In every marketing message you write, whether it’s a web page, direct mailer, e-mail, e-book or report title or brochure, the headline is the most important element. The headline has to convince people to take the time to read further. It needs to state a benefit you offer and it needs to create enough curiosity that makes someone want to read more. Just changing your headline can literally double the response you get. I’ve seen it happen many times.

Then there’s the copywriting or content. Do you touch people at an emotional level with your message? No matter what type of product or service you offer, you need to prove that you really understand their needs, pain, challenge or wants. Then you have to go about proving that you can give them the solution they’re seeking. People aren’t much interested in the process you go through to get results. They just want to feel confident you’ll get the results they want.

Now more than ever, when people are bombarded with information and marketing messages, the impact of your message needs to stand out from the crowd if you hope it will be noticed.

We use an 11-step process, a really simple system, to write headlines and web content that compel people to take action. That’s just one of the systems you’ll learn if you join us in July for Traffic Class-How to Turn Your Website into a Virtual Sales Tool.

This 4-part tele-course is only offered a few times a year and you don’t even have to worry if you miss a class because you’ll get the audio (along with session notes and worksheets).

You can drive all the traffic you can to your website-and I’ll show you how to do it-but if visitors don’t take action once they’re there, you’ve wasted all that effort. First get your website ready for visitors and then create a steady stream of traffic.

In one month you can learn what you need to know to make your website a virtual profit center for your small business. There are a few spots left so I hope you’ll register now to get the EARLY REGISTRATION PRICE!

For those of you in the US-have a wonderful July 4^th weekend!

Janis

So many of you tell me that you don’t know how to get more traffic to your website or that no one is buying or signing up for your mailing list. No wonder you’re fed up. Most small business websites are ineffective–little more than online brochures.I’ve found that it’s usually for one of these reasons:

• You don’t have the time
• You don’t have the knowledge
• You don’t realize how many sales you’re missing
• You’re a little technophobic and afraid of the learning curve
• You don’t know where to start and it seems overwhelming and confusing.

There are 4 KEYS to online success:

1) Solid Keyword Research

2) A Sticky Website that compels people to take action

3) Basic Search Engine Optimization

4) A Proven, Repeatable Online Marketing System

I’ve helped many clients double their business by improving their website and online marketing strategy. And you can learn to do much of this yourself, or you can learn what needs to be done and then outsource it very affordably.

If you are still struggling to get clients and you’re not getting traffic to your website then join me in Traffic Class.

http://smallbusiness-bigresults.com/trafficclass.htm

You’ll find a great video there as well that you must watch.

The 4-part tele-course,

Turn Your Website into a Virtual Sales Tool starts on Tuesday, July 7^th.

I want to teach you a simple 9 Step Process that will make your website a new profit center for your business.

Register now to get the early registration price, and remember even if you can’t make all of the classes, you will have access to the audios, notes and worksheets so you have all the information you need to INCREASE SALES THROUGH YOUR WEBSITE!

Janis

A number of recent posts were lost along with all of my categories and tags!  Ouch. So I apologize if you’re looking for something you can’t find. We will be recreating these over the next weeks and adding new posts as well as getting a design overhaul.

Ah, technology! It’s great when it works correctly and absolutely frustrating when it doesn’t.

Janis

Some small business owners hesitate to get on the video bandwagon because they feel uncomfortable in front of the camera, they fear the technology involved or they don’t want their business videos broadcast on You Tube. Not to worry.

You don’t have to be the on-camera person. You can let someone else who is comfortable talk about your business. Or you can have someone stand behind the camera and interview you. I took this approach once when I was doing a TV segment with someone who was camera shy. Once I got them talking about their passion, they lit up simply answering my questions.

You can also use photos and power point slides, add a royalty free music track and voila, you have a great video. If you want to outsource this there are plenty of people who can do it for you. My friend Online Video Branding Expert Lou Bortone performs this service for lots of businesses. You can also find people locally or by finding a freelancer at elance.com. It’s easier and less expensive though to simply buy a Flip camera for around $150 and try your hand at this at home or in the office.

Once you’ve got a simple 2-minute video, post it on your home page on your product pages and you’ve actually created an opportunity for your website visitor to meet you, hear what you have to say and feel a connection with you. In your video you can:

• ask people to opt-in to your mailing list
• ask people to purchase or download something
• educate them about your product or service
• answer frequently asked questions
• create curiosity about your product
• talk to them about the results you are able to get with clients
• do a “benefits” video where you tell them all of the wonderful benefits they’d
  have if they opt-in or buy

That’s just a few of the ways that, in 2 to 3 minutes, you can connect with a potential client in a way you never could through simple written content. Think about this–it is much more interesting and entertaining to watch a video than to read a web page.The other option is for you to create a video that is either entertaining or educational (how to) and to post it on the popular video sites. Then start telling people about it and ask them to bookmark it when they watch it so its popularity spreads like a virus. Embed the same video on your website, link to it on your blog or in your e-mails. Create some interest and it will drive targeted traffic to your web pages.

