Hi,

As you probably know, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced on December 1st that we have been in recession for about a year. I am sure that you, as a business owner, have seen the signs of recession before the National Bureau of Economic Research made the announcement.

I have been seeing the signs of recession as well, because I have been getting emails from dozens of business owners every single week asking me about marketing in recession. To help these business owners, I decided to write an article on how to get clients during a recession.

However, as I started to write this article, I saw that I wanted to say much more than I could fit into a one-page article.

So instead I wrote a report: “5 Keys For Getting Clients During A Recession” and it is available for you, FREE, at
https://www.EffectiveOnlineMarketing.com

Get the report and discover:

– – How to find a target market filled with people hungry for your products

– The best marketing techniques to use in recession

– Five keys to building your list easier and faster

– Two questions to ask yourself to make your social networking extremely profitable

and much, much more.

Download the report, FREE, at

https://www.EffectiveOnlineMarketing.com

Biana Babinsky

If you are using social networking, chances are, you have an account at Facebook. Facebook has thousands of applications you can use and you might be wondering which ones to use to promote your business. A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post on Why You Should Not Use Too Many Applications On Your Facebook Profile.

Since then a few business owners have asked me what I actually use and recommend to others to use on Facebook. Here are my recommendations:

– My Box Application. This is a great application that lets you display HTML code on your Facebook Profile. Use it to display your newsletter sign-up and promote your free gift and your newsletter on your Facebook page.

But you are not limited to just promoting your free gift and newsletter – you can use to promote anything you’d like. And, since the box will display HTML, you will be able to use colors, bigger fonts, etc on your page. Just don’t overdo it – a bit of color will bring attention to the information. Too much color and too many things will only confuse people.

– Notes. These are fabulous for sharing ideas and articles and promote your expertise. The best part about the notes is that they are viral. When you post a note information about it gets into your feed that your friends can see.

Your friends can comment on your note, and once they do the information about the comment will be in their feeds, and their feeds will now virally promote your note.

Another great use of notes is to use them to import your blog posts. That way each one of your blog posts will be posted as a note and will be listed in your feed, giving your posts lots of exposure. Your friends will also be able to comment on your posts right there on Facebook if you use Notes to import them.

– Events. Do you offer events, such as teleseminars, webinars and others? Then use Events to let your friends know about them. Just go to Events, create a new event and follow directions to post it and invite others to it.

You can also send updates to people who invited to your events to remind them where they need to register, how they can attend, etc. Don’t send too many reminders, but do remind them once or twice to make sure that everyone who wants to come remembers to register.

I love using this option on Facebook to promote my upcoming teleseminars. I have used it to promote both free and for-fee teleseminars and have always gotten good results.

Just like with everything in marketing, remember to work with your target market and make everything you do relevant to your target market.

Want more social networking tips? Join me for the Social Networking Teleseminar Series

Biana Babinsky

I received this question from a coach recently:

“I am a career coach and have been coaching one-on-one for the past few years. I decided to start creating group programs and a few months ago I offered a Coaching Group option to my newsletter subscribers. Basically, I envisioned it as a group of 5-10 people who would get together on the call twice a month and ask me questions about their careers. I promoted this a lot – through a networking group, my newsletter, web site, seminar sites – but could not get a single participant. What am I doing wrong? How can I get people to sign up for my coaching group?”

Biana’s Answer: What strikes me from your description is that you are just offering a Career Coaching Group. That is not enough for me to make a decision if I need your group and if it would work for me.

Is the group for people in their 20’s, just starting their first jobs? Is it for people in middle management trying to move up? Or is it for people trying to switch jobs? Or maybe it’s for people who are unemployed and need help landing a job asap?

As you can see, there isn’t much information about who exactly you are doing this group coaching for, so your potential customers are not sure if it’s for them. And if they are not sure, they will not sign up.

So how can you create a better group coaching offer? Don’t just call it a coaching group, name it something meaningful, name it something that will communicate value and give people an idea about who it’s for, so that they can self-select either in or out.

