Attracting Prospects to Your Sign-Up Page

March 9th, 2010

Once you have a great sign-up page and an irresistible offer, it’s time to create some traffic. A steady flow of traffic to your sign-up page is essential to your success. Here are several strategies that can help you quickly build traffic to your sign-up page.

Visualize, Focus Your Efforts and Act. To create new traffic, you must first visualize yourself as having a large client list. This is important, because seeing yourself as successful helps focus your efforts. Set a target size for your list and give yourself a time limit for achieving it. Picturing that success can get a process going that will build your list.

Next, learn which forums your target audience frequents and hang out there. Read their questions and comments. It’s a good way to find out exactly what they want.  Post comments and respond to questions, but be careful not to say blatantly, “Sign up for my free report!” Useful comments with your email address, photo and the URL of your sign-up page in your profile can be very effective in attracting traffic.

You can also borrow traffic from someone else’s client list by connecting with people who sell related products. Decide which related products will truly benefit your clients. Look for websites your target audience is likely to frequent.

Consider ways you can benefit those companies by featuring their products, and ask them to do the same for you. Ask for testimonials or links to your products, and return the favor. Doing so can expand your impact significantly. Use this strategy carefully, however. Handing out testimonials indiscriminately weakens your own reputation.

There’s another idea you might not have considered for quickly building traffic to your sign-up page. Run competitions with your existing clients. Reward them for referring others to your sign-up page. If you have a well-written newsletter filled with useful content, your clients will be glad to share it with other professionals.

Award a free copy of one of your digital products to the 1,000th subscriber and also to the person who referred them. Offer a free copy of that product to the existing client who generates the most traffic. It won’t cost you very much and you can gain loads of new prospects on your list.  If you’re hesitant to give away a product you normally sell, consider the long-term benefit. Gaining new traffic for the cost of one product is a good trade-off.

Steady Traffic Equals a Strong List. Building a strong list requires a steady stream of new traffic to your sign-up page. Start by visualizing yourself with a great client list, and then focus your efforts on increasing traffic. Experiment with forum comments, product testimonials and client contests to encourage prospects to visit your sign-up page.

Traffic-building techniques such as these, combined with a well-written sign-up page and an irresistible offer, can put you on the path to a solid client list that sustains your business.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter – If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Attracting Prospects to Your Sign-Up Page

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Posted in Business Networking, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Marketing Mastermind, Niche Marketing, Online Marketing, Strategies To Keep Good Customers, target audience | 2 Comments »

Do You Know What Your Market Really Wants?

March 7th, 2010

Before ramping up your marketing when sales are disappointing, take a step back and ask yourself, “Do I know what my market really, really wants?” Being able to answer that question is the key to growing your business. By focusing on what people want, rather than on what you hope to sell them, you can begin to see the kind of success you desire.

If you suspect you’re wasting time by marketing something people don’t really want, here are some principles to ponder:

People buy what they want, not what you think they need.

You’re going to get a lot of resistance to your marketing if someone thinks they’re being shoehorned into buying what they don’t want. No matter how loudly you proclaim your product’s benefits, your market won’t respond if they don’t want the product. To continue doing so is a lot like speaking a different language and shouting to be understood.

People need to feel good about what they’ve bought.

One way to zero in on what your market wants is to develop empathy with that group of people. You must connect emotionally with how they feel about purchasing. When you’ve put yourself in someone else’s shoes, you begin to understand how they feel. What are their hopes and dreams? What do they fear? What keeps them awake at night?

If you’ve done a good job of pinpointing a target market, you should be able to learn these things easily. Until you do, you’re wasting time on marketing that won’t work, because you don’t yet know what products they’ll feel good about buying.

People buy products when they feel they’ve been understood.

No matter what logical explanation someone can give for buying a product, underneath it is the belief they’ve been understood. Someone knew enough about who they were to make a product that fits them.

So, how will you know when you’ve learned what your market really, really wants? You’ll know, because that’s when it all becomes easier. There’s no need to push or shove someone into buying, because they want what you’re offering. It will be such a revelation to learn how easy selling your products can be when they’re what your market wants.

