Online Business Coaching Company
Using eCourses to Leverage Your Expertise Online
Copyright 2006 Donna Gunter
You’re a wonderful service provider, whether you’re a massage therapist, real estate agent, mortgage broker, web designer, etc. However, as a service provider, you have only so many hours in the day to work with your clients, yet there are still hundreds and hundreds of people in the world who could really use the knowledge and expertise you hold about the service you provide.
Enter the eCourse. eCourses are a timed-released format of delivering valuable information to your customer base via email. The course segment emails consist of shorter pieces of information that can be consumed in generally 1-2 minutes. Using autoresponder technology, the lessons can be delivered with a specific interval of time in between and delivered automatically, with no regular human attention needed beyond the setup of the eCourse. How cool is that?
Never been exposed to an eCourse? Here’s one you can sign up for right now: “5 Keys to Putting Money in Your Pocket with a Virtual Assistant”, found at http://www.Boost-Your-Bottom-Line-with-Virtual-Assistance.com.
The eCourse can be offered free of charge and used as a marketing tool to gather contact information from prospective clients and to expose them to your expertise and sell them on your products and services. Or, it can be offered for a fee for clients who might want to get a taste of what you offer but aren’t willing to pay your full service fee yet.
An eCourse is pretty simple to write. Come up with a topic that is appropriate for your target market. Each lesson becomes a simple article. Write 5-10 lessons, and you have a terrific eCourse on your hands. Or, if you like to write Top 10 lists, create one of those and make each bullet point become one of your lessons for the eCourse. Write your eCourse in a comfortable and conversational tone–just as though the reader were sitting down to have a chat and a cup of coffee with you. Include new and innovative information in what you’re writing so that the reader is assured that you’re the expert. Give some real-life stories or practical applications about how the reader can apply the information in your eCourse. Cite valuable resources in your materials that will further help your reader. To keep your reader motivated and empowered, sprinkle some inspiration in with your eCourse message. You’ll want your reader to come away with useful and valuable information and be anxious to receive or buy further information or expertise from you.
If you’ve been in business for awhile, you know that it takes 7-10 “touches” for a client to decide to buy your product or service. A multi-issue eCourse gives the prospective client multiple opportunities to “check you out”. And, because you’re getting in front of the prospective client each time s/he receives a new segment of the eCourse, the eCourse permits the prospective client to get to know you before hiring you, thus making the eCourse the perfect relationship builder and lead generator.
Once you have the content for your eCourse, you can format it in plain text, or in HTML, using a program like FrontPage. However, you won’t want to have to personally send out the ecourse to everyone who subscribes, so I use the autoresponder and subscription features that come as part of my shopping cart program. You can sign up for a free 30-day trial here and use all of the features of the program:http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/?pr=31&id=59401
Demonstrate to the world what a phenomenal service provider you are. Start drafting your first eCourse today!
Top 7 Strategies to Build Trust in Your Online Service Business
Copyright 2006 Donna Gunter
How do you know whom you can trust online? Which businesses are legit, and which ones are primed to rip you off? It can be tough these days determining which is which. With the advent of phishing and other online threats, some days you just want to shut down your email program and Internet browser and wish for a face-to-face interaction with someone that you know, like it was in the “good ole’ days” before the Internet took over our lives.
The ability to do business online is both a blessing and a curse, to paraphrase Tony Shalhoub’s TV character, Adrian Monk, from the series “Monk”. As a business owner, the Internet lets you expand your business to more potential customers than ever before. However, as a small service business owner, you can’t be everywhere at once, nor can you possibly have time for personal interactions with all of your potential clients. So, what’s an online business owner to do?
You can clone yourself online. I’m not referring to some science fiction technology involving the creation of a “mini-me”. Rather, you want to create an experience of you that is available to prospective clients, without you having to actually be there. Your “clone” creates a feeling of confidence in your prospective customer base — a feeling that you’re a real, live human being whom your prospective client can reach out and touch whenever needed.
Here are 7 strategies you can use to create your online business clone and increase customer confidence:
1. Make contact easy. Ensure your contact info clearly displayed on your website. Make it easy for your visitors to find your mailing address, phone number, or email address. Nothing is more frustrating to me when I’m searching for info on a website than to find only an 800 number. I want to know with whom I’m about to do business (a name) and where this business is located.
2. Be responsive. Respond to all email inquiries and phone calls in a timely fashion. Or, install a live chat feature on your site. I’ve dropped an email to several well-known consultant-types after reading their new book or hearing about a project in which they’re involved, and have been happily surprised to receive an email response from them, and even a phone call, in some cases. Nothing satisfies that human need for connection than some personal attention, and promptly returning your phone calls and emails will provide that for your visitors.
