Client Magnets Official Blog

Posts Tagged ‘targeted marketing’

How To Set Up Your Business So the Media Contacts YOU

Recent studies show that 79% of all major media find their resources and story ideas from blogs and the Internet. So, yes, the major media really will call you… but only if your web presence has instant credibility and the ability to stand out from the crowded pack.

On this call Bernadette is joined by Suzanne Falter-Barns. You’ll learn how to attract calls from some of the biggest media available today, as well as major publisher book deals.

Join us for this call!!

MARKETING* MASTERMIND Call

Tuesday, 31st August, 2010, 8:00pm UK Time (3pm EASTERN, 12 noon PACIFIC)

TOPIC:  *How To Set Up Your Business So the Media Contacts YOU*

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 tonne 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.

Running an event can provide you with a substantial profit. You can earn revenue from the event itself, or from selling items during the event. With the many revenue options available for making money from an event, people still miss out on some great revenue opportunities. Here are some insider tips for increasing your event revenue that most people don’t consider:

Provide Tiered Pricing
If you want to open your event to the widest possible audience, consider creating a tiered pricing structure. You can quote a relatively low ‘entry-level’ price for just admission to the event. You can also add a ‘premium’ or ‘deluxe’ event attendance, with carefully-considered extras. You might add a product free of charge for attendees who sign up for the premium package. You might also add one-on-one time with the event organizer, keynote speaker or other key event guests.

In this way, you can provide basic entry to wider range of people, while still raising the overall cost of your attendance. If you provide basic entry for $100, or a premium attendance for $200, your average revenue will increase, depending on how many people choose the premium option. You can also add a pre-registration option at a lower rate, and then charge the full rate for registration at a pre-designated cutoff point.

Offer Trial Memberships
If you have a product that functions as a subscription, such as an information distribution service, you could offer attendees at your event a ‘free trial.’ A 30, 60 or 90-day trial is typically long enough to provide attendees with a good understanding of the service and its benefits. You’ll find that many people like the service and stay in the program; giving you an ongoing revenue stream once the free trial has ended.

Open Up In-House Opportunities
One great function of an event is to promote your in-house opportunities and services. Events are a great way to convey information about your services to attendees, and convince them that you’re the person with the expertise and systems in place to serve their needs. If you’re promoting in-house opportunities, though, your event can’t be planned exclusively around that. Unless you’re hosting a free event to reveal a new product, people expect to receive a certain level of value from your event; not an extended marketing pitch.

Convey valuable information at your event. Answer important industry questions; questions that you have the expertise to answer because it’s in your field. Provide information about a product. Give your event a purpose beyond simply promoting your services or products. A good event coordinator can find opportunities to work in-house services into the event’s structure at key points, and begin to build a relationship with attendees to meet their ongoing needs.

Be creative in the ways you leverage revenue at your event. Offer a tired pricing structure, which typically yields higher event revenue than a single price. Provide trial memberships to subscription or ongoing services, to demonstrate the value to your attendees and create an ongoing revenue stream. Finally, find ways to promote your in-house services to your audience throughout the event.

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

Do you know what the most valuable page on your website is?

It’s not your “About Me” page. It’s not your “Testimonials” page.

It is the page where people give you their contact information and purchase your products or programs. That is the goal of your business.

To achieve that goal, you need to get people to opt-in. Nothing else can happen until they do this.  That is why the design of the page where they opt-in – your squeeze page – is so important.

Getting your prospects to hand over their contact info isn’t always easy, but if you focus on your squeeze page set-up, you will successfully obtain client information, build your list and make sales.  Use my tips below to maximize the effectiveness of your squeeze page.  These strategies work!

•    Make your homepage a squeeze page

To get maximum results, make your squeeze page your homepage. This will lead to a significant increase in your opt-ins and in your list.

•    Model successful squeeze pages

To get ideas for your new home page, model other successful squeeze pages. Look at other people’s pages with new eyes. Emulate the elements that make them successful while using your own unique copy that speaks to your own target audience.

•    The important information should appear within the browser window

The pages that are most attractive give the most important information at the top, without having to scroll down. Everything your visitors need to see should appear within the browser window in front of them. Don’t make them have to “lift a finger” to find the best of what you have to offer.

