Throughout the interview process for the Write.Publish.Sell: Grow Your Career Beyond Your Blog virtual summit I have had the chance to get fantastic tips from 40+ amazing entrepreneurs, coaches, and leading ladies, five themes became really apparent. These tips were mentioned repeatedly throughout the interviews, so it’s safe to say these are five steps that you must do to grow your business. The best part is that they don’t cost money and they are easy to implement!
5 Action Steps to take TODAY to grow your business immediately
1.Make sure YOU are visible on your page and social media.
People buy into YOU, not necessarily your product. There are probably hundreds of other options for the same or similar product/service, but you are the ONLY YOU. When potential clients are trying to determine who they should place their trust in – be it for coaching, consulting, or other services and products, they want to know that they trust and believe in YOU. So make sure YOU show up on your website.
Make an About page if you don’t have one. Tell your STORY. It’s so important to why you launched your business and why others should jump on board with you. Make sure you have some pictures of YOU.
YOU are your brand. Is it easy to find information about YOU?
Action step:
Check out your site. Add an About page or update your about page to tell your story about why you launched your business. Put some pictures of you on the site!
2.Get absolutely clear about what you are selling!
Go look at your website. Is it IMMEDIATELY clear what your business is about and what you can offer to a new client? Do you have a product or a service? Is that obvious? If someone wants to find out more about that product or service, is it easy to navigate to more information? What is it that your customers need to know? Is that information on the page?
Bonus tip: Is the page free of clutter and visually appealing? If not, you may want to consider hiring a professional designer, especially if you are interested in working with brands and sponsors. Tiffany Romero, founder of the SITS girls – and someone who knows a LOT about getting major brand involvement, recommends that any blogger who wants to work with brands should have a very clean, neat, and professional website.
Action step:
Make sure your landing page is a very clear representation of your business and what you offer to clients and consumers. Remove any popups if you have anything that immediately attacks a new visitor. Those can be seen very salesy (or just get completely ignored anyway.) Then, share your page with some of the people in your tribe and ask them to tell you what they think it is you offer as a service or product. Hopefully, it will be clear. If NOT, solicit their input on what would make it clear.
If your page is cluttered, try to remove anything that is not necessary. If you feel your page needs professional help, seek out a designer that can help you improve the site.
3.Tackle ONE social media channel at a time. Find where your tribe is and focus THERE.
You can waste a LOT of time trying to be everywhere. And it’s not really necessary. Find out where your ideal client or your tribe is hanging out and be THERE. If that’s Facebook, focus 98% of your efforts on Facebook. Gretchen Fox of the Made to Order Social Media Agency, recommends that you be more strategic in your efforts by being small and consistent in your social media. How do you do this? You do it by hanging out where your peeps are hanging out, and focus your efforts there.
But, Gretchen says DO be sure to acquire the social media names for all sites and build a page that simply directs them from Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram or wherever they found you to your primary Social Media place.
Action Step:
Do a little research on your ideal customer. Where are they hanging out? Check your stats to see where else their interests lie. You can create a poll and send it out to your list or post on Facebook to see where they spend most of their time. Then, start focusing your efforts there, and stop spending the time in the other social outlets. Make sure you have that page set up to direct people where you are. Add a Call To Action on your blog posts or website to direct them to your main social area.
4.Make sure you have a very CLEAR CALL TO ACTION on your sales pages, services pages, and throughout your social media and email campaigns.
If you are getting ready to launch a coaching program, as an example, there should be a call to action driving your future clients to your sales page EVERY place a person lands. In blog posts (integrated into the message, not just an annoying pop up), in your social media posts, in your email messages and newsletters.
Example: To learn more about how to launch your own Etsy store, register for my free webinar here.
Rock your sales launch by downloading this pre-launch checklist here. (Download NOW!)
Join my private Facebook group NOW for more tips on growing your podcast audience.
Sign up now for a free 30 minute consultation with me…
And so forth.
Action Step:
Go insert clear Calls to Action every place it makes sense on your website, social, and email series.
5.Create an email list for your new and potential customers.
Seriously. You MUST have a list. The people who are going to sign up on your list are the MOST likely to actually purchase your services and programs. So it’s important that you develop and grow your relationship through regular (but not ridiculous) amounts of communication with this audience. Don’t always sell to them. Send useful information and bits about yourself and your story.
PLUS – and this is a big one…. you don’t OWN your Facebook page or twitter list. It could *poof* disappear at any moment. But you DO own your email list.
Action Step:
Create your list! You can start with a free provider such as Mailchimp and create a place that everyone who clicks on that call to action will be stored. You will not be able to automate a nurture series with the free version of Mailchimp, however, it is not difficult to set up an email series or template. Julie Stoian has offered a great tutorial on using Mailchimp as a freebie for anyone who purchases the All Access Pass of the Summit.
Something to consider:
If your products and sales funnels are very different, you’ll likely want to have separate lists depending on which Call To Action they follow. Obviously, if someone wants more information about Mailchimp, you don’t want them receiving all of your emails that go to your list about Social Media for Facebook. Or maybe you do… that’s up to you to figure out!
If you already have a list in place, make sure you are actually using it. You don’t want to just email them when you have something to sell. And you also don’t want them to forget who you are. A nurture series is the perfect way to grow that relationship (and potentially upsell) with a new subscriber. We’ll be talking about nurture series in the Write.Publish.Sell virtual conference – that you registered for to receive this action plan!