Once that happens, you’ll begin to hear from your clients how grateful they are for your products. Everything about how you do business will be transformed, because you’ve taken the time to learn what your market wants. You’ve made the effort to step into their shoes and understand what makes them tick. And that effort pays off in products that really meet the needs of your market.

So, if you’re still struggling to sell your products, or it feels as though you’re pushing people into buying what they don’t want, it’s time to take inventory. Here are five questions to answer before trying again to sell your products:

  1. What is most important to the people in my target market?

  2. What problems keep them awake at night?

  3. What is the desired end result they’re hoping for?

  4. Does my product help them solve their problems and reach their goals?

  5. Do I need to change my products so that they do?

The process of stepping closer to your target market and understanding that group of people may take time and effort, but it will definitely be worth it. Once you know the people in your market very well, the products you offer them will meet their needs. And that’s what people really, really want.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Do You Know What Your Market Really Wants?

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Do You Need To Change Direction?

March 4th, 2010

You’ve worked hard to define yourself and your business. You have distinguished your area of expertise and identified your niche – and business is good.

But, somewhere along the line, as you work within your niche, serving those specific clients who are benefiting from your services and products, your business may start shifting in a slightly different direction. Keep a look out for this shift in direction.  It can be a very positive step – presenting more opportunities available than you’d realized.

If this starts to happen in your business, it maybe time to reposition yourself. If you’re noticing that your skills and expertise lend themselves beyond the niche you created, don’t be afraid to refocus your vision.

For example, a client of mine initially established herself as an expert in helping working moms and moms who wanted to start a business.

She noticed the same things coming up over and again in her target market – guilt, confidence, work-life balance. She did a lot of research and gathered a lot of information because she was coaching, mentoring, and advising her clients.

Although she was very successful and very satisfied with her business, she uncovered an opportunity for corporate work. Though she is still working within her area of expertise by offering workshops and services for working mothers, the corporate niche is totally different.

What she is selling to companies isn’t mom coaching. She’s selling them the end result of retaining working mothers. This is a really important distinction. She isn’t abandoning what she’s been doing with her coaching of moms, but the corporate client is really a new direction. In essence, she has two clients – the corporation who hires her and the end user, the moms that she’s already been working with in the other part of her business.

In this case, the opportunity to expand and work outside her niche led her to reposition herself to accommodate these additional opportunities.

In some cases, you might find that certain aspects of your niche aren’t working for you. This is another instance of the need to reposition your business in order to find a more suitable direction.

Another of my clients spent more than 18 months putting large tenders together to submit to government organizations, where a particularly strict type of bidding process is required by law. It’s very difficult to establish personal relationships that lead to a sale in that type of environment. Though he’s had some success in his business, he began weighing whether it was worth the enormous amount of effort he was putting in. All of the bidders are essentially on the same level, with no personal rapport with the potential client to help win the bid.  He was essentially operating in a buyer’s market. And that is not where you want to be. To attract clients, you need to turn that traditional sales dynamic on its head so that you’re operating in a seller’s market. You want to be the one with all of the advantage, and position yourself so that there is no competition. In his case, looking to private companies with whom he can establish relationships would put him in a better position.

Look for markets where it will be easier for you to build those personal relationships, and where you can position yourself as an expert.

Whether you have noticed the opportunity for additional business, or recognized the need to shift from your current niche, repositioning is an excellent way to expand your options.

You can still work within your area of expertise, but by repositioning yourself, those same skills could be very valuable on a larger scale.

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

Do You Need To Change Direction?

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Posted in Business Networking, Business Plans, Business Success, Marketing, Niche Marketing, Small Business Ideas, Success Secrets | 1 Comment »

Instant Credibility, Contacts & Cash!

March 2nd, 2010

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!

It’s my special one-time

“BONUS STEPPING UP! CALL”

Instant Credibility, Contacts & Cash!

