How was your 2009? If your 2009 hasn’t been as great as you had planned, chances are you have spent a lot of time doing things that didn’t work, instead of doing things that would work for your business.

The best action you can take in 2010 is to start doing things that will work for your business and will help you bring in more prospects and more clients. To accomplish this, you need to stop doing what doesn’t work.

As I have been observing many women service professionals, I have noticed many of them making these three mistakes. I am inviting you to let go of them, while we are still in 2009 and start your 2010 without them. Doing this will help you bring more prospects and more clients to your business.

Here is what you should let go in 2009:

- Trying To Be Like Others. You know how it is. You see someone using a marketing technique, and it seems to be working for them, so you start using that technique too. You do it without spending the time to learn how to apply it and without spending the time to learn whether the technique would work for your business.

As a result, you spend time on using the technique, only you are not getting any results from it.

Stop doing what others are doing. Instead, find techniques that work for you and your business. If you love to do public speaking, use it to attract clients. If you love to write, write articles and blog posts to attract clients to your business. Find what works for you. It will make your business unique and it will make it easy to attract clients.

- Being Spontaneous (In Marketing). There are times when being spontaneous is good. But when you are working on bringing more clients to your business, the best thing to do is to have a plan.

Don’t jump from one thing to the next in 2010. Instead, plan how you will be attracting clients in 2010, and then go ahead and follow your plan!

- Making Marketing Hard. Let’s leave the notion that marketing is hard in 2009. When you think that marketing is hard, you are not going to use it and will not be able to attract clients as a result.

Marketing is not rocket science. It is all about creating a plan and using it to attract clients. Doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Make a plan for 2010 now and use it to attract more clients in 2009. This will simplify your marketing and will help get better results in 2010.

Learn how to create a marketing plan for 2010 that will grow your business in the How To Create A Winning Marketing Plan Study Guide.

Last week I wrote a blog post on How to stop treating your coaching business as a commodity. When you treat your coaching business as a commodity, your potential clients will compare your prices to other coaches’ prices and hire the least expensive one, because that is only way you are giving them for comparison.

On the other hand, when you stop calling yourself “business coach”, “life coach”, “career coach” or just “coach”, and show the value you provide instead, your potential clients will look at your approach and your value to see whether they resonate with them.

See the difference in these approaches? Let’s talk about how to create a value approach that will distinguish you from everyone one else in your field:

1. Define Your Target Market Very Clearly. It is impossible to show how valuable your coaching services are, if you don’t know WHO will benefit from them. If your current target market is everyone, or a very large group of people, you must define your target market clearly.

Defining your target market is the first step to showing the value you provide and differentiating yourself from everyone else in the market.

2. Research Your Target Market. Once you define your target market, you want to learn as much as you can about it. Learn what your target market wants, needs, and is interested in. What are they interested in learning about? What are the issues they are experiencing? What do they need help with?

One of the best ways to do this research is to connect with your target market on social networking web sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and learn what your target market is talking about there.

3. Define WHAT You Provide. Define the value that you provide to your target market and don’t use the words “coach” or “coaching”. The best way to do that is to find a problem that your target market needs solved and define what you provide in terms of that problem.

For example, if you are a weight loss coach, you help people lose those extra pounds.

You can learn in detail how to create your marketing message that will get you clients in our How To Create A Marketing Message That Will Get You Clients Audio Recording

More posts about attracting clients to your business:

- Stop Spinning Your Wheels And Start Getting Results With Your Coaching Business

- Coaches, Get Rid Of The About Coaching Web Page Now!

- Does Social Networking Work For Coaches?

Are you in the process of creating a Marketing Plan for next year for your service business? If you are, you are probably wondering what you need to include in your plan. Here are four tasks that you must include in your marketing plan to grow your business:

Grow Your List

Building your list is the most important item to include on your list of tasks to do in 2010. A list of your potential clients, waiting to hear from you, is your most important asset. When you have 1,000 or more of your potential clients on your list, waiting to hear from you, you will be able to get more service clients and more product sales whenever you need.

