Chloe has a children’s book titled Milton’s Secret: An Adventure of Discovery through Then, When, and the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and Robert S. Friedman, which really simplifies the concept of living in the present moment, and how the practice of that will, for the boy in the story, eliminate fear and worry.
I wanted to explore that as it pertains to your business, with a slightly different slant. I wonder if you, like so many of my clients, and myself as well from time to time, are so hooked into the future that we’re missing the NOW and not fully enjoying the journey?
So how do we unhook from it to allow what we truly want to come to pass without always feeling like we’re striving for it? Here are 5 ideas:
1. Let go of the goals that take you away from the present.
Let me say first that you can have everything you want – and there’s no judgement here on what those things are.
That being said, do you want a mansion, to be the #1 speaker in your market, to be the one with the biggest email list in your market, to be a New York Times bestselling author, to make a million dollars? There’s nothing wrong with any of those lofty (and completely attainable) goals.
And, what happens is when we’re so focused on the sexy dream we tend to get ourselves so riled up about getting there that we miss all the amazing stuff happening NOW.
What I’ve noticed is that people get impatient, sad, frustrated, and even angry when they’re so focused on the future goal that the present seems uninteresting at best, despairing at worst. The antidote? See #2.
2. Polish the present
I want to encourage you to stop striving so hard and thrive in your present. What I mean is that if you make what you already have better, and polish what’s already good and working, you uplevel your life without expending that energy on something that doesn’t exist yet.
Yes, it’s about appreciating what’s already good and right in your world and in your business AND it’s about how you can make what’s already there fulfill you even more. It’s true that if you make the most of what you already have, you’ll get more and better of it with a lot less effort on your part.
3. Don’t plan so much
I’m all about having the big picture plan down to the day-to-day details, and yet I know that most of the time, the plan changes.
One of the reasons we – as businessowners – plan so much is because it gives us a sense of control and it helps to alleviate the fears and doubts we have about knowing what we’re doing.
So have the plan and be willing to be flexible with it. Let it be a guide but not the only way. If you get wrapped up in THE PLAN you’ll actually hold yourself and your business back from being able to adapt quickly when things change – and they always do.
Assess if you spend more time planning than doing – and if you do, stop right now. And if you tend to fly by the seat of your pants more often than not, you might want a lightly-built framework around you to give you some sense of stability.
4. Get out of the striver’s club
Stop trying to aquire a better future with others who are striving. It’s just too exhausting. I’m not saying to surround yourself with lazy folks, but to get out of the overdrive club if you want to relax into a currently compelling present instead of an exhausting still ‘out there somewhere’ future.
5. Get off the ‘if/when’ rollercoaster
I admit this is a pet peeve of mine. Not from people who are decisive, but from people who use it as an excuse to not be happy now. When you make ‘if/when’ statements, you’re living in the future. Dreaming and visioning is one thing; otherwise it’s a holding pattern for you but even worse, you’re not enjoying where you’re at right now!
I’d love to know your thoughts on how to unhook from the future so you can enjoy the present – please leave your comments below.
Building a responsive, high-quality list of email subscribers is the key to leveraging your marketing time and increasing your income. Here’s 6 specific ways to show you how:
1. Don’t Hide Your Opt-In Form
Don’t make your website visitors search for the opt-in form to your list. To make it super-simple for your visitors to sign up, do what I recommend to my clients – just a simple one-page website, that I call an Invite Site, where the only thing you’re doing on the site is inviting your visitors to sign up for your list.
Then there’s no confusion or question about what it is they should do. Once they sign up, you can redirect them to another page where they can gain access to more information from you.
2. Offer a Free Taste
Encourage people to sign up for your list by offering them something of value for free in exchange for their email address. Good choices are a mini-ecourse, a special report, a checklist, or a short audio program. Add some enticing copy describing the benefits your visitor will receive from your gift to increase your sign-ups.
3. Keep it Simple
If you only ask for your visitor’s first name and email address, you’ll get a higher response rate, meaning more people will sign up for you list.
Obviously, if you’re offering a physical Free Taste (like a CD), you’ll need to get your visitor’s shipping address as well. Just try to limit the information you’re asking for to increase the number of people who sign up.
4. Add Your Privacy Policy
Make your visitor feels comfortable giving you their email address by adding a short privacy policy right there with your opt-in form. Something as simple as “We will never share your email address, period” should suffice.
