I have been watching hundreds of coaches struggle to get clients for their businesses. The most common reason for this is not having a marketing plan. Instead, they do random marketing techniques from time to time hoping that one of them will stick and bring in clients. If you do not have a plan, you will not be able to get clients.

Here is a 5-Step Plan that will help you get more clients for your business:

Become Clear About Your Goals

This is really the first question that you must ask yourself, because what you put into your Marketing Plan will depend on what you want to accomplish. Without knowing what your goals and intentions are you will not be able to find the right marketing actions to market your business.

Find Your Target Market

A lot of the marketing that you do will depend on who your target market is. Decide on your target market before doing anything else. As soon as you are clear on who your target market is, it will become much easier for you to market and it will become easier for you to build your list and get clients.

Create An Effective Web Site For Your Business

Your web site is the tool that helps you build your list and sell your products and services. Your web site must have pages specifically for selling your products, pages specifically for selling your services and pages specifically for building your list. By creating pages with a single purpose your will focus your web site visitors’ attention and inspire more of them to take action with you.

Build Your List

Very few people who come to your web site are going to become your clients immediately. This is because they don’t know you yet and they do not trust you yet. People buy from people they know, like and trust.

When people visit a web site for the first time, they forget all about it a few minutes after they leave. This means that they will only come back to your web site and may potentially become your
clients if you are able to remind them about yourself.

Your newsletter is the best tool you have to get your potential customers to keep coming back to your web site.

Drive Traffic To Your Web Site

Now that you have effective web pages that sell your products and services, as well as a large list list, you must bring in web site traffic.

There are many marketing techniques that will help you bring in traffic. Social networking, article marketing, business blogging, and search engine optimization are all great techniques to bring traffic to your web site.

Start with one and learn how to use it to get web site traffic. Once you are comfortable with using it, move on to the next one and master that approach. This way you will master all online marketing techniques one technique at a time.

Having a marketing plan is the best way to start getting clients for your business. Take an hour right now and start creating your marketing plan to create a successful business!

Need help creating your online marketing plan? Learn how to create your marketing plan and use it to get clients for your business at https://www.MarketingSalad.com

Biana Babinsky

https://www.MarketingSalad.com

I recently heard from a business owner who said that she watched TV for just an hour and it left her very scared of the state of the economy and how it was going to affect her business. My first recommendation was to turn off the TV and concentrate on her business and her customers instead.

But then I started thinking – what could she have in that one hour instead of watching the news that would have helped her with her business? Here are 10 things that take just 1 hour to do and that help you market your business:

1. Write an article that you can submit to article directories to market your business.

2. Spend an hour on Twitter networking and getting to know your followers.

3. Review your web site statistics to learn how your web site visitors are using your site.

4. Write a blog post.

5. Approve and welcome new Facebook friends.

6. Listen to a marketing teleseminar or audio recording. Here is one marketing audio recording for you to listen to: 5 Keys For Creating Your Online Marketing Plan Audio Recording.

7. Submit an existing article to article directories. You can submit it to 10-15 directories in an hour.

8. Reply to your e-mail.

9. Review one of your sales letter to improve conversions.

10. Do keyword research and find good keywords to use on your web site, so that you can get more search engine traffic.

So here are my 10 things you can do in just 1 hour to promote your business. I am sure there are many more – what are the things you recommend doing to promote a business that will only take 1 hour?

Biana Babinsky

Every time I review traffic coming to my blog, I see a lot of traffic coming from search engines. How do search engines bring traffic to my blog? Here is how:

– I come up with a post idea and write a blog post.

– I optimize the post for search engines and post it on my blog.

– The post gets indexed in search engines.

– People who have never heard of me before use search engines to find information. They see my blog post in the search engine, visit the post and read it.

Search engine traffic is very useful – if I look further into my statistics, I see that some people who come to my blog from search engines subscribe to my blog feed, subscribe to my newsletter and become clients. And search engine traffic is free – it does not cost me anything to get this traffic to my blog.

So how can you capitalize on this and bring free search engine traffic to your blog? Here is how:

Come Up With Good Topics For Your Blog Posts

It is not enough for people to find your blog posts using search engines. When they come to your blog, you need to convince them to stay and read. And this is done by writing interesting blog posts.

