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Have everything you want in business. Even if the economy is stacked against you!
Start NOW: 2011 Marketing Insights Worksheet
1. Make it happen – no matter what – To do that you have to make the effort, take action.
2. Focus – take actions on something specific – focus ahead on one specific thing – concentrate your efforts the best you can –I know from experience that you will be bombarded with lots of offers and distractions. If you aren’t careful you will be sidetracked away from your focus.
- If you want to succeed you need to have a singular approach identify the most important first and next step then focus there until it is done –
- Impatience is the forerunner to failure – you only stick to something if you resist the effort to go for the next offer that comes along –
- So the first thing you need to remember is
Put your best effort forth until it is done
3. Reason is a rational motive – focusing on something specific is making an informed decision on where to focus your effort = reason – Decide what you want to focus your effort on :
· creating your own products
· promoting your services
· promoting affiliate products
· buying reprint rights
· learning to write sales letters
· writing articles
· generating traffic
There are so many things to consider – what do you do first?
The question is how to best use your time –
- prioritizing – what is most beneficial to your business –
- resist the emotional urge to buy something new – ask yourself if this is going to help or is it just a distraction
- build on the foundation you’ve already laid
I help business people with all the issues noted above. Contact me, Coach Donna at donnalaward@gmail.com Let’s make 2011 your best business year, ever! No Matter What
Posted in Business Success Actions by .
Friends will ask if I can refer someone for cleaning windows, getting credit repair assistance, and on and on – It’s getting more and more difficult to get new people to buy from you, straight out. Some people simply will not buy from those they’ve never heard of and with whom they don’t have a relationship.
Your prospective clients will probably be asking these questions:
- What is this product/service all about?
- What is the main purpose of this product or service?
- How does it solve my problem? Or, help me?
- Is this merchant someone I can trust?
- How do I feel about this offer?
Consider what your prospective clients are looking for. Knowing your target market will help answer these questions during the pre-selling process; by writing copy that “sells” the way you would like to be sold.
- Pre-selling is done in a variety of ways, including what is referred to as an ethical bribe.
· An ethical bribe’ is a freebie, something you giveaway in exchange for a person’s contact details and permission to contact them.
· Prospective clients may feel more comfortable about joining your list because they view the “ethical bribe” as a lower risk than making a purchase. All they need to do is give you their e-mail address and they are “in.” This gives you the opportunity to gain their trust and build a relationship that can lead to repeat sales down the road.
When you give your freebie – make sure that you are showing off your expertise as you share great content that isn’t easily available elsewhere. And, make sure it is targeted to their learning level. You want your prospect to feel that they have received value from what you provided, even though it was free.
Ok – You have a start here! Build a blog/website and they will come, is not the way it’s done now. Building relationships – rather for business or love – is time consuming, and we all stumble along the way.
One thing that you need to understand, is that millions of ebusiness owners are doing the same. It’s important that you know how to get ahead of your competition, so you can get the attention that you need from your potential prospects.
That’s why coaching has become the ‘in thing’ right now. People realize the value of having someone help and hold them accountable along the path.
Donna Ward – BSBM (Bachelor of Science – Information Systems- and Business Management) from University of Redlands’ School of Business
Claim Your Free Mini-Course “List Building Blocks” with my optin box at the top right of my own blog — Rather you’re online and/or brick and mortar, growing your list is always part of your strategy. It is of extreme importance to your business life and growth. So, check it out and learn more from my blog!
Oct 10
7
Targeting for Success – Get Into Your Strategy Game and Start Playing with What Your Avatar Wants
Virtually anyone can make money online, but most people won’t.
Why? Because they don’t apply what they know, they aren’t persistent, focused, and are unclear.
Anyone who is making money online has done this. And… they periodically evaluate where they are at.
What is it?
You have to know who your target market is and is not. You have to know who you want to do business with and who wants to do business with you. Where is their pain, frustration, and how can you solve this for them.
And you must continually evaluate who your market is and use this to determine your marketing strategy, advertising, branding, articles and …your target market’s motivation, that is to say, “why the heck do these people come to you in the first place?”
Posted in Business Success Actions by .
Oct 10
7
Blogging Without Writing
Newsletters & Emails to Subscribers
What else can you do with them?
Do you have an email list? Are you submitting online articles?
- When you send emails to your subscribers or send out your regular newsletter, post an article, do you stop at that? Have you heard of re-purposing?
Start posting the updates you send to your subscribers and your newsletters or ezines to your blog as well.
Some of your subscribers may not get a chance to read your emails before they are shuffled down their inbox screen or worse yet, they may have filters that are blocking your emails altogether. This will allow them to still receive the valuable information you have to share AND give you more quality content for your blog.
Posted in Blogging Tips by .
No Sales? Avoid this nightmare by following these tips for getting others to buy your products…
1. Get the Offer in Front of Targeted Audiences
First things first: Get your offer in front of targeted prospects.
