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Archive for the ‘Niche Marketing’ Category

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

Lots of people have an abundance of ideas. You’ve probably got so many ideas that you don’t know where to start – and all the ability you need in order to implement every one of those ideas, too.

But, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. When you’ve got so many ideas that you don’t know what to do, you will half-do everything.

The key is to focus on the one or two ideas that can really bring in the big wins for you. Putting your time, energy and talent into those ideas will step up your business by enabling it to run more smoothly and be more productive.

Here are some rules to live by to help you choose which ideas you should implement.

Follow the 80-20 rule.
80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your assets, meaning that 80% of the money you make will come from 20% of your clients.

When you know this up front, it is much easier for you to plan. You should be following through on the ideas that will appeal to your top 20%. Design products and programs and solutions for those clients, because that’s where four-fifths of your income is coming from.

Worry about the lower priced stuff later. Most people do this the opposite way, thinking  that starting with low priced offerings and then building up to Rolls-Royce or VIP programs is the right way to plan. Don’t miss out on the big opportunities because of that way of thinking.

Look at your time.
The primary reason most people can’t follow through on an idea has to do with the way they allocate their time.

Put your time into ideas that can and will produce income. Part of achieving a new revenue goal is about allocating your time differently. You’ll have to stop spending time on certain things and start spending time on other things.

As obvious as that may sound, it’s amazing how many people ignore or overlook that. Listing your assets and listing the differences in the 80% of your revenue coming from 20% of your assets will show you how much time you can spend per idea or project, essentially telling you what you need to spend your time on and what you need to stop doing.

Think in terms of project income.
Don’t just think in terms of monthly income anymore. Instead of planning your year month by month, try planning quarterly, from a financial aspect, but also plan around big projects. Three or four big projects should be sufficient.

The income streams from these projects will help you decide which ideas to pursue. If you’ve got a revenue goal of $250,000, which projects will get you there and at what times?

The key is not to do all of them at once. There is a connection. What you want is to have one project build momentum for the next project, which builds momentum for the next project, and so on. It’s important that you plan strategically, that you’ve got a long range plan and that all of the elements make sense.

You can’t help but come up with ideas; it’s how and why your started your own business in the first place. Just choose which ones you will follow through on, and when, to make the absolute most of them.

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

When it comes to marketing, every single thing that you do to generate leads should have a purpose. Without a purpose, you can end up with an advertising blitz campaign that saturates the market but doesn’t have any real direction.

And where does something without direction end up going? Nowhere.

We call this “spray-and-pray” marketing – advertising your business anywhere and everywhere, hoping that people will notice you, praying your hard work pays off.

You’ll do a ton of things because you think you need to be doing them. You’ll get on Facebook. You’ll start to Twitter. You might host a teleseminar or write some articles. Don’t get me wrong. These can all be very good leads for your business, but if you don’t know why you’re doing them, they are just busy, random activities. Unless they are consciously linked to your end point, they will simply exhaust you and your physical resources, like your energy and time. Some of them will exhaust your money as well because they cost money to apply.

Be more intentional with your marketing techniques to avoid becoming frustrated by the amount of time you’re spending on lead generation. Instead, your time will be well spent because your marketing is on purpose. What you really want is to be engaging with your clients in your specialty, and that is where intentional marketing will lead you.

But, if do you reach a point of being overwhelmed or disillusioned, where you’re putting out a lot of energy but aren’t getting the returns, don’t be discouraged.

Do not give up. That would be a tremendous waste of your talent.

Part of my own purpose is to support and encourage you to pursue your own path. I know it’s easy to get discouraged if things haven’t been working out the way you’d imagined. Don’t blame yourself, and don’t assume that what you are offering has no value because you haven’t been able to get people to buy it. That would be a critical mistake.

What you are offering to clients absolutely does have value. You may just be missing one or two of pieces on how to promote it. It’s time to tweak your approach and get focused. A tweak or two could be all you need to make your approach more intentional, to turn things around and help you start attracting the clients you want.

You will probably find that you don’t need a major overhaul in your business, and that some of the approaches you are using do work quite well. It’s not about giving up on what you’re doing, throwing it all out, and saying that it was all a terrible waste of time. It’s not about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

It’s about evaluating where you are and looking closely at where you want to be.