•    Use headlines and bullets to present your message

Announce your best information in the area that most people notice first – the headline. Develop a headline that will grab your visitors’ interest and get them to stay online to hear the rest of your message. Use a prehead and a subhead to deliver your best copy.

Successful pages don’t include one long paragraph of copy after another. A successful squeeze page presents its best content as great mini headlines in a bulleted format.

•    Make big, bold promises

Use numbers within your bullet headlines. State that you’re going to solve problems. Make big promises in your bullets. You’ve done the research, campaigns and surveys to determine what your target audience wants, now highlight that information in your bullets.

•    Make a personal connection

Your target audience want to know who you are.   Don’t keep your personality a secret. Make your squeeze page personal. People buy people. Although we’re all speaking virtually, on Twitter and on teleseminars, people want the personal human connection.

They want to know you. They want to see the person behind the site. At the very least, include a photograph of yourself. Add audio and video to increase the personalization.

•    Use a thank you page

Don’t lose that personal touch once your visitor has opted in on your squeeze page. Your thank-you page is a great place to further your relationship and offer your new client even more. You could make another sale just by asking for it on your thank-you page.

•    Remove Navigation Bar and Banner

There are a couple of web page staples that should not appear on a successful squeeze page. These items do nothing to help you get people to opt-in. So, strip out the navigation bar and ditch your banner. They should not be on your squeeze page.

•    Test, measure and improve your conversation rates

Make sure you test and measure your conversion rate on your squeeze page. Find out how many visitors are actually buying into your offer. Regularly measuring your conversion rates will tell you what’s working and what isn’t on your page.

When you apply at least one of these tips, and you will see an improvement in your conversion.

Make a checklist and work through it. Improve your squeeze page one component at a time and you’ll be in a much stronger position – I promise!

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

Are you thinking about starting a high-end coaching, consulting or mentoring program? If you’ve got years of accumulated knowledge, a top-level program can be a great way to share that information and help your clients achieve success. It may be time for you to stop running one-day programs and selling books and launch a top-level coaching program, instead. You can provide great results for your clients, and truly share your information in a significant way through these programs.

One-day workshops may be good for clients who have limited time or budget but want to make a difference in their business. In a one-day workshop, you can begin to create the foundation for a successful business owner to make a transition in the way he or she does business. However, a one-day workshop isn’t a magic medium for you to create an army of happy, successful businesspeople. You can only share so much information through a one-day workshop, and you’re essentially always starting clients out on the same basic level; they never progress past the techniques you can cover in a single day.

If you’ve accumulated a lot of knowledge about success in your medium, business or industry, you might consider selling e-books. E-books are typically a compilation of knowledge and techniques that people can use to work on their own and boost their business. E-books can provide a revenue stream, but they’re typically limited in scope.

An e-book cannot begin to convey all the accumulated knowledge and business acumen of years in an industry or field.  Like one-day workshops, an e-book can help build a basic foundation for client success, but many clients never progress past that basic level of knowledge and technique contained in the e-book. This makes e-books great for introductory materials, but ultimately too limited to help clients achieve overall success.

Top-Level Coaching Programs are Great for Client Success
Top-level coaching programs let you really share your accumulated wisdom and business expertise with your clients on a basis that can help them achieve success. Unlike e-books and one-day workshops, a top-level coaching program typically enables you to work with your clients one-on-one to help them develop the skills and techniques specific to their field. You can help your clients set goals and achieve them with your expertise; you’re not just leaving clients alone to blunder around and try to build on a basic foundation.

Top-level coaching programs provide clients with an ideal medium to move beyond the basics and truly grasp success. This is good both for you and your clients. If you’d like to help your clients achieve real results, it’s time to move beyond e-books and one-day workshops and consider launching a top-level coaching program.

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’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Marketing Mastermind Call:

Boost Your Speaking Sales with “The Invisible Close”

Tuesday, 27th July, 2010

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

It’s a disservice to let interested consumers walk away without securing the benefit of your fabulous products or services. They came to buy from you. Give them what they need to say “YES!”

