We recently sent an email to anyone who hasn’t opened ANY of my messages since January 1, 2012.  The message explained that it is important to me to only be sending messages to those who actually want to receive information from me.  I tell my own clients to unsubscribe to anything they don’t read on a regular basis.  Having a lot of emails clogging up the in-box is not a good business tactic.

Also, subscribers who rarely open or click email messages can drag down your emails’ reputation. Nowadays ISPs, such as Hotmail, Gmail, etc., expect marketers to audit their mailing lists on a regular basis.  Mailing to inactive subscribers can negatively impact your reputation should you unknowingly hit a spam trap or if your messages get reported as spam.

Futhermore, sending messages to unresponsive subscribers can negatively affect how your email is displayed within your subscribers’ inboxes. Most of the popular ISPs now use engagement metrics to decide whether to put your email higher up in the inbox, or into the recipient’s junk folder.  So your deliverability is at stake as well.

Then there is the last motivating factor to clean your list, which is cost. Why bother emailing inactive subscribers if they’re never going to see it or respond to it? Better to remove inactive subscribers and save the money.  aWeber charges me based on how many subscribers I have, so why pay for subscribers who aren’t engaged?

If you haven’t cleaned your list in awhile, or ever, take advantage of your email marketing provider’s analytics, and take a look at the engagement metrics of your subscribers.  Then get scrubbing to you can have a clean list of subscribers who are active members of your community.

What are your thoughts on deleting subscribers? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so leave me a comment below.

Here are four strategies you can immediately implement into your business to help you ramp up your revenue.

1.  Map out your strategic sales plan: Any business plan worth it’s salt should include a well thought our sales funnel.  Having a wide variety of techniques that attract clients is the first step.  Once you have the attention of prospective clients, you can implement drip marketing campaigns that automate your marketing process.  Be sure your marketing plan includes plenty of valuable content as well as profitable offers.

2. Create recapture programs: Many businesses can count on 80% of their revenue to come from the same 20% of their clients.  If you aren’t getting repeat sales and customers, it may be time to examine what you have to offer to past clients.  Is it possible to create a maintenance program, or services that would benefit clients who you have already worked with?  Have options to present to clients to encourage them to continue working with you.

3.  Be prepared to down sell: Many of my clients find that they’re missing the boat by not having services that can accomodate clients who have limited budgets.  If your client can’t afford to work with you privately, do you have a group program, a virtual program, membership resources or an apprentice coach to offer as an alternative way for them to get the results they want within the budget they have?

4. Leverage your efforts: Look for ways to leverage your resources to create additional streams of income.  Compile previous workshop content into a product that you can sell at live trainings, via your newsletter or autoresponder, or on your website.  Look for other ways to leverage your skills, your resources, your talents, and the most important resource you have… your time.  Many business owners forget that the whole point of working for yourself is to not have to work hard.  Implement strategies which will automate the process of attracting leads, provides value, builds relationships, and ultimately creates revenue on auto pilot.

Which of these strategies do you need to implement into your business? Feel free to leave me a comment, I”d love to hear what you have to say.

The truth is that spending time or money on marketing strategies before there is consistent pattern of cashflow is the #1 fatal mistake that many business owners make.  Get the clients, bring in some revenue, and then use that cash flow to hire experts who can build your website and help you with marketing tasks while you continue to make sales.

Here are three fool-proof ways to get clients this week:

1. Call old clients: Many company’s receive 80% of their revenue from 20% of their loyal customers.  Contact previous clients and offer them the opportunity to renew their program.  Design a special maintenance, jump start or renewal program and recapture your raving fans!

2. Generate Leads: Offer a complimentary strategy session to your email subscribers, website visitors, blog readers and social media connections. Or, offer strategy sessions as a bonus to paid programs, product purchases, workshop registrations, etc.  Fill your schedule with prospective clients who are interested in learning more about your services, and convert those leads into paying clients.