There are almost certainly pieces of what you’re doing that are working. But, that spray-and-pray part of marketing is just not smart marketing. And if you have been doing that, at least you’ve been taking action. If you look on the positive side, you’ve been doing something. It may not have been the most effective thing, but you are working, trying and doing the best you can.

Now you know that you need to be more deliberate, more purposeful. And you now know it’s time for you to address your business and your marketing with intent.

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

No matter what you’re selling, whether it’s a training course or a marketing seminar or a physical product, you’ve probably spent a long time agonizing over price. Sellers almost always spend more time than they need to thinking about and setting a price. In reality, sellers think price is a lot more important than it actually is. The next time you’re pricing a product, keep these things in mind.

Price Isn’t as Important as You Think
Sellers almost always spend far too much time thinking about the price of a product. They agonize over whether they’ve priced their product appropriately for their market. In most cases, sellers actually under-price their products. When I work with people one-on-one, I almost always find that sellers are charging too little for what they’re offering. I spent a lot of time telling people to raise their prices.

While sellers may think that price is the most important aspect of marketing an event, that’s simply not the case. Research has shown that less than 10% of buyers are actually influenced by price as a primary factor when they make a decision. Realistically, it isn’t the price that matters, but how well you market the event.

Present Your Price Effectively
Many sellers think that if they price a product low enough, it will virtually sell itself. Sellers think that low prices are easy to justify in consumer minds, so consumers will want to take advantage of the low product and make the decision to buy or register. In reality, it isn’t the price that influences peoples’ decisions to buy; but rather, how well you present that price. If you don’t present your price effectively, the sale is over before it’s begun.

Beware of Sticker Shock
Sticker shock is a phenomenon that occurs when people present their prices too early. You don’t start off a presentation by telling people how much something costs, because then they’re fixated on that price. If they feel that the price is high, they’ll stop listening to whatever you have to say, and you’ve lost the sale. Instead, present the price toward the end of the sales presentation.

Build Your Product Value
To effectively sell your product, you must establish your product’s value. You must spend time showing your potential buyers why your product is a must-have product. Explain what they get from buying your product. Show them how your product solves a problem they just can’t seem to resolve, or how it does so better than anyone else’s product. Once you’ve established that your product has value, you can present the price of your product; after your buyer is convinced enough of your product’s value to listen to your value proposition.

In Summary …  Charge More, and Present Your Price at the Right Time
Don’t undercharge for your product. A low price won’t sell your product – good sales copy will sell your product. Price your product appropriately, and spend time establishing the value of your product before you reveal the price to your sale prospects. With the right value proposition techniques, you can increase your conversion rate and let your product sell itself!

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

What comes to mind when you see that the majority of your sales page visitors have left without purchasing?  You may choose from two schools of thought: you may consider them to be lost to the click-away, or you may consider them to be interested prospects that simply need to be followed up with.

Everytime a prospect visits your website – whether they purchase from your or not -  is an opportunity to increase your revenue and grow your business.   The key is in following up with each and every visitor.  But how can you do that?

You must first capture the information necessary for following up, and then you need to implement a plan that makes meaningful, targeted contact.

Your squeeze page, or opt-in page, is an invaluable tool for gathering contact information from your website visitors.  You can’t follow up with people unless you have the information necessary for doing so.    The best way to collect names, addresses, and other data is to make it a prerequisite to entering your site.  On your opt-in page, you ask for their details.  This information will then be used by you for following up with buyers and non-buyers in one or more of the following ways:

• E-mail Follows Ups. Your first contact with website visitors should be immediately after they register their details – a sort of “welcome to the club” message.  Autoresponder programs are more readily available, and less costly, than ever – and are the easiest way to accomplish e-mail follow ups.  You can try to orchestrate follow-up emails on your own, but it won’t be long before you find yourself buried under the weight of this task.

E-mail follow-ups shouldn’t stop after initial contact.  In fact, you should use your email list to stay in contact, to gather questions, to respond to feedback, and to stay relevant in the minds of interested parties.

• Snail Mail Follow-Ups. Standard mail is still relevant.  In fact, it can be a valuable tool for “switching things up.”  When a prospect finds you via the internet, and then receives a postcard with valuable information in their mailbox, you instantly establish yourself as a well-rounded and versatile business person.

Services are available, much like those of autoresponder companies, that can do this for you.  Traditional mail can be a great tool for driving traffic back to your sales page.