So do not call it a coaching group. Instead, create a very specific program for your target market that helps your target market solve one of the problems that they are experiencing. To get the most people register for your group you will need to offer them something they really want. For example, if your target market are college students looking for their first job, how about a program on landing a great job right out of college.

The next things you want to do is to create a compelling sales letter for your program. And then you need to create a good marketing plan to market the program.

You need to give your target market enough information about your program, so that they can say: “This sounds like a program that will help me solve the problem that I am experiencing. I really need the solution and this program offers it to me!”

Once you get your target market to think this way, you will get many members for your group!

I was asked on one of the calls I did recently about what steps I would recommend to take for a coach who wants to take their coaching from a part-time hobby to a full time profitable coaching business.

It takes time to re-adjust and what you need to re-adjust the most is your way of thinking about what you do. When you have a hobby, your priority may not be making money. When you run a business, your priority is to have a profitable business that brings in income.

You also need to re-adjust the way you think about marketing. Marketing is the cornerstone of your business and helps you bring in clients. If you are not marketing your business you will not be able to have a successful business, it’s that simple.

Here are some marketing tips to help you take your coaching from a hobby to a successful coaching business:

– The very first thing to do is to decide on a good target market for your business. Before you can bring in clients consistently, you need to decide on WHO these clients are. After all, if you do not know who your clients are, how are you going to bring them to your business?

Make a decision about who your target market is. Knowing your target market will help you make other decisions and will help you simplify your marketing. And we all want to simplify our marketing :)

– Decide on marketing techniques you’d like to use to market your coaching business. It is great if you want to use blogging, and social networking, and article marketing, and public speaking, and e-mail marketing to promote your business. However, don’t start using them all at once!

The best way to market your business is to pick one technique, master it, start using it on a regular basis and then move on to the next one.

And remember, you don’t have to use every marketing technique you have heard about. For example, I have clients who enjoy public speaking, who speak often and for whom public speaking is one of the most effective techniques for getting clients.

On the other hand, I have a client who says that she would never ever do public speaking, it’s just not for her. Her favorite marketing technique is blogging, she is good at it and she uses her blog to generate interest in her business.

Pick the techniques that you enjoy applying and you will be more successful with them.

– Have a marketing plan! Create a plan for bringing in more clients, marketing your business, etc. You are much more likely to take action if you create a plan and put it on paper.

Members of my online business mentoring program have access to thousands of dollars worth of resources on creating a marketing plan, picking a profitable target market and using online marketing techniques to promote their business. Get immediate access to all these resources by joining us at https://www.MarketingSalad.com

Biana Babinsky

I am sure that by now you have heard about social media and social media sites. Lots of people are networking on them, talking about them and using them to promote their businesses.

Because there is so much information about social media and social networking everywhere, I have been getting lots of questions about social networking from my clients, members of my mentoring program and web site visitors.

Everyone wants to know how to get results from social media web sites. And by saying results the majority of business owners mean “more clients”.

So how can you, a coach, consultant or other business professional, use social networking to get more clients for your business?

What you want to use to use social networking for is to meet and connect with your target market. Just like with any other marketing technique, you want to get your target market to know you, so that they can do business with you.

My recommendations for using social networking effectively are:

– As always, look for where your target market is and go ahead and meet it! There are tons of groups on many different networking sites, and you can start by participating in a few different groups that your target market frequents. Don’t join every single group that you see – there are thousands, if not millions of those, and you will never be able to use all of them.

Instead, find groups where your target market hangs out and networks. Increase your visibility by participating in the groups.

Everyone knows the leader, right? The best visibility comes when you are the leader of the group, so start your own group where your target can hang out and you can demonstrate your expertise!

– What’s the next step for your target market? What step should people in your target market take in order to get into your sphere of influence? They subscribe to your newsletter!

Make sure that you offer people plenty of opportunities to get on your list.

– Explore social networking sites and use the available resources. Different social networking web sites have different resources for you to use, and some are not so obvious. Some offer resources to post your upcoming events, post your articles and blog posts, etc. Use the available resources to get more visibility and exposure for your business.