How do you grow your list? Commit to taking at least one action every day in 2010 to build your list. Doing this will help you get more people on your list much faster.

Create A Brand New Gift (Or Update A Current One)

Giving a valuable gift in exchange for subscription to your newsletter will help you grow your list much faster. If you do not have a gift that you are giving away, one of your first actions of 2010 must be creating one.

Even if you already have a gift that you are giving away, don’t let it go stale. Update a current gift or even create an additional brand new gift that you can give away in a different campaign.

A new or updated gift will create more buzz and excitement, and, as a result, you will get many more subscribers for your list.

Update Your Web Site

If you haven’t updated your web site in the past few years, take the opportunity in 2010. Search engines love new and updated content, and so do people in your target market. Also, chances are some things have changed in your business. You may not be offering some of your products or services any more. You may have new articles that you want to post to your web site.

Create New Products

Creating your own products has always been extremely important, but now it is even more important than ever. The reason is that in today’s economy a lot of people are saving money. And because of this they do not have enough money in their budgets to pay for your services. But since your products cost much less than your services, many more people in your target market will find your products affordable.

There are many different products you can create – a membership program, e-books, home study guides, audio recordings, reports and many more. Make sure to include creating of your own products into your marketing plan for 2010.

Ready to create your marketing plan for 2010? Join me for the How To Create A Winning Marketing Plan For 2010 Teleseminar this Friday to learn how to create a marketing plan for 2010 that will grow your business. Register now at http://www.marketingsalad.com/your2010.html

Here is a mistake that I see many coaches make and this mistake is preventing them from getting more coaching clients and charging the rates that they deserve.

What is this mistake? The mistake is that they treat coaching as if were a commodity. First, what is a commodity? A commodity is a good or service that you sell, that is no different from anyone else’s similar good or service.

Let me give you a few examples of what this means, and since I love to cook, this will be food-related examples. When you go to the grocery store to buy sugar, and you don’t care about the brand, you buy whichever one is cheaper. This makes sugar a commodity.

When you go to buy salt, or pepper, and you are just comparing on price, this product a commodity for you. You are just looking for the best price, and nothing else.

Exactly the same thing happens when coaches introduce themselves as a “business coach”, “life coach”, “career coach” or just “coach”. When you do that, you introduce yourself as a commodity - there are many business coaches, life coaches, career coaches and just coaches around.

And when you do not differentiate yourself, you let your clients pick a coach based on price alone. When you have a potential client who is choosing between three different business coaches, how will she ever choose is all she has to go by is that each person is a business coach? She will choose based on the price alone, and she will go with the one who offers her the best price.

Instead, you should not call yourself a business coach and compete with all the other business coaches. Share what is unique about you and how you help your clients, so that your clients choose to work with YOU, and not with a generic business coach!

Next week I will share with you how to make your coaching business unique, so that you can stop being a commodity. Make sure to subscribe to our feed, so that you do not miss the post.

Are you a coach, wondering whether you should write an ebook or not? If you are still considering creating an e-book for your business, here are just some of the reasons for why you should create an e-book for your business right now:

Being An E-book Author Brands You As An Expert In Your Field

If you look at people who are considered experts in their respective fields, you will see that one of the things that many of these experts do is write. They write and publish books, e-books, articles, blogs, etc. When you tell your potential clients that you are an e-book author, you are seen as someone who knows a lot about the subject area and who is an expert in their field.

Your potential clients want to work with an expert. So when they see that you are an author, more of them will want to work with you.

You Can Help Many People With Your E-book

As a coach, you want to help as many people as possible with your gift and expertise. You want to help as many people as possible to improve their lives.

However, there are only so many people you can help if you only offer one-on-one coaching services. Once you fill up your service roster with 10-20 clients, it will be hard to help many more people than that.

With e-books you can help many more people with your gift and expertise. Once you write your e-book and set up your e-book selling system, you can help 10 people with your e-book or you can help 1,000 people with your e-book. You will not have to spend any time on the actual selling process, and, therefore, will be able to help many more people with your e-book.