• The Teleseminar. In your chosen follow-up method, make the offer of free participation in a teleseminar.  This will give prospects the opportunity to hear your voice, ask questions, and to voice concerns.  The dynamic that occurs when you speak to a number of people at once is one that can electrify the transfer of information.  Additionally, you can use your teleseminar to make special offers to your listeners  – a limited-time offer, for instance, or an offer that’s only available to teleconference attendees.

Don’t fall into repetitive sales tactics.  Mix it up – send a welcome e-mail, then a special offer postcard, then an invitation to an exclusive teleseminar – keep them guessing.  No matter your follow-up plan, ensure that you gather all of the information necessary to facilitate it when your website visitors register their details.  You can’t send postcards without physical addresses, and you can’t send e-mails without e-mail addresses.

Use your site visitor statistics to your advantage.  Don’t view those who walk away as failures in conversion, but rather, as opportunities to follow up and build your turn-over numbers, and 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

The registration process is a key aspect of planning an event. The more registrations you get, and the earlier you can get them, the better you can plan for your event. With enough registrations or pre-registrations, you can pay deposits and completely fund your event without a penny of your own money. If you don’t get enough registrations up front, you may worry about filling the event or managing the costs of the event.

“Early Bird” Pros and Cons
Many people utilize an “early bird” strategy to get people to pre-register for events early. With the “early bird” marketing technique, you give people a discount for pre-registering far in advance of the event. Having the cash early offsets the discount, somewhat, and you can also price events slightly high so that the discount is the price you really hope to achieve, and so it looks even more attractive to prospects.

Unfortunately, the “early bird” marketing strategy has one major downside: once the deadline passes, people have no particular incentive to register. The deadline creates a false sense of urgency, and once that deadline is gone, the urgency is passed. You can use the early bird strategy effectively with other marketing techniques, but don’t count on it to carry your pre-registration efforts.

Plan a SERIES of Deadlines Leading up to the Event
One useful strategy for successfully marketing an event is to plan a series of deadlines leading up to an event. You might have price increases, or you might provide ‘bonuses’ or ‘extras’ for people who register before a certain date. For example, participants who register before a certain date might also get bonus materials, such as a handout, manual or guide.

Alternately, you could give people who register before a certain date an opportunity to participate in a one-on-one session with a lecturer or industry professional at the event, or other value-added session. By having a series of deadlines, you can continue to create urgency to register without simply extending your pre-registration deadline.

Provide Payment Plan Options
Another effective strategy for boosting pre-registration is to provide payment plan options. Break it down to payments that sound simple and relatively low, instead of demanding the entire registration amount up front. For example, if you’re planning a training course for four months away, you can offer pre-registration for $400, or four easy payments of $100 each.

Set deadlines for each payment to ensure your registrants don’t simply wait until the last minute to pay. The downside with this option is that it may require more administration from you, in that you’ll have to track each payment and may have to track multiple payments for each registrant. However, if this boosts your overall registration, you may decide that the extra administration is worthwhile.

Be Creative and Flexible with Pre-Registration
Above all, be creative and flexible with the pre-registration process. Utilize multiple techniques to boost your pre-registration numbers as much as possible, both to get an accurate idea of the number of attendees at your event, and to help finance your event deposits. With the right pre-registration techniques, you can plan a fantastic and successful event!

Want to learn more about how to make money with your own events? Visit our Event Money Machine Blog. You’ll learn about an amazing Telesummit being held later this month. Tickets to this event are FREE – so join our priority notification list to be the first to know when they become available.

Getting your target audience interested in your product or event, and interested in the price you want them to pay, requires a few basic steps. You must establish yourself as an expert. You must build confidence with your audience. You must convince your audience that your solution is the answer to their problems. Building empathy with your target audience is a fast way to accomplish all of these things …

What is Empathy?
For the purposes of creating marketing materials, developing empathy is the act of building a rapport with your audience. Show them that you understand their problem. Convince them that you, too, have the same problem, questions or needs that they have. Create a group for your audience, and then insert yourself into this group. By developing empathy with your audience, you’re making yourself ‘one of them.’ This is an extremely valuable step in creating a successful marketing campaign.

Build Trust Through Empathy
In many cases, your target audience may be embarrassed about their problem, or they may feel like they’re alone in needing a special solution to manage their issue. By establishing empathy with your audience, you show them that they’re not alone. You, too, have benefited from a special tool or event to handle the same problem they have. By building empathy with your target audience, you immediately go from becoming an untouchable expert to someone who has experienced the same problems and issues as your audience; someone much more accessible and less intimidating.

