Wednesday, March 17, 2010 Webinar: How to Do Surveys to Attract, Sell, & Profit

One of the challenges with coach and consultant websites and blogs is capturing the attention, engagement and email addresses of visitors. Offering a survey or a quiz is a great way to do so, but it’s not easy to write one that is effective.

A good survey can do several things for you:

1. Gather information about your visitors
2. Find out more about what they need and want
3. Get their opinions, ideas, feedback
4. Get social proof & testimonials
5. Gauge how much they know, where the gaps are
6. Hold their attention long enough for them to remember you
7. Make them think (i.e. get them involved and engaged with you)

Here’s another crucial piece of information you’ll need to be aware of: new FTC rulings making many of us afraid that we can’t get the proof we need to bring new clients in and keep the clients we have.

If you’re not sure what the FTC rulings mean for you and your marketing, and want to learn more about surveys and quizzes, don’t miss the Webinar I’m leading with Jeanne Hurlbert, Ph.D., MySurveyExpert.com.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

3 p.m. ET

Register here (will be recorded):

How to Do Surveys to Attract, Sell, & Profit

You will receive a free report when you register:  “How to Avoid the Top 10 Survey Mistakes That Cost Marketers Millions, and Double Your Profits in 90 Days or Less.”

We had some people who  missed the webinar on JournalEngine, and many people had questions. We’ve decided to host a teleseminar this coming Tuesday March 2 at 4 p.m. ET. If you’re curious about adding new profit streams to your coaching business, don’t miss this. Attend (for free) a teleseminar with Marc Manieri and find out about JournalEngine. Tuesday, March 2, 2010, 4 p.m. ET. Registration page here: JournalEngine Teleseminar (will be recorded).

Why You Should Attend: Read this post: Multiple Pathways to Online Profits

Are you adding video clips to your blog and website? Here’s what you need to know. Right now, video has a great chance of getting you first page listings when a prospect does a search on the Internet.

Let me repeat: Video helps your search engine rankings.

It’s true. I won’t go into the techy details, but at least for now, the field is wide open. A short video clip, even if it’s not spectacular, has a great chance of coming up in search results.

Check out this page: iFlashVideo (there’s no cost to join list to find out more).

The eye is attracted to images, and really attracted to moving images. Which means you need to capture your business and your personality on video. And it’s easier than you might think, no expensive equipment necessary.

But the window of opportunity won’t stay open for long. Those coaches and consultants who put a professional-quality video onto their sites will have a clear advantage in getting found by the people they can help.

“They”… I mean “YOU!” But what’s a busy professional to do?

I suggest you sign up to find out more about a special video membership service with the folks at iFlashVideo.com.

Right now, would be a good time to sign up for a video membership service called iFlashVideo.com, before it closes on Monday, February 15, 2010.

There’s no fee to get on the list, and no obligation to join. But you do have to get on the list to get the information that explains what’s involved.

They aren’t being secretive about the costs: $149 to join, and $49/month for a new video clip. If you decide to join, that’s fine. But you won’t get the chance unless you’re on their list when the doors open sometime on Monday, February 15, 2010. They have a limited number of memberships that will be available.

Sign up using my affiliate link, please. They are running some kind of crazy leads contest and I could win a TV or a computer, or maybe an Amazon gift card. You know how I love books!

It won’t cost you anything to find out more about this, and then you can easily take yourself off the list if you’re not interested. I’ve used iFlashVideo and know they are honest and won’t use your email for anything other than this membership launch next week.

They did the video showing on my home page here, and now I’ll be changing it out each month thanks to their service. All I have to do is supply a script and they do the rest. This saves me a ton of time.

Don’t worry about all the many new online marketing tools that can overwhelm you. Just do the big important things for your online presence. Video is not only hot, it’s smart. Next to blogging, it’s the smartest thing you can do to get found, get known, and get clients with the Internet.

I know many successful consultants who don’t have much time to take care of their online marketing presence. I understand. Even if you’re publishing short blog posts, it takes time to read up, write, and hit the ‘publish now’ button.

Surfing to find information that’s relevant in your niche can lead to getting drowned in a tsunami.

Websites and blogs: You can’t live with ‘em, or without ‘em. No matter how well you’re doing in terms of keeping your pipeline of clients full, you’ve got to look good on the Web. By looking good, I mean, you’ve got to have a full body of content that reflects your intelligence and your professional credibility.

To make things more complicated, along comes Social Media, places like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. What do you need to know about using these sites, and what can you afford to ignore?

Then there’s video, YouTube, and other places to publish content on the Web (article directories, ebooks, podcasts…). Ay, caramba…

To help you sort through the essentials of using the Web to get clients, I’ve created an online learning program called Content Marketing for Online Profits. You can gain access by registering here. I suggest you read it, because it will cut short the learning curve and give you the essentials of what your online content marketing strategy should be, especially if you’re a coach or other service consultant working to provide services to organizations or individuals.

