As the online business coach, I have evaluated hundreds and hundreds of service professionals’ web sites. Many clients have come to me asking why their web sites are not selling their services, and usually the reason was that their web sites were not effective at selling professional services.

When you are selling a service that costs hundreds or thousands of dollars, but your web site looks like it was designed by your 14 year old nephew, there is a huge disconnect. Your web site visitors will perceive the disconnect and go on to your competitor’s web site.

When your potential customers find your web site online, your web site is all they have to form an opinion about you and your business. Make sure that your web site projects a professional image that you want your customers to see.

My top five tips for having a professional web site are:

– Professional Web Design. This cannot be overemphasized. You have at most just a few seconds to make a positive impression on potential customers.

If they like your web site, they will stick around and learn more about your products or services. Otherwise, they will simply move on to the next site.

– Your Own Domain Name. Your own business domain makes your business web site address memorable and brandable.

– Professional Web Hosting. Free hosting usually comes with advertising plastered all over your web site, which is exactly what you do NOT want on your professional web site.

– Offer A Free Gift In Exchange For Newsletter Subscription. When you offer an expensive service on your web site, many people will not buy from you the first time they see your web site. Research shows that people need to hear about you seven times(!) on average before making a decision about buying from you.
Therefore, you need to keep in touch with your web site visitors long after they have visited your web site in order to convince them to buy your services.

The best way to get their email addresses is by asking them to subscribe to your newsletter in exchange for a gift on a topic that is of interest to them.

– Create Compelling Web Copy. Does your web site copy sell? If your web site copy does not sell effectively, your potential clients are going to leave your web site without buying and without subscribing to your newsletter.

Learn how to write effective web copy – this still will help you over and over again.

For more information on creating an effective web site get the FREE Report “Top Strategies To Get Clients Online” at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/free_report.html

Biana Babinsky

Biana Babinsky

Do you show value of your products and services when you are selling them online?

You need to ALWAYS show value of what you are selling – whether it is a $7 report or a $5,000 one-on-one coaching package. Whether you only sell products, or you charge per hour, per minute, per project, per pound lost, etc, you need to show the VALUE of what you are offering. No one is going to give you even a dollar if they don’t think that what you offer has value for them.

And this is very true when you are doing business online. You are not “there” when your potential customers are visiting your web site, so the only way they can find out about the value that you offer them is by reading your web copy. If you web copy is not communicating the value that you offer, your potential customers will go elsewhere.

I did an experiment a while ago, where I had a low cost product (under $10) for which I created very short copy. The copy described the product, but not the product’s benefits. The product sold just a few copies.

Another product on the same topic was more expensive, but it had more web copy written for it, discussing the value and benefits in addition to describing the product.

I sent a lot of traffic to both products. The second product sold many more copies.

Consumers need to know what value they are going to receive when they buy your products or services. It is not the price alone that the consumers are after. You have to explain the value of the product well enough, so that your consumers understand the value of what you are getting, no matter how you are charging.

Learn how to show the value that you provide to your clients during the Make Thousands Of Dollars With Online Copywriting Teleseminar Series. You can register for it at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zcopy

Biana Babinsky

Lately, I have been hearing from many coaches, consultants and other service professionals about online networking. Many have admitted to having networked online for some time, but then giving up on this activity because they weren’t seeing results.

Do you want to get clients and newsletter subscribers from your online networking efforts?

Click Here To Read The Rest Of “Are You Wasting Time Or Networking?” Article

Biana Babinsky

Do you want to be a REAL online networker? Do you want to know how to use online networking to get clients?

Here is an article I wrote about that: Don’t Be An Almost Networker

Biana Babinsky

Every day I see coaches offering free coaching sessions and I just want to tell them to STOP! This is because offering free services is not a good way to get clients. Your time is valuable and you should only offer your coaching services to people when you are getting paid for them.