As someone who speaks the language of the target group, you build trust; they’re more likely to believe your pitch if they feel you’ve been through the same things they encounter. All of these things go a long way toward establishing yourself as a trusted source, which makes people much more inclined to buy your product or attend your event.

Solve Problems Through Empathy
One of the most effective ways to market a product or event is to establish that it solves a problem that your target audience experiences. If you can build empathy with your audience, and then establish that your product or event solves their problems, you’ve instantly crossed a boundary toward getting them to take action. An audience is much more likely to believe that the solution offered to them is legitimate if they believe the creator of the product has used it to solve the same problems they have.

For example, if someone who has always been thin tries to sell a weight-loss product to an overweight demographic, the overweight demographic may be disinclined to trust the thin creator. However, if someone who has successfully lost weight tries to sell a weight-loss product, he or she gains instant credibility by having successfully solved the problem that the target demographic experiences.

Build Empathy for Successful Marketing
Bottom line: build empathy with your target audience to create a successful marketing campaign. Become one of the crowd. Show them that you understand their problems, and that you can help them. If you’re able to establish empathy with your audience, you’re much more likely to sell your product or event to them.

Bernadette Doyle has attracted a loyal following who rave about her down to earth yet inspiring approach. If you liked today’s issue, you’ll love Bernadette’s marketing and success training products and programmes to help you develop a business that suits YOUR preferred lifestyle. http://www.clientmagnets.com

There’s little point in driving people to your website if you’re not able to capture their business once they get there. So, before you try to draw the crowd, make sure the fundamentals are in place.

There are three foundational things that you need in place before you try to get your business name in front of potential clients.

•    A List Manager.

Because I didn’t have a list manager when I first started, I had to manually send out the free report I had offered to a hundred people. You don’t want to do that. A list manager is your database – the place where you store all the names you’re going to collect – and it enables you to handle the “subscribes” and “unsubscribes” automatically. You don’t have to spend any time on it, or hire an assistant to do it.

Some examples of list managers are 1ShoppingCart.com, Total Business Cart, Constant Contact and  AWeber.

•    An Ethical Bribe

What are you offering that is interesting and enticing to the clients you want? You need to present something so tempting that people will be eager to hand over their name, their email address, possibly even their mailing address.

Consider using a free report, a teleseminar, or an audio. These can all work very well in helping to build your list. If you don’t think you have enough expertise, consider interviewing an expert, and use that as your giveaway.

Spend some time thinking about what that enticement is going to be. Make sure your offer is congruent with the people you want to attract. What will have those clients flocking to you?

For example, high-end marketing clients probably won’t be interested in a program titled “Marketing on a Shoestring.” Psychologically, you’re going to attract the cheapskates with that title, when what you really want are the money people. So make sure your pitch fits the people you’re pitching to.

•    A Squeeze Page

It used to be enough to have a box on your website that says, “Sign up here for our free newsletter.” These days, you will find that less than 10% of people who visit the page actually sign up.

A squeeze page is a standalone page that has one goal – to get people to join your list.

For example, use a squeeze page to promote a teleseminar. That page will contain the teleseminar topic, the details about the teleseminar, and a box where people can sign up. There is no navigation bar leading to another section of the website. There is no other information.

Here’s an example of one of my squeeze pages:
www.clientmagnets.com/steppingup

I’ve found that about 70% of visitors say yes, compared to the 10% who click on that box somewhere in the corner of your website. This is where you will capture the person’s details.

Once you have these fundamentals in place, you can begin to focus on the promotional things you need to drive traffic to your site.

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

The most effective marketing materials speak directly to your audience. Effective marketing materials are developed with your audience in mind, and they answer your audience’s questions, solve their problems and overcome their reservations about attending an event. In order to create the best targeted messages designed to speak directly to your audience, you must know your audience, and you may need to develop multiple marketing materials.

Identify Your Target Audience
When you begin planning any marketing campaign, you must identify your target audience. Many people find when they begin this process that they don’t have a clear idea of who their target audience is, in which case they must begin to identify a target audience. If you don’t know your audience, your event may not be as well-attended as it could be, or you may find that there’s not a high demand for the product.

