Basically, there are two things that must be in place before any of your offerings can be successful (read: profitable). One is that it must be designed for a niche. So, there must be a group of people who you are targeted to offer your product/program/service toward.
The other is that is must solve a problem that your niche wants solved. Sounds obvious, yes? But many times, we create what we think our niche NEEDS instead of what it WANTS. It’s critical to know the difference and to use that knowledge to create your offerings.
There are many ways you can find out what it is that your niche wants most so you can create it and offer it to them. One of those ways is to hold a teleseminar that both delivers value to your participants as well as provides you with market research to use to inform your product line.
The best thing is that these types of teleseminars can be easy to fill and fun to host. Here are the steps:
1. Decide on the topic
Your best best is to choose a topic that’s broad in scope, meaning that it discusses a problem that the majority of your niche struggles with and would like help in solving. This will get you more people on the call as well as give you a more diverse group from which to learn from for your own market research purposes.
2. Use a mini-application
When people register for your teleseminar, ask them to fill out a short questionaire. This really begins your market research because you’ll be asking them what it is that they are struggling with specifically in relation to the bigger topic.
For example, if your topic is “How to Balance My Business and My Family and Still Have Time for a Great Life”, one question you may ask in your questionaire is, “What’s the ONE thing you struggle with most when it comes to balancing your business and your family? Please be as specific as possible so I can give you some specific strategies to help!”
You could also ask the question in another way: “What two questions do you have that I must answer on this teleseminar for you to feel it was of value to you?” You may also want to ask where your participant is at present with regard to your topic and where they’d like to be.
Tell them you’ll be answering as many questions as you can on the teleseminar itself, to engage people right from the start when they are registering for the call, as well as encourage them to show up in the first place (this is particularly helpful if this is a fre*e call).
Also, don’t be shy about telling your participants that you’ll be using their comments and feedback as part of growing your own business. For example, if you’re writing a book and you need some more content for a certain section, hold a teleseminar on that topic and share with your teleseminar participants that they may be featured in the book if their comments, suggestions or examples are used. People will jump to sign up for your call!
3. Ask questions
At this point, you have an outline for the call itself, and now you’ve filled it in with more content with the answers to the questions that were submitted when people registered.
The next step is to weave those questions and answers into the conversation on the call itself, and ask if there are MORE questions or comments around them. This will give you more in-depth and insightful information for your purposes, as well as be valuable to those on the call. This is when you really want to give the space and the time for your participants to talk (count 5 Mississippi’s if you have to to stop yourself from filling any silence while people are thinking).
Be sure to record the call so you can listen carefully to the conversation again and take notes about what you hear that your participants are looking for in terms of solutions to their problems.
4. Send a follow-up email
As soon as possible after the call, send a follow-up email thanking your attendees for their time and participation. Include notes from the call that you’ve cleaned up and converted to a neat PDF file for them as well for added value.
What you’ve done with this is type of ‘Open House’ teleseminar is invited your attendees to ask you anything they want about your area of expertise. With the information you glean, you can easily tailor your next product around the things they most want, which equals a successful offering for you!
I’d love to know your thoughts on hosting your own teleseminars – please feel free to share your comments below.
If you’re reading this ezine, it’s likely that you’ve participated in a teleseminar, whether it be mine or one of my colleagues. You’ve probably been on some that have been very good, where you got tons of really valuable information. And you may have found yourself on a few that were nothing but pitch-fests for the host’s latest product.
But I want to share something with you. Hosting content-rich teleseminars for my target market is some of the quickest and easiest mo^ney I’ve generated in my business.
Holding F.R.E.E. introductory teleseminars are a great way to promote your business, increase your email subscriber list, make more sales on your products, and enable your potential clients another way to connect with you. By being on the phone with you, they get to know you through your voice, adding the human touch that can be so hard to cultivate online.
When I first started building my business, I offered a f.r.e.e. monthly teleseminar that gave people an introduction to what I teach. From each of these calls, I got more ezine subscribers, more members for my group coaching membership, and more sales of my products.
Holding PAID teleseminars helps to promote your business and generate revenues as well. I do 2-4 paid teleseminars a month, each on a different marketing or success topic, and each of these revenue streams generating thousands of dollars.
Another way to offer teleseminars is to do “intensive” or “bootcamp” series of multi-week teleseminars. I’ve offered 8, 10- and 4-week ‘”workgroups” on the topics of listbuilding, creating a successful business online from scratch, and search engine marketing that have been very profitable.
Hosting teleseminars is easy and here’s 4 simple things you need to get started:
1. The Right Target Market and the Right Topic
Here’s the secret for producing and profiting from a teleseminar: It must be designed for a target market AND it must solve a problem that that target market is struggling with. If you have those two keys in place, you’ll be sure to attract enough sign-ups and make money from your topic.