3. Make calls:  Pick up the phone and reach out to people on you list, previous leads, and anyone who you think might be a good fit for your program.  Approach each call from a place of service with the goal of relationship building and offering a helping hand.  If the conversation provides the opportunity to recommend a specific program or product that would be a good fit for the problems the person you are speaking to has, then go for it!  This is a great way to build connections, receive referral business, and sign up clients.

These three strategies are fool-proof ways most successful entrepreneurs use to build their business.  Which of these are you going to start using to sign up new clients this week? Leave me a comment, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Health Coach Meme: This is going viral

Here are five strategies to keep in mind when designing your next campaign:

1.  Create Value:  The first thing to keep in mind is what is the value you want to provide to your audience?  What are the solutions your prospective clients are searching for, and what types of tools, checklists, and reference guides can be provided to meet their needs?  The more value you can provide, the more likely it is that the content will be saved, printed, shared, etc.

2. Competition: Take a look at the marketing and promotions your competitors are creating.  Try to determine what is working well and where the may be potential gaps that your marketing can fill in.  It’s also beneficial to know what has already been done so your marketing doesn’t feel repetitive.

3. Branding: Every company should have a strong grasp on their branding, mission, and message so that it is clearly communicated.  The goal is to have a cohesive marketing strategy that supports your goals and business plan.  Having a well defined niche and ideal client in mind will help keep your marketing efforts connected.

4. Outside the box:  Where can your marketing set your company apart from what’s already been done?  Look for inspiration and set the intention to having an open mind where creative ideas will flow.  Let your creativity be expressed in a way that reflects your personality.  Express yourself with color, images, humor, interests, and/or passion.  As long as you remain true to your brand and communicate your message in a clear and concise manner, you should be able to create a theme that can be repeated.  Think about creative companies like FreeCreditReport.com commercials, Zappos, and Apple and what you can glean from their campaigns.

5. Timely Inspiration: Look for inspiration in current events, holidays, the seasons, etc.  For example, how can you tie your business into things like spring, the Kentucky Derby, gas prices, or the Summer Olympics?  We’re working on a couple of fun info-graphics that ties into of-the-moment news, and we will share these on social networks like Facebook and Pinterest and hope for a viral effect.

Creativity is something that everyone can tap into to promote their products and services.  How do you express your creativity in your marketing? Please leave me a comment below, I”d love to hear.

Here are some of the changes that will affect your business Facebook page when Timeline takes over:

1. Images:  There will be changes in the ways that images are displayed.  A single “cover photo” with a size of 850×315 will appear at the top of the Timeline.  This may be a huge advantage for businesses, as a well-designed banner or logo image can be permanently displayed to showcase products and services.  You can design a cover image that includes text to describe your products and services in a few phrases or sentences.  The Timeline cover image may function like a website header image, if you plan it right.  Also, other images are more prominently displayed, offering businesses excellent opportunities to show off products.
2. History:  The way that a user’s history is shared changes with Timeline.  Instead of being a simple chronological list of use, visitors to a Timeline can check out the most important happenings, and can see how a business has developed over time and evolved.  Use this history to your advantage and connect with visitors to your business Timeline.
3. Easier Access to Info:  Rather than having to click on a separate link to view “Info,” the Facebook Timeline will display the info about a business (or personal user) prominently toward the top of the Timeline.  Be sure that this information is accurate and correctly reflects your business, since the info will be front and center instead of tucked away.
4. Fewer Visitors?  Have you had less traffic to your Facebook profile since Timeline began?  Be sure to take full advantage of the many Open Graph apps that are available now through Facebook, like watching videos on Hulu, listening to music on Spotify, reading articles through Yahoo or other similar newsfeeds that post on Facebook.  Keep your business profile prominent on the news feeds of your fans and they will be more likely to pay your page a visit and see what’s going on.  Connect with your fans by reading articles and watching videos that they would be interested in.  Remember, Facebook is a social media site, so be social!  Start conversations about relevant topics pertaining to the news you read or videos you watch and connect it to your business.  This will connect you with your customers.

