Here is a question I got recently:

Biana, I have been following your advice and I am seeing great results. I am now using my article marketing and blogging to bring in web site visitors, turn them into newsletter subscribers and then into clients. Last month I got 74 new subscribers!!!

I was on your social networking call a few months ago where you talked about social networking and Twitter in particular. I am wondering how I should incorporate Twitter into my existing online marketing strategy. Should I use it to bring people to my web site? Should I use it to get more newsletter subscribers? What’s the best way to do that?

Biana’s answer: I think it is great that you are thinking about adding Twitter to your marketing lineup. Social networking has been a part of my online marketing strategy for a long time and social networking has been bringing great results year after year.

I also find it’s great that you are creating strategy for using Twitter and how it is going to fit into your online marketing plan before starting to use it. I see many business owners starting to use Twitter and other social networking web sites, use them for a while and only then try to understand how to fit them into their online marketing plan to generate leads and clients. By thinking about this before you jump in you are way ahead of many business owners.

I recommend using Twitter for listening to your target market, creating awareness for your brand and expertise, and building your list. You can also use Twitter for promoting your products, teleseminars and services. But if you use it first to accomplish the first three tasks, you will see much better results when you do start promoting your products, teleseminars and services. Here is how it works:

– Listen To Your Target Market. One of the biggest benefits that Twitter provides business owners with is the ability to connect with their target market and hear what the target market is talking about.

One of the biggest challenges that business owners face is not knowing what they target market needs. At Twitter you are able to listen to your target market, see what kind of issues your target market is experiencing and what kind of help your target market needs.

Now use this information to offer a product or a service that your target market needs and you will see great results!

– Create Awareness For Your Brand And Expertise. Twittering, sharing and connecting with others will help you create more awareness for your business. Many people learn about their new Twitter friends by following their profile link. So make sure you include your link and watch your web site traffic increase!

And, twits are listed in search engines, thus helping you increase awareness of your business even more!

– Build Your List. The bigger your list, the more successful your business is. Use Twitter to build your list by sharing information about your free gift and your newsletter with your followers. Don’t promote it all the time, but it’s perfectly fine to mention your offers from time to time.

Make Twitter part of your Online Marketing Strategy – you will see that with some thinking and planning, you can start seeing results from social networking! For more information on using Twitter to promote your business, join me for How To Use Twitter To Promote Your Business Teleseminar at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/ztr

More tips for using Twitter to market your business:

– What Is Twitter? Answers To Popular Questions About Twitter

– 7 Things To Do To Promote Your Business On Twitter

Biana Babinsky

It has been just twelve days since we launched the FREE 5 Keys For Getting Clients During Recession special report, and we have already had well over 2,500 downloads!

My goal is to get the report in the hands of at least 5,000 business owners this December, to help them change their marketing mindset and get clients during these economic times. That way they will be ready to get the ground running and start getting clients once January starts!

This is where I need your help. I would love it if you could share the information about the free report, “5 Keys For Getting Clients During Recession”, with other business owners. And I would like to give you a gift for doing that. Keep reading for more information.

Here is how you can share information about the report:

1. Recommend the report to a few of your contacts by letting them know that they can go to https://www.EffectiveOnlineMarketing.com to get the no charge report, “5 Keys For Getting Clients During Recession”

2. Click here to reprint one of my articles. You may reprint articles in your blog, in your newsletter or on your web site. Each article provides valuable content for your readers, so you will be sharing useful marketing information with them. The Author Box contains information about the report.

3. If you are on Twitter, please twitter about the report by letting people know they can download it at https://www.EffectiveOnlineMarketing.com

4. If you use social bookmarking tools, you can bookmark the blog post I wrote about the report,
https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/marketing/c/2008/12/04/609

If you take any one of the steps above (or you can do all of them!), I would love to give you my “How To Turn Your Visitors Into Customers” special report at no charge. This report sells for $17 on my web site, but it is yours at no charge for helping me spread the word.

Once you let people know about the 5 Keys For Getting Clients During Recession special report, fill out the contact form at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/contact/ and let us know that you have shared the information and we will send you the link to download your copy of the “How To Turn Your Visitors Into Customers” special report. No proof necessary; we are doing this on the honor system.

Thank you very much for helping me help 5,000 business owners get clients! I really appreciate it. And don’t forget to get your own copy at https://www.EffectiveOnlineMarketing.com

Biana Babinsky

This article is an excerpt from the “5 Keys For
Getting Clients During A Recession” Special Report, available for you, FREE, at https://www.EffectiveOnlineMarketing.com

I have taught hundreds of business owners how to market online and get clients. What I always find interesting is that some people who have hired me to work with them didn’t need to be taught marketing. They knew a lot about marketing, what kind of marketing techniques were available and how to apply them.