2. A Bridge Line
There are several good no-cost bridge lines available for you to use, but the one I’m currently recommending is NoCostConference.com because you can record the teleseminar for free as well. This is a nice benefit to offer your participants and to anyone who had to miss your teleseminar for any reason. I use it as a back-up recording for all my calls.
3. Recording Service
You’ll need a way to record your teleseminars so you can provide the audio for people to listen to later and for you to make CDs from if you decide to package your teleseminar into a physical product later. I use AudioAcrobat to record all my teleseminars, with NoCostConference.com as a back-up.
4. Automatic Registration
You’ll want to be able to have people sign up for your teleseminar without you having to do a lot of work. I use Aweber for all my teleseminar registrations, but you can also use your shopping cart’s autoresponder service if you have one.
I’d like to invite you to start offering f.r.e.e. teleseminars to promote your business, and once you get more comfortable with both the format and the technology, start offering paid teleseminars. Even if you only have a handful of people on your first call, it’s great practice. And I guarantee your numbers will increase as you continue to build your email list, and you’ll be profiting from teleseminars in no time.
Do you want to Master the Art of Teleseminars to Make Thousands of Dollars?
In my brand-new L.E.A.P.™ GOLD program, we’re going to go well beyond these basics with this topic, including delving into cutting-edge methods and new technologies to ensure your teleseminars are the ones your target market clamors for!
Although there are fancier ways to teach ‘virtually’, teleseminars are still HOT, simple to do, have stood the test of time and, with the methods you’ll learn from me, are proven to make more sales. You can be creative with them, making them more fun for you to host as well as for your attendees, and you can make A LOT of money from just a single hour of work that you can do in your pajamas from your office, back deck, front porch, dock or sailboat (I speak from experience here)… 🙂
We’ll cover both free and paid teleseminars, which to offer and why, what technology to use, pricing, what to do if something goes wrong (it happens to all of us at one time or another), and much, much more. I’m even going to share all my templates and other how-to pieces to model to host your own successful teleseminars.
Interested? Reserve one of the *very* limited seats TODAY
I’d love to know your thoughts on hosting teleseminars – please feel free to share your comments below.
An annual trip we make each summer is a visit to the spectacular Castle in the Clouds. The Castle’s original name was “Lucknow”, which struck me when the staff posed us for a photo of us in the tea room, complete with period hats. It seems wherever we go with our daughter Chloe, she attracts these opportunities – she’s pulled out of line to get special attention, she’s picked to go on stage, or the line we’re in puts us in the front seat. It happens so often, we couldn’t help but notice it – sure, she’s super cute and friendly (she’ll strike up a conversation with anyone) – but there seems to be something about Chloe that brings her luck now. Now, if we could just bottle that… 😉
Seriously, I’m a believer in creating your own luck (thus why I don’t buy lottery tickets). Actually I don’t usually use the word luck because I think it’s too easy for people to use it as an excuse, and not in a positive way. I’ll share something personal here – I bristle whenever someone says to me how ‘lucky’ I am to have such well-behaved kids. Don’t get me wrong – I know how blessed I am (and those of you who know me or have been reading my ezine for awhile know this too) to have two happy, healthy, whole kids. No one is more grateful for that than I am. And yet, that comment (and similar ones) always comes across to me as if James and I had nothing to do with it, that it’s the luck of the draw that we have well-behaved (most of the time) children. Are you kidding me?
It’s the same thing in your business. I’m not ‘lucky’ to have a multiple 6-figure business. I created it, I earned it. And I did that by doing 4 things consistently:
1. Learning
I’m always learning something new or re-learning something I already knew. If you’re not learning, you’re not growing. If you’re not growing, your business won’t grow. The more you grow inside, the more successful your business will be. So whether I’m learning a new marketing tactic or studying ‘divine success’, I know that learning will ultimately show up in the success of my business and my life.
2. Implementing
Of course if you don’t implement what you learn, what’s the point? 😉 I implement more often than most, which shows up in my success. I’ve also learned to delegate much more to my team which means we collectively get a lot more done. My coach’s request to you is to pick one thing you’ve been meaning to implement, either choose to do it yourself or decide who to delegate it to, pick a completion date and get it done!
3. Leveraging
You can’t create a truly lucrative business without leveraging as much of your time and your talent as possible. One way I do this is via my ‘3+’ rule. Whenever I’m trying to decide whether or not to implement something, I ask myself if I’ll be able to use whatever it is I’m considering in three or more ways.
A simple example of this is writing articles about my area of expertise. When I first started out, we would publish the articles in my ezine, make them a blog post, and submit them to article directories. Now, we do those three things as well as post a podcast, submit that to podcast directories including my Artist’s Page at iTunes, submit it to blog directories, and more.