Optimize Your Blog Posts For Search Engines

Do research and find popular keywords that you can use in your blog posts. Then, use these keywords to optimize your post. Use a keyword in your blog title and use it in your blog post’s text.

Warning: do not use the keywords too many times in the blog text. A few mentions are ok, but too many will adversely affect your search engine rankings.

Get Links To Your Blog

Using keywords is not enough. In order to get good rankings in search engines, your blog must have other web sites linking to it.

There are lots of different ways to get links to your blog. You can participate in blog rolls and use article marketing and social networking sites and do many other things to get links to your blog.

Monitor And Make Changes Accordingly

Monitor your search engine traffic and analyze the keywords that search engines use to drive traffic to your blog. You may find keywords that you are not using yet in your statistics. Start using them to drum up even more traffic.

Keep refining your search engine optimization strategy based on what you learn in your statistics. Doing this will help you get more search engine traffic to your blog.

I discuss how to get traffic to your blog in the How To Get More Traffic & Readers For Your Blog Study Guide. Get it now at https://www.marketingsalad.com/blog.html

Biana Babinsky

I posted a message with this headline on a few lists and heard back from a few coaches who told me that based on the traffic statistics for their blogs, even their dogs do not read their blogs.

Here is what you need to do in order to be successful with your blog:

Define Your Goals For Your Blog.

What do YOU want to happen? Do you want a million readers? More newsletter subscribers? A lot of clients to find your blog?

Let’s say that you are a coach and author who recently released a book. So your goal for your blog is to sell more of your books.

Set Up Your Blog To Help You Reach Your Goal.

What does your blog need to have in order to help you reach your goal? To continue with the previous example, if you are a coach and an author, whose goal is to sell more books, you must add information about your book to the blog. Add information to the header and to the menu, so that information about the book is visible on every blog post. You should also blog about your book once in a while as well.

Blog About Things Of Interest To Your Target Market.

Since you would like your target market to come to your blog, create blog posts on topics that your target market is interested in.

Drive Your Target Market To Your Blog.

Now that you know what your goals for your blog are, you have set up your blog to help you reach these goals and you blog about things of interest to your target market, you need to bring the actual target market to your blog.

In order for you to actually achieve your goals you need your target market to come to your blog and purchase your book. You can achieve that by bringing your target market to your blog.

How can you do that? You can do that by using online marketing techniques such as article marketing, social networking, newsletter publishing, and many others to drive traffic to your blog.

I discuss many different ways to drive to your blog in the How To Get More Traffic & Readers For Your Blog Study Guide. You can get it now at https://www.marketingsalad.com/blog.html

Biana Babinsky

If you have been reading this blog, you know that I am a huge fan of article marketing. I have been using article marketing for many years to build my list, get clients and get web site traffic. Many of my newsletter subscribers and clients have found me by reading my articles in article directories, blogs and on other people’s web sites.

I often receive questions about article marketing that have to do with duplicate content. When you submit the same article to 10, 20 or 30 article directories, you have exactly the same article appear on multiple sites. This constitutes duplicate content.

Many business owners have seen that duplicate content does not rank as high as original content in search engines. Because of this many business owners have been asking me if it is still worth it to submit articles to article directories, if they will not rank that high.

The answer is that even with duplicate content you should definitely submit articles to article directories. Your articles will still show up in search engines – they just won’t rank as high as more original content.
However, when you submit your articles to good, popular article directories, you will receive traffic boosts in two different ways:

– First, when your articles are published in these article directories, they will have links pointing back to your web site(s). When people click on these links, you will get very useful web site traffic that you would not have received otherwise.

– Blog and web site owners use article directories to find articles that they can re-print on their web sites, in their blogs and in their newsletters. When you submit your articles to article directories, they get re-printed, thus, providing you with more exposure and more traffic.

And, when you have many articles appear in many directories, your potential clients see immediately that you are the expert at what you do.

Therefore, even if your articles that you submit to article directories don’t rank that high in search engines, you will still benefit from using article marketing.

Want to know the best places to submit your articles to get more web site traffic? In my FREE Report, “How To Get Clients Online” I have listed my 10 favorite article submission directories.
You can get the report at https://www.AvocadoConsulting.com

Biana Babinsky

I publish a weekly newsletter on getting clients online and I am often asked how this newsletter helps me and my business succeed.