Example: If you’re selling a dog training book, don’t email your marketing list and expect to make sales. Instead, get your offer in front of people who are likely to buy (e.g., people who need to train their dogs).
2. Craft a Compelling Sales Letter
Next, you need to create a sales page that persuades your prospects to buy your product. This means your sales letter ought to have an attention-getting headline, an opener that hooks the prospect and engages her emotions, a bulleted list of benefits, proof that your claims are true and a call to action. Search out what others are doing and saying – get your ideas and use your own voice.
3. Give a Bonus
You want to give your prospects a good deal, so that as they read the sales letter they’re thinking, “wow, I can’t believe I get all this for just 50 bucks.” Then you really thrill them by throwing in a valuable, tightly related bonus. This small act turns a “good deal” into a “no brainer.”
Don’t pick and choose the methods you like best. Instead, incorporate all these ideas… and enjoy the results!
Be sure to read: How Do You Get Others to Buy a Product or Service?
Sep 10
30
Home Based Business Strategy Actions
Home Based Strategies for Success
When you are utilizing strategies with step-by-step action plans, and using systems put into place, you are can be your way achieve awesome results.
Something that I found a necessary step, was to determine a set time to work on my ‘to do list’ (that I made out first thing in the AM) and put my calendared tasks on that list for that day (a system). I found it helps to do repetitive tasks at the same time and day. Others find it may works to spend several hours in one day completing large tasks, but set days for this. Don’t forget your repetitive tasks – like article marketing! Determine what works best for you, but make the commitment to be successful!
I can show you EXACTLY what to do, step-by-step, to be successful at getting clients, building your business, and making more income.
When I coach my clients, I use my Strategy Action Step Formula for Growing Your Business.
Since I am a Jeneth Certified Coach – I continue to follow and learn from Jeneth Blacker. I have been taught to ask questions like these from her website at Jeneth.com:
“Is it time for you to unlock your unique vision and launch something new?
The vision that you are holding under lock and key in your heart.
…
and you know you’ve not been fully committed in the past, but you are ready to create a big impact now!
Now is the time.
Now you are ready to truly-honestly-genuinely commit 100% to your vision, but you need help.” Jeneth.com
As a Jeneth Certified Coach – still working with Jeneth – we are here to help.
Posted in Business Success Actions by .
Show the Carrot
Instead of threatening to prevent people from commenting, you may want to consider giving them a positive incentive to comment.
For instance, you could put some lower bound on the number of comments you must receive before you will create another post.
Example: You might say that you will only post after you have received at least 30 comments from readers.
With this said, it is important that you follow the response to this policy over time. Make sure that readers aren’t simply posting “good work” or “nice post,” but instead are actively participating. Otherwise, this system will not work and you may need to switch to something else.
Note: I can’t stress enough the importance of the “carrot” principle in place for this strategy:
You need to show people what’s next.
Tease them about the next blog post and make it clear that you’ll post this new exclusive post right after you reach a certain amount of comments.
Make a Typo
Similar to the tip, Creating a Poll, which involved creating a poll that purposely excluded certain categories of response, you may want to consider drawing comments by intentionally making a mistake.
You can do this by occasionally making a typo, which will incite those who cannot accept typos to comment.
Of course, with this strategy, it is critical that you do NOT go over-board. Frequently making typos on your blog will make you look unprofessional and will hurt your chances of long run success.
- Hold Contests
Another good way to encourage readers to become commenters is to hold regular contests.
- In these contests, the entry fee will simply be making one or more comments. And the prize can be a number of different things, including merchandise from your niche or store; or the opportunity to make a one-time guest blog.
As far as picking winners goes, this is up to you. You could either select them yourself by picking the “best comment” or you could randomly select a comment using http://www.random.org.
The first method is entirely subjective; however, the second method may lead you to select someone who only put in a nominal effort, perhaps by writing “good post,” which could anger other participants.
Tip: If you make a random selection, in order to optimally take advantage of this opportunity, you may also want to screen cast the selection process and post it on your blog at a pre-determined date and time.
- Feel free to make real-time voice-over while you’re screen casting and add excitement to the video.
- This could draw a lot of interest from participants and give your blog a healthy traffic spike.
2. Be Controversial
Another good way to encourage readers to comment -
- is to occasionally your blog post something highly controversial, but not ethically objectionable.
Example: You might cite a famous Internet marketer who has claimed that creating an email list is a waste of time; and that you should instead always send traffic directly to your sales page.
When it comes down to it, you don’t even have to take a side. You can simply introduce the controversy and then let commenters jump it and flesh out the debate.
This can be an excellent way to draw readers in and prompt them to get involved.
With all of this said, I cannot stress enough that you should not post controversial topics that could be construed as morally or ethically objectionable material. This is more likely to turn off readers, rather than get them involved.
And, Have Fun! No Matter what!
Posted in Blogging Tips by .
How Can You Start Building and Increasing Twitter Followers?
