Build your celebrity status – make a video

12/08/2011 By 3 Comments

Margaret Adams - Solo Success Expert Probably the first thing you’ll notice about this post is that there isn’t a video embedded in it.

However, it is a post about my first video presentation.

Now, the video isn’t up on the web yet, so I won’t say too much about that side of things.  What I’m writing about today is the important starting point for your video: your script.

Creating your video script

I was asked to speak for somewhere between ninety seconds and two and a half minutes.

When I began to plan, the first thing I did was to think about what I could cover in a short space of time and remain interesting to my audience of small businesses.

I decided to offer my top three tips to help independent professionals, (coaches, consultants, counsellors, therapists and other expert professionals) to build their fame online.

  • I chose a “top tips” approach because there’s an obvious structure to that sort of film script.
  • I chose that approach so that people watching would obtain advice they could use immediately.
  • I chose the tips approach because it’s a memorable type of structure.   There is a defined number of things to remember.

Then, of course, I had to think about producing something that would last for the right amount of time.

As an ex-teacher and lecturer and a professional speaker, I know it’s important always to work to the time limits you’ve been given.  I’ve run conferences and training programmes in the past where the first presentation has over-run by half an hour or more, and I’ve then spent the rest of the day trying to catch back time.

Therefore, it’s really important to think about how long your script will take to deliver.

It’s a good idea to use some of the statistics about speaking to help you to plan.

Now, when you speak in conversation, you can deliver around one hundred and forty words per minute.  If you’re thinking about speaking to an audience, then you’ll probaby deliver about one hundred and twenty words a minute – maybe a bit less.  That will tell you how long your script should be.

I created my script to be two minutes in length.

Practising your delivery

That’s the next stage.  Practise delivering your script.

Practising delivery means making sure that the script lasts for the right amount of time.  It also means thinking about the structure of your delivery.

  • Is what you have to say broken up in a meaningful way?
  • Can you deliver the script in an interesting way?

Well, my top tips approach helped with both of these requirements.

I practised the script and reworked it until it sounded right and the words really felt natural to deliver.  That’s the real advantage you gain, if you write your own script or have a sympathetic speechwriter.

Developing a professional approach to being filmed

Some filming takes place in studios.  Some filming takes place elsewhere.

In the case of my video I was filmed in a hotel where the staff were busy clearing up after a morning meeting and setting the room up for lunch.

It wasn’t quiet.

It wasn’t ideal.

However, we did get the job done.  The professional videographer I was working with did a lot to make things run smoothly and his approach was helpful and positive.

I was as well prepared as I could be and that was what was important.

Margaret Adams’ Three Top Tips To Help Small Businesses To Build Their Fame Online

So where are the tips?

I’ll post the script for the filming session next time along with some tips to help you to write an interesting and engaging script for your own film or video debut.

If you like this post…… please tweet about it and share it on Facebook and on LinkedIn.  Comments are always welcome, too.

Filed Under: Business Skills, Growing Your Business, Marketing Your Business Tagged With: , , ,

Seven Reasons Why You Should Ditch Your Five Page Website

25/07/2011 By 1 Comment
The pedal bin

Guess what goes in here?

Once upon a time every one seemed to have a five page website.

A business had a website with a home page, an About Us page, plus one page, or maybe two, about the products and services that it offered. Then there was a “Get in touch with us” or a “You can find us here” page.

The website was static.  In some cases it wasn’t updated for months or even years.

That was then.

Today a five page website, especially one like the site described above, simply won’t do.

Here’s why.

Reason One: You Need Landing Pages

You need to think about landing pages as well as your home page.

People don’t necessarily arrive on your website at your home page; they could arrive anywhere on your website.  If you leave people to find their way around, you can’t assume they will ever see your home page. You can’t assume they will ever read all that introductory information you’ve placed on your home page.

Additionally, it’s often a good idea to offer different greetings to people who come your site via other sites.  If you create different landing pages for different groups, you can customise their experience of your website.

We have at least four different landing pages on this site and every one is different.  Different groups of visitors are coming with different expectations of this site.  Customised landing pages manage those expectations.

Reason Two: You Want To Be Able To Blog

Blogging is important these days.

If you want to build your reputation and become famous in your niche you need to blog or to produce authority content about what’s happening in your industry.  You might also want to engage in discussions with key players in your niche.  You might want to influence your customers and potential customers on a hot topic.