“But Biana” – I have heard many of my clients say when I told them not to offer free coaching sessions – “if we don’t offer a free coaching session, how do we find out I and the potential client are a good fit?”

This is a great question! It is important to make sure that there is a good fit for the two of you to work together. I recommend that instead of offering free coaching you offer a free “Getting To Know You Consultation” to people who are interested in your coaching services. Keep the session short, about 30 minutes and pre-qualify your clients before talking to them. Your time is valuable, so doing the pre-qualification work will help you see who is serious about working with you.

If you are not doing it yet, ask your potential clients to fill out a pre-consult questionnaire for me to get to know them better. Doing this also shows a commitment and interest from their side.

But what helped me even more to NOT offer any free services was creating products – E-books, Home Study Guides, Members-Only Web Site and Teleseminars.

When I get e-mails from prospective clients asking about my services, many times I can tell that the one-on-one service may not be appropriate for them. However, an e-book or some other product might be very useful.

When I am able to offer my products to people who can’t afford my services, or are on the fence about them, I am able to generate revenue from the situations that I would not be able to get anything out of if I only had my services to offer.

If you are a coach who offers ONLY services, I strongly recommend to look into creating multiple streams of income by creating and selling products in addition to services.
My Complete Step By Step Information Products Guide shows you a step-by-step process for creating e-books, teleseminars, members-only web sites, special reports and other products. You can get it at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zinfo

Biana Babinsky

I have heard from many life, career and business coaches who are doing everything alone. They make all of their business decisions along, wear all the hats in their business and have no one to turn to get feedback for their business.

As a result, many of them get discouraged from running their business and stop running their business altogether. It does not have to be that way. If you are a life, business, career or any other type of coach, who is doing everything him/herself, I recommend to find people they can talk about running your business. You need to exchange ideas and get feedback from your peers – doing this helps you get fresh ideas for running your business.

To find the best way to communicate with others, decide on what it is that you need first.

– If you need specific help in marketing your business and getting more clients, you need a business coach. A coach will help you market your business better, create a marketing plan, get more clients and much more.

Need a business coach? Click here to join my online business coaching program to get advice directly from me.

– If you are overwhelmed with details (administrative, marketing, etc) of running your business, it may be a good time to hire a virtual assistant. A virtual assistant can do the tasks that need to be done, but are not at the core of running your business. Great tasks to outsouce include admin, web site updates, some marketing tasks, etc.
Need a virtual assistant? contact me and I will be happy to recommend one for you.

– If you are a business owner, but none of your friends and colleagues are, seek out a networking group for business owners. There is a ton of them both online and offline, and you will be able to participate in the groups, network with other business owners and see how others run their businesses.

Join my Online Networking Group For Solopreneurs to network with solopreneurs just like you.

– If you want to get feedback on your business and marketing efforts and get input from others, create or seek out a mastermind group.

It is great to have a masterminding group at your fingertips to share ideas, get feedback on your new project and much more. I run a web site for business owners at
https://www.MarketingSalad.com where members mastermind and get feedback from each other.

Biana Babinsky

The most successful type of marketing has three components:

– Knowing who you are marketing to. Don’t market to everyone – pick a good and well-defined target market and market specifically to it.

Many professionals think they should market to everyone, but picking a good target market and marketing to it will help you greatly. It will make your marketing easier and much more targeted, and will result in more clients.

– Once you have picked a target market, you should research it as much as you can. Truth is, the most successful marketing happens is when you find a group of people, get to know them and market a product to them that they really want.

– The last component is reaching as many people in your target market as you can. When you have a product that your target market needs, the best way to get more sales is by reaching more people in your target market.

Use techniques such as newsletter publishing, search engine optimization, article marketing and others to reach more people in your target market.

Want to learn how to market your coaching business successfully? Use this FREE Tutorial to learn how to market your coaching business: FREE Tutorial: How To Market Your Coaching Business

My summer culinary adventures continue! This week is all about red bell peppers. Red bell peppers are a very versatile ingredient – fresh ones can be eaten raw, in a salad or made into a dip. Grilled ones go really well with grilled meat or with other grilled vegetables.

