Protected: JigsawBox Call 6 April
Posted on 07 April 2010 by Nicola
Why Clients Like Having An Online Coach
Posted on 05 March 2010 by Nicola
Those of you who know me know that I just LOVE being an online coach. Now here are 7 reasons my clients love it too…..
1. They have time to think before they answer my questions. They might mull over a really good question for a couple of days before they answer it; getting a far better insight than giving me their gut response.
ShareFour Reasons Why You Need A Blog
Posted on 03 March 2010 by Nicola
1. Gone are the days of one-way communication on the web. The days when you simply told your clients what you wanted them to know about your product, you controlled your PR and customers bought what you had or they didn’t.
Now the consumer wants to interact with you and your products, they have questions they expect to be answered, they’re interested in finding out information and discussing it with you.
If they like you, and more importantly, if they don’t, they’re telling their friends on Facebook and Twitter in a moment and they can make your reputation or break it overnight.
You need to give your potential clients a place to be heard, a place to voice their concerns, which you can then address quickly and competently, to further enhance your reputation as an expert in your field and manage any bad feelings or questions. And a blog can be it!
The beauty of a blog lies in it’s two-way communication and the ability for your readers to add their own comments and contribute to the discussion. It’s a place you can find out if they hate your new product and why, or what problems they’re facing that you can help them fix. Not having one isn’t really an option.
2. Google LOVES blogs. Traditionally it can take 6-8 weeks for a normal web page to get found and indexed by google. This is because websites don’t have a standard template that google can easily understand. Google knows where to go to look for information on a blogsite, as they use a common template that is already Search Engine Optimisation friendly.
In a nutshell, if Google likes you, you’ll get found more easily.
For example, I have Google alerts set up to inform me when a post mentions my name or JigsawBox and google can find it as quickly as 30 minutes after that post has been published. And that’s quick.
3. Because wordpress and other blogging platforms are easy to update, you can have fresh, new relevant content appearing all the time. You no longer have to contact your web developer for every little change you want to make, add new pages, or totally change the look and feel of your site. You can do this yourself, quickly and simply, so it costs you nothing more than your time.
4. You can log into and update your blogsite wherever you are in the world quickly and simply.
Are you still holding back and not using a blog in your business? Or is your blog your passion? Share here….
ShareTeleseminars: How To Remove The Fear Factor
Posted on 01 March 2010 by Nicola
There are many great reasons why running teleseminars is a good idea but one of the main reasons that stops people is the fear factor.
When you’re starting to run teleseminars, if it’s something you haven’t done before, you may be worried about what you’re going to talk about for an hour.
In actual fact, by interviewing somebody in your teleseminar, you are not the one having to do most of the talking. You’re the one who has to come up with the questions for the interview. And let’s face it; asking questions is what coaches do, so you’re good at this.
All you really need to have is three or four key questions. You don’t have to provide any of the answers, so your knowledge isn’t being tested. Your expertise is not being tested. Your guest is.
You don’t even have to plan loads of content. And because of that, the fear factor is removed. Instead you can concentrate on hosting and running the call while your guest worries about coming up with the right content.
Who could you interview and take away the fear factor?
ShareFour Ways To Choose Where You Network
Posted on 26 February 2010 by Nicola
Networking, both online and (dare I say it!) offline as a ‘real person’ is a key part of any business success. After all, what else is your business and marketing strategy about other than creating great relationships with other people. But there are so many opportunities, so many groups to join, people to ‘follow’, so many networking groups to join – and it’s not all about getting in front of your potential clients.
Here are four criteria for where and with whom you network – make sure you’re not missing one of them out.
1. Where you can meet with your peers and colleagues. This kind of networking means you keep abreast of the latest developments in your field, get a feel what others are up to so that you can ensure your own Unique Selling Proposition is really unique, and spend time with people who are finding solutions to the same problems you’re facing. Notice I don’t say meeting with others that can moan about your problems with you, make sure the people you’re spending time with are the positive people, not the energy drainers (you know who they are!).
2. Where you can meet with potential referral partners. These are people who are working with the same clients you want to be working with, but with a different field of expertise. For example, if you’re a trainer, you might attend an HR conference, or if you’re a parenting coach, you might attend a teacher’s or educational psychologist conference.
3. Where you can meet with people who are doing what you aspire to be doing with your business. This, for me, is key. Identify four or five people that really inspire you, and invest in their networking or mastermind groups. Attend their live conferences. Being around these people will rub off on you – you’ll be infected with their enthusiasm and pick up some great contacts amongst the other people who are there to do the same. I’m investing in Andrea J Lee’s, Hannah McNamara and Bernadette Doyle’s events this year for this very reason.
4. Where you can meet your potential clients. Getting yourself in front of people who could potentially become your clients is a key marketing strategy. Go where they go, and simply offer to help (NOT try to sell your services!). Establish your credibility by providing help and advice, introduce them to others that can help them and be a generally nice and helpful person, so that when they do need to buy what you’re selling, they’ll choose you as they know, trust and like you.