This will be difficult to do with a website that’s limited in the number of pages it has, especially if you intend to comment on lots of different issues or to offer insights into each new issue as it arises.   If you also want to keep a record or an archive of your articles, then you definitely need more pages.

It’s a bad idea to have a blog somewhere else on the web and do your commenting there.  Why do you want to send traffic somewhere other than to your own website?

Reason Three: You Want To Tell Visitors More

Let’s say you have a fabulous product or service.  You can tell visitors to your website a bit about your offer on your product/services pages but you’d really  like people to know more.

If you create  additional pages with more information, a detailed specification, some video footage, testimonials and the like, you can do this.

In fact, you can do all of these things using extra pages on your website.

You’ll overwhelm people if you try to put too much onto a single page.

Therefore, you need more than five pages on your site.

Reason Four: You Need Sales Pages

Perhaps you have a special offer or you’re running a promotion.  You can let more people know about these offers if you create a sales page or sales pages.

Sales pages offer more than a bland description of a product or service.  Your sales page is aimed to get people to buy.  It sets out a completing argument as to why people should buy and buy now.  It could include testimonials.  It could include a lot of detail about what people will gain if they buy.

You’re making a time-limited offer via your sales page. You want people to take action.  You may even want them to buy online.

A sales page is crafted to encourage people to take action now.  It’s a special page that you’ll struggle to make room for on that five-page website.

Reason Five: You Need To Help The Press And Media To Find You

It’s important for businesses to build strong relationships with the media.  It’s important for you to help the media to build your fame.

You need somewhere on your site to house the information that you want the local, regional and national press to find.  You need to let the media know about your business in a concise and quotable way.

If you’re an expert, you need to let the press know on which topics you’re prepared to be interviewed.  You need to publish press releases on newsworthy topics that affect your industry and make them accessible to the media.

As your business grows you’ll need that press and media page as well as the other pages you’ve been building.

Reason Six: You Need Private Pages

You won’t want everything on your site to be immediately visible and public.

You may want to create pages where you can place information for specific customers.  You may want a page where people who have signed up for something can download that special report or guide.

That means, at the very least, you need to make use of pages that don’t appear in the primary menu at the top of the screen.

You may even want to make some of your pages password protected, so that only people with the password can view the content.

Giving people an individualised experience of your website will only be possible if you consider these options.  That customised experience will be difficult to provide via those five pages on your site.

Reason Seven: Five Page Websites Constrain

There’s so much you can do, and there’s so much people want to do with their websites today, that you really can’t afford to be limited to five pages.

If you only have five pages to work with, you won’t be in a position to do many of the things that will help to build your brand and your reputation in your industry.  You won’t be able to build your fame quickly.

What do you think?

I’ve set out seven reasons why I think you should get rid of your five-page website.  Have I missed anything?  What would you like to add?

Leave a comment with your thoughts.

Also, if you find a five page website is enough for you, then please leave your comments, too.

Oh yes, please share the post on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  Let’s see what other people think about this subject.

Filed Under: Becoming A Market Leader, Growing Your Business, Marketing Your Business, Productivity Tagged With: , ,

How to use SEO to bring more traffic to your website

29/06/2011 By 4 Comments
Magnifying Glass On Its Side

Focus on the language clients use.

So far in this series of blog posts we’ve covered two different types of web traffic.

These are: traffic from referring websites and direct traffic.

You’ll get a lot of your traffic from these sources because, as a coach, a consultant, an expert or as a senior person in a professional services organisation, yours is essentially an offline business.  However, you also want to get traffic from the search engines.

Traffic from search engines

Visitors who find you via the search engines are likely to be people who do not know you.  That means they have been searching online for a particular product or service or for information and have been directed to your site.

They’ve been directed to you because the term they’ve typed into the search box matches the language on your site.

This is important.  It means that you need to think carefully about the terms people use when they’re searching online and then use the same language yourself. Do this well and people will find you online.  They will also say that your website is search engine optimised.

Do you need to learn about SEO?

I think you do, but possibly for different reasons than are often offered.

I think you need to think carefully about SEO because the more time you spend thinking about your customers the better.

Therefore, if you’re a life coach or an executive coach, for example, you’ll be thinking about the words you can use in your website copy to help people who are in your target market to find you.

With all types of coaching one of the ways you can do this is to make sure you talk about your location in your web copy.  Coaching in Central London or Executive Coaching in Central London or Life Coaching in Central London could all be terms that people looking for a coach in Central London might use when they begin their search.  If you’re in the coaching business and you’re looking for clients in Central London you know to include variations on all the relevant terms about your location in your copy.