What they actually needed help with was changing their marketing mindset. Many business owners feel that marketing has an aura of sleaziness around it. They feel that marketing is somehow dirty and an honorable business owner should not be engaged in it. They don’t feel that they should market – they feel that their customers should just find them and come to them.

Unfortunately, customers can’t just find you on their own. They need to know that you are out there, that you are an expert at what you do, and that you can help them with their problems. You must market to communicate all of that to them.

The good news is, though, that marketing does not have to be sleazy or dirty. Marketing can be fun, honorable and ethical and still be effective. And the first thing that you need to do to market ethically and effectively is to change the way you approach marketing.

You need to create a good marketing mindset. This kind of mindset will not sabotage your marketing efforts, and it will help you get the best results from marketing. It will also help you identify marketing techniques that will make your marketing authentic, as well as effective. What’s better than that?

Here is how to create a marketing mindset that will help you get clients, fill up your teleseminars and multiply your profits honestly and ethically:

– Be honest with yourself. Understand that you must market to get clients and be successful. You will be able to pick how you market, but you must do something to bring in clients.

– Understand what marketing is. Marketing is a process designed to introduce your target customers to your business, to invite them to request more information and to get to know you.

– Realize that you are not pushing things on people that people don’t want. Rather, your potential clients need your help and your expertise enables you to provide that help.

Your potential clients have real problems and they need real help. When you market, you let them know that you can help them. What can be more valuable than that? You are not trying to sell them something they don’t want, but something they want and need!

– Find marketing techniques that you enjoy the most, and start using them! Of social networking, article marketing, search engine optimization, blogging, which ones do you like the most? You will get better results, make a difference for your clients and enjoy marketing in the process!

Make your mindset work for you – you will help more people, get more clients and will be happy about the way you market your business!

For more information on how to market your business in today’s economy, download my FREE report, “5 Keys For
Getting Clients During A Recession” Special Report, at https://www.EffectiveOnlineMarketing.com

Biana Babinsky

What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving? No matter what you are thankful for, don’t just be thankful around Thanksgiving. Make it a habit to say thank you every day of the year. Take the time and say thank you to your clients, vendors, colleagues, mastermind group members, and all of the people who have helped you make your business successful.

Here are four ideas to help you say “thank you!”:

– Offer A Referral Bonus. Everyone likes to be thanked for something they have done, but what they like even more is getting something in addition to the thanks. If you have people who send clients your way, why not say thank you with either a monetary bonus or a gift? People love receiving unexpected bonuses and will be more likely to refer more clients to you in the future.

You may want to set up a formal referral system to offer referral bonuses and get more clients referred to you. You can also set up a formal affiliate program or you can do this informally. If you offer products such as seminars, teleseminars, e-books, etc, an affiliate program can greatly increase your sales.

– Offer An Unexpected Testimonial In Social Media. Did you receive exceptional service from someone you are connected with on social networking web sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or others? Thank them for their help publicly instead of privately.

That way you will help the person who had provided great service for you to get more clients. This is the best way to thank them.

– Thank Your Clients By Underpromising And Overdelivering. You like your clients and you want to help them as much as you can, right? You can do that by underpromising and overdelivering on everything that you help them with.

– Just Say Thank You. This is a very simple, yet very powerful technique to thank someone in your business or life. Thank your clients, your coach, your assistant, everyone who in any way is responsible for your success.

Take a moment and thank someone today! You will be glad you did.

How are you thanking people in your business and life? Post a comment and let us know!

Biana Babinsky

When I got online in the 90s, the Internet became a hobby of mine. I discovered e-mail and the web, forums and social networking, and really enjoyed the Internet. As I was using the Internet, I saw huge possibilities for doing business online. I started looking into running an online business. After some time my hobby became a business.

I love my business – I help business owners get more clients and make more money online. My business model is creating multiple streams of income, by offering both products and services to my clients.

As my hobby became a business, I was in need of a new hobby. In early 2000’s cooking became my new hobby. It started with me wanting to replicate different foods that I had tried at restaurants. But as I started cooking, I started to really enjoy it. I also realized that being able to cook meant that I could create food that was both healthy and delicious. Cooking has been my hobby for some time, and in this time, I have given out a lot of cooking advice and taught many people how to cook, and, more importantly, how to enjoy cooking.

And after a while of enjoying cooking as a hobby, and becoming passionate about it, I am doing it again! I am turning my hobby, cooking, into a new income stream. I just launched a new blog, Tasty Galaxy, Easy Cooking For Busy Professionals, to help busy professionals cook healthy and delicious meals. I am looking forward to developing this blog in the next months, and turning my passion into an income stream, using my online marketing expertise. Just saw that the blog is already getting traffic from search engines, and this is after being launched just last week!

I will be documenting the steps I am taking to turn this blog into an income stream for members of my online business mentoring web site, MarketingSalad.com.

