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

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?

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!

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

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

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

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

9 Resources You May Already Have to Start Your Online Business

February 10th, 2010

Is something stopping you from starting your online business and moving forward to achieve success in your life? Successful online entrepreneurs didn’t let their circumstances prevent them from getting started. No matter where you are starting from, you already have many of the assets and resources you need.

If your reaction is, “I don’t really have any,” I am going to prove to you how wrong you are. You’ll be surprised at how much you bring to the table.

You don’t need to have a huge marketing budget. You don’t need the technical know-how. You don’t need to have a website or a facility for taking payments online yet.

What you do need is an awareness of the resources that you can tap into.

•   Life experiences. Your experiences in life count for a lot. Make a list of all the jobs you’ve ever held, and all the work you’ve done for those jobs. All of this adds value to who you are right now.

•   Existing prospects. Do you have a list of people that you’ve been in contact with who have expressed an interest in your services? If you don’t, or if it’s a small list, you need to begin to build that up.

•   Existing customers. Your list might not have hundreds of customers, and it doesn’t need to. If you have a customer list, of any length, that’s an existing resource that you can use to get you started.

•   A  network. You have a group of people that know you, that like you, that value you. While they may not be direct customers for your business, there’s a good chance that they will participate and help you.

•   Email. Just send an email out to your prospects, past and present customers, old colleagues and other network lists saying something like, “This is a new project that I’m starting. I would really appreciate if you could hook me up with other people that might be interested.”

•   Your willingness to ask for help.
Yes, this is an asset. Don’t take the path of least assistance. If you’re going to build a successful online business, it’s essential for you to get comfortable with asking for help. You’ve got to be okay with that. It’s not a sign of weakness. It’s actually a sign of strength.

•   Existing products or programs. You might already have something that you don’t even recognize the value of. I turned copies of sales proposals I had used years ago to win training contracts, into valuable materials that I could share and sell. That was material that I had been undervaluing.

•   Your know-how and experience. Maybe you’re very good at what you’re doing and getting tremendous results, but can’t explain what you do. That’s okay. That can be pulled out of you and turned into training or a product that can give people similar results, without you having to work with them in person. Or you could map out what you know into a process that you can sell to other coaches. There are lots of opportunities to utilize your know-how.

•   Support and help. Do you have someone who assists you with admin? Or someone who helps with the technical work? If you don’t, it’s easy enough to get hooked up with that.

These are the some of the resources you likely have ready have access to.  You can build a successful online business if you have these.  Take inventory and see where the gaps are. The more resources you have to start with, the less time it’s going to take for you to profit. If you’ve got fewer resources, you have less of a margin for error, so deploy them wisely.

9 Resources You May Already Have to Start Your Online Business

It’s my birthday – again!

February 8th, 2010

I’ve just finished a meeting with my team and Brandon, my customer service representative has informed me that many of you are ‘chomping at the bit’ to hear a replay of my ‘Virtual Birthday Party’ call I did last Saturday.

We know this call struck a chord with many of you who attended live. It got pretty ‘raw’ in places as I pulled back the curtain and revealed exactly how transformative the past 12 months have been for me.

Well the queen has two birthdays, so I can too! And the good news is we’re offering a one time replay of that call, this Tuesday 9 February.

Amazingly, many of the requests came from people who already attended the live call and simply want to hear it all over again. That’s what tells me this was a special call, because in all the years I’ve been offering teleseminars, I’ve never heard that request.

Here a just a few of the comments received:
‘I got off the phone feeling empowered for the first time in months.  So a HEARTY THANK YOU for all that you have been through, for sharing your story, for being a champion, and for giving me hope that I, too, will create a new reality for my life.  God bless you richly for your faith. You have truly inspired me today.’

‘Quick thanks for telling me about Bernadette and her Stepping Up programme. I participated in her teleseminar that she did this past Sat (on her birthday!) and a) felt a connection with her,  just like I did with you, b) was v. impressed by what she was offering and c) felt like she had read my mind (re: my goals for my business and myself) and was speaking directly to me!’

‘I want to congratulate for the call today , it was  – for me – 300% more valuable and the way you presented it gave me the confidence to be in the right place. I could relate to many things you said. And it is  – again — one of these amazing things of synchronicity that I came across your program ….’

Here’s where to register so you can get all the details of the call.
Click here for details and to register http://www.clientmagnets.com/steppingup/

This call was truly LIFE-CHANGING for those that heard it, so make sure you join us for the replay.

It’s my birthday – again!

Using Twitter To Build Your List

February 5th, 2010

Many of you have heard me talk about using Twitter to drive people who follow your tweets to your web page.  But how do you even find followers to lead?  There are a few strategies that you can use to build a Twitter following and it works quickly for fast results.  In fact, two of my VIP clients, went from just 27 followers to over 700 in just a matter of weeks!  Here’s a few of those strategies …

1. Follow the leaders – When you build a Twitter following, your goal is to find followers who are receptive to your message.  Follow one of the leaders in your particular industry and you can open the way to access their thousands, even tens of thousands of followers.  Here are somes ways to get your name in front of those followers:

• Tweet success stories – If you have a success story to share involving this person – tweet them.  Let them know about it.  They’re certainly not going to keep it to themselves, they’ll usually re-tweet it to their followers.

• Re-tweet their message – You’ll receive a thank you from them, another step in getting your name out there.

• Remember, you need to give before you get.  It’s a two way street – or perhaps a two way tweet in this case.  Put together a list of five to ten people that you’d like to build a relationship with and start building on that relationship.

2.  Follow the followers – If you follow someone on Twitter, there’s a 50% chance that they are going to follow you back.  With Twitter, you are able to follow 10% more of the people who are following you (if you have 1,000 followers, you are able to follow 1,100 people).  Use software to follow the followers of

3.  Automate and systemise – If you decide to go through and manually add followers, you’re likely to have some very tired fingers.  There is software that can automate the process for you.  I use Tweet Adder, a software program that costs $55 and has been a huge help (www.tweetadder.com).  Not only does it automate the process, but it allows you to find the right type of followers for your product or service.  You can use keywords and locations to target potential followers.

While Twitter isn’t the only list building tool available to you, it’s very effective in leading followers to your web site and squeeze page.  Twitter has the ability to multiply your following quickly.  It’s a fast tool and easily automated.

Be sure to start Twittering and use this tool to your advantage.

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

Using Twitter To Build Your List