However, my favorite way of preparing red peppers is roasting them. When you roast red peppers, the flavor really intensifies. Roasted peppers are very versatile. You can make a roasted pepper dip to make them stand out, or you can add some roasted peppers to other dips, such as hummus.

This week we used red peppers in a salad, roasted them to use them in a red pepper hummus and used raw red peppers to dip into the hummus. Do you cook with red peppers?

And just like I usually have a weekly cooking theme, I also have a coaching theme. This week’s it seems to be coaches (and other solopreneurs) who try to educate their clients about their industry instead of educating their clients of the benefits of hiring them.

As an online business coach, I have reviewed hundreds of solopreneurs’ web sites and have visited hundreds more. What I have seen on over 70% of the web sites that solopreneurs were over-educating and under-marketing.

These web sites have educated me about a lot of things – the solopreneur’s industry, education, philosophy and ideas. Unfortunately, the web sites didn’t tell me anything about what I really wanted to know – how the solopreneur will be able to help me, the potential customer.

If your web site is over-educating and under-marketing, potential customers are going to leave without contacting you about your products and services. Discover how to keep potential customers on your web site and how to turn them into actual customers during the “How To Create A Marketing Message That Will Get You Clients” Teleseminar.

During the teleseminar I will show you how to create an effective marketing message that your customers will respond to by hiring you!

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

https://www.marketingsalad.com/marketing-message.html

Biana Babinsky

I have been posting advice on this blog about marketing for coaches. Check it out:
writing for coaches, are you selling coaching? and more.

However, what should you do if you are not a coach yet? What if you haven’t gone to a coaching school yet and are not actively looking for clients? When should you start marketing your coaching business?

You should start now! Yes, that’s right. Even before you pick your coaching school and before attending. You should start marketing now!

Why? First of all, it will take time to learn about marketing. If you have never marketed anything before and you have not done any marketing or networking, it will take to learn how do it.

And even once you have learned about marketing, it will take time to apply it and get clients from it. Marketing is not a one time event; rather it is a process that you need to apply to your business on a regular (every day) basis.

A coaching practice is a business, so knowing how to market it, and how to network to get clients for it will help you a lot.

Here is how to get started:

– Define what your coaching business does (will do) and how you are going to help your clients.

– Define your target market – who are going to help? How are you going to help them?

– Create an effective marketing message for your business. This should involve who you help, how you help them, etc. I will be teaching a teleseminar in a few weeks on how to do this. You can learn more about it at https://www.marketingsalad.com/marketing-message.html

– Create an effective web site for your business. Make sure it reflects your marketing message.

– Start learning about how to start an e-mail list of prospects. The more prospects you have on your list, the more of them you can reach, the easier it will be for you to find coaching clients and buyers for your product.

You should get my Complete Step By Step Online Marketing Course to learn more about online marketing techniques to use to promote your coaching practice online.

Biana Babinsky

Many coaches I know sell coaching or free sample coaching sessions.
The problem with doing this is that people rarely buy coaching or sample sessions. What they do buy is a solution to a problem or a cure for a pain.

I have seen many of my clients try to sell coaching and free coaching sessions – they tried to sell coaching by explaining what coaching means, what a coach is, how the industry works, etc. However, once they did their research, found out what their clients’ problems were, and started selling solutions to the problems, their client count went way up

If you are selling coaching, stop. You need to sharpen your marketing message. Spend some time on defining and researching your target market. Then, instead of selling coaching and sample sessions start talking to clients about the problems they have and the solutions they need.

Need help creating an effective marketing message for your business? In two weeks I will be teaching Create An Effective Marketing Message Teleseminar that will help you create a message that will bring clients to your business. You can register for it at

https://www.marketingsalad.com/marketing-message.html
Biana Babinsky