Here’s my video clip I put together in about 30 minutes using a Logitech Web cam and uploading it to YouTube. Okay, it’s a very amateur clip, but it gets the job done. I wanted to do a better job of polishing it up, but you know how that goes, ran out of time, etc…

You may have heard that Content Marketing is the “way to go” when it comes to marketing your professional services on the Web. But what does that really mean?

And, once you publish a website or a blog with plenty of content pages, or an e-newsletter, how does that content work to get you and your business found on the Web, get leads, and convert readers to clients?

If you’re a busy executive coach, someone providing  leadership training and development, you’ll need to learn a few things about online marketing, just to keep in the game. And the Internet “game” changes so quickly, how do you know what to do and what to ignore, with all the new social media sites and online tools?

I hope to  cut short the Web marketing learning curve with this online ebook, Content Marketing for Online Profits. All you need to do to get access to this important information is to register here. It’s completely free.

Included in the final chapter is a Content Marketing Survey about content marketing and blogging, that I know you’ll find helpful, since you’ll be given a personalized assessment of your own content marketing needs.

Go ahead and register to access this online ebook, then tell me what you think. I’d love to get your feedback.

Did you know that with a few good tips, you could be getting good blog marketing results in under 20 minutes a day? It’s true.

Joan Stewart, aka The Publicity Hound, is sharing her tips and interviewing me, The Blog Squad, about Time-Saving Tips for Smart Blogging

Be smart. Turn your blog into the best darn marketing tool on the planet.

When: January 20, 2010 at 4 p.m. ET

What: Smart Blogging teleseminar

How: Sign up here: http://snipurl.com/smartblogging

Where: On the phone, audio recording available

Who: Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad, and Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound

Small fee involved, big handouts, recording, big value in saved time, money and energy!

Blogs are the hottest thing going these days when it comes to marketing on the Internet. A blog is a way of delivering your messages and articles to clients. A blog is a type of website, more personal, easy to create and far less expensive than traditional web sites.

Just when you thought you were mastering the tasks of websites updating, and creating an email newsletter, along comes blogging, and you have to ask yourself:

•    Do I really need a blog?
•    Isn’t an email ezine or newsletter doing the same thing?
•    Should I do both?
•    Are these two marketing tools going to eat up all my time, energy and money?
•    What’s the best way to spend my resources to get clients and results from my marketing efforts?

Here are ten reasons why you should pay attention to the blogging revolution and do both and ezine and a blog.

1.    Because a blog is web based, it is published instantaneously every time you post. This allows you to be spontaneous with issues that affect your readers/clients.

2.    Because blog posts are spontaneous, they tend to be more informal, friendly, and conversational. Blog posts show your personality. Your readers/clients need to know who you are before they will invest in your services. Providing both an ezine and a blog allows your readers to get to know you better.

3.    You can set up a subscription form on your blog and your subscribers will get a notice in their inboxes each time you post something new. This is a great way around the spam filter problem which blocks so many ezines and legitimate messages.

4.    Blogs link to other blogs and people, which help you create a viral marketing system, increasing your exposure to search engines. Search engines love blogs because they are text based and keyword rich.

5.    You have instant access to all your published articles on your blog. A blog automatically creates archives of previous posts. You see them in a side-bar for easy access. You put them into categories for easy finding. One clever person we know spent a day posting all her ezine articles to her blog, so that it would appear she has been blogging for a much longer time. Also, readers of her blog may not have had the opportunity to read all of her other ezine articles.

6.    You can use your blog to become a trusted expert in your field by filtering content on the web for your subscribers. Readers don’t have time to surf and to collect information, but you can do it for them, thereby establishing yourself as a good resource.

7.    You can set up links for ads, products, and for your affiliate programs in the blog side columns so you don’t have to include them in the body of your article. In an ezine, you have to be careful about promotional stuff in the article because it annoys people and causes them to unsubscribe. A blog is a non-intrusive way to do this, and an ezine can link to the blog where more information can be found.

8.    Readers can comment on your blog postings, which creates rapport and with readers. You can ask questions, stimulate responses by being controversial, and survey readers. It is a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of what readers want.

9.    You don’t have to mess with a web site, or pay a web designer to update your web site every time you have a new article or teleclass, or program or product. Blogs are user-friendly, and with a few instructions or tutorials, you can learn to use it yourself. It is less expensive than setting up your ezine in HTML.

10.     Bottom line is this: using a blog and an ezine will help attract more visitors to your website, who become subscribers and who may eventually become clients.

Think of the World Wide Web as a big fishing pond. The more fishing lines in the pond, the more fish you are going to catch.

You have a web site, it is static like an online brochure.

You have an ezine, which you grow through subscription links everywhere.

And now, you should have a blog, where you can attract more readers to get to know you, where they can interact with you, and maybe take your bait!

Happy fishing!