Many of my clients have asked me how to get started on having a web site. Should they create a web site themselves? How should they do it? Should they hire someone else to create a web site for them? What makes a good web site?

I usually recommend stepping back from an idea of a web site, and creating a list of what you actually need. You do not need a web site per se; what you really need is a process for getting clients online. Your web site is one of the main pieces in this process.

So, what do you need your web site for? Ask yourself these questions about your future web site:

– Do you need a place to promote your services?

– Do you want to create a hands-off system for getting clients online? Do you want to be able to build your list and use online marketing techniques to do that?

– Do you want to sell products such as ebooks, teleseminars and others?

– Do you need a membership web site?

– Do you need an automated system to get people to your web site and promote your services to them?

What to include on your web site and how to design it will depend on the purpose your web site will serve. If you don’t know what you need your web site to do, don’t hire a designer, as you will waste your money.

Only when you know what the web site needs to do, hire someone to create it for you.
Also, there is no reason to have a web site, unless you are going to use it and other online marketing techniques to attract more clients. If you will not use it for marketing, it will just be another business expense that will not pay for itself.

If you do want to use your web site to market your business, decide what you need your web site to do, before doing anything else. Doing this now will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

I have helped many clients to save thousands of dollars on their web sites – by helping them create a web site plan to get their web site right the very first time they design it or outsource to have it designed for them. You may want to join my mentoring program at https://www.MarketingSalad.com to learn how to create a plan for your web site.
Biana Babinsky

So you went to a networking event and met three people who are in your target market, and who can really use your services. Or you just attended an online networking event and want to keep in touch with a few people you met there. Or a colleague introduced you to a potential customer who you would love to work with, but who isn’t calling you back.

What should you do? How much should you follow up with these people? And, most importantly, how should you follow up with them to ensure a positive response?

If these people are in your target market, but they haven’t expressed specific interest in hiring you now, I would not spend too much time on following up with them. I meet dozens (sometimes more) target customers every week, so it is impossible to keep following up with all of them until they get back to me.

What I do is follow up once with information about my newsletter and the gift they will receive when they subscribe to my newsletter. Subscribing to my newsletter is a no-brainer for them – there is no charge to subscribe and they receive a gift when they do.

It is much easier to convince a prospect to subscribe to a newsletter than to buy your services. When you meet people in your target market, work on getting to that first step, having them to subscribe to your newsletter. Selling them your products and services will come later.

Getting potential customers to subscribe to your newsletter is great for you – now you are able to follow up and build relationships with potential customers without having to follow up with each person individually. As you send out your newsletter and build relationships, potential customers get to know you and are much more willing to buy your services and products.

Following up using a newsletter is extremely effective. A big part of my business comes from people who have been my newsletter subscribers for some time.

I recommend that you start a newsletter and use your newsletter as your automatic follow up program. This way you can follow up with hundreds, or even thousands of prospects, all at once.

Learn more of my tips for following up with clients – join my members-only online business coaching program at MarketingSalad.com

Biana Babinsky

How Can I Get MORE Newsletter Subscribers? This is one of the most popular questions I receive from coaches, consultants and other service business owners.

The best way to get more people to subscribe to your newsletter is by offering a free gift that they can receive when they subscribe.

Everyone likes free gifts, so when you offer a free gift to your subscribers you are immediately going to get more people to subscribe.

When people first learn about your newsletter, they are not sure if they want to subscribe or not. But they will definitely subscribe if they really want to receive the gift you are offering.

You want the people who learn about the gift to immediately say: “I want this!” and subscribe to your newsletter, so that they can get the gift. Therefore, the gift should be on a topic that is of great interest to your target market.

A few months ago I taught members of my mentoring program how to create a newsletter gift that will get you many newsletter subscribers. You can get the recording of that call at https://www.marketingsalad.com/triple-newsletter.html

Biana Babinsky

Do you need to bring in more clients and jump-start your sales NOW?

To start earning more money now without waiting for more long term strategies to kick in, I have created a process that will help you get more sales from your existing web site visitors.

Discover the process to jump-start your sales during the “How To Increase Your Fall Revenue By Turning MORE Web Site Visitors Into Customers” Teleseminar.

The teleseminar is TOMORROW, September 19th, so register now.

The teleseminar is only open to members of my members-only online business coaching web site, MarketingSalad.com. Learn how to attend the teleseminar for just $1 at

https://www.marketingsalad.com/more-customers.html

Biana Babinsky

So you wrote a book, now what? How can you find people who want to buy your book online? Here is how:

– Define the target audience for your book – who are the people who want to buy your book? Who is the target market for your book? Your book is very targeted, so you should be able to pinpoint a very specific group of people who wants the information you are sharing in the book.

– Start a newsletter to collect the email addresses of people who visit your web site. Not everyone is going to buy your book the first time they visit your web site. If you can’t keep in touch with them AFTER they have visited your web site, you have lost them forever.

If you are able to get their email address you will be able to market your book to them for a long time. Plus, if you decide to offer other products based on your book (teleseminars, ebooks, etc) you will be able to use your e-mail list to promote them as well.

– Create a marketing plan for your book. There are lots of things you can do to market your book – article marketing, blogging, search engine optimization, public speaking, etc.

Make sure your plan addresses how to get traffic to your web site, how to turn your traffic into leads and how to turn your leads into buyers.

Have you written a book? Do you want to sell more copies of your book online? Listen to my FREE Audio Recording, 5 Steps To Selling More Copies Of Your Book. You can download the audio recording, free at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zbusiness

Biana Babinsky

Article submission is the process of taking the article that you have already written and submitting it to article directories, web sites and other places that accept them.

