Many years ago I was working on a web site project for a client. It was almost done, but there was an important part that I needed to completely finish the web site. The client needed a programming script for the web site. I wrote her a script that did everything but one thing that she needed.

It took me a long time to troubleshoot the script, but I still could not get that one thing to work. I really wanted to be done with the web site, so that I could move to the next project, but before I could be done, I needed the script to work. After spending another week on that script, I finally asked another web developer about the issue I was having. In about an hour I had a working script!

I was very excited, as the project was done! I billed the client, we checked and released the web site and I moved on to the next project.

As you can see, taking the next step is great and liberating. If you are stuck trying to figure something out and you can’t move on, here is what I recommend. Take some time and decide what this next step should be. Then, decide if you can take the step on your own, find an expert to ask questions about taking the step, or hire someone to help you with it.

For example, take a look at the next step that you should take in marketing your business. You may want to start a blog, but aren’t sure which software to use. Or, you may want to do article marketing, but aren’t sure how to get started. In this case the best way to take the next step is to find an expert who can answer your questions and recommend the best way to do that.

For the past few days I have been helping members of MarketingSalad.com, my online business mentoring program taking the next step to accomplish their goals. I am dedicating this week and next week to this task, so if you need help in finding the next step to take, come join us at https://www.MarketingSalad.com!

Biana Babinsky

About Biana Babinsky: Biana is the online business coach, expert and author who teaches coaches, consultants and other online business owners how to get more web site traffic and clients online. Join her Online Business Mentoring Program at https://www.MarketingSalad.com to learn how to market your business better online!

Is your business in balance? Or are you working on 25 projects and 15 marketing initiatives at once, all while thinking: “I should really be using this brand new social networking site that I just heard about!” ?

If that sounds like you, it is time to re-think how you do business and see if you can prioritize your actions, while still accomplishing everything.

Here are some of the things I do in order to achieve more balance in my business:

– Automate everything that I can. Lots of things can be automated online – scheduling of blog posts, automatic product fulfillment, ezine software, etc.

Take action: Take advantage of technology to automatically get people subscribing to your list, downloading your products, registering for your classes, etc.

– Outsource tasks that I don’t enjoy doing and can’t automate.

Take action: Take a look at everything you are doing and see which ones can be outsourced.

– Long term scheduling. I always know what’s coming up for my business for the next 6+ months. That way I can plan the tasks I need to do, marketing I need to do, etc.

When you know what’s coming up long term, you can schedule backwards. For example, if one of your goals is to have an ebook written by the end of October, 2008, you know that there are tasks that need to get done every month/week/day in order for this to happen.

Take action: Create your marketing plan!

– Multiple streams of income. Creating products, such as seminars, ebooks and my mentoring program has really improved my work/life balance.

I can have as many or as few one-on-one clients as I want. (I usually have 3-7 clients at any given time), and I don’t put my marketing efforts into getting one-on-one clients.

Instead, my marketing is concentrated on getting leads for my business.

Take action: Create multiple streams of income for your business!

Biana Babinsky

About Biana Babinsky: Biana teaches coaches, consultants, virtual assistants and other business owners how to get more clients, create multiple streams of income and run a successful online business. Join her mentoring program at https://www.MarketingSalad.com to discover how to create a successful online business.

Many coaches have asked if they should use article marketing to promote their business online. Here are just a few reasons to use article marketing to promote yourself:

– Article Marketing Helps You Build Your List. I am sure you know that building your list and conversing with your potential clients is extremely important. I have tried dozens of list building techniques, but I keep using article marketing, because it is effective and it helped me add tons of people to my list.

– Article Marketing Helps You Promote Your Expertise. One thing that many successful experts do is writing. They write articles, books, ebooks and other products. When your potential customers read your articles, they are automatically seeing you as an expert.

– Article Marketing Helps You Tap Into Brand New Markets. When your articles are reprinted on other blogs and web sites, people who have never heard of you before will read them and get exposed to your knowledge and your expertise.

Every time your article is reprinted, you are able to tap into a brand new circle of potential clients that you would have never reached otherwise.

– Article Marketing Helps You Start A Conversation With Your Potential Customers. People buy from people they know, like and trust. How do they find out that they know, like and trust you? By having a conversation with you! Your article is the first step in that conversation. Here is how it might go:

Step 1: Your Potential Customer Reads Your Article
Step 2: Your Potential Customer Follows The Link From The Article To Your Web Site
Step 3: Your Potential Customer Subscribes To Your Newsletter
Step 4: Your Potential Customer Reads Your Newsletter, Gets To Know You Over Time
Step 5: After Learning About You, Your Potential Customer Buys A Product, Registers For Your Class, Or Becomes A Service Client

More and more online business owners are realizing how powerful article marketing can be. Every time I read articles in article directories, I see more articles from coaches, consultants, virtual assistants and other professionals posted there.