5. Include Testimonials
Even adding two or three testimonials of people who’ve signed up for your list and received your Free Taste will increase your list numbers. If you currently don’t have anyone on your list, send a copy of your Free Taste to a handful of colleagues and ask for testimonials in return (and offer to do the same for them).
6. Getting People to the Opt-in Page for Your List
Once you optimize your opt-in page, you need to get people to it. There are literally hundreds of ways that you can drive traffic to your web page where people sign up for your list (we cover 42 of them in my 21 Easy & Essential Steps to Online Success System™), but here are three of the best:
1. Utilize your email signature in every email you send out. Be sure you point people to your opt-in page in your signature with some enticing copy as to why they should click on your link.
2. Write and submit articles, including the link to your opt-in page in the author’s resource box.
3. Do a simple pay-per-click campaign to drive targeted traffic to your opt-in page.
Follow these tips and you’ll start increasing your email list subscribers today.
I’d love to know which of these resonates with you the most – please leave your comments below.
One of the most effective ways of getting people to discover and try your products or services is by offering a Free Taste – which is just that, a taste of what it is that you offer.
Free Tastes come in many forms: an ezine, an ecourse, an audio program, a special report, etc., and they are obviously free. It’s a tried and true marketing strategy that if you offer someone a free taste of what it is that you do, they are much more likely to become a paying client or customer down the road.
Once you’ve created your Free Taste, the next step is to market it to encourage people to sign up for your list. The following are 15 proven ways to promote your Free Taste:
__1. Your email signature
In your email signature (your name and contact info that you put at the bottom of every email you send out), include a link that goes directly to the sign-up page for your Free Taste or to its respective autoresponder. Entice people to click through with a compelling question, followed by the link.
__2. Your website
Make sure your sign-up form for your Free Taste is prominently placed on the home page of your website, as well as on every other page of your site. This way, no matter what page your visitor lands on, you’re giving them an opportunity to opt-in to receive your Free Taste.
__3. Other people’s ezines
Ask to be mentioned and recommended in other people’s ezines within your niche. Offer to do the same in return.
__4. Other people’s websites
Offer your Free Taste as a bonus to colleagues’ in complementary niches to offer to their lists.
__5. Testimonials you write
Write results-oriented testimonials for products or services you use and love. Give permission to the owner to post your testimonial to their website, including the URL to sign up for your Free Taste.
__6. Articles
Write and submit articles within your niche. In the author’s resource box at the end, promote your Free Taste by including the URL to your sign-up page or the email link to your autoresponder.
__7. Discussion lists
Participate in discussion lists where your target market hangs out and offer your Free Taste, following the list’s guidelines for promotions.
__8. Thank you pages
On your thank you pages for purchases, offer your Free Taste. Your customer may not have signed up before buying your product or service and you want to give them an opportunity to do so before they leave your website.
__9. Your sales copy
Peppered throughout your sales copy, give the opt-in form to sign up for your Free Taste. Most people don’t buy on the first pass, but they will likely sign up for your free offering.
__10. Your business card
On the back of your business card, tell people where to go to sign-up for your Free Taste.
__11. Teleseminars
Offer content-rich free teleseminars and make it clear that your desired outcome is to have the registered guests sign up for your Free Taste, not to sell them anything.
__12. Directories
List your Free Taste in the directories that are available to you via your membership in associations or organizations, and any directories specific to the packaging of your Free Taste.
__13. Swap ads with others
Offer to promote a colleagues’ Free Taste in return for promoting yours as ads within each other’s ezines. Run your ad for a minimum of three consecutive issues for the best results.
__14. Tell everyone
Don’t forget to tell everyone on your contact list about your Free Taste. Send them the link to your sign-up page, and ask that if they cannot benefit from it themselves to please pass it along to someone who would.
__15. Offer a free bonus
Offer a bonus or gift as an added incentive to sign-up for your Free Taste. A special report, an audio program, or something similar that is in a different form than your Free Taste. For example, I offer my ezine as a bonus for signing up for my free audio interview.
Remember: Never add anyone to your list without their permission.
These 15 tactics will help you promote your Free Taste and add significantly to your list numbers. Just implement them consistently, and you will grow an audience quickly and easily.
I’d love to know your thoughts on this – please leave your comments below.
A question I get asked by entrepreneurs all the time is…
“Where do I start? With an ezine, a website, a blog, or what?”