Your E-book Is Your Passive Income Stream

This means that your e-book is sold online without any involvement from you. You can sell your e-book on your web sites 24/7/365. Even if you are on vacation, your customers can still visit your web site, buy your e-book and immediately download it.

Your passive income stream works for you passively, without your involvement, thus leaving you time for marketing and working on other income streams.

You Can Create Other Products Based On Your E-book

As you start selling information products, you will see that different people learn differently. While some love e-books, other prefer seminars, audio books, teleseminars and other products. The good news is that you can reuse all of your e-book materials and turn your e-book into other products, such as seminars, audio books, teleseminars and more. Read How To Turn One Ebook Into Multiple Streams Of Income post on more information on this.

Learn the easy and effective process for creating your own ebook in the How To Create An Effective Ebook That Will Make You Money Study Guide, available at http://www.marketingsalad.com/ebooks.html

Are you a coach who has written an ebook? Or are you in the process of creating one?

I have great news for you! Selling your actual e-book is not the only way to monetize it! Here is how to turn your one e-book into multiple streams of income:

- Create A Teleseminar. Use some of the material you have in the e-book to create an hour-long teleseminar. Your e-book is long, and you will not use all the material in the e-book for this one teleseminar.

You can teach this teleseminar free, and use the teleseminar to help you build your list.

- Record The Teleseminar. You can now use the recording in many different ways: you can give it away as a bonus with purchase of the e-book, or you can create an audio download or a CD that you can sell on your web site. You can also use it as a free giveaway for those who subscribe to your newsletter.

- Create A Teleseminar Series Out Of The E-book. In this case you can turn each 1-2 chapters into one call. You should also record the calls and turn the recordings and the e-book materials into a Home Study Guide.

Now you have created a large product by just using the information that you have compiled for your ebook.

- Turn Each Chapter Of The E-book Into A Special Report. To do that, add additional material and expand each chapter to make it into a stand-alone special report. Now you can use each one of these stand-alone special reports. You can sell them online, give some away as bonuses, etc.

- Create Exercises For Every Chapter and use them with your one-on-one clients. This is a great value-add to your one-on-one services.

- Promote Other Products In The E-book. Many times e-book authors forget that the book itself is not necessarily the end product. You should view your ebook as an intermediate product in your marketing funnel. Include information about your other products and services, as well as links to your web site and other resources at the end of your e-book.

Take advantage of multiple possible ways to use the material in your e-book. Create new products and teleclasses based on the material you present in the e-book in addition to selling the book itself. This way you can create additional income streams for yourself and your business.

Learn how to create an effective e-book during the How To Create An Effective Ebook That Will Make You Money Teleseminar

Are you a life coach, looking to improve your social networking skills? Many life coaches have been asking me about how to get more clients on social networking web sites. Here is how:

Create An Effective Social Networking Profile

Very often I visit potential networking partners’ profile to learn more about them, visit their web site and to learn more about them. Unfortunately, very often their profiles don’t contain enough information about them and about what they do. What is even worse, they do not have links to their web site!

If you are a life coach, who is using social networking web sites to get clients, you must list your web site address in your profile. If you don’t, how will your potential clients find out more about what you do?

Connect With Your Target Market

Very often I see life coaches not putting any thought into who they should be connecting with. They just connect with anyone who asks, and, as a result, their connects are very untargeted.

Since you are using social networking web sites to find clients, make sure that you connect with your potential clients. Spend the time on social networking web sites to purposely connect with people who you want to do business with.

Ask Your Target Market To Take The Next Step With You

Very often I ask my clients, who are life coaches, “What is the next step that you want your potential clients who you met on social networking web sites to take with you?”

Many times they say: “I want them to become my clients.”

Thing is, it is hard to convert someone you just met on social networking web sites into a client. It is much easier to turn them into newsletter subscribers and then build a relationship with them. That way it will be much easier to turn them into clients.

