing and able to take on your efforts.  But how do you find the fertile ground in business?

Building a list of potential clients, people who are open and receptive to buying your product or service, is simply identifying the fertile ground of your business.  But, just like the first steps toward planting a garden are the most labor intensive, so it goes for your business.  But of course, at the start is the most important time to start building the list.

Certainly if you’re just getting started in your business you need to focus on the activities that bring in the revenue, but this is an instance in which you need to think long term.  For those of us with smaller businesses, and for those of us flying solo, we tend to focus on the “time is money” issue.  This is one area in which at first it will seem like too much effort for too little return, but we need to think not only for the long term, but take a more multi-dimensional approach.

Think about who would be on your list.  Obviously someone who’s shown some interest in what you’re selling.  So, wouldn’t it be safe to assume that they’re going to be more receptive to a marketing effort if they’ve already shown a level of interest?  It would certainly make more sense to focus on the list rather than a more ‘shot in the dark’ approach of cold calling.

So, of course, list building is essential for focusing your selling efforts, but it’s also going to give you an insurance policy for your business.  Who among us hasn’t had a lean patch in their sales?  It happens to the best of us.  With your potential client list, you have the opportunity to reach out and make a quick sale to a whole group of people who you know, just by the fact that they’re on your list, are receptive to your product.  It’s nice to have that to fall back on in difficult times.

Not only can your list get you through a dry spell, but it offers the seeds for launching your next product or your next offer.  It’s what we call the low hanging fruit, in keeping with the planting theme of the day.  Which would you rather pick the fruit that’s easy to reach, or the fruit in which you’re going to have to put more effort into the task?  It’s the same fruit, mind you – just one happens to be less labor intensive.

If you’ve not yet started building a list, I suggest you begin immediately, and if you have a list, keep it growing.  Just like planting, it may not always pay off right away, but it will down the road.  And just like planting, you’ll wish you had started sooner!

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Focus on Fertile Ground to Grow Your Business

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Posted in Advertising, Business Plans, Business Success, List building, Marketing, Money Making Ideas, Personal Productivity | 2 Comments »