A great way to make creating these viral videos into an easy repeatable system is to write articles for submission to article directories and then record those same articles as a video. Post the article with the video to your blog as well. This way you can leverage your work.

It’s time to learn what you need to know to make video a powerful marketing tool for your small business.

Look at what Online Video Expert Lou Bortone and I have put together for you! We’ll teach you how to create videos that look great and sell. Register early to get the early registration discount.

http://VideoStarPower.com

In spite of the economy, my wonderful small business clients are not only optimistic but many are busier than ever. How is this possible?One of the most important things we talk about in my Group Coaching Strategy Sessions is mindset. Those people who constantly repeat how bad the economy is like a mantra over and over to themselves and others are actually brainwashing themselves into a state of fear, anxiety and paralysis. I’ve heard this called a bunker mentality. On the other hand people who turn off the news and spend time developing new strategies, plans and systems for their business and then implementing them with confidence seem to be doing just fine.

Another aspect of mindset has to do with your intentions vs. your core beliefs. If you have a big dream or intention, but deep down you don’t really believe it’s possible there is a disconnect. Energetically you’re being pulled like a tug of war in two opposite directions and that is never going to move you forward. It’s really hard to make progress because your core beliefs are going to sabotage your intention. Your core beliefs are telling you it just can’t be done. I’ve seen this happen over and over with clients and I’ve certainly experienced it myself as well. The secret is to recognize it and do something to change it.

When you truly have a core belief that you will reach your goal and you are passionate about it, you’re already creating the energy impetus that will make it so much easier for you to get there. When there is a lack of alignment between belief and intention that’s when you find yourself confused, overwhelmed, procrastinating or stuck. When your core beliefs are in alignment you get this feeling of inner power and an inner motivation to do whatever it takes to get help from the people and resources that can get you to your goal as quickly as possible. This means letting go of feelings of lack that tell you that you don’t have enough time or money to do what needs to be done to get more ideal clients now. It also means letting go of the fear of learning something new.

• Do you need a new website?
• Do you need to create a new product?
• Do you need to master marketing?
• Do you need to add technology, like using an autoresponder and videos?
• Do you need to use Social Media?
• Do you need a mentor?
• Do you need to focus your time on client generating activities?
• Do you need systems so you can get more done in less time?

If the answer is yes and you haven’t done it, ask yourself what’s holding you back? Figure out what core belief is telling you that you’re not as great as you really are or that you can’t invest in yourself.If you commit internally to playing a bigger game amazing things start to happen. Because the first thing you’ll do no matter what the sacrifice, is to find the help you need to fast-track your success. You’ll start to feel a flow in your business and its amazing how quickly new clients will begin to find you. Plus you’ll be more committed to doing what it takes to find them.

I’m thrilled right now to see my small and solo business clients becoming more profitable than ever. They are finding well-paying clients, lucrative joint ventures, new opportunities. There are so many opportunities out there right now its mind boggling. Just change the way you think. Tune into your core beliefs and align them with your dreams.

Check these NY Times stats:

• Americans are now watching over three hours per month of online video - 191 minutes per person on average (up from 169 in February).
• YouTube dominates online video with 5.5 billion videos and 89 million Americans.

It took me a while to get going with video, just because I knew there would be a learning curve and I was trying to find the time. I know you can relate to that!!

Once I started though, I was blown away by how powerful it was in increasing traffic. One simple video on my home page has doubled the number of people that opt-in to my list! Other colleagues had told me they had gotten similar results with a simple 2 minute video. It seemed hard to believe until I followed their advice and got the same results.

Video allows you to reach people in a way like never before. It allows you to look them in the eye and speak to them without having ever met them. Why do you think TV and movies are so mesmerizing?

With video you can:

– drive tons of targeted traffic to your website
– get your message out to many more people
– use it on your website like a virtual sales presentation
– use it on your website to double your opt-in rate
– use it to create popular video courses and tutorials
– use it to build a rapport with website visitors you’ve never met

And best of all, basically, it costs nothing! Little cost-Big results!

Now you might feel camera shy or not know where to start. A lot of my clients have told me that.  They don’t know if they’d look good on camera. They don’t know what to wear. They feel they wouldn’t look natural or comfortable. They’re afraid that it’s too technically challenging. But all of these fears can be easily overcome.