So ask your social networking connections to take the next step with you, to subscribe to your newsletter. It is much easier to convince your connections to subscribe to your newsletter than to become your clients.

Use this three-step plan to get more life coaching clients using social networking! Here are a few study guides that will help you get better social networking results:

How To Build Your List With Social Networking

How To Create Your Social Networking Strategy

How To Use Twitter To Promote Your Business

Many coaches have been telling me that one of the biggest challenges they have had is that they can’t fill up heir teleseminars. No matter what they do, very few people sign up for their teleseminars.

If no one is signing up for your teleseminars, there are a few things you need to look into:

Is Your Target Marketing Interested In The Topic Of The Teleseminar?

I have seen this many times. Very often coaches offer a teleseminar on a topic that interests the coach, but no the coach’s target market. And since the topic does not interest the target market, very few people (if any!) sign up for it.

Don’t ever offer a teleseminar on a topic that interests you. Instead, research the topics that your target market is interested in, and offer teleseminars on those topics.

Teleseminar Sales Letter Is Not Effective

If your teleseminar topic is of interest to your target market, then your target market will come to your teleseminar sales page to learn more about it.

Once your target market is on your sales page, your sales copy must do a good job selling your teleseminar. If the sales copy does not convince your target market to register, you will not get any teleseminar participants.

Make sure that your sales copy does a great job promoting the benefits that your target market will receive when they register for your teleseminar.

You Do Not Have A Marketing Plan For Promoting Your Teleseminar

No marketing plan usually translates into no teleseminar participants. Make sure to create a plan for promoting your teleseminar before you start promoting it. This way you will get many more people to attend it.

Here are some of the best places to promote your teleseminar: your list, social networking web sites, your blog, groups you are a member of.

Learn how to get more teleseminar participants on social networking web sites such as Facebook and Twitter during the How To Fill Your Teleseminars With Social Networking Web Sites Teleseminar.

Biana Babinsky

Recently I received a following e-mail from a career coach:

“I am a career coach and have been one for a while. It seems that in today’s tough job market there are many unemployed people, which is supposedly a career coach’s target market. However, I find that my prospects tell me that they can’t afford my career coaching services.

What should I do so that I can get more career coaching clients willing to pay for my services?”

Biana says: What a great question! My definition of a target market are people who need, want and can afford your career coaching services.

It looks like you have 2 out of 3 - they want and need your services, but they cannot afford them. So what should you do?

Whatever you do, do not lower the price of your services! When you lower your service prices, the message that you are sending to the world is that you do not value the services that you provide. If you do not value them, your clients will not value them either.

Instead of lowering your service prices, how about creating lower priced products and services? Group coaching, e-books, teleseminars, workshops, membership programs - all of these will help you deliver information to your target market at a lower price than your one-on-one career coaching services.

For example, you can create:

- “How To Get Your Dream Job” e-book

- A three-month coaching program, “How to get back into job search after being laid off”

- A teleseminar on how to create an effective resume

and much more.

Find out what your target market needs and create an information product with that information. Then, when someone can’t afford your career coaching rates, offer them the information product instead. To learn how to create information products, get the How To Create Information Products Guide

Biana Babinsky

If you are like many service professionals I know, you probably submit your articles to article directories once in a while. So what do you do and how do you write these articles to more results from them? How do you get more web site traffic, more leads and more clients from your articles?

My recommendation is to think about what you want your article to accomplish before you write it and submit it to article directories.

The goal of your article is to have your article readers to click on the link in the Resource Box and subscribe to your newsletter. So how do you do that?

- Write an article of interest to your target market

- Create a headline that makes people want to read your article

- Make your Resource Box a continuation of your article

- Offer a free resource in the Resource Box that is of interest to everyone reading the article

- Create a good squeeze page that offers the free resource in exchange for an email address

- Link to the squeeze page from the Resource Box

Your article is a mini-funnel that leads a person to subscribe to your newsletter.

For more information on building your list with article marketing, get the How To Build Your List With Article Marketing Study Guide