Join me and my guest Lisa Sasevich, the “The Queen of Sales Conversion, for this action-packed call where we will be covering…

• Exponentially grow your platform sales using Irresistible Offers

• Get massive results without being “salesy”

• Maximize your profits with no marketing budget!

• Simple, no-cost things you can do to instantly double or triple your sales conversion.

• The secrets to inspiring someone to act now…without being pushy or “salesy”!

• How to craft your “Irresistible Offer” to support Big Sales and your Big Life!

• And most important, how to share the wealth of your wonderful and unique talents and receive wealth in return!

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 tonne of other member benefits – such as access to our online members forum.

Not a member?  Then click here to 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.

Looking for an opportunity to shine from the depths of the direct mail slush pile?

Though it might sound a bit cliché, everyone, even those of you who feel encumbered by a limited budget or a relatively small business volume, can do that.  Whether you’re sending out 10 pieces of mail per week, or 1,000 pieces, you can not only entice people to open your mail, but you can keep their attention with a creative, lumpy insert.

Maybe you have, at times, felt intimidated by the “big boys” – the companies who have thousands or millions of dollars to spend on direct mailing.  But, despite what you might have come to believe about these huge corporations, you actually have an advantage over them for creative direct mailing.  If you have an inventive idea for lumpy mail, you don’t have to sit in countless meetings with marketing committees, pitching your idea, enduring criticism, and perhaps, ultimately, having your idea shot down.  You are your final decision maker.

When you’re creative with your lump mail insert, you can spur your recipients to action.  Here are few examples to stimulate your imagination:

• If you’re intent on helping companies and individuals to find their own hidden treasures, you might consider including an old-fashioned scrolled treasure map with your promotional letter.

• If you consider a message to be of the utmost importance, you might want to stuff it into a bottle before mailing it.

• If you’re hoping to entice inactive customers to fall back in love with your company, you might insert a boomerang with a message like, “Boomerangs always come back, don’t they?”

• If your company has a mascot, you can have a lovable likeness of him or her reproduced as a lump.

• If your company helps people to find resources, for instance, you might want to include an ornamental needle-in-a-haystack.

• A complete comprehensive service might be accompanied by a small, silver platter and the statement, “I’ll give you everything you need for start-up on a silver platter.”

• Fortune cookies can be purchased, complete with customized messages inside, that deal specifically with your purpose or promotion.

If you’re stumped for lump ideas, there are resources that can help.  Two examples are www.LumpyMail.com and www.ImpactProductsMarketing.com.  There, you’ll find lots of creative ideas for lumps.  Maybe you want to announce a promotion, invite inactive customers back to the fold, broadcast an upcoming campaign, publicize a grand opening, or announce a new product or service.

Simply using bulk to create a piece of lumpy mail will, indeed, prompt people to open the envelope, but if you want to stay with them for longer than it takes to empty your promotional pen of ink, or to use that pad of custom sticky notes, you’ll want to put some innovative thought into your lumpy insert.

Make your mail memorable with creative lumps…because when your lump is specific to your purpose, and unlike any other lump, it deems you memorable, worthy of the call or the click, and the investment.

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

Writing a sales letter is a practice in anticipating what your prospects will think, and overcoming their objections. When you’re writing your sales copy, it’s invaluable to be able to put yourself in your prospects’ shoes and predict what they’ll think when they read your copy. It may be difficult to predict all of the objections that your prospects will have to your sales letter, but one thing you can easily manage is this: catch the catch. Explain why you’re offering such a great deal or such a great product to your prospects, or they won’t believe your pitch.

Prospects Look Out for Deals that are Too Good
From an early age, most of us are told “if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” By adulthood, most people feel that they can judge whether a deal is good or not, but that little doubt lurks in the back of most people’s minds. If you do a great job of establishing the value of your product, and justifying your price, people might have trouble trusting you or your sales copy. If you make your product sound “too good to be true,” you have to explain yourself to your prospects or risk loosing sales.