3. Become a real person. Use audio and video on your website and your photo. No one likes to do business with a faceless corporate entity. Come out of hiding and display your photo on your website, or photos of you in action in your business. Create a visual image in the mind of your visitor. Better yet, with the increasing popularity of online video and audio, let them hear and witness you in action. A great tool to help you put audio and video on your website is AudioAcrobat, http://dgunter.audioacrobat.com/ .
4. Provide client testimonials. “Can she do what she says she can do?” is a common question asked of service business owners, and they want to read about others who’ve been happy consumers of your service. Ask current and former clients for powerful testimonials and sprinkle them across your website. Keep in mind that the best testimonials give a synopsis of the client’s problem prior to hiring you, and the happy outcome as a result of hiring you. Those that just say, “Oh, Donna is wonderful!” is a great ego boost, but provide little credibility to your visitors.
A second powerful way to demonstrate your results is by providing case studies, or a synopsis of a problem that a client faced and your strategy that helped that client solve that problem. People want to do business with people who have a proven track record, and testimonials and case studies provide that track record for you.
5. Demonstrate your expertise. One of the easiest ways to tell the world what you know is by writing articles. Article writing is an extremely personal experience for me, as I’m typically writing about a problem that a client has had, an issue that came up in conversation recently with a potential client, or something with which I’m struggling in my business or something I want to research and know more about. The greatest compliment that I ever got about my articles (other than the fact that they contain useful info) is that each article really sounds like me. Don’t worry about giving away your info — those who may be able to implement your information without hiring you can also become your biggest champion and referral source because they know that you know what you’re talking about.
And, you never know where your articles might lead. I got a call today from a friend who was in an online chat for resellers of a product, and the topic of writing articles came up with another person in the chat room. My friend went to my blog to provide a link to an article I had written on the topic of article submission, and when he published it on the chat, the person with whom he was chatting said, “Oh, I know Donna.” My friend was blown away by the coincidence. There are no coincidences–just good marketing.
6. Provide freebies. Add value to your website visitors by giving something away — an ebook, a report, an ecourse, an audio recording, or a a free teleclass. The more you can demonstrate your expertise and the more ways that a visitor can begin to know, like, and respect you, the greater chance you have of building trust with that person and converting that person into a paying client.
7. Stay in touch. Once you’ve obtained someone’s contact info, stay in touch with him on a regular basis, as the more someone sees and talks to you, the quicker the trust develops. Regular communication is key, and you can stay in touch on a regular basis through the publication of an email newsletter, a free teleclass series that is open to all of your contacts, or by updating your website regularly with new content, like articles for your target market.
Giving your visitors confidence that they can trust what you do and say is one key to success in the online world. Eliminate the barriers in doing business with you and set visitors on the path of getting to know, like, and respect you. When you do, you’ll discover that their trust isn’t too far behind.
How to Find Your Target Market Online
Copyright 2006 Donna Gunter
Are you fishing where the fish are? This may seem to be a question with an obvious answer, but I’m constantly amazed at how many business owners are looking for their target market in all the wrong places. Worse yet is the business owner whose target market is “everybody”. Do you know how tough it is to market to everybody? The reality is that not everyone needs your product and service, nor is it a good match for every single person on this earth.
The first issue to resolve is determining who comprises your target market. Are they male or female? What age group? What industry? What socio-economic group? Until you narrow your focus and select a smaller niche market, much of your marketing effort will be in vain.
Once you’ve got a target market in mind, you need to know more about them. Here are the questions that I ask clients about their target market: Where do they hang out on- and off-line? What do they read? To what groups and associations (real and virtual, personal and professional) do they belong? How much money do they make? Can they easily afford your product or service?
There are some great research tools available online for you to research your target market. Here are 7 that I recommend:
1. Professional associations: American Society of Association Executives, http://www.asaenet.org, is a great place to start, as most of the executives of the reputable associations belong to this organization. To do your search, go the Gateway of Associations, currently found here: http://www.asaecenter.org/Directories/AssociationSearch.cfm?navItemNumber=16581 Once you’re in the Gateway, you can look up associations by keyword or by location. Once you’ve found the appropriate association(s), check out the association website and see if you should belong, and determine if the group has a local chapter that might meet in your area. If your initial search in this directory leads you to a local chapter, you should be able to backtrack and find the website of the national office.