So I asked my online colleague, video expert Lou Bortone to help me put togethera 2-part tele-course that would have you looking like a star and popping out eye-catching, sales-converting videos in no time.

http://VideoStarPower.com

Lou and I discovered we had a lot in common. We had both worked professionally in television before becoming entrepreneurs. We realized we had tons of tips and tricks that would help our clients look like pros on camera. Plus Lou has honed the skill of Video Marketing. It’s got it down to a system where in minutes he can splash his videos all over the Internet and quickly see hundreds of new visitors to his site. Who wouldn’t want to learn that system?!

This is where you can go to learn all about this content-packed 2-part tele-course that’s happening at the beginning of May. Since creating videos is very low cost with a very big return, a simple investment in this course could be all you need to start doubling your opt-in list and increasing your sales.

Video Star Power

Learn How to Look Like a Seasoned Pro on Web Video
AND Learn the Video Traffic Explosion System!

We’d love it if you’d leave a comment with your most pressing video questions.

 Janis

So I began reaching out to a small group of women who, like me, have successful online marketing and coaching businesses and whose reputations I respected. I explained what my goals were for the group and why I thought it would be advantageous for each to join. To my surprise, most said yes immediately. Each of these women are solo-preneurs with outsourced teams, but like me, they were looking for the same type of support I was proposing. One of our main goals was to help each other dramatically increase our online success.

Since then we’ve met monthly by teleconference and we communicate regularly via a private Yahoo group. Not only have we become friends, but valued business advisors and collaborators. We share our best resources, best practices, best marketing ideas, best systems and best connections. We’ve done numerous joint ventures with each other and all of our businesses have grown substantially. Occasionally we get a chance to meet in person at a business conference and it’s always like spending time with an old friend. And yes, we have fun!

I like these women. They are smart, open, collaborative, focused and successful. They don’t make excuses; they are confident. I’ve learned so much from them and I hope I’ve given as much in return. We make money together and we give each other support. When we’re perplexed or have a business problem, we have a place to go to get honest feedback and direction.

Mastermind groups can help you grow your business on so many levels. But like everything else in business, you need to be clear about your goals and strategy before you either form or join one. Here are a few tips that will help guide you.

• Get clear about what you hope to get out of a Mastermind Group. Make a list of your goals so you can be clear with prospective members.
• Decide how your group will meet. Possibilities include:

- a private Yahoo group which allows each member to e-mail all the others,  
- a private Facebook group which allows you to upload your photo and have a forum,
- a tele-conference group,
- a group that meets in person

• Decide how often the group will meet.
• Decide the maximum number of members you want to have in the group. Keep in mind that once it becomes too large it looses the feeling of intimacy and familiarity.
• Decide if there are attendance requirements. Will it matter if some people are fairly active and others aren’t?
• Decide what benefits members will get by devoting time to participate in the group.
• Decide if there are any group rules.
• Do periodic surveys once your group is up and running to determine if the meeting times are the best for everyone, if members want to add or revise goals, if members have specific topics they’d like to discuss during meetings, plus include any other questions where members opinions would be helpful in improving the group.

People tend to stay active in a Mastermind group if they are getting something of value out of it. That’s why it’s important to make sure that both you as the group leader, and the members are really benefitting from your interaction.

As small or solo business owners, we don’t have a board of advisors with whom we can brainstorm ideas. A great Mastermind can serve that purpose. You can also have sub groups within the larger group that focus on helping each other in some way or in doing joint ventures. This is what has occurred in our group.

Overall a great Mastermind group can improve you focus, give you fresh ideas and perspective, help you feel supported in numerous ways and can really improve your bottom line.

I just returned from attending Willie Crawford’s Birthday Bash Conference in Orlando. Willie is one of the most highly respected and successful Internet Entrepreneurs in the world. I consider him an online friend and was thrilled that he agreed to be a featured speaker at the Virtual Business Conference that I organized with Wendy Weiss last fall. Willie is a warm and generous person who has lived an extraordinary life.

At the event I finally met some friends that I had known online for years-people like marketing and book publishing expert Kathleen Gage, Internet marketing entrepreneur Mark Hendricks, and CNN videographer and Internet marketer Kevin Rockwell and several of my current online subscribers.  I also made some wonderful new friends, all of whom are successful Entrepreneurs, like E-bay expert Kevin “Mr. Ebay” Johnson, Social medial expert Dr. Ron Capp, communications and public speaking expert Felicia Slattery, Entrepreneurial marketing expert David Preston, Internet marketing and Wordpress expert Ron Davies, millionaire Internet superstar Stephen Pierce and successful motivational speaker  Sam “everyday is Saturday” Cowley. And that’s just a few of the wonderful people I connected with which will undoubtedly result in upcoming joint ventures and shared profits.

 Me with Felicia Slattery and Susan Preston at in Orlando Florida.