Wednesday, 3rd March, 2010,

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

http://bit.ly/9vBVEn

This call is a special BONUS for my new Stepping UP! members.  Members, also get a ton of other benefits including …

• Fast Start Webinar, where I walk you through my planning process for the year ahead (I don’t know anyone else who teaches this)

• Portable digital player which has 20 masterclasses – so you get to immerse yourself in my best marketing strategies (and get the year off to a flying start)

• Ticket to the 3 day live event worth £1500/$2400 – we’ll be doing these events in the USA as well as the UK/Ireland

• Access to the Stepping UP! area of the forum which is exclusively for Stepping UP! members

• Private strategy consultation

Not a member?  Then join the “Stepping UP!” programme today so you can take advantage of this call and all the other member goodies each and every month. http://www.clientmagnets.com/steppingup2010

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

Bernadette

Instant Credibility, Contacts & Cash!

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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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Recognize Your Niche

February 23rd, 2010

Are you waiting for that “aha!” moment to finally figure out your special role on the world’s stage? Do you expect that one day your specialty will just hit you like a bolt of lightning?

If you’re waiting for the light bulb to turn on, you may end up sitting in the dark for a very long time. More often than not, identifying your niche and your specialty is more like a silhouette emerging through the fog.

In my own experience, picking a niche always comes about gradually. You’re working on one thing, and then another thing similar to that, and before long, you are being associated with a specific specialty or setting.

You probably don’t even realize it as it happens because the process of creating your niche is steady and progressive – the feeling isn’t at all like your expectations. No fireworks, no clashing symbols.

The whole evolution of my own niche probably took 12 to 18 months. I didn’t just ask myself one day, “I wonder what my niche is?” and the next day decide to be a cold calling expert. And, once I became a cold calling expert, I didn’t stop there.

You need to just keep going and continue defining yourself in your business. Ask yourself, “What is it that people are struggling with that I can help them with?”

I honed in on the area of appointment setting and appointment making. At that time, no one else was really offering courses on that specific topic. That helped me to stand out in the marketplace. Part of the reason that I stuck with that niche was that the market kept me on track.

I’m not where I am today because I decided at a very early age that I wanted to be an appointment setting expert. If there is a demand for what you are doing, the market will tell you whether you should continue in that direction. It just may not be a direction you ever saw yourself heading in.

Keep it simple.  Look around you and ask yourself, “What am I seeing that’s coming up as a problem for people time and time again?”

You can look at the needs of existing clients, read trade magazines for your industry or visit online forums to find similar topics that come up again and again.

There will be some that you’re drawn to and others where you don’t have that same attraction. Follow up on the ones that you feel a pull toward and see what happens.

Don’t confuse identifying a niche with “what’s my purpose in life?” That is a much bigger question. You are a magnificent being with so much to do on this earth. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to boil it all down into one sentence.

But, that’s actually exactly what you need to do when you pick a niche. Boil it down. Pick one phrase. “I help ____ to achieve or to solve ____.” Maybe you help moms who want to start their own business, or need another example here.

If you’re approaching your niche as a life purpose question, it’s going to be nearly impossible to answer. Take yourself off the hook and take that pressure off yourself.

Your niche will evolve with your business. Again, learn from my situation. I didn’t stop at being a cold calling or appointment setting expert. Today I’m teaching people how to find new business. The way in which I’m helping people and the types of people I’m helping is completely different from what I started out with.

So, don’t be concerned that what you decide today is irreversible. The market may take you in another direction over the course of time.

Approach finding your niche more pragmatically. Identify the area where you think there could be demand and where you feel you’ve got some expertise and can add some value. You don’t have to have it all perfectly figured out from the outset.

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

Recognize Your Niche

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Posted in Business Networking, Business Plans, Marketing, Niche Marketing, Success Secrets, target audience | 4 Comments »

Automatically Close More Sales

February 18th, 2010

If there’s one challenge new entrepreneurs share, it’s the need to close more sales. They work very hard, but never seem to meet with enough people to reach their desired goals. There’s a better way to meet your goals and it’s called “sales automation.” Once you learn to automate some or all of the sales process, your closing ratio, and your income, will increase dramatically.