Timeline or no Timeline, connecting with customers is what using social media sites, like Facebook, is all about.  Even with the new format change, you can find ways to connect with your customers.  Don’t be scared by the adjustments, find ways to use them to your advantage and make your connections even stronger and more meaningful.  Use it to build your brand and increase your exposure!

Start With Your Business Model

Not all marketing techniques work with every business model. You’ll l hear all sorts of wild ideas and so called “proven” tactics, but that doesn’t mean they’re the ones that will work best for your business and goals.  Begin by looking at your own business model by evaluating these key factors and characteristics:

• A description of your ideal customers
• Where leads will come from, such as organic search, paid search, joint ventures, offline sources, affiliates, etc.
• What are your prospective clients’ buying triggers? In other words, where or when do they usually make a purchase decision? For example, it could be from a product review, a personal recommendation, through surfing content sites, through email newsletters, etc.

Popular Marketing Strategies of Competitors

Now, look again at your business model and the most popular marketing tactics used by your competitors. How do they convert prospect into customers? For example,

• Individual sales pages that lead to freebies that put prospects into an email series
• Regular free teleseminars that include a special offer at the end
• Straight SEO and traffic generation
• Multiple joint ventures and recruiting of affiliates

Which marketing strategies will you focus on?

If you try to do several marketing campaigns at once, you might not find success with any of them. You’ll need to focus on one to start with. Test one at a time, evaluate its success, and then add more strategies into your marketing plan.

Try selecting the easiest strategies first. You should always have at least one easy tactic you can use that doesn’t require a lot of time and stress. For example, you can quickly and easily create an autoresponder series that starts every time a person signs up for that list. It’s a passive form of marketing that requires almost no follow up once it’s in place. Then you can start planning out more campaigns.

Can you imagine how terrible it would be to have to redo your website from scratch?

Fortunately, there are steps you can take to reduce the possibility of this happening.  You can sleep easier at night when you have a backup of your website, posts, comments, store, etc..  That way, in case the worst happens, you can restore your WordPress blog in the event that it is hacked and/or deleted.

Implement these suggestions to prevent your site from being hacked:

• Be sure your password is made up of numbers and letters so it isn’t easy for others to guess.  If you use something simple, such as your name, a hacker may be able to figure it out pretty easily.    The same goes for your user name, don’t use the default “admin”.

• Don’t use free plugins, themes, templates, etc that you find online.  Often these “free tools” contain viruses and spyware.  Only purchase website software from reputable sources.

• Login to your website frequently and watch for new security upgrades, and implement the latest updates as soon as possible.  Using outdated versions of WordPress can leave chinks in your security armor that gives hackers easier access.

• Install security and anti-virus plugins that will make it more difficult to gain access to your site. Some plugins will notify you if there are attempts to guess your password as well.

These simple tips can protect your WordPress website from being hacked.  Even if a determined hacker gains access to your site, when you have everything backed up it will be a cinch to restore your site if you’ve taken the appropriate measures to have everything backed up.

You might be asking yourself: “Where are the leads? And where are the SALES?”  If this is true for you, you might be missing an important strategy for getting leads to subscribe and prospective clients to call, which is: THE CALL TO ACTION.

A call to action tells website visitors what you want them to do.  With any marketing materials, it’s crucial to get your prospective clients to act NOW rather than later.  Most website visitors only visit our websites once, and never return again.  Therefore it’s absolutely imperative to have an interactive website that gives potential clients direction and suggestions.

Here are simple several steps to get your phone ringing and your sales increasing.

1. Do your research so you understand what type of offers your target market is most likely to respond to.  Be sure that any offers you make are in alignment with your expertise and visitor interest.  Be sure that your title tag and meta description in the search engines is related to your home page content.

