When heart-based service professionals see how many marketing techniques are there for them to use – Twitter, Facebook, social marketing, blogging, article marketing and many more – they get confused about how each technique is supposed to bring in more clients and help them build their lists.

Actually, social marketing, blogging, Twitter, articles, Facebook are just techniques that help you reach people in your target market, promote your expertise and build your list.

I recommend focusing on one technique at a time, discovering how to use it effectively to invite people to your list, mastering it and then moving on to the next one.

For example, if the technique that you are starting to use for building your list is blogging, here are some of the things you can do to use it effectively:

– Blog on a regular basis

– Add a very visible subscription box to your blog

– Using the RSS feed to your blog to share your blog posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Once you are happy how a technique helps you build your list, move on to the next technique, and optimize it to do the same.

For more information on how to build your list in a non-salesy way, get my FREE Report, Four Keys For Building Your List at https://www.effectivelistbuilding.com/4keys/

I am sure you have heard that in order to create a successful service business, you must have a niche. If you don’t have a niche, you won’t be able to promote your business effectively and you won’t be able to get clients for your business.

When I just started my web design business many years ago, I didn’t have a niche. As a result, both business owners needed ecommerce web sites AND people who wanted a web site for their dog where my potential clients. I couldn’t position myself in either market, though, because I was marketing to both (and to 50 more different markets) at the same time.

Once I decided to work with ecommerce businesses (no more dog web sites for me!), I became known in my field, and started getting referrals and clients on a regular basis.

If you don’t have a niche, there are a ton of things you won’t be able to do effectively:

1. You Can’t Create Effective Marketing Materials. Effective marketing materials are all about your perfect clients and what problems you help them solve. Good marketing materials help your potential clients see how they will be transformed after working with you. In order to achieve this, your marketing materials have to be written with your niche in mind.

If you don’t have a niche, your marketing materials will be very general, and won’t appeal to your perfect clients.

2. You Can’t Use Social Networking Web Sites Effectively. I have had many heart-based service professionals tell me that they are not getting results from their social networking. And many times the problem is deeper – they cannot get results from social networking web sites, because they are not using them to connect with people in their niche. And they cannot connect with people in their niche, because they don’t know who their niche is.

If you don’t have a clearly defined niche, you won’t be able to use social networking web sites effectively.

3. You Can’t Get Clients. Here is another question that I often get from heart-based service professionals – I am willing to work with anyone, so why is it so hard to get clients?

Many service professionals think that if they want to work with everyone, then it would be easy to get clients. After all, if everyone – people on the street, everyone they meet on social networking web sites, every person who reads their blog – is their client, then it is going to be very easy to get a few more service clients.

But, the exact opposite is true. If you don’t have a niche and you are marketing to everyone, it is going to be very hard to get clients. Without a niche, you won’t be able to showcase your expertise and how you help people. When you define your niche, it will be much easier to show to people in your niche how they will benefit from working with you, and you will get many more clients as a result.

Learn how to find your perfect niche during next week’s call, How To Find Your Profitable Niche , that you can register for at https://www.marketingsalad.com/niche.html.

Are you wondering whether you need to create a whole long sales page to product your product or whether 1-2 paragraph write-up will do? The answer is you do need longer sales pages.

When I just started, many years ago, I was promoting my products with just a paragraph or two of text and that’s it. I did have some sales, but I have noticed a definite increase in sales once I created longer sales pages.

The reason they work better is because they contain more information about the product that you cannot include in just 1-2 paragraphs.

Here is what I recommend to my clients who are starting to create their sales pages:

Concentrate On Benefits Of The Product

I see so many heart-based service professionals spending a lot of space in their sales letters discussing the features of their products instead of benefits.

Write out benefits of your product before you are even starting to write your sales letter.

Here are a few examples of benefits:

– You will eat healthier, while saving money on food

– You will communicate better with your children

– You will get more clients while having fun marketing

Pay Attention To Headlines and Sub-Headlines

Very few people will read the whole sales letter, but they will pay attention to headlines and sub-headers because those stand out.

Spend some time on creating effective headlines that communicate the benefits of your product.

Use The Sales Letter To Answer The Potential Buyers’ Questions

As people are reading about your product, they have a ton of questions. For example:

– What is the refund policy?

– How do I know that this product is right for me?

– How is this going to help my situation?

The more questions you address, the easier it will be for your potential buyers to make a decision whether they want to buy the product or not.

More blog posts about sales pages:

– Three Tips For A Better Landing Page

– How To Write Landing Pages For Products

You know the riddle, “How do you eat an elephant?”. The answer to it is “One bite at a time.”