Getting Past Your Objections to Automation

When we’re talking about “sales automation,” it simply means putting your sales process into a format that doesn’t require your physical presence. That may mean writing a great letter that causes prospects to want to buy without needing to meet with you. It could also mean setting up a website and email system that reaches out to prospects and makes your offer in a compelling way that leads them to buy.

Right now, you might be saying, “Oh, no, selling my product requires face-to-face interaction!” Here’s the thing— there are only so many hours in a day and so many prospects you can meet with personally. If your company’s success remains tied to your ability to shake hands with every prospect, you’re severely limiting your future income.

Instead of being the bottleneck to your company’s success, find a way to package what you’re offering so that the sales process can be automated. When you do, you’ll be on the path to a big jump in income. Learning to use automation tools like sales letters, webpages and brochures as your sales force will increase your closing percentage exponentially.

Packaging Your Offer for Automatic Sales

The first step, is packaging your product so it fits in an automated process. Even if you’re the product, as coaches, consultants and other professionals often are, what you’re offering the client can still be packaged.

What do you say when sitting face-to-face with a prospect? Pull that together into a package that can be presented over and over without your actual involvement, and you’ve got the key to automated sales.

Get started by creating a sales letter that focuses on your product and the need it meets in your target audience.

There’s a lot of discussion about how long online sales letters can be, but it’s important to remember you must answer every question when you aren’t physically in front of the prospect. Otherwise, they’ll simply move on to the next offer.

So, practice writing your prospects a letter that answers every possible objection and points them toward a sale. Open that letter on your website, and make sure the sales process is completely automated. A well-written online sales letter can become a powerful “sales force,” automatically selling your product without any involvement on your part.

There are other ways to make sales more automatic. A carefully written brochure that moves the prospect from initial interest to “I’m ready to buy!” can eliminate the need for personal sales call.

Moving the people toward a sale really doesn’t require being eyeball-to-eyeball with them. It simply takes packaging what you do in a compelling message. Move past your own objections to sales automation and let it help you grow your business.

By putting your products in front of more people, without requiring your own time and effort, a good automated sales process can increase your sales dramatically. Find a way to package your product and increase your exposure dramatically through sales automation.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Automatically Close More Sales

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Posted in Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Internet Business, Marketing, Niche Marketing, Online Marketing, Sales Motivation, target audience | No Comments »

Real Life Success Stories Call

February 16th, 2010

People ask me all the time ‘Bernadette, I can see that your marketing strategies clearly work for YOU, but what about other people? Do your techniques work for them?’

The answer is ABSOLUTELY these strategies work for all types of businesses, and I’m ready to PROVE it to you with a special ‘Success Stories’ call I’m hosting this Wednesday 17th February

Get ready to meet:

• The mother of 3 who launched a new program and generated €30,000 in just 67 days (without even having a website!)

• The successful business owner who was frustrated with the margins in his traditional business model and approached me to help him repackage his expertise into a product that he could sell on ‘auto-pilot’. Sales so far stand at £75,000….

• The former financial adviser who started a business from home that now generates £100,000 a year – even though she works just 25 hours a week and balances running her business with looking after her young son….

Results like these are QUANTUM LEAPS, not incremental gains, and we’ll show you EXACTLY how they did it on this special call: http://clientmagnets.com/successstories

Register NOW to join us. You’ll be inspired by the amazing results they have achieved – in record time.

See you on the call!

http://clientmagnets.com/successstories

Real Life Success Stories Call

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Posted in Advertising, Business Plans, Business Success, Home Business, How To Make Money, Law Of Attraction, Marketing, Niche Marketing, Online Marketing, Sales Motivation, Success Secrets, Teleseminars | No Comments »

Make it EASY for them to say YES

February 15th, 2010

How easy is it for clients to say yes to what you’re offering? How aware are your potential clients of the huge improvements you can make in their lives?

It’s up to you to make them aware; to make it easy for them to say yes to your services. Basically it comes down to this: You need to make the intangibles of your business tangible.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re a healer or a coach. You’ve helped your clients lose weight, stop smoking, find the love of their life or double their business sales. Your process produced amazing results that literally changed their lives.

If you are able to create these incredible transformations in the lives of your clients, you have to be able to explain what it is that you do. You need to put your process into words so that new prospects are able to wrap their head around what you’re offering.