There are many ways that my newsletter helps me:

– My newsletter positions me as an expert

– My newsletter helps me showcase my expertise

– My newsletter helps me build relationships with my subscribers, every single week

– I re-use the articles that I write for the newsletter on my web site to get more traffic

– My newsletter brings in more clients and more sales. Every time I send out my newsletter there I see many product sales.

All of this from just sending out a weekly newsletter!

It is no wonder that when I discuss the above with my clients, they want to take action and start their own newsletter! So their next question is how to get more newsletter subscribers.

I use many strategies to get subscribers. I believe that the best to get subscribers is to have a system in place for using online marketing techniques to get subscribers.

First in the system is your free gift – a gift that your target market would love to receive. Offer this gift to everyone who subscribes to your newsletter.

Next, tell everyone about this free gift, so that they subscribe to receive it! For example:

– If you are doing an off line speech or a presentation, pass around a sign-up sheet to enable participants to receive your gift and get on your list.

– If you have a business blog and are blogging, have your gift offer prominently displayed on your blog.

– If you are writing and distributing articles, make sure that everyone who is reading your articles is able to sign up to receive the gift.

Share the information about your free gift with everyone in your target market! You can dramatically increase your product sales and build your client roster if you have a large list full of your target clients, ready to hear from you.

If you don’t have a system of getting people on your list yet, I recommend that you sit down today to brainstorm how to create such system and how to use all the marketing that you are already doing to build your list.

Want to learn my favorite strategies for building a list? Join me for the Top 5 Strategies To Build Your List Teleseminar at https://www.marketingsalad.com/build-list.html

Biana Babinsky

Every once in a while I receive a question from a coach who has heard that newsletters are old news and web 2.0 is the way to go. Here is a question I received recently:

Question: Biana, I have been a life coach for about 4 years now. I have been publishing my newsletter for about 2.5 years. About 6 months ago I started reading articles and hearing from everyone that newsletters are outdated and that I should start using web 2.0 exclusively.

Did I make a mistake? Should I have been publishing my newsletter instead of starting the blog and doing social networking?

My answer: First of all, I LOVE web 2.0. Blogging and social networking has been bringing leads and clients to me for a very long time. However, your newsletter is a foundation of your marketing strategy. Before you blog, before you use social networking sites, you MUST have a newsletter.

Let me explain. Your newsletter helps you build long term relationships with people in your target market. It is your most important piece in your marketing strategy. When you meet people in your target market – in person, through speaking or networking, or online, though social networking, article marketing, etc – you need to invite them to get on your newsletter list.

Once they get on your list, they will be able to receive your newsletter, get to know you and become aware of products and services that you offer.

The best way to use web 2.0 is to use it to get more people to subscribe to your newsletter. When people are reading your blog, make sure that you invite them to subscribe to your newsletter. You can do that by using an invite in the blog header, including a newsletter subscription box in your menu, etc.

And when you are using social networking, make sure that your personal pages on different social networking sites promote your newsletter. That way you can use your newsletter to continue building relationships with people you meet at social networking sites.

So I recommend that you continue using your blog and social networking sites, but you should also find a way to continue building relationships with people you meet through those means.

I talk a lot about using your newsletter to get clients in the Grow Your List Home Study Course that you can see at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/znews

Biana Babinsky

After I published FREE Web Site Traffic Series Part 1: Article Marketing, I have gotten emails from some of you asking for more information on driving traffic. Today I am discussing how to use your blog to get more free web site traffic:

– Use Search Engine Optimization To Drive Traffic To Your Blog. Search engines bring a lot of very targeted traffic to my blog posts, so I always recommend using search engines to drive more free traffic to a blog.

Search engine optimization for your blog consists of three important parts: doing keyword research, using the keywords in your blog post and getting links to your blog.

First, you need to find keywords that your target market uses when searching for materials on the same topic as your upcoming blog post. You do not need too many keywords for one blog post.

Next, you need to use a few of the best keywords that you find in your blog post.

And to get better search engine rankings you need to have links leading to your blog. You can do that by exchanging links with other bloggers, listing your blog in blog directories, etc.

