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.