1. Your Profile and Landing Page — What do people see when they come to your page?
Introduce yourself with an abbreviated intro with a link to your more detailed About page on your Website. Also, if you can, add your Facebook link, here.
2. Do you have your own lists that you are involved in?
Twitter lists is a way to organize the people you’re following on Twitter – then you can get a snapshot of the things those users are saying by viewing that list’s page, or find new people.
3. Include your Twitter followers in what you are doing in your business –
Anyone following needs to know what you are working on – but, remember too many Tweets can be annoying.
4. Look at your followers that you have, and start little conversations -
Take a look at what your twitter streams are doing –
5. Have your articles tweeted and re-tweeted!
6. And see if you can re-tweet info that you like from others.
Always thank anyone for their re-tweets of your information
This is information that we see wherever we look – but, remember to put your Social Media into a process/system so that it is kept upfront in your mind and the minds of your followers. Such as:
Every morning:
1. Spend 15-30 minutes – expanding your lists on Twitter, Facebook and LInkedIn.
- What I do first is see who is wanting to connect with me on Twitter and respond with a personal little note and suggestion that we connect on Facebook.com/donnaward9 – in other words I add my link to make it easier
- Then I look at who their followers are – check out about 5 each day to see if they might be a good fit for my business
- Then I do the basic same procedure with Facebook and LinkedIn.
In just a couple of weeks I have doubled my Twitter Connections, and my Facebook and LinkedIn are growing steadily.
- What is my plan here? Besides the obvious, growing my lists – I am building relationships and I may ask for interviews of JV’s with some of these connections – growing my lists, again.
So, remember:
- Look at others that are doing something similar to what you are doing; their followers may not know you – take a look at their followers – find people that you would like to connect with – and follow them if you feel that may be a prospect for you to connect with – you could do this for, at least, 15 minutes a few times a week. The idea here is that they will follow you back, if they are interested.
– This is a free, fun and useful tool – which can really help you find followers: Twitter.com/grader you can follow them, but also go to their site and it grades you; telling you how influential you are and another use is it shows your local area (which you could change) – here is where you want to connect to the top local groups and people in your community– many may be people you already know – it is getting you in front of your local community!
– Another great tool and free: Listorious.com helps you find people on lists that you may want to reach.
The more people see you on another person’s Twitter stream – more interest may be generated to check you out, also.
– Remember, you can use ping.fm to post to all of your Social Media sites at once – so much easier.
The best part is to have fun – No Matter What!
Blogging is a do-or-die kind of thing for any business now.
Just look at what management guru Tom Peters said about blogging in front of hundreds of people:
“I will simply say, my first post was in August of 2004. No single thing in the last 15 years professionally has been more important to my life than blogging.”
These are NOT random words.
It’s not coincidence that tens and thousands of people all around the world made money, got expert status, and maybe found their life’s passion through blogging.
But how?
Now I know that some of the things that I might consider ridiculously easy – like setting up a blog – can sometimes completely befuddle others. And that’s where I comme in as a mentor or coach. A business coach will help you with these questions and issues of:
- Why do you want/need a blog?
- To reach people of similar interests
- Share your knowledge, network, and experience
· The initial stage to setting up a blog, like any endeavor, is STRATEGY – what is your business model going to be like, what do you want your business to do?
- Is your business plan going to include advertisements on your blog?
- §If you already have a large list – maybe this would be a good thing.
- Are they going to be relevant to your blog – or irritating?
- You will be building your personal brand here.
- Your brand, knowledge and network could increase in value.
- You will want to set time aside to create blog posts of about 250-300 words, and…
- Post to your blog 2-3 times a week – I’ve heard it said that posting on the same day and at about the same time helps with SEO (Search Engine Opitmization)
More business planning to do:
- What will be the name of your blog, your domain name?
- What actually is a domain name?
- A domain name is the name of your site, what the search engines find, and is the main part of your url – i.e. http://www.yourdomainname.com
- Millions of domains are registered daily. Some domains are worth thousands of dollars.
- You can buy/register your own domain name at Go Daddy $7.49 .com Sale!
- And, remember the .com – for your blog – not .info, etc. (for this assignment.)
Bottom line: choose a market, register a domain – you can start easy with Go Daddy.com Sale! Get hosting for your site, I suggest Hostgator.com, because you will want to install your WordPress blog on a reliable cPanel hosting site. I am an affiliate for both Go Daddy.com Sale! and Hostgator.com – because I trust these sites – and because you receive discounts at both sites, but only when you use my links.
PS When you go to hostgator.com – you can use the word hgc25 for your coupon to get the first month of Baby hosting for only a penny. We want you to try our Baby hosting with no risk. You still get the 45-day money-back guarantee on your penny.
- If you need help, as I did my first time, I am here for you!
Contact Donna La Ward at donnalaward@gmail.com with any questions and please leave a comment or question on my blog.
Lions, tigers and bears, oh my – are you befuddled? If not, proceed on to the next blog…
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