4. Mentoring (with and to)
I’ve had at least one mentor since I was 13 years old. One of the many lessons I learned from him was that I didn’t have to go it alone, that I could ask for help and be given it without strings attached. As I grew up, I’ve had different personal and professional mentors, which is why it’s always an easy decision for me to make that investment, in both time and money, especially when it comes to my business.
And being a mentor to other women entrepreneurs is absolutely part of my path. It brings me great joy and allows me to give them the lift they need to go from where they are to where they want to be.
Which of these four resonates the most with you right now? Pick one and create your own luck by putting it into action right away.
I’d love to know your thoughts on being lucky and these four ideas – please feel free to share them below…
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A question I often ask my target market is, “what’s your biggest challenge with building your business online?” And one answer I get frequently is this:
How do I make my website earn money?
If you’ve got a business online, then it’s likely you have some sort of web presence. Perhaps it’s a one-page ‘sign up for my list’ kind of site, or a full-blown brochure site with a menu of choices, or maybe your site is in the form of a blog. Regardless of what kind of site (or sites) you have, if they’re not doing what you want them to – and since we’re in business, ultimately that means making some sort of a profit – then it’s time to make some changes.
But how do you REALLY know whether your site is working or not? Here are four strategies to test and track your pages to know what needs fixing:
1. Let the numbers speak
I’m sure if the sky was the limit, you’d hire the most expensive web designer with the fanciest tools to create the most spectacular site imaginable for your business – and someday you just may do that.
For now, though, even an ugly site can make money. My own original site is a perfect example of this, and one reason why I keep it live as an example for my clients. And I can think of at least two sites right now that I personally think are not that pleasing to the eye, yet I know they are raking in the bucks each and every month, year after year.
So don’t get caught up in having the most polished and professionally looking site. Focus more on having the pieces in place that will bring you the cash, too.
2. Give your site only one job
Think of each page of your website as a separate entity with one main purpose. It may be to sell something, or to sign up for your list, or to get people to call you for an appointment. Whatever it is, make it clear that that one thing is the action your visitor should take from being on that page.
3. Track your numbers
Most web hosts offer statistics that you can use to watch your numbers, or there are other web stat programs that you could use as well (such as Google Analytics). However you are keeping an eye on your numbers, you should be looking for two things: how many people visit your site and how many people take the action you want them to take.
From those two numbers, you can figure out your conversion rate, which tells you how many of those visitors took the action you wanted them to – like sign up for your list. If you make small changes to your page AND watch these numbers at the same time, you’ll be able to tweak things to increase your conversion rate. See #4 for more on this…
4. Make one change at a time
This is a very effective way to increase the conversion rates on sales pages and sign-up pages. Change just one thing – for example, the headline – and watch your numbers. Compare those statistics to your previous ones and decide whether or not to keep the change. (You can also do this via a split-test in your shopping cart, where the software does the number crunching for you.)
I see so many sites that try to be all things to all people by offering everything under the sun in too small a space – a website – and all that does is confuse people and encourage them to click away. Remember, ‘a confused mind clicks away’, so always go back to the main questions when considering making changes to your website: What’s the purpose of this page? What is the one thing I want my visitor to do here? And then design your copy around the answer. Keep it simple and you’ll get better results every time.
I love to know your thoughts on these tips. Please share below…
I have a successful business because I know what to do and I do it. I make a good income, I work with clients I enjoy, I get to be creative and I get to do all of that in a way that serves my family and my life.
So when I attended a small intensive led by Laura West, my intention was not to get more strategies or techniques, but to truly shift the way I envision my business as I reinvent it in these shifting current entrepreneurial waters. And that’s exactly what I got – here are just four of those shifts:
1. Money comes from working within your creative power centers
Laura’s created this powerful body of work around the ‘creative power centers’ that crystallized where I needed to spend my time and energy on to evolve my business in the way that honors my life and my own strong boundaries around that life.
For me that means really listening and following my intuition more, taking care of my personal energy more, increasing a team member’s responsibilities, and adding a whole lot more ‘Alicia flavor’ to the mix.
2. Always come back to what I want
When the thoughts get muddled and the confusion sets in with all the choices of what to do in my business (and my life), I will keep coming back to this single question:
What do I want?
And I’ll keep asking it until what I want is crystal clear. Then I’ll know exactly what to do.
3. Systems and structure equals more freedom
I’m great with systems – we have one for pretty much everything in my business – but structure is lacking a bit, and that’s because I can operate well on the fly. However, just thinking about how a little bit more structure would benefit me and my team and how that would lead to more freedom for me got me excited about actually putting that structure in place right away.
4. My non-negotiables are my success
I’ve been looking more closely at this and with the focused time at the intensive, I realized that a big attraction piece for my audience are my non-negotiables (family first, summers off, etc.). From that place, I was able to draft the new design of my business and I couldn’t be more excited about what’s to come.
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