Can you tick all these off? What have you missed off? Share, I’d love to know.
Networking, both online and (dare I say it!) offline as a ‘real person’ is a key part of any business success.
After all, what else is your business and marketing strategy about other than creating great relationships with other people. But there are so many opportunities, so many groups to join, people to ‘follow’, so many networking groups to join – and it’s not all about getting in front of your potential clients.
Here are four criteria for where and with whom you network – make sure you’re not missing one of them out.
1. Where you can meet with your peers and colleagues. This kind of networking means you keep abreast of the latest developments in your field, get a feel what others are up to so that you can ensure your own Unique Selling Proposition is really unique, and spend time with people who are finding solutions to the same problems you’re facing. Notice I don’t say meeting with others that can moan about your problems with you, make sure the people you’re spending time with are the positive people, not the energy drainers (you know who they are!).
2. Where you can meet with potential referral partners. These are people who are working with the same clients you want to be working with, but with a different field of expertise. For example, if you’re a trainer, you might attend an HR conference, or if you’re a parenting coach, you might attend a teacher’s or educational psychologist conference.
3. Where you can meet with people who are doing what you aspire to be doing with your business. This, for me, is key. Identify four or five people that really inspire you, and invest in their networking or mastermind groups. Attend their live conferences. Being around these people will rub off on you – you’ll be infected with their enthusiasm and pick up some great contacts amongst the other people who are there to do the same. I’m investing in Andrea J Lee’s, Hannah McNamara and Bernadette Doyle’s events this year for this very reason.
4. Where you can meet your potential clients. Getting yourself in front of people who could potentially become your clients is a key marketing strategy. Go where they go, and simply offer to help (NOT try to sell your services!). Establish your credibility by providing help and advice, introduce them to others that can help them and be a generally nice and helpful person, so that when they do need to buy what you’re selling, they’ll choose you as they know, trust and like you.
Can you tick all these off? What have you missed off? Share, I’d love to know.
ShareWhy teleseminars are a great ‘free item of value’
Posted on 24 February 2010 by Nicola
Teleseminars are such a great thing to have as your free item of value. By this I mean your free (ie costs them nothing) item of value (has a great deal of value to them) that you give to people in exchange for their name and their email address.
Using a free up and coming teleseminar to do this is ideal because it has a natural inbuilt deadline and a sense of urgency.
If you’re offering a free report or an e-book as a free item of value, that’s fantastic. However, you might find people will land on your site and think “That looks good. I will come back and look at that later.” Or they download it, file it, and never read it (which gets them onto your list, but no closer to sampling your expertise).
There’s no sense of urgency as to why they should download that special report right here and right now. With a teleseminar it’s built in that if they don’t sign up right there and then they’re going to miss the call itself. There’s a real reason to act now built in.This was one of the major components of my successful list-building last year, that helped build my list from 15 to 1500.
Could you/should you/are you using them?
Teleseminars are such a great thing to have as your free item of value. By this I mean your free (ie costs them nothing) item of value (has a great deal of value to them) that you give to people in exchange for their name and their email address.
Using a free up and coming teleseminar to do this is ideal because it has a natural inbuilt deadline and a sense of urgency.
If you’re offering a free report or an e-book as a free item of value, that’s fantastic. However, you might find people will land on your site and think “That looks good. I will come back and look at that later.” Or they download it, file it, and never read it (which gets them onto your list, but no closer to sampling your expertise).
There’s no sense of urgency as to why they should download that special report right here and right now. With a teleseminar it’s built in that if they don’t sign up right there and then they’re going to miss the call itself. There’s a real reason to act now built in.This was one of the major components of my successful list-building last year, that helped build my list from 15 to 1500.
Could you/should you/are you using them?
Are you getting clients handed to you?
Posted on 22 February 2010 by Nicola
I think there’s a key difference between selling products and selling your services as a coach, trainer or consultant and that is you have to build a strong, direct personal relationship with someone and win their trust before they will work with you as a coach. How do you do this? Well one way is by using referral partnerships.
Now what I’m NOT talking about here is joint ventures. To be clear a joint venture will usually mean jointly promoting an event, or cross promoting a specific product or programe. A referral partnership is when you develop a relationship with someone who refers you business (suprisingly!), and very often referral partnerships are reciprocal but not necessarily, in fact often referral partnerships will be about directing business from one party to another.
So what’s the first step to finding a referral partner for your business? Well firstly you need to know what kind of business you’re in; who you’re target market are, and who your clients really are. Forget trying to market to anyone who’ll listen, really stop and work out the answers to these questions clearly. Once you know the answers to these questions, then you can start to look at who might be in a position to be encountering your ideal clients all the time.