I took pages of notes, some pictures and video and came away with many great ideas as well, since the speakers were very generous in sharing their knowledge, insight and success secrets. I had an opportunity to brainstorm with other successful Entrepreneurs and came away super charged and highly motivated to create new programs and products that will help my clients and online community experience faster business growth. I also made new friends and discussed opportunities for potential joint ventures, which hopefully will take shape over the next months.

 Internet millionaires Mark Hendricks and Willie Crawford. Mark is “roasting’ Willie at his birthday party. Nobody had a negative word to say about Willie.

The same kind of connections can be attributed to attendance at good local networking events, where I’ve become well connected in my local business community. There is no substitute for carving out some time to attend live events on a regular basis. Look at them as an investment, not an expense. 

 With Internet Entrepreneur and fellow NC resident,
Bob “the teacher” Jenkins

Since working in a home-based business can be isolating, live events give each of us a unique opportunity to bounce ideas off respected peers and learn new strategies from them. Plus it’s just fun to be with people that talk the same language you do! I’ll let you know which events I’m planning to attend and maybe we’ll get to shake hands and share a meal or exchange of ideas.

So how do you get yours to grab someone’s attention?  So many times I land on a website that a client has requested I review to find language that sounds alarmingly like a business letter written in the 1980’s.  “Welcome to our website. We serve the _____ industry. We offer excellent customer service and we have great prices”.

Does that message sound compelling to you? First of all it’s focused on the company, not the customer. It’s states the same benefits that every company says they offer.  I’m sure you’ve heard that you need to tune into radio station WIIFM (what’s in it for me) when crafting a marketing message. The ME in WIIFM is the customer!

Just think about how much effort you put into marketing your company online, either through pay per click ads, social networking, search engine optimization or other methods, only to have a stream of visitors arrive on your web page and bounce right off. Ouch! Or think of the investment you may have made in a direct mail piece or brochure. If you don’t have a truly mesmerizing message the trash can is where your marketing will end up. This is a painful blow to your sales conversion and bottom line that I know you can’t afford, especially now. And what about the people that really needed what you have to offer and went somewhere else because your marketing message didn’t capture their attention?

Here are a few simple suggestions to help your message stand out:

• 1) Write headlines that either stress a in-demand benefit of your product, create insatiable curiosity, or touch an emotional hot button
• 2) Create content that identifies your prospect’s main challenge, want or need, then tells a story about how the benefits they hope to get. I guess this my “imagine if” list.
• 3) Always, always have one direct, simple call-to-action. Whether you’re doing a print ad, a direct mail piece or a web sales page, you need to tell readers precisely what they need to do now.
• 4) Make sure you understand why your customers buy from you before you write your marketing message. What is their biggest problem? What are they hungry and ready to pay for? What do they want life to be like after they purchase and use your product or service?

Those are just a few suggestions to get you started creating the kind of marketing messages that practically force people to stop and read them!

Want a no-cost opportunity to learn more about creating the kind of marketing messages that are like money in the bank?  Wait to you see who I’ve nabbed for a tele-class on March 19^th.

Take a Look

Janis

When you’re one of a huge number of competitors and you’re competing for a small number of jobs, you better stand out from the crowd. You’ve probably noticed how hard it is to grow sales if you’re trying to penetrate a market that is saturated with competitors and has just a limited number of prospective clients. Think of being a real estate agent or home builder right now.

When I was getting started in show biz, there were a group of us that had a sort of mentor - tough love mother figure. She was a big casting agent in New York and was the daughter of one of the Marx Brothers (remember their great comedic films?). She was highly respected but also feared. However, since a small group of us studied acting with her she took us under her sometimes suffocating wing. She minced no words. “You are no more than a bar of soap on an overcrowded supermarket shelf”, she said. “You’re simply a product and if you don’t stand out, no one cares”. When you think you’re such a great artist, that brings your ego down to size and makes you plainly see what you’re up against. But little did I know I was getting a lesson in basic marketing principles.

At that time, who would have guessed how crowded the marketplace would become or how much more information would be vying for our attention through types of media that didn’t exist then. Now more than ever it’s essential to stand out on the “supermarket shelf”.

That’s why I’ve arranged for an expert crafter of marketing messages to show you how to make your marketing messages, as he puts it, “rise above the marketing clutter, grab the attention of your prospects like a vice grip and practically force them to take immediate action”.

Learn More

I guess it’s my old show biz genes, but I get a kick out of watching American Idol. Why does one singer make it through while another with an equally great voice get sent home? Because the one who makes it through has better branding and a clear marketing message. They have the look, the right song, the right interpretation and arrangement. They are authentic and able to stand out from the crowd.

Take a look at the image you’re projecting and the words and images that make up your marketing message. Are you standing out from the crowd?