You can take this further, because some coaches specialise in a particular type of coaching.  Coaching for people facing divorce or coaching for people coping with bereavement are clear niches within the coaching marketplace. If you’re a coach, and if you have a defined niche, you’ll need to think about the variations of wording people are going to use when searching online.

  • Does the term coaching for divorcees work?  (That is: does it bring you traffic?)
  • Does coaching for people getting a divorce work?
  • Does coaching for people facing the break up of their marriage work?

You know your current clients.  You know the language they use.  Use that type of language yourself.  If they found you online, ask how they found you.  That will help you, too.

SEO for real people and offline businesses

Magnifying Glass

Search for the right words to use

I always call this next development: SEO for real people.  SEO specialists urge people to use online tools to do more research.  I think that’s fine, but for offline businesses there are additional things we can do, too.

We can think about our clients’ problems.  If I’m a life coach working in Central London and specialising in helping people who are facing divorce, I’ll know that this situation means that my potential clients are likely to have lots of other problems to deal with, too.

They may be facing issues surrounding the custody of children.  There may be issues linked to the ownership of the family home and the distribution of jointly owned property.

It would make sense for me – if I were the life coach I’ve just described – to have some content, or articles, on my website, helping people to deal with these problems.  I would not need lots of detailed information, but I could deal with the most common problems facing people who are divorcing.  I could quote some examples of how long things tend to take to resolve and so on.

In SEO terms the value of this is that it will bring those who are divorcing to my website even if they’re not – as yet – thinking about coaching.

SEO is an art, not a science

Good SEO is exactly the same as good client relationship management.  You need to think like your customers or clients and spend time understanding their needs, wants, expectations and aspirations, if you’re going to succeed with either.

Of course, with SEO you then need to know a bit about meta-tags, H1 or title tags, H2 or subheadings and how to use an SEO plug-in.  Yet, I believe these are secondary issues.  Finding the right words comes first.  You find the right words when you know your audience.

Get more traffic visiting your website

If you’re now actively thinking about:

  1. direct traffic
  2. referred traffic
  3. traffic from the search engines

you’ve made a lot of progress.  Even if you’re just doing one or two things to help you to get more traffic you’ll see a difference in the web statistics.  You don’t need to think about these things all the time, but you do need a strategy, because with websites, a structured approach always helps.

What to do now

If you’ve found this series of pieces on increasing the traffic to your website helpful, please tweet about it and “like” the post on Facebook.  Leave a comment and let me know exactly what you’ve found helpful.

I’m not a technical person so I tend to write about SEO and similar  subjects in different ways from the ways in which web developers write.  Do you like my approach?

See also:

How to get more traffic from referring websites

How to get more visitors to your offline business’s website

Three reasons why your offline business needs a blog.

Filed Under: Becoming A Market Leader, Business Skills, Growing Your Business, Marketing Your Business Tagged With: , ,

How to find more new business for your professional services business (4) – Spare a thought for the IFAs

11/04/2011 By Leave a Comment
Piggy Bank

Here's where it stays.

If you’ve been following this series of posts, you’ll know that I’ve been writing about strategies to help professionals – anyone selling an expert service – to find ways of bringing in new business.

At the beginning of the series I explained that your best prospects are not the people who are ready to buy today.

I’ve also talked about how to get people to show more interest in your business and how to get people to build a relationship with you long before they’re ready to buy professional services in your area of expertise.

However, there’s one group of professionals who have particular problems in making sales because they’re often selling high-value investments and “services” which take a long time to mature.

These are the professionals selling pensions or property for investment or other long-term investments. 

These are the people who really struggle to get clients to see the reason for buying now.

Come back later

As any Independent Financial Adviser (IFA) will tell you, it’s never too soon to start to think about your retirement income or what life will be like when you’re a lot older than you are now.  Unfortunately, whilst most people will accept this as the truth, getting them to take action is a different matter.  It’s the same with buying property for investment.  There are always good reasons for doing nothing today and putting off decisions until tomorrow.

It’s difficult to inject urgency into these types of decisions.  It’s difficult to get people to take action now – or in the near future.   The consequences of inaction might be significant in the longer term, but the consequences today or tomorrow are barely recognisable.

Join my club

Where urgency doesn’t help to make a sale then it’s time to try something else.   When injecting urgency into the sales process doesn’t work, try exclusivity.