You want to submit your articles to many different places because the more articles you have submitted to web sites, the more people will know about you and the more of them will be able to visit your web site and become your clients!

Article submission consists of a few steps:

– Writing your article

– Creating an effective resource box for the article that is optimized to bring lots of traffic to your web site

– Finding article directories you want to submit your article to.

– Creating an account at the article directories. You will only have to do this once, the first time you submit at that particular directory.

– Logging in to your account at the article directory

– Following instructions at the article directory and submitting your article to them.

The process is very intuitive and not hard – once you submit a few articles, you will know the process well and will be able to follow it for as many articles as you’d like.

For a step-by-step process for writing and submitting your articles online to get more web site traffic and more clients get my Complete Step By Step Article Marketing Course at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zarticlesc

Biana Babinsky

Online networking can be extremely rewarding, if you know exactly the results you want to get and how to get them.

Here is a plan I recommend following for effective online networking:

– Make Your Networking Goals Clear To Yourself. Until you know exactly what results you need to get out of your networking efforts, no one will know what they are either. It is extremely important to know exactly what you need to get out of networking. Do you want to meet certain kinds of people? Promote your expertise? Gain more clients?

– Find Appropriate Networking Groups, Web Sites and Forums To Participate In. After working with many clients I have found out that the majority of people who have complained about not getting results from networking online have been networking in the wrong groups. When you network with people who are not in your target market, you will not accomplish your goals.

To find the right groups to network in, look back at the goals you have set for your networking. What kind of people do you need to network with to reach these goals? Once you know the answer to this question, find the networking groups where the majority of participants are these people.

– Network With Your Goals In Mind. Participate in discussions, share and help others and show your expertise at the same time. This will help your target market notice you and it will help you reach your networking goals faster.

For more information on how to use online networking to get clients, join my members-only web site, MarketingSalad.com to be coached by me on using online networking to get clients.

Biana Babinsky

Many people have asked me – what is the best marketing technique to use to sell more books? If I start blogging, will I sell more books next week? Will article marketing sell 100 more copies of my ebooks?

Truth is, no marketing technique – blogging, search engine optimization, article marketing or any other one – will increase your sales immediately.

What you need to find out is how a particular marketing technique will fit into your overall marketing plan.

Many marketing techniques are designed to bring people interested in what you do to your web site. However, those techniques don’t account for what happens AFTER you bring them to your web site.

If you do absolutely nothing in addition to blogging, people will come to your blog, read it, linger for a bit and leave. This is because there will not be any incentive for them to stick around.

People are bombarded with tons of marketing messages every day. Many of your blog visitors will forget about your blog and its address two minutes after they leave it.

Therefore, it is imperative to make sure that you can collect the e-mail addresses of people who visit your blog. If you can get their e-mail address, you will be able to e-mail them, market to them, and sell your books to them long after they have visited your blog.

You should do this with every marketing technique you use – figure out how to use it to add people to your list, so that you can continue to market to them long after they have visited your web site.

Next week I am teaching a free teleseminar, 5 Steps To Selling More Copies Of Your Book Or Ebook.
I will be talking about creating a marketing plan to promote your book online and get more sales. You can register for the teleseminar FREE at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/books.html

Biana Babinsky

So what is the best size for an article that you can use to market your business?
Is it really important to have a very lengthy article? Will your clients only hire you if your article is longer than someone’s PhD dissertation? Will your clients actually read an entire article if it is over 10 pages in length?

It is not extremely important to have a very lengthy article. Of course, a very short article, such as 2-3 paragraphs will not do. In fact, many article directories have minimums when it comes to article length, and they will not post your article if it is too short.

However, it is also not good to have a very long article. While you may have a lot of knowledge to share, a very long article is too much for your readers to read. If you started writing articles and you have too much material for one article, split the material, write two articles and get double the exposure :)

So what size should your article be? A page to a page to a page and a half is best. Some article directories do not accept articles that are under 500 words, so you want to be a bit above that.

For more information on using article marketing to promote your business online, get my Complete Step By Step Article Marketing Course

Biana Babinsky

I find that using article marketing has been the best way for me to get more publicity, get published on other people’s blogs and in newsletters, get more web site traffic, newsletter subscribers and clients.

Article marketing is very simple – in order to use it you need to write an article, use it on your web site and submit it to article directories. Each one of your articles can go a long way to help you promote your expertise and get online publicity for your business.

Here is how you can use just one article to get online publicity. You can (and should) repeat this process with many articles to multiply your publicity.

– Publish the article in your newsletter. By doing this you share your knowledge and expertise with your newsletter subscribers. Then, when they need help in your field of expertise, they are likely to hire you.

– Create a resource box that maximizes the number of leads you can get. To do that, make sure that your Resource Box invites people who are reading the article to subscribe to your newsletter.

– Use your article on your web site to get additional search engine traffic to your web site.

– Submit your article to directories and aggregators. By doing this you are offering your article for reprint to other people, who are going to reprint it on their web sites and their blogs, thus providing you with more online publicity. When your article appears on their blogs and web sites, your name and expertise are exposed to more members of your target market.

– Find other people who cater to your target market and accept guest articles in their newsletter, blog and on their web sites. Ask them to include your article. This way people who visit their web site and read their newsletter can learn about your business.

Discover how to use article marketing to get newsletter subscribers and clients in the Complete Step By Step Article Marketing Course

Biana Babinsky