A second place to locate associations is Gale’s Encyclopedia of Associations. This multi-volume encyclopedia is present in the reference section of all major libraries, and due to the expense, you will probably want to pay a visit to your local library to use this resource. Some libraries subscribe to GaleNet, the online database, http://www.galenet.com and can issue you a username and password so that you can use it as well.
A third option is to do an online search for “industry” (you fill in your target industry here) + “professional association”. Using quotation marks will result in the best search.
2. Trade and consumer publications: Once you’ve found the appropriate association to which your target market belongs, each association will probably have a professional membership publication and/or newsletter. You might be able to subscribe to the publication without joining the association.
Gebbie Press (http://www.gebbieinc.com) publishes a media directory in which you can obtain a newspaper and trade and consumer magazine directory. Bacon’s (http://www.bacons.com) also publishes a number of media directories, including Newspaper/Magazine Directory and Radio/TV/Cable Directory, among others. As with the Gale’s Directory, you’ll probably have to pay a visit to your local library to use this resource, as it’s rather expensive to purchase.
3. Online discussion forums/lists: I’ve had a number of clients tell me that they have gotten subscribers to their newsletter and signed up clients based on their participation in online discussion lists or forums. Scott Stratten maintains a great list of good business-oriented discussion forums at http://www.un-marketing.com/index.php?p=u. Many professional associations run their own discussion lists and forums. And, there’s always the Yahoo Groups Directory, http://groups.yahoo.com, Google Groups, http://groups.google.com/, Forum Haven, http://forumhaven.com, and another comprehensive list at QuintCareers.com, http://www.quintcareers.com/Internet_networking_sources.html.
4. Online networking: Some virtual groups exist for the sole purpose of networking. A number of ones that are better known, like Friendster and MySpace, are primarily social in nature. The business-oriented ones often have “networks”, as Ryze calls them, that bring people together centered around a common goal or interest. In many cases, you can create your own network. Scott Allen has a comprehensive listing of online networking groups http://thevirtualhandshake.com/directory.html and has co-written a great book on the subject with David Teten, The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online.
5. Blogs: Not only is creating your own blog a great way to market your business, but commenting on other blogs read by your target market is also a smart move. With so many blogs online, it might be tough to find the ones that are the ones read by your target market or are on a topic of interest to your target market. You can start with Google Blog Search, http://blogsearch.google.com/ , Feedster, http://www.feedster, and a directory of blog submission sites published by Robin Goode at http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/, which will be helpful as well in your blog search.
6. Ezines: Reading (and submitting articles to) ezines read by your target market will give you a great overview of typical issues and problems faced by your target market. Here’s a listing of the most popular directories, http://ezines.nettop20.com/.
7. Income: Knowing how much money your target market makes will aid you in determining how to price your product or service. For help, consult Salary.com, http://www.salary.com where you can get pay ranges for specific geographic locations. More detailed reports are available for a fee.
Doing your target market research ahead of time will save you a great deal of grief and headache. Targeting your market and marketing your plan will help you get more clients online.
10 Steps to Creating Your Internet Marketing Plan
Copyright 2006 Donna Gunter
If you’re the owner of a small service business, having a solid Internet marketing plan in place can both increase your name and brand recognition locally in your geographic area, as well as expose you to a whole new set of potential clients throughout the world. If you have a business plan or vision that is written, you only need to integrate this Internet marketing piece into that existing plan. However, if you are like many of my clients, you carry your business and marketing plans in your head without bothering to commit anything to paper.
Here are ten considerations you need to make as you complete your Internet marketing plan:
1. Objective of Internet Marketing Plan: What do you want to accomplish by using Internet marketing? To find new clients? Provide services and info to existing clients? Sell services or products? Educate your target market or your staff about your product or service? Create an online community for your target market? How much money to have to spend each month on this Internet marketing plan? Having a goal and budget in mind will make your marketing more effective.
2. Marketing Funnel: The most successful online business owners have a marketing funnel (think of it as an upside down triangle) through which they “funnel” clients. The process begins from the wide top of the funnel, representing low-cost products or free give-aways, and moving clients down through the funnel to the narrower portions which represent gradually increasing investments from the clients from your higher-priced products and services. What products and services do you currently offer? Are they at varied price points that would create a funnel effect? What plans do you have to increase your product or service line? Will those new offerings plug gaps in your marketing funnel?
3. Your Competition: Knowing and understanding where you stand among your competitors can you help you strengthen your marketing message. Do a keyword search for the terms someone might use to find your business online. Write down the URL’s of your top 5 competitors. How popular and relevant are their sites? You can check their traffic ranking with Alexa, http://www.alexa.com/#traffic, as well as see what other sites link to them. Does your competition offer something unique? Where are the gaps in the service or product offerings?