In other words don’t focus on the purchaser’s situation, focus instead on the opportunity and the fact that:

  • It won’t be there for long.
  • Circumstances are going to change soon.
  • The only time to make the purchase is now.

The message is simple.  You can only be part of that exclusive club if you act now.

“There won’t be another hotel built at this resort for another five years so ……..”

“Changes to taxation mean that you can only take advantage of this situation if you act before ……”

Many professionals don’t focus enough about selling exclusivity – except the IFAs that is.  IFAs  know exclusivity  one of their most important assets.  They know that  selling opportunities often works extraordinarily well.

So, why don’t you sell exclusivity, too?

I  can only take on ………………. clients.  To be part of that group you need to be the sort of person who ………………….

My practice is almost full.  I have spaces for …………………. but only if ……………..

What’s different?

How are you using the advice in these posts to help you to change the way you market your business?  Let me know in the comments.

Please tweet about this series, too.  Say you “like” the series on Facebook.

Filed Under: Business Skills, Developing New Products and Services, Growing Your Business, Sales Skills Tagged With: , ,

How to find more new business for your professional services business (3) – The long-term solution

01/04/2011 By 1 Comment
Intricate Relationships

Entwined with your customers

If you’re an expert selling your professional expertise in your marketplace, you already know your clients don’t always buy immediately.

You’re selling professional services, and either you get your business when someone has a crisis – in which case your success can owe a lot to luck – or you get the business because you’ve taken time to build a relationship with a prospective client over time.

The question you need to think about is how to build a relationship with those prospective clients, so that yours will be the organisation they come to when they need your sort of expertise.

Engage with prospective clients

If you’ve read part two of this series:  How to find more new business for your professional services business (2) – the simple solution you already know you need to make your website attractive and to offer useful information to strangers who visit your site, in the hope that you can start to build a relationship as a result.

To be sure of getting their business you need to do more.

Of course, every one seems to be sending out newsletters these days, and offering helpful pdf downloads to demonstrate their worth.  You need to do that, but you need to do more. You need to build the personal side of that relationship.

Connect with your prospects

Two heads are better than one at problem solving.  Two connections are better than one. Make sure your website visitors and your newsletter subscribers have the opportunity to connect with you on Twitter and on your Facebook for Business page.  Perhaps you can set up a LinkedIn group for the core elements in your target market.

Your aim is to build more connections so that you are bringing people closer to you and so that they hear useful and relevant information from you more often.

Present yourself in the right way

The best way for you to present yourself to your audience is in the role of an expert.  People approach professional practices for expert advice. You need to build your reputation as an expert with the people who you want to do business with now and in the future.

This means you will manage your Twitter account to promote your expert persona to your marketplace.   Your blog will do the same.  Your newsletters will reinforce your reputation.  Your Facebook presence will help you to make the points about who you are and how you help.

All the content you upload and promote will set out to reinforce that perception of you and your business as people worth knowing.  Your content will promote your business as  the place to go when someone needs your sort of service.

Remember who people buy from

It’s a truism that people buy from people, but that really is the case.  Even when you’re working in a professional capacity, if possible, people still like to buy from people.

Therefore, the secret of bringing in more new business over the longer term is to be perceived as someone who a client would want to work with.  Of course, your clients value the reputation of the practice and the support the whole organisation can offer, but they really buy from individuals.

  • They want to know about you.
  • They want to find that they like what they find out about you.
  • They want to believe they can trust you before they do business with you.

Today, however, there’s more.

The know-like-trust continuum is well known to people in business.  Today, it’s not enough to work on getting people to trust you.

Nowadays, people want to sample and to try you out before they buy.  When you’re selling professional services, the best way to do this is to offer sound general advice freely and to be accessible.

Now’s the time therefore, to think about the image you want to present online and to work hard to build those relationships.  Now’s the time to think about positioning yourself as a trusted adviser.  Your efforts will pay off in the longer term.

What to do now

If you like this post, please tweet about it or say you like it on Facebook.

You might also like the read:

Are you selling a complex product or service?

How well are you closing the sale?

How to find more new business for your professional services business (1) – The challenges

How to find more new business for your professional services business (2) – A simple solution.

Let me know if you’ve found this series helpful.

Filed Under: Business Skills, Developing New Products and Services, Growing Your Business, Marketing Your Business, Productivity Tagged With: ,
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