Reasons for Offering a Great Deal
A few key phrases can help diffuse worry over a deal being “too good” and convince your prospects that you’re on the up-and-up. With one technique, you explain to your prospects why a product like yours normally costs more, and how you’ve managed to change the production method to realize a cost savings. Then, you can say something like “I can pass along my cost savings to you.” This lets the prospect know that you know you’re offering a really good deal, and gives them a reason for you offering a good deal. If you don’t explain this to them, they’ll think that you’ve misrepresented the value of what you’re selling, and will turn away from your product.

Another technique involves presenting yourself as the “good guy” and responsible community member to your prospects. For example, you could tell your prospects that a colleague has recommended that you charge more for your product, but you’re “not greedy,” so you’ve chosen to offer it for less. One successful copywriter said “This is such a valuable skill set that I’m offering it at this price so as not to price it out of the hands of the people who need it most.”

In most cases, it doesn’t really matter how you overcome the “it’s too good to be true” objection – just that you address it somehow. When you re-read your sales letter, look at it from the eyes of a potential prospect. If you find yourself thinking “What’s the catch?” then you probably need to re-work your copy, or add in some language explaining why you’re offering such a great deal. With this technique, you can overcome the mental objections of the prospects, and you’re that much closer to making a sale!

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

Good marketers know they need to stay fresh in people’s minds to be ideally positioned for that sale, or to form a good business partnership with a new affiliate. People try a variety of ways to stay in people’s thoughts, both physically and on the Web. You may do article marketing, newsletters, email blasts, and media marketing to keep your Web presence fresh. Alternately, you may send postcards, letters, holiday cards, or even birthday cards to build relationships and stay connected with people physically. Most of these methods are getting old and tired, but forming good relationships enables you to connect with people in creative new ways.

Be Creative with Your Connections
Do you send out holiday cards every year to your prospects? So do most businesses. You don’t stay fresh in people’s minds by doing the same thing that everyone else does. Find new ways to be creative with your connections, and catch your clients’ minds in a unique way. By forming good relationships with people, you’ll have a fresh pool of creative ideas to draw upon to keep your relationships dynamic and unique.

Consider this example: Carrie Wilkerson spoke with my Mastermind Group and talked about how she uses social media to build relationships. Carrie mentioned that one of her contacts talks on Twitter every day about how he walks his dog in the morning. He mentions the dog by name, and even the type of dog. When Carrie wanted to make a connection with this man, she didn’t just send him a note or a card; she sent a dog toy for his dog. She mentioned his dog by name, and found a toy that the dog would appreciate, based on the information that this man shared about his dog.

This showed the man that Carrie listened, and was interested in him as a person – not just him as a business contact. This is a fantastic strategy for solidifying relationships, and as a way to stay connected with people that will actually stay fresh in their thoughts. That man probably won’t remember everyone who sent him a card, but he’ll definitely remember the woman who sent his dog a toy.

Use Your Relationships to form Unique Connections
Your relationships with people provide valuable connection opportunities. By building good relationships, you set yourself up for opportunities you might not otherwise have. When you build a good relationship with someone, for example, you’re much more likely to be set up with the friend of a friend as a new business contact. People are more likely to refer business contacts that they like, than pushy sales-oriented people who don’t care about them as a person.

Use your relationships with people to form unique connections. Don’t just be the sales person, or the person with the coaching product, or that consultant. Be a friend; be the person who sent the dog a toy, or the person who’s always asking about the kids or the wife. By building these unique connections with people, you’re getting into their lives in a real and meaningful way, and you’ll be in their minds if a fantastic new business connection comes up, or if they remember that they know someone who might be a good match for your business.

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 is your definition of opportunity?

Imagine that it’s a typical week for your website – the one that you have planned, designed, to which you have driven traffic, and through which you have made booking and registrations possible. Let’s assume that during a given week, 100 visitors cross into the realm of your site; 2 of them make the decision to purchase; however 98 of them leave without investing in your product.

What number captures your attention in the above example? Is it the 2 buyers? Will you wait for another 2 buyers next week? Will you count on luck, or “spray and pray” to deliver a sprinkling of voluntary customers next month, and next year?

Or, do you view the 98 departees as 98 new opportunities for sales?