4. Target Market: Instead of trying to marketing to everyone (the shotgun marketing approach), find a clearly definable target market that you can easily describe and locate. Are they male or female? What age group? What industry? What socio-economic group? Where do they hang out on- and off-line? What do they read? To what groups and associations (real and virtual, personal and professional) do they belong? How much money do they make? Can they easily afford your product or service? What keywords are they using to search for businesses like yours online? (Note–you can do keyword research with free downloadable software, http://www.GoodKeywords.com).
5. Solution to a Problem: The reason that someone will buy your product or hire to you to provide a service is to solve a particular problem that they have. What problems and issues plague your target market? How does your product or service solve that problem? How does your solution differ from that of your competitors? What makes you uniquely qualified to provide the solution to their problem?
6. Branding Your Business: Your domain name can either help you be memorable or cast you into a sea of “brandless” solutions. At a minimum, you’ll want to buy both your personal name as well as the name of your business in the .com version, if it’s available. Then buy the .com versions of your product names and program names. If you use a full-featured domain registrar, you’ll be able to point and mask these domains to internal pages of your web site, or use them as stand-alone sales letter pages.
You may also think of problems faced by your target market or solutions that you provide and buy domain names in the .com version of those as well. Internet marketer Dean Jackson brands his ebook on how to stop a divorce by owning the domain name, StopYourDivorce.com, This is a compelling solution to his target market — men who have been ignoring their wives’ complaints of marital dissatisfaction and come home one day to an empty house and a note telling him that she’s filing for divorce.
7. Assess your website. Your web site should be visually appealing, with one primary font for the text and a simple primary color scheme, along with an easy-to-navigate layout, and readily identifiable buttons to link to other pages in the site. Your content should focus on and address the problems of your visitors and how your product or service can help solve their problems. Rather than listing the features of your product or service, detail the benefits they’ll gain from purchasing your product or service. People rarely buy features — they buy benefits. Don’t depend on your web site designer to write your content — that is best done by you, as you know your business and your target market better than anyone.
Present a clear call to action that is clearly shown on every page of your site. In an online business, your primary call to action should be getting the visitor’s name and primary email address by asking him subscribe to your ezine or by giving him access to a free ecourse, special report, audio recording, or ebook. Lastly, provide an abundace of readily available information to demonstrate your expertise (articles, blog posts, free downloads, giveaways, contests). Your visitor is always asking WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) — make your web site about your visitor, not about you.
8. Online Business Management Technology: Do you have access to the appropriate services and technology that will help you sell your product or service online? At a minimum you’ll need a merchant account (permits you to take credit card payments) that includes a virtual gateway (enables you to process transactions online) and a full-featured shopping cart that will permit you to sell both physical and electronic products and create a series of autoresponders to follow up with buyers and non-buyers alike. Depending on your marketing plan, you may also want to investigate email newsletter distribution services, online appointment setting services, stand-alone autoresponders, blogging software, article submission sites, online press release distribution services, website content management services, and links exchange management services and software.
9. Internet Marketing Strategies: How will you create traffic to your website? There are countless ways to do this, including: pay-per-click purchases (in which you buy a keyword at a search engine and pay for placement on that search engine for that keyword and pay for each visitor who clicks on that link and is sent to your site); organic search engine listing ranking (in which your site comes up at the top of the non-sponsored listings on a search engine by having keyword rich descriptions in the page title and page desciption meta tags and then optimizing each page for no more than 3 keywords in the first 250 words on a page); well-written email newsletter that is published on a regular basis; submission of articles on topics related to your target market to article submission directories; regularly post entries to a blog aimed at your target market, full of content discussing issues related to that target market; series of podcasts containing interview with experts of interest to your target market; ongoing series of teleconferences containing value-added content for your target market; submission of online press releases with new tips information for your target market; exchange relevant links with others in different industries with the same target market;
10. Building a Team: You’ll never be able to do this all alone. The most successful business owners don’t even try. You need to add experts to your team who are great at what they do so that you’ve got the time and energy to go out and do what you do best — selling your products and services to your target market. Some great experts to add to your team include a virtual assistant or online business manager, an online business coach, a web site designer, a graphic designer, a writing expert (editor, ghost writer, proof reader or copy writer), a bookkeeper, and intellectual property attorney, to name a few.
To conduct a successful Internet marketing campaign, you need to integrate your plan into the overall marketing plan/business vision that you have for your service business. Some businesses will thrive off Internet marketing alone; however, for most, Internet marketing simply complements and enhances your offline marketing strategies.
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