If you don’t have a target audience, make one. You may need to tweak your product or event to appeal to this audience, but you’ll always have more success with a targeted marketing campaign than a campaign that isn’t addressed to anyone. If you don’t have a target audience, your product or event may need more refining, which gives you a good opportunity to define your scope or re-evaluate your product to make it more effective.

Target Your Message to Your Audience
Once you’ve identified an audience, target your marketing message to your audience. Dan Kennedy calls this “message to market match.” Answer your audience’s questions, and develop a call to action that speaks directly to your target audience. You can use a general marketing campaign, but a general campaign won’t give you the same success as a targeted campaign. It’s perfectly acceptable to use the same techniques in multiple campaigns; particularly techniques that have brought you success; but tailor those techniques to each marketing campaign that you run.

Consider Creating Multiple Marketing Materials
If you find that you have multiple target audiences, consider creating multiple marketing materials to more effectively reach those audiences. For example, if you’re conducting a dating event that may appeal to both men and women, you might want to create targeted marketing materials for both groups; one for the men, and one for the women. If you’re creating a business event for people in different industries, you might want to create a set of marketing materials for each industry.

By targeting your specific market, you can ensure you create a clear, compelling message. If you use a general marketing message, you may find that your message becomes diluted, or lacks the clear call to action you can create in targeted marketing materials.

Remember that developing a clear call to action is your key to great success with a product or event. You can create a highly successful event! You have the tools at your disposal, so all you have to do is create a targeted marketing campaign to reach the right audience, and you can realize success beyond your wildest dreams!

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

Many people go out of business because they have failed to align their product with what the market demands – and with what their inner selves demand.

Many times, businesses need to endure a breakdown before a breakthrough can be felt.   Sometimes, the bad times are the only times that spur the need for positive change.  In other words, even if you’re struggling with simply “making it,” there’s plenty of hope.

I know you want an endless supply of customers – a flow that’s as intense as you’re willing to handle.  But there’s an important element to consider before moving forward.  You must ensure that any success you’ve experienced to this point isn’t just a symptom of luck. I like to say that even a broken clock shows the right time twice a day.  If you glance at the clock randomly, there’s a chance you might get the right time.  And if you do, you might be fooled into thinking the clock is working.  But it’s not.

You have to make sure that people are coming to you because of the one-of-a-kind value you’ve offered them, not because they’ve stumbled upon you.

There’s no denying that you have a treasure trove of valuables to offer.  You have gifts, talents, and abilities that are guiding you toward your perfect mission.  You know there are people out there that would greatly benefit from what you have to offer.  But when you can’t find those people, or they can’t find you, it can be a painful disappointment.  Because your venture really is your calling, right?  Or isn’t it?

Every business owner has a calling, and to truly find success in that calling, that business owner needs to be assured that their distinctive abilities are made apparent by that business.

Often, your attempts at furthering your business aren’t the problem.  Instead, it might be that you have missed something that’s fundamental to attracting clients:  finding that one thing that only you can offer, and that consumers are looking for.

If you are passionate about something, and it happens to also be a God-given gift, then somewhere in the world, there is a demand for that service.  God isn’t wasteful.  He wouldn’t give you something and not create an equal and opposite need for it.

Your challenge is to find the channel through which you can deliver your true value to those who need it.  Frederick Buechner defines vocation as the place where passion meets the world’s greatest hunger.  This is a beautiful statement.  It reinforces the idea that we’re all here to do something or be someone.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t tell us how to make the connection, or how to keep ourselves in business.

To get a better grasp on this channel, take the time to reflect on you.  You are a vehicle for delivering the gifts that the world is waiting for.  Put your gifts in writing, and assess them.  Then ask yourself these questions:

• How do my gifts complement one another?

• How can my talents be combined to create something unlike anything the world has ever seen?

• Does that combination meet a need?

• If not, can I find a legitimate need?

• Or do I need to find a new and different recipe for those gifts, based on a need I know I can satisfy?

Carving out your vocation using the talent and need factors will go miles to pull your business through adversity.  In times of adversity, luck is nowhere to be found…but true value never dwindles.

If, after true introspection, you still believe that you are where you need to be, and the consumers just aren’t coming, stay with me.  There are secrets yet to be revealed that might affect your view, and your success, in a manner that you haven’t yet considered.

Bernadette Doyle created Client Magnets Ltd to help self-employed people solve one of their biggest business problems: attract a steady stream of 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