In truth, your best profit potential lies in the 98 visitors who chose not to buy. If you plan well, after they leave, you will have 98 names and addresses that can lead to potential sales. All you need to do is have a plan for following them up. Just think – if you can get even 2 of those 98 to say “yes,” you have converted a larger percentage than you did with your sales page alone.

Here are some points to show why you should be following up:

• When you follow up with website visitors, you are targeting prospects who have already expressed an interest in your product. They clicked, which means, at the very least, that they are curious. For my regular readers, you know that this means you have gathered an audience of people with “raised hands.”

• Targeted follow-up correspondence answers questions that many of your visitors are not willing to ask (and many people have the same types of questions). Every time you answer a question, you take the opportunity to dispel an objection or a fear.

• Follow-up breeds interaction, which begs conversation. Think of your follow-up e-mails, postcards, and teleseminars as ice-breakers in a conversation that everyone wants to have, but no one knows how to broach.

• Marketing research doesn’t lie. It tells us that more follow-ups equal more conversions. Stay relevant in the minds of your prospects, and you’ll be the first person they turn to when a problem arises.

• Follow-up is a circular phenomenon. It gives you the information you need to devise better methods of follow-up. When questions are posed, and objections voiced, you are given valuable insight into the minds of prospective clients. With this information, you can plant more seeds and dispel more fears.

• Follow-up contact is an invaluable vehicle for conveying the idea of urgency. If a conference is set to take place 6 months from now, people will put off registration. But, if you can communicate a special offer through follow-up correspondence, you will light the fire to sign up. Often, discount deadlines and space limitations work well.

To increase conversions and increase your sales, it’s absolutely necessary you follow-up with all your prospects – even the prospects that don’t buy from you. You cannot follow up too often – you just need to vary your medium to keep your prospect engaged.

Don’t hesitate to use the invaluable follow-up for attracting and retaining clients. Leading prospects to your door is never enough – you must give them the incentives to revisit, and to invest.

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 you’re thinking about revealing the price of your product or service, think about your target audience. If you don’t, you, you could be pricing yourself out of your audience.  I recommend tailoring your product or services to different audiences.  By doing this you can build several price points into your offerings.

Start with the High Price Points First
When you’re thinking about your target audience, there’s a good chance you may be looking at more than one group of people. If your product or service can appeal to many different groups of people with only a little modification, you’ve got a very valuable product on your hands. In the event that multiple groups may be interested in your product, start with the high price points first.

When you start with a high price point, you can discuss custom solutions, coaching packages and high-cost products with your audience. An audience that can afford to pay a high price point is probably expecting a lot from your product, including some personal attention. For example, you might want to offer a complete coaching package and book about marketing at a high price point.

Then, after you’ve ran your coaching program or presented your executive conference, you can create a package targeted toward a lower price point. Starting with the highest price point first gives you many benefits: it helps you fully-develop your product or services, it gives you an opportunity to ask for more, and it helps to justify the cost when you offer a lower-priced version to other audiences.

Offer Less for a Lower Price Point
After you’ve offered your high-price-point solution to the audience that can afford it, tailor a package for your lower-price-point audience. For example, if you offer a 5-day coaching package to your high-price audience, you may offer a weekend workshop or half-day coaching packages to a mid-range price point. If your product has enough diversity, you could even consider a lower-range price point consisting of just the written materials and a DVD or CD recording of your high-cost event. There’s no shortage of ways you can modify your product or services to suit a lower-cost audience and still capitalize on using the same materials and techniques.

Sales Strategies in Order of Price Point
When you start with a high price point and then offer a product to an audience in a lower price point, you can actually use the high price point to justify your price. Saying things like “People paid $5,000 for this product, but I’m not going to charge you that” gives you the ability to offer your target audience a “great” deal. Likewise, if you offer less for your less-expensive price points, the high-price audience doesn’t need to feel cheated or disappointed, because they got more for their higher price.

Consider whether your product appeals to people in multiple price points, and create custom packages that cater to each price point. By offering a high-priced version to an audience that can afford it, and creating a lower-price version for a different audience, you can increase your earnings exponentially with hardly any extra work!

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