I was reminded of it as I was reading a discussion on my Facebook Page, What is the BEST way for a service professional to build their list?

Here is my response to it:

“I don’t think there is one best way for every service professional to build their list.

I recommend picking one that resonates with you the most and mastering it. Then, once you know how to use it for inviting people to your list, continue using it, while trying out other techniques.”

It won’t work if you start using ALL of the techniques at once. You will immediately get confused, and abandon the idea of building the list altogether. It is much better to start one bite at a time, the same way you would eat an elephant.

Here is what I mean. Let’s say you picked article marketing technique to get started with. Here is what you will need to do:

1. Find good topics for your articles by doing research and finding topics that your target market is interested in. Create a list of topics.

2. Pick one of the topics to write an article, keep the rest of them for future articles.

3. Create an outline of the article, doing this will make it much easier to write your articles.

4. Write the article, edit it.

5. Create an eye-catching headline, the better your headline, the more readers you will get for your article.

6. Create a Resource Box that invites your readers to subscribe to your newsletter.

7. Post your article to article directories.

Repeat steps 2-7 for the rest of the topics that you have research. Once you have written enough articles and mastered article marketing, you may move on to the next technique, such as blogging, free teleseminars, social networking, etc.

More blog posts to help you build your list:

– How To Invite People To Your List In A Non-Salesy Way

– How To Create An Irresistible Gift

– List Building Secret No One Is Telling You About

I have met service professionals who took a year or even longer(!) to launch their newsletter. First, they spent months agonizing over whether they need to start a newsletter in the first place. Then, they did research to make sure everything would be perfect. Then, they started thinking about which newsletter service provider to use. Then they did more research to make sure they find the absolute best provider. Then they started thinking about creating a page on their web site about the newsletter. Then they did some more research to build the perfect layout for their web page….

They were waiting to make sure that everything would be perfect before starting their newsletter. As a result, after months of trying to make everything perfect and agonizing over whether they make the perfect decisions or not, they still haven’t started their newsletter.

In the meantime, those service professionals who picked a good newsletter service provider, created a good gift and started giving it away in exchange for subscription to their newsletter have been inviting people to their lists and building their client base for months.

If you wait for everything to be perfect, you will never take action. Instead, make sure that you make good decisions on what you need and move on to taking action.

If you are starting your newsletter here is what you need to decide on:

– Your Gift To Your Newsletter Subscribers. Find a good topic for your gift and create it. A good topic is something that your potential clients really want to know – an answer to one of the questions that they have, a solution to a problem that is bothering them.

– Create A Page To Give Away The Gift To Your New Subscribers. This page is called a squeeze page, and its only goal is to convince the people you send to that page to register for your gift and join your list.

– Set up Your Autoresponder To Send Your Gift To Your New Subscribers. This is how you will deliver the gift to those who sign up.

Don’t try to make everything perfect before you get started. If three months later you find out that you want to make changes to your autoresponder or giveaway page, you will be able to do that. Right now your goal is to stop waiting for perfection and start building your list.

Get started now, so that six months down the road you actually have built a client base, instead of still waiting for everything to be perfect. Learn exactly what kind of gift to create, how to create a squeeze page (I give you one to model!) and much more in the Build Your List Home Study Guide at https://www.EffectiveListBuilding.com

On my Facebook Fan Page I recently answered a question that I have received from many heart-based service professionals. Here is the question:

“How can a heart based service professional invite people to their list in a non-salesy way?”

I shared a short answer on the Fan Page, but I wanted to share a longer one here on the blog. Let’s say you are a life coach, providing life coaching services to women in their 30s-50s. They are unhappy with their current careers, and they are looking for something better. You want to help them first, define what this “something better” is, and then find it.

You are looking to invite many of these women to join your list, so that you can share tips and ideas with them, and they can get to know you, like you and trust you. And as you are sharing your tips with them, you will also be letting them know about your life coaching products and services. If they feel that they need your help, they will be able to take the next step with you and check out your offerings.

So the question is: “How do you invite them to join your list?”, because until they join you, they cannot start learning from you and building a relationship with you.

The best way to do that is to not just invite them to join you, but to offer them a gift. Your gift should be a report, an e-book, an audio recording, or an e-course on a topic that your target market is really interested in. You want them to say: “I want this!” and register to get your free gift.

For example, a great free gift for women in their 30s-50s looking for a new career would be a report on “Five Steps To Uncovering Your New Career”. Since they are looking for what it out there for them, giving them a report that helps them uncover this new career will help you build a list of people in your target market in a non-salesy way.

Learn much more about building your list in a non-salesy way in the Build Your List Home Study Guide.