2. Write your content in a way that leads to a call to action. Position all calls to action clearly so that visitors will know precisely what to do and how to do it. Use phrases like “register now for the call” or “click here to schedule your session” at the exact location on the page where there is a button or a click through link which are obvious.

3. Have multiple calls to action on every page of your web site. You can put calls to action in the header of your website, in the sidebar, within the content, and on individual sales and opt-in pages.

One of the most common calls to action asks for information such as the email address in exchange for free downloads, call registration information, etc.  Be sure to link these types of web forms to a shopping cart or an autoresponder to build your mailing list.

Creating a simple, smooth and effective call to action is a strategy that every effective website must leverage. A straightforward and strong call to action can make all the difference between getting traffic, and getting clients.   Well thought out calls to action are  vital to the performance of your website.

This dilemma keeps many coaches from raising the investment for their services in the first place, or makes them fearful of making their fees high enough so that they , and worse yet, from earning the income they desire, and deserve. Understanding the psychology behind the sales-process is crucial to breakthrough the “it doesn’t work” mentality, or what I call, “stinkin’ thinkin’”.

When I help clients deconstruct where their marketing process needs more support, the answer of why clients say “no” to investing usually lies in one of three very important parts of the sales process:

First, understand that clients are interested in investing in solutions, which is a key distinction from “hiring a coach.”  In fact, most people don’t dream about “working a coach someday”, or have photos of famous coaches on their vision boards.  It’s harsh but true, people don’t roll out of bed and think, “today’s the day I’m finally going to find me a coach!”. They also don’t thumb through Vogue, O Magazine or Home Beautiful and see a coach on the O List or the “spring trends” checklist and run to their MacBook and credit card, right?

Here are three fool-proof ways to raise your coaching fees, keep them high, and get clients who are willing to pay them:

1. Be crystal clear about the results and benefits clients receive in working with you: Clients hire coaches to get the results that they are dying to have. They hire us to increase their incomes, save more money, attract more clients, look better, to feel better, to stop worrying about stuff, etc. So unless the client has a very clear understanding of how they will benefit by working with you, and precisely how they will get the solution to with whatever is keeping them up at night, they won’t pay any fee (no matter how small) to hire you.

Therefore, to get high-paying clients, your consultation/break~through session MUST be very clear about how working with you with help them to achieve their goals, desires, dreams, etc. You have to show them how your work will make a difference for them in a very personal way. Explain to your client in no uncertain terms what their end results will be after working together.

2. Become comfortable with your fees: Sometimes it takes a consultation (or five) to get comfortable with saying your new and upgraded fees out loud, and clients pick up on this anxiety and then pass on signing up. To get comfortable with your higher fees, practice saying your fees aloud, to your mirror, and to your family. (Pets are often willing listeners also). Or, make a list of the top 25 ways clients get amazing results from hiring you and refer to it often.

Remember that even IF half as many people decline to work with you at your higher fees, but you’re charging twice as much, that’s half the work for the same amount of income you were making before. So don’t worry that less people are saying yes, another bonus is that you will attract high quality clients who are a pleasure to work with at your higher prices.

3. Have a systemized marketing funnel: There has to be marketing plan for encouraging cold leads to become hot prospects who are ready, willing and able to hire you and pay you what you’re worth. For this to happen, there needs to be a relationship established with your prospective client. This is where the sales process comes into place. Most clients come into the funnel by trying something for free. They might download your freebie from your website, then read your newsletters, browse the articles on your website, and attend a teleseminar.  Then they may buy an entry level low-risk type of product.  They then will become more likely to advance through a series of products and/or programs which become progressively higher of an investment.

Once customers have become familiar with you and like what they have experienced at a smaller investment, then they will become more likely to invest with you at a higher level, such as group coaching program or a product.

Which of these three marketing strategies do you need to implement? Feel free to leave me a comment, I’d love to get your feedback.