Generally, people can only experience the results of your services after they’ve tried you. In their minds, they are essentially taking a risk, because they don’t know exactly what the benefits are going to be for them until they try your service.

So, it’s your job and it’s your duty to make the intangible tangible.

How do you go about doing that?

Start by getting good at quantifying and spelling out the benefits of what you offer.

If you’re like many people, you may be resistant to this step. You may feel like you’re bragging. Or you might resist out of a sense of integrity. Maybe you’re worried about making a claim that you can’t follow through on. Maybe you feel that just because you helped one client drastically improve, you don’t want to assume that you can do the same for everyone.

Well, your that viewpoint is actually hurting you, and it’s hurting your potential clients.

Because while you’re not willing to make big bold promises or big bold statements, even about the results that you’ve already delivered for others, sooner or later someone else, who doesn’t share your integrity, will.

And all of those potential clients who are confused, looking for help and for solutions, will be seduced and taken in by the cowboy or the charlatan who offers a similar service, but doesn’t share your integrity.

While you’re sitting on the moral high ground, worrying about whether it’s okay to say something, there will be plenty of others perfectly willing to lure in vulnerable people in need of help. Your prospects will fall prey to them, unless you step up.

If you don’t, someone else surely will. And it won’t be someone with your abilities, values and integrity. It will be someone who is just focused on the money.

So, it’s time for you to get in the game. Instead of letting clients feel like they’re taking a chance on you, give them what they need to feel confident and assured in their decision. Make your services concrete. Once you spell out exactly what you do, how you do it and how it will benefit them, it will be easy for them to just say “yes.”

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

Make it EASY for them to say YES

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Posted in Advertising, Business Plans, Business Success, Marketing, Niche Marketing, Online Marketing, Sales Motivation, target audience | 1 Comment »

Declare Yourself the Expert

February 11th, 2010

Are you waiting for permission to be considered the expert in your field? Are you lingering at one level, waiting for someone’s approval to move on to that expert status?

Good things do not always come to those who wait. You need to stop waiting for permission and approval. No one is going to come along and deem you the expert or hand you an award. This is something that you must step up and claim.

Only when you have the guts to step up and claim it, will you be thinking and acting like a winner.

When I began my first business, at 26 years old, I had no track record. I had no past clients and no success stories to talk about. I had no marketing experience, and no budget.

I basically had every possible disadvantage.

The one thing I did have was alot of enthusiasm and a very positive mindset about what I was doing. I started positioning myself and calling myself an expert – long before anybody else came along and awarded me that title.

To think and act like a winner, you need to keep your focus on where you’re heading, not where you’re starting from.

Many people get crippled by this. Don’t be one of them. Don’t get caught up in this cycle of looking for some type of approval or permission that will suddenly make you step up and be the expert.

Once I chose to define myself as a cold-calling expert, I started acting like one and before too long, I did indeed become one. I was honest about it; not arrogant and thinking I knew it all. I brushed up my skills and learned the things I needed to in order to claim my expertise.

The same holds true for my friend, Carrie Wilkerson, who has an absolutely huge following on Twitter. A big part of how she gathered that following was that she just acted like the expert. Before long, people started treating her like the expert and inviting her to speak at events.

A lot of people call her “the overnight expert” because she went from zero to a million dollars in less than 12 months.

You have that ability too. The thing that you need, first and foremost, is a positive mindset. You need to be confident enough in your skills and your knowledge to step out in front and make yourself known.

You also need to be astute enough to research and master all of the things that your area of expertise requires. Make a list of exactly what an expert in your field needs to know in order to be considered “the expert.” You probably have all of those qualities and requirements already.  If you don’t, you will at least know what you need to do or improve upon to claim the role.

Once you know that you have what you need, you can begin to act the part of expert. Then you can pass on all of that expertise to your clients.

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

Declare Yourself the Expert

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Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Internet Business, Marketing, Motivation, Niche Marketing, Online Marketing, Personal Productivity, Success Secrets, Words Of Inspiration | 6 Comments »

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