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.
SharePosted 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….
SharePosted 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?
SharePosted 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.
SharePosted 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?
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.
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
SharePosted on 15 February 2010 by Nicola
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?
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!
SharePosted on 12 February 2010 by Nicola
Yes please! I’d like some of that I hear time and again from coaches that sell only their telephone and face-to-face coaching services.
My advice to you? Buy Multiple Streams of Coaching Income by Andrea J Lee.
This is a 297 page book but is really easy reading as Andrea expresses so well the pain and frustration faced by many coaches all around the world who sit there with empty spaces in their diaries where client bookings should be, and empty bank balances when their coach training companies promised them they would be full.
Chapters include stressing the need for coaches to stop coaching just 1:1 to grow successful business and asks you if you’re up to changing your mindset about this. This is followed by some great tips on choosing your niche, and on the essential of then marketing to that niche, before finally moving onto what I consider to be the really exciting stuff: how to actually create those multiple streams.
There are so many ideas here: eBooks and Teleseminars we know about, but Andrea explains how to use online memberships, companion coaching programmes, live trainings and coaching gyms amongst the ways to generate those multiple streams and move not just into creating products, but to consider ways of coaching 1: many instead of just 1:1.
If you buy one book to help you generate passive revenues this year, I recommend Andrea Lee’s Multiple Streams Of Coaching Income. Andrea is the be-all and end-all when it comes to turning your desire for helping others into products that help you make money. Michael Port.
And I can’t argue with that.
Get your copy here. It’s only $24.99 and you get the pdf version straight away. Let me know what you think of it.
SharePosted on 10 February 2010 by Nicola
Jeff Herring is The Article Marketing Guy and he spent some time convincing me that article marketing can give you a far greater return than Google AdWords as a way to drive traffic to your site:
Jeff explained that he has got one article that he wrote in August of 2005 which sends people to an opt-in page where they can get a sample of an e-book. And on that page there’s an offer to buy that e-book there too. It’s a $27 little e-book that sells all day every day. And how does Jeff continue to make sales? Because in the time he’s had that article up since August 2005, it averages 1,500 unique viewers a month. Let me just repeat that: Every month 1,500 brand new people come in to read that article. All that cost Jeff was the time it took him to write and submit that one article.
Now, let’s compare that to Google AdWords (and by the way Jeff uses Google AdWords too, he’s not knocking it!).
To get that same 1,500 unique viewers a month, let’s say that it costs Jeff 25 cents a click for a Google AdWord (a reasonable estimate). That would cost me $350 a month to get those same 1,500 clicks or over $4,200 a year.
So you’re getting the same result for free by using article marketing, but not only that but it’s a more qualified result.
Let me explain.
With Google AdWords, you can place four or five lines of text and a link. In an article, you could go up to 1,500 words (but Jeff normally recommends 300 to 500). Because of this your reader is getting to know, like and trust you, learn how you approach problems and learn how you solve problems. By the time your reader is getting down to where the links are, they’re ready to go. They want to click on those links and they want that information.
Even if you pay a writer $15 to $25 an article, article marketing wins this competition I reckon!
What do you think? Are you using either/both/neither?
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