Let me give you an example: if you’re a life coach and you’re working with women who have recently had children for example, you might find that gym instructors, dieticians or day-care center workers, are going to be coming into contact with the same clients that you might want to be working with.
Take a look around you: who could you choose to be a referral partner for you?
EzineArticles.com: Three Reasons Why It’s The Place To Submit Your Articles
Posted on 19 February 2010 by Nicola
1. Get found by Google
One of the things that writing articles will allow you to do is to build a massive web presence and be found often in Google. Articles written and submitted to EzineArticles.com get picked up a lot by the search engines as they are the dominant article directory and that’s because of the constantly fresh and updated information EzineArticles provides through its’ site.
This is the one of the key ways that article marketing raises your profile on Google.
In fact EzineArticles.com are the number one non SEO source of traffic for their authors. For example, recently, they delivered 5.1 million click-throughs to author sites in one month through the links you can place in the resource box.
2. Get found on EzineArticles.com
When you become known as an expert on EzineArticles.com, people not only read your first article. They want to read more by you. If you imagine it’s similar to when you find a novelist that you like and you want to read more by that person, you go find their other writing.
The same thing happens with your articles, so people read more and more of your writing which lends you credibility and increases the chances of them clicking through to your site and ultimately becoming a client.
3. Get found on other people’s sites
What article directories function as is as content providers to people that have websites, blogs, newsletters, who don’t or can’t create their own content (in fact it’s a great place to search when you’re short of an article for your next newsletter!).
So when you’re writing about a ‘hot’ topic, you can often find that your articles get picked up and circulated for you, especially if you’re providing great useful content that other people want to pass onto their readers.
And it costs you nothing other than your time.
Head over there and get writing! www.EzineArticles.com
ShareAutomate Your Business: 1ShoppingCart
Posted on 17 February 2010 by Nicola
Why would you want to get an autoresponder, and why does 1shoppingcart do it for me?
- You need a sign up form to allow your website visitors to ‘opt-in’ to your mailing list. Most autoresponder services allow you to create an opt-in form very simply. For example in 1shoppingcart you can create one in less than a minute that asks your subscriber for their name and email address. You are then provided with the html code to copy and paste into your website. You don’t have to understand anything about html code, you just need to know how to copy and paste!
- You can choose which page to direct people to straight after they have opted in. This allows you to send them to a thank you page with a download they have signed up for, or to a particular sales page or article you want them to see, at the point they are the most interested in what you have to offer. Again, 1shoppingcart makes it really simple by asking you to include which url you want people to arrive at after they press ’submit’.
- Autoresponders allow you build relationships with people without you having to manually them out to individuals. If it takes up to 7 or 8 times for someone to even remember you exist, an autoresponder is a great way to send someone 7 or 8 great tips, or a short e-course so that your reader can learn to know, trust and like you before you try to sell them anything.
- 1shoppingcart also allows you to start off with a simple autoresponder package, and then add on extra features such as (you’ve guessed it!), a shopping cart when you want to start to sell digital products, an affilate system and a digital download service as your business needs grow.
Warning! I started off with a simple autoresponder system provided by www.i-contact.com which was excellent I have to say. My problem was that when I decided I needed the extra functionality that 1shoppingcart offered me and decided to switch, I lost half of my mailing list.
This is because you can’t simply import all your contacts’ details, but for spam regulations, you have to ask them to re-regsiter. And generally people are lazy and they don’t!
So begin with the end in mind, get yourself a system that does everything you will eventually need it to do and just buy the bits you need to start with.
And I took a look around at all the experts and successful people in my business and realised they were using it, and if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me!
That’s why I recommend 1shoppingcart - but what do you think?
ShareLow/No Cost Ways To Attract Clients
Posted on 15 February 2010 by Nicola
Find out how to use time, energy and imagination, and very little money on your marketing
What if you’re pretty new in business and you haven’t got a huge budget to spend on your marketing, and you just don’t know where to start? 
Deborah Bifulco, co-founder of The Coaching Academy has personally coached and mentored over 300 coaches/consultants worldwide since 2002 and is uniquely equipped to understand what it takes to be successful as a coach/mentor. She has a passion for helping others to succeed and co-authored the book, “Guerrilla Marketing on the Front Lines” with Mitch Meyerson, Jay Conrad Levinson and 34 other world-class Guerrilla Marketing Coaches.
Debbi kindly offered to let me pick her brains about using innovative and low cost methods to market your business and attract more clients and I wanted to share the audio with you here.
What will you learn in this 60 minute audio?
- How ‘Guerrilla Marketing’ differs from traditional marketing techniques
- How to define and find your target market
- What people REALLY buy
- Three Guerrilla ‘weapons’ you can start using right away
No opt-in required, just listen in right here and let me know what you think….
Don’t forget to join my next free teleseminar with Jenny Flintoft to Sort That Work-Life Lack of Balance Out!
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