– Make Each Blog Post’s File Name Descriptive. Different blogging software behaves differently, but some will call your blog posts 2.html, 3.html, 4.html, etc. As you can see, that is not very descriptive and not particularly helpful to either people or search engines. When you create a post called How Coaching Helps Business Owners, calling it how-coaching-helps-business-owners.html is a much better title than 5.html.

Make sure that your blogging software creates descriptive file names for your blog posts; it is better both for human readers and search engine spiders and doing this will help you get more traffic to your blog.

– Get Links To Your Blog. More quality links means more more traffic, it’s that simple. Work on getting quality links pointing to your blog.

– Get Your Blog Listed In Blog Directories. Blog directories are a great source of getting links to your blog. Sometimes blog directories will give you a unidirectional (they link to you, but you don’t link back to them) link, other times they would exchange links with you.

– Use Article Marketing To Get Traffic To Your Blog. As I mentioned in the FREE Web Site Traffic Series Part 1: Article Marketing post, article marketing is a great way to drive more free traffic. And you can use article marketing to drive traffic to your blog by using your article’s Resource Box to link back to your blog.

I share my system for using my blog to get free traffic and clients in my How To Make Thousands Of Dollars With Your Blog Home Study Guide that you can see at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zbt

More articles on getting free traffic:

– FREE Web Site Traffic Series Part 1: Article Marketing

Biana Babinsky

If you are not getting the results from your blog, you are not alone. Many business owners have told me that they are not getting results from their blogs. After reviewing many blogs, here are the top three mistakes that I see business owners repeating over and over again:

– Not defining the results you are looking for BEFORE starting to blog. What are your objectives for blogging? What do you want to achieve with your blog? Be crystal clear on what you want to achieve and keep this information in mind as you are starting your blog.

– Not picking the blogging software that is right for you. If you pick blogging software that you are not sure how to use or if you have blogging software that is difficult to use, you will not use it. This means that you have a blog, but you are not actually blogging.

If you are not blogging, you can’t use your blog to get clients. Having blogging software that works for you will solve many of your blogging problems.

– Not optimizing blog posts for search engines. Search engines have sent me many thousands of blog readers, some of whom have turned into clients.

In fact, search engines will send you some of your most targeted readers. The more targeted the readers are, the easier it is to turn them into clients. Start using search engines for every blog post. Doing this will help you gain more traffic and clients.

– Not capturing e-mail addresses of your blog readers. I have had many business owners tell me that they have blogs and that they have many people reading their blogs, but they are not turning any of the readers into customers.

The first step that you must take to turn your blog readers into clients is capturing their e-mail addresses. If you can’t connect with your blog readers by e-mail, you will not be able to turn them into clients.

The How To Make Thousands Of Dollars With Your Blog Home Study Guide teaches you how to create a blog and use it to get more customers for your business. Learn more about it at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zbt

Biana Babinsky

Many of my clients have been asking me for free marketing techniques to bring more targeted traffic to their web sites.

There are quite a few methods to spread the word about your web site for free or inexpensively. However, I recommend that you first decide WHO you want to bring to your web site. This will make a big difference on how you apply marketing techniques later on.

Once you have decided who your target market is, you need to use online marketing techniques to drive your target market to your web site.

Here are my favorite online marketing techniques. All three of them are free to use to bring traffic to your web site:

– Article Marketing. Article marketing consists of writing articles that your target market is interested in reading. Once you have created these articles, you need to submit them to article directories.

Every time your article gets published in an article directory, or it gets re-published on other people’s blogs and web sites, it gets published with a link back to your web site. Thus, every single person reading your article can click on the link and visit your web site. This will help you get more web site traffic.

Read articles on Article Marketing: https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/articles/articles.html

– Business Blogging. Blogging is really big now, and this is because lots of people are now either blogging or reading other blogs, or both. Blogs are also popular because you can use them to communicate with current customers and attract new customers to your business.

Start a blog that is of interest to your target market. Post to it often. Make sure that your blog is listed in blog directories and that you optimize your blog posts for search engines.

Read articles on Using A Business Blog To Market Your Business: https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/articles/blog.html

– Search Engine Optimization. A lot of people are using search engines to find what they need. Make sure that each page on your web site is optimized for search engines, so that people who are looking for the information available on your web site can find it.

Read articles on Search Engine Optimization: https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/articles/seo.html

Biana Babinsky