To get access to all the information on how I am turning the blog into an income stream, register to become a member now at www.MarketingSalad.com

And now that my passion for cooking has just become an income stream, I will be looking for a new hobby to take up :)

Biana Babinsky

Have you heard this expression before? “Do You Eat Your Own Dog Food?” usually means “do you use your own products?”. When it is used in tech circles, it usually refers to a company using the products that it has created.

When I adopted this phrase to use with my coaching clients, I usually use it to discuss if the client walks his or her own talk. For example, if a financial coach who teaches others not to have debt is in a lot of debt himself, he is not eating his own dog food. And if a relationship coach teaches others how to find a fulfilling relationship, but does not have a fulfilling relationship herself, she is not walking her talk either.

It is extremely important to walk your talk and to be authentic when you are in business for yourself. When you are not walking your talk your potential customers will realize that you are not being authentic with them and will not be able to trust you. And if a potential client does not trust you, how can they do business with you?

This is another reason I only teach online marketing techniques that I have tried myself and that I know work. If you want to be successful in business, you must be authentic and always do what you say.

Now you. Do you eat your own dog food? Share with us how you use your authenticity in your business.

Biana Babinsky

After last week’s post on Three Step Online Marketing System For Getting Clients, I got a few questions from coaches who tell me that they are using a similar system to promote their business already. They now want to leverage the system to increase the number of clients they have, and they are wondering which step they should be working on.

First, let me remind you what the Three Step Online Marketing System For Getting Clients is:

Step 1: Identify your target market and drive your target market to your web site.

Step 2: The web site visitors that you have acquired in Step 1 are now browsing your web site. Turn them into leads!.

Step 3: Turn your leads from Step 2 into clients.

So, which step do you work on if you would like to add more clients to your business? Well, there are a few different ways to look at it:

You turn your leads into clients in Step #3. Let’s say that typically you get 1 client for every 150 leads that you get. This means that for the next 900 leads you will enroll 6 clients. How can you increase the number of clients you enroll?

– If you keep the same rate of turning leads into clients, you will need to get more leads in order to get more clients. If you get 1,800 leads instead of 900, you will be able to enroll 12 clients instead of 6.

– Or, you can work on improving your closing techniques, so that you can enroll a client per 100 leads. That way, without increasing the number of your leads, you can get 9 clients out of your current 900 leads, instead of just 6.

– You can also improve the quality of the your leads. The more qualified your leads are, the fewer leads you will need to work with in order to enroll a client. If you have 900 more qualified leads, you may be able to enroll 9+ clients instead of the usual 6.

The bottom line is that there is always room for improvement in your system for getting clients for your business. If you do not have all the clients that you need yet, review your online marketing system to see which steps you can improve upon to enroll more clients.

To learn how to create an effective marketing system that helps you get all the clients that you need, join me for the How To Get More Clients Online Teleseminar Series that starts tomorrow. Register for it now at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zmarketing

Biana Babinsky

I have seen thousands of business owners do it. A business owner, let’s call her Carol, offers a great service, and she designs a whole system for her clients to get through her service and achieve amazing results. Carol sees the amazing results her clients are getting and, quite correctly, attributes the results to the system that she has created for them.

However, when it comes to her own business, Carol resists setting up a marketing system. Instead, she just tries using different marketing techniques, hoping that one of them will turn out to be the technique that will bring her all the clients that she would ever need.

She tries blogging, article marketing, social networking, search engine optimization, using each technique for a few days and then moving on to the next one. She starts her own list for which she now has 24 or so subscribers.

None of the techniques have really brought in customers, so three months later she goes back and starts from the very beginning – blogging, article marketing, social networking, search engine optimization, again for a few days each. Her list is now at 39 subscribers, but again, nothing is happening.

This is exactly what I have seen many business owners do. They rapidly switch between many marketing techniques hoping that one of them will provide all the clients that they need. None does, so they start over again, still hoping for clients….

The problem here is that they have no system in place for using online marketing techniques effectively. It is not enough to just apply the techniques; you must have a clear understanding of why you are bringing people into your sphere of influence, what happens with those people and how can you continue to communicate with these people to turn them into customers.

Here is a Three Step Online Marketing System For Getting Clients that you can use:

Step 1. Use online marketing techniques to identify your target market and drive your target market to your web site.

In this step you will apply online marketing techniques such as social networking, article marketing, business blogging, etc. But you need to apply them effectively, so that your target market will recognize that you can help them and visits your web site.

Step 2. Turn the web site visitors into leads. The web site visitors that you have acquired in Step 1 are now browsing your web site. Now either they will leave your web site and never come back or you must turn them into leads on the spot. You can accomplish this by offering them something of value in exchange for subscribing to your newsletter.

Step 3. Turn your leads into clients. Again, you must have a system in place for this – you must have an effective follow-up system that helps you turn your leads into clients.