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

And, more importantly, is it worth telling? This is what an article on CNN is asking, Everybody has a story — but is it worth telling?.

While the article is specifically about memoirs, I think it applies to other genres as well. As someone who works with authors on self-help and other how-to non-fiction titles, I always recommend to my clients to do research to see if there will be demand for their book/e-book before they actually write it.

That way if you decide to go ahead with your idea, you will see how realistic your projected numbers are, and how much demand there is in the market for your idea.

Biana Babinsky

One of the most important concepts in online marketing is a landing page. A landing page is a page where your visitor lands to do something. It could be a page where your web site visitor lands following a link from your PPC ad. It could be a page where your web site visitor lands to purchase your ebook. In short, it is a page, where your web site visitor comes to take action.

The best rule to remember about a landing page is one action – one page. What is an action? An action is the action you want your web site visitor to take on the landing page. The action can be subscribing to your newsletter, buying an e-book or registesting for a telseminar.

The most successful landing pages don’t try to be all things to all people. Rather, they concentrate on getting a user to take one action and one action only. When someone lands on a landing page like that, they only have two options – take action or leave.

So, what about your landing pages? If your landing pages are not producing results, it is time to take action!

– Review your landing page. Are you only asking your web site visitors to take one action per page? If you are asking them to take more than one action, make a change to ask them take just one action.

When I helped a client change her landing page for a teleseminar to only have one available action to take, she was able to double her sign-ups!

– Review your web copy. The sales copy on your landing page is very important as well. Does it convince your web site visitor to take action? If not, you need to improve your sales copy to make it convince your visitor to take action.

– Review your marketing. How do you promote your landing page? Do your promotions help you qualify your visitors, so that the ones who do come to your landing page are already targeted customers?

Biana Babinsky

Do you need more clients for your business? Getting more clients is a goal of many business owners, but not all of them are able to bring more clients to their businesses. This is happening because many business owners are not using the right marketing techniques for getting clients.

Many business owners market randomly, instead of concentrating on effective marketing strategies that have been proven to be able to bring in clients over and over again. I recommend that you use these three marketing strategies in your marketing plan no matter which marketing techniques you use and no matter what kind of marketing you do. Doing this will result in more clients for your business…

Continue Reading 3 Keys For Getting More Clients

This is the conclusion I came to after analyzing how thousands of coaches, consultants and other online business owners market their business online. In fact, the majority of business owners are wasting their time by marketing online.

Why is that? Many coaches, consultants and other business owners have spent hundreds (sometimes thousands!) of hours on driving traffic to their web sites. However, even though they brought traffic to their web site, they did not turn this traffic into customers. All the time that they spent on driving traffic to their web site was a complete waste of time!

So what can you do about this? How do you stop wasting time and get started with using online to actually get results for your business?

In order to do that, you need to create a strategy for how you are going to use your web site traffic. You need to have a strategy for driving traffic to your web site AND you need to have a strategy for using your web site for turning this traffic into clients. If you have millions of people coming to your web site every day, but your web site isn’t doing anything with them, you are not going to make a single penny from all this traffic.

Once you have a comprehensive strategy for dealing with your traffic AND you have a web site that implements this strategy, you are going to be able to turn your web site traffic into prospects and clients.

Stop wasting your time marketing online! Discover how to create and implement an effective strategy for using your web site to turn your web site traffic into clients during my upcoming teleseminar, How To Use Your Web Site To Get Clients at https://www.marketingsalad.com/websites.html

Biana Babinsky

Recently I have been exploring Facebook, the online social networking site, in more depth. I have been a member for a while, but I haven’t used my account that much. By the way, if you are a member, you can search for me and send me an invitation to connect.

I have been using Instant Messaging a very long time. I have been using it for connecting and networking and I have also been using it extensively with my clients.

Now Facebook is putting the two together – you can now use a new instant messaging feature directly on Facebook to chat with your friends.

Check out more on this at Facebook: Facebook Chat: Now We’re Talking and on CNN at Facebook unveils instant message feature

Biana Babinsky

Many coaches, consultants and other service business owners spend a lot of time and effort on writing their articles. They create a nice introduction, include interesting content, and tie everything in the article together with a great conclusion. Once they have created the content, they think that their great article is done and start submitting it to article directories…

Continue Reading How To Get Results With Your Articles