The answer is – it depends. It depends on where you are at in your business building efforts. But after hearing this question asked often enough, I think there’s something else going on ~ a request for a simple way to understand how all the pieces fit together. So, here goes:
First, you want to have a clearly defined target market, and be offering solutions to the problems that market wants solved. Then follow the steps below to leverage your time in reaching them with your offers.
1. Create an Invite Site
The first step is to create what I call an Invite Site. An Invite Site is a simple one page website where the only thing you do is invite your visitor to sign up for your email list by offering them something of value for free in exchange for their email address. For the record, the ONLY website I had for the first three years in my business was an Invite Site and I’ve built a 6-figure just from that.
2. Write and send an ezine
As you build your list, you’ll want to stay in touch with your subscribers. The easiest way to do this is through an ezine, or online newsletter. If you’re just starting out, know it doesn’t have to be anything fancy. A short article in text format sent to your list on a consistent basis is enough to get you in the habit of writing and sending an ezine, and for staying on your reader’s radar screen.
3. Post your ezine article to your blog
Create a simple blog for free at WordPress.com, give it a name that incorporates what it is that you offer (for example, advice about marketing, dog grooming, real estate, etc.), and cut and paste your ezine article as a post to your blog. The search engines love blogs because of their text-based format. They also love fresh content and with a blog you can post new articles consistently, keeping the content fresh, whereas on a static website, the information doesn’t change very often.
BONUS: Record a podcast from your ezine article.
Give your audience another way to get to know you (and take advantage of the millions of people who are downloading and listening to information on their MP3 players) by offering a podcast. Simply take the content from the article you wrote for your ezine and use that as your script for your podcast.
I know this seems simple, but that’s because it really can be this easy. If you put just the first three steps into action, your business will start to grow. As it does, you can start adding more bells and whistles, like graphics or different sections to your ezine, or jazz up your blog. In the meantime, keep pointing people to your Invite Site to grow your list, stay in touch with them via your ezine, and post your articles online so more people will find you.
I’d love to know your thoughts on this – please leave your comments below.
Taking my struggling consulting business online and following the business model I now do turned everything around for me, financially and otherwise. So when I started hearing from my mentors that I might want to add some offline marketing tactics back into the mix, I was hesitant to say the least.
But then I started studying and learning more about some specific direct mail strategies, and recognizing the power they have, I started wondering if maybe I wasn’t missing an important piece of the puzzle to take my business up another notch.
Then I started seeing some amazing results from my colleagues who were using direct mail in addition to their online marketing efforts – things as simple as a postcard – and I decided I needed to get into this game myself.
How do you get started adding direct mail marketing to your mix? Here are 5 simple steps:
1. Start collecting physical addresses
You may have the addresses of those clients and customers who have purchased something physical from you already, which is a great start. But you also want to start collecting snail mail addresses from those people who sign up for your list. This way, when you’re ready to send a physical mailing out, you’ll have all the information you need. AND, if email deliverability gets muddier, you’ll always have this other option of reaching your audience.
2. Plan a campaign
I always tell my clients to plan an online promotion campaign when they are ready to market a specific product, program or service, instead of sending out a single announcement. The campaign I recommend typically includes a minimum of three emails.
Same goes for an offline mailing. You need to plan a campaign, with more than one mailing, in order to truly get and discern a return on your investment.
3. Go cheap the first time
Something I learned when I was the public relations/marketing director for a university was NOT to do an expensive mailing until we had cleaned our list. Peoples’ addresses change for a variety of reasons and you may not always have the most up-to-date ones when you’re ready to send your mailing.
So, here’s a tip to clean your list before you start investing in some higher-end mailers. Send a postcard that has your return address on it to your current list. Then update your list via the returned postcards you get. Then make sure you have your return address on every mailing you do to keep your list as up-to-date as possible.
4. Keep it simple
Do a postcard, which gets read right away, with a simple, direct, compelling message and an immediate call to action, with graphics that don’t distract but support your message.
5. Track your mailings
The easiest way to do this is to send your readers to a simple website address (URL) that you only use for the purposes of that mailing. All you have to do is redirect that URL to your existing web page (where your offer resides) using the tracking link feature in your shopping cart. That way you can tell how many people typed in the URL and how many people took advantage of your offer. This is how you measure your return on your investment.
Getting started with adding direct mail to your marketing mix isn’t difficult. And by combining your online strategies with offline ones, you’ll be gaining a lot more clients and customers and bringing in a lot more income.
I’d love to know your thoughts and if you’re already using direct mail marketing or if you’re ready to start using it. Please leave your comments below.
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