Create an Online Marketing System for your business today. The System will make a difference between doing the same thing over and over again and not seeing results and actually starting to get clients from your online marketing efforts. I will be teaching how to create an Online Marketing System for your business during the How To Get More Clients Online Teleseminar Series. Register for the Teleseminar Series now at
https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zmarketing

Biana Babinsky

As registrations are rolling in for the How To Get Clients And Build Your List With Social Networking Teleseminar Series, I am having conversations with business owners about social networking.

One question that I have received a few times is:

How Can Coaches Use Social Networking To Promote A Coaching Business?

This is a great question, because I think social networking is one of the best media for coaches to promote their businesses. Sadly, I see many coaches under-use, mis-use or not use social networking at all.

Here are three steps to help you get coaching clients using social networking:

#1: Describe Your Coaching Business On Your Profile.

Don’t just say that you are a life coach, a business coach or a career coach. There are thousands (or even millions!) of other life coaches, career coaches and business coaches using social networking web sites. How is your potential client supposed to know which one to hire if everyone is a life coach?

Instead, use your profile to discuss the benefits that your clients will receive when they work with you or buy your products.

For example, many times I don’t even mention “coaching” or “consulting” when talking about what I do. Instead, I concentrate on clients’ benefits. I tell my potential clients that they will be able to Get More Clients Online when they work with me.

#2: Share Your Free Gift On Your Profile.

I am sure that you would like everyone you meet on social networking web sites to immediately become a life coaching client. Unfortunately, that will happen very rarely.

When your potential clients just encountered your profile on a social networking web site, they don’t have a relationship with you yet. Because of that they do not know that you are an expert at what you do, and they are not willing to invest into coaching with you (yet!).

They are, however, ready to get your free gift and subscribe to your newsletter. Make sure that information about your free gift is VERY visible on your profile. That way you will get more subscribers.

Don’t have a free gift for subscribers yet? Create a free gift now, because a free gift can triple the number of newsletter subscribers without increasing your web site traffic. Once you have your free gift in place, start offering it to people you meet on social networking web sites.

#3: Create Information Products (And Share Information About Them!).

Once your target customers opted in and downloaded your free gift, start sharing information with them and building relationships. As you are building relationships, make sure that you mention what you have to offer.

Many coaches only offer coaching services, and they mention this in every newsletter. However, very few people will be interested in your coaching services. From what I have seen with many of my clients, fewer than 1% of subscribers are interested in one-on-one coaching services. For some people it is the issue of pricing (one-on-one packages cost a lot of money), others are more interested in other ways to learn (e-books, audios, group coaching, etc).

Therefore, if you are only offering coaching services you are leaving a lot of money on the table. Many of your subscribers and people you meet through social networking will not work with you one-on-one, but are interested in buying your products.

Start creating information products to increase your revenues and get more clients through social networking.

Biana Babinsky

I like using Facebook for social networking (if you are a member of Facebook, add me as a friend. Just let me know that you read my blog.). It has been great at helping me connect with members of my target market, find affiliates and create joint ventures and other opportunities for my business.

I like learning more about people and visiting new and old friends’ pages to see what’s new in their businesses, on their blogs, etc. Unfortunately, sometimes I have to leave the pages without learning anything about the friend’s blog or business. This is because some people on Facebook have so many applications on their profile pages that it takes them forever to load.

I know that it is hard to resist to add an application that helps you send someone a hug. Or send someone flowers. Or offer someone a drink. Or add unicorns to your page. Or….

Remember, though, every time you add an application to your Facebook profile page, it becomes bigger. This means that it will take the page longer to load. People are impatient, so if your page isn’t loaded instantly, they will just go on to another page without looking at yours.

Also, since you are on Facebook to bring more clients to your business, think about what those hugs, drinks and unicorns applications say about your business.

Here are three tips to make your Facebook Page more effective:

– Make Your Profile Page Load Fast. If your page takes a long time to load your visitors will go elsewhere and no one will ever find out about you and your business.

Make sure that your Profile Page loads fast on both fast connection and on dial-up. Yes, some people still use dial-up, so you want your page to load for them, especially if they are in your target market.

– Add Business Applications To Your Page. Some of the Facebook applications help you display your blog posts, promote your business web site, promote your newsletter, etc. These are exactly the applications you want to use on your profile.

I myself use applications to display my Free Report on getting clients online, to display my blog posts, etc.

– Decide If You Really Need Non-Business Applications On Your Page. Since you use your Facebook page to market your business, do you really need non-business applications on it?

You may want to add one or two that you really like, but stop there. You are serious about building your business, so make sure that your Facebook profile reflects that as well.

Want to learn more about using social media to build your business? Get my Social Networking Home Study Guide at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/znetwork

Biana Babinsky