I discussed many more ideas for using social networking to promote your business during the How To Create Social Networking Plan That Gets You Clients Teleseminar last month. You can get the audio recording of the How To Create Social Networking Plan That Gets You Clients Teleseminar at https://www.marketingsalad.com/social-networking.html

Biana Babinsky

Many times my clients ask me how defining a target market has helped my business grow. I have been working with my target market for a long time. My target market are service professionals – coaches, consultants, virtual assistants and other service professionals. I help them get more web site traffic and more clients online.

Defining a target market has been extremely helpful and profitable for my business. Once I knew exactly who my target market was, it became much easier for me to find my target market online, network with it and bring my target market to my web site.

Here is some advice for you if you are struggling with defining a target market or a niche for your business:

A target market are people who need, want and can afford your products and services. Remember, all three have to hold — they people you want to work with have to need, want and be able to afford what you offer.

I have seen many business owners making a mistake by using two out of three — they find people who need and want, but can’t afford what they have, or they market to people who don’t necessarily want what they offer, even though they need it.

Another consideration I recommend looking into are the people you like to work with. Look at your past clients and see which clients would you like more of.

These are usually the clients who you enjoyed working with, who got results from working with you and who had no problem paying your fee. These are usually the clients you want more of. So start
looking at them — are they a part of a specific group?

Where can you meet more people from this group? How can you market to people from this group? Once you answer these questions, you will have a target market, and some ideas about marketing to it!

Need more help defining your target market? Get my How To Find A Profitable Target Market For Your Business Audio Recording at https://www.marketingsalad.com/niche.html

Biana Babinsky

Just read an article, MySpace, Facebook: Big not always better about how Internet users like to use smaller, more targeted social networking web sites and groups.

Personally I like both types of groups. I am a member of small networking groups where membership is very targeted. For example, we have a very targeted networking group at MarketingSalad.com, my online business mentoring web site. In addition to learning about online marketing, members of MarketingSalad.com also network with each other and do business with each other on a regular basis. This group is very targeted – members are are coaches, consultants, virtual assistants and other online business owners who are serious about building profitable online businesses.

But I also like much larger networking web sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. The key to using those really large sites is to still find smaller groups of people you want to socialize with. For example, if you like skiing, search for skiing groups. If you want to become known to your target market, search for groups/places where your target market is and start the conversation going.

It does not matter how big or small a group is, as long as you can create a strategy to increase your visibility and reach your market effectively.

Biana Babinsky

Are you a life coach who wants to work with two completely different niches? You are just starting out in life coaching and you really want to help two completely different groups of people. Is it a good idea of a bad idea?

If you are just starting out with life coaching, and you are not sure how many niches you should have, you should start with just one niche. Having one niche will make marketing and getting clients much easier.

I always recommend to my clients to pick one niche in the beginning and concentrate on it for a while. It takes time to become known to your niche, get your marketing going and get known.

Your goal is to be seen as an expert by your niche, you want them to know you, like you and trust you. You want to build a list with many people in your niche as subscribers, you want to write articles that your niche will read, start a blog, etc. It will be impossible to do this effectively for two different target markets at once.

I recommend deciding on one niche for now, starting a web site and starting to promote yourself to your niche. You can revisit having a second niche after sometime, but start marketing your life coaching business to one niche for now.

Discover how to find a perfect target market for your coaching business with my How To Find A Profitable Target Market (Or Niche) For Your Business Audio Recording

Biana Babinsky

Have you ever heard the saying, “If you want to learn how to do something really well, teach it to others”? When you teach others, you usually gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for the material that you teach.
Teaching a teleseminar in something you know is also a great way to demonstrate your expertise to your potential clients and to convince them to become your one-on-one clients. Teaching teleseminars is an extremely versatile marketing technique. This is because it is very easy to use teaching to promote your expertise both online and offline…

Continue Reading Promote Your Expertise By Teaching Teleseminars

Biana Babinsky

Why are you trying to get people to come to your web site? Obviously you want them to come to your web site and take some kind of action – you want them to subscribe to your newsletter, buy your products or contact you about your services.

But what if people come to your web site, but they are not taking any action? No one is buying, they just leave your web site?

Click Here To Read My Article On How To Make Your Web Site Visitors BUY

Biana Babinsky