How to Build an Evergreen Sales Funnel

By Lisa Nelson  |  Email Marketing

sales-funnel
Do you have a sales funnel in place currently that continuously works to convert new subscribers into paying customers?

If you currently have a low level program created and available for purchase on your website, this could be an easy addition to boost this income stream.

Step 1:

Make sure your free opt in gift (the gift you use to entice people to give you their name and email) is in some way connected to the program you want to offer.

Example: How to Lower Cholesterol in 8 Simple Steps is an opt in gift. It is a natural entry point that acts as a teaser for the program Heart Health Made Easy.

If your free gift does not tie in well with your program, consider creating a new free gift to make this function well.
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5 Top Tips for Managing Email

By Lisa Nelson  |  Business Manager

This guest post was originally published by Tracey Lawton at Business Success Strategies.

Managing Email

When I asked my subscribers recently what their biggest office headache is, email is right up there with the rest of them! Comments such as:

“Emails – yikes!”

“Responding to emails”

“Managing email”

“Email overload”

Sound familiar?

Technology is a wonderful thing – it allows us to work virtually, from anywhere in the world, and makes our lives easier. However, it can also hinder us, and this is particularly true in the case of emails.

Every day we are bombarded with hundreds of emails, only a small percentage of which are necessary. Spam filters are great at filtering most of the unwanted emails but a small amount do get through, adding to the number we have to sift through!

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Content Is Crucial: You Can’t Monetize From Obscurity

By Lisa Nelson  |  Content Marketing, Marketing

This guest post was originally published by Ursula Jorch at Work Alchemy.

Content MarketingIncome in your business is built on the relationships you cultivate and nurture with your clients and prospects. When people know, like, and trust you, they start to buy.

One important way to keep those relationships growing and to start new relationships is to provide great content and spread the word.

You may have heard the marketing expression, ‘content is king’. There’s a lot of truth in that: great content draws people and keeps them engaged with you.

In your business, you’re on a great adventure. You’re learning and exploring new things all the time. If you share that experience with your audience, you’ll bring them in on the adventure!

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Develop a Content Marketing Mindset

By Lisa Nelson  |  Marketing, Project Management

This guest post was originally published by Jen Levitz at Connect with Your Client.

Content Marketing Mindset

Today, marketing really is all about online content. It doesn’t matter what type of business you have, marketing online is going to be more lucrative than marketing offline.

Most people don’t run to the phone book anymore when looking for a business. Instead, they look for a business online. And then in addition to that, they ask their friends online, and do a lot of research online before making their purchasing choices. Whether you have an online business or an offline business, this advice will increase your sales exponentially.

Build Your Credibility

The first step toward developing a content marketing mindset involves using the online world to build up your credibility. Use your blog, release white papers, and participate in social media and more to ensure that your reputation is well represented online. Perfect every social media profile and don’t start an account unless you are willing to keep it up to date at least weekly.

Seek Out Thought Leadership

Getting to know thought leaders in your industry can actually rub off on you and make you into a though leader – eventually. Find and follow thought leaders in your industry, comment on their blogs, offer donated original content, review their products, and ask them to review theirs. Interview them on a podcast. Do what you need to do in order to become part of their circle.
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  • Are you losing dollars and missing opportunities?

    As a project manager, I take the day-day project management pieces off my clients plate, freeing up their time to convert new clients, create new programs, and frankly...just show up and do what they’re good at.

2 Factors for a List Building Telesummit

By Lisa Nelson  |  Marketing, Project Management

2 Factors for a List Building Summit

SUCCESS FACTOR #1: SPEAKER PROMOTION

By and far, speaker promotion is at the top of this list. The impact of the other factors is not nearly as great.

When hosting a summit, speaker promotion is the key for getting individuals to opt in to your event. Let me tell you now, social media promo does not convert as well as a solo email. A newsletter highlight for your event does not convert as well as a solo email. A solo email is very important. You will have speakers say they cannot send a solo email. You may have to pass on having that speaker participate. Yes, there are exceptions to the rule. Let’s say it’s a really big name speaker and simply having them participate would be a major draw for your audience. I can’t emphasize enough that this is the exception, not the rule.
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  • Are you losing dollars and missing opportunities?

    As a project manager, I take the day-day project management pieces off my clients plate, freeing up their time to convert new clients, create new programs, and frankly...just show up and do what they’re good at.

3 Scheduling Tools to Efficiently Schedule Appointments

By Lisa Nelson  |  Project Management

scheduling-tools

As both your team and client load grow with your business, you quickly waste too much time in sending emails back and forth scheduling appointments.

Here are 3 scheduling tools to consider incorporating into your business.

  1. Doodle – When you have multiple parties needing to coordinate a meeting date/time, you can use doodle to poll everyone. You select date/times that work for you and send a link to your doddle poll to all other team members. You can quickly determine which date/time everyone can make. Doodle integrates with MeetMe mentioned below.

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  • Are you losing dollars and missing opportunities?

    As a project manager, I take the day-day project management pieces off my clients plate, freeing up their time to convert new clients, create new programs, and frankly...just show up and do what they’re good at.

5 Steps To Effectively Use Content Marketing to Grow Your Business

By Lisa Nelson  |  Marketing, Social Media

5 Steps To Effectively Use Content Marketing to Grow Your Business

1. Know Who You Want to Attract
Before you can create content that appeals to your target market (and potential clients), you need to know what they are struggling with, what they want to know, and how they want it. Do they want to read, listen, watch, etc? (Always good to simply ask your current clients and subscribers to learn the answer.) Once you know what they want and how they want it…deliver. If you seek clients dealing with food allergies, provide content relevant to this audience. Don’t be all over the place in your content generation…one day food allergies, the next about dieting, and a third about foods to reduce stress. Your target audience is dealing with food allergies, be consistent in what you right about to highlight yourself as someone who specializing in this area.

2. Be consistent with your publishing.
Certain pieces of content imply different levels of consistency when it comes to creating and delivering content. How often you want to publish may impact the form of content marketing that will work best for you. For example, consistency is expected with blogs, newsletters, magazines, and podcasting. Consistency is wise, but not required when it comes to videos, ebooks, webinars, and infographics. If you know you will be inconsistent, go with content where consistency does not hinder results, such as guest blog posting.
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Did your business do better this year than last year? Monitor your business analytics.

By Lisa Nelson  |  Business Manager, Website Analytics

business analytics

At the end of every year, I look back at my business stats and compare how my business did this year versus the previous year. This allows me to identify if my business is growing and meeting my goals or if I need to shift the plan for next year.

I encourage you to step back and review your business stats.

What stats to monitor and how?

The easiest way to monitor your stats is to set up a spreadsheet…I actually encourage you to do this monthly or quarterly, but for the example here we’ll just cover annual.

All right, I’ve opened up my tracking spreadsheet so I can share with you exactly what it is I monitor and you can use this as an example to identify what you should be monitoring.

Website visitors
I use google analytics to monitor how much traffic my website receives. The number I monitor are the unique “users” and not overall visits which could be repeat individuals….or myself.

List size
I use Ontraport for list management, so I collect the total number of subscribers on my list and compare to the number last year. I’ve kept stats since 2008, so I actually compare data over the past seven years and can also look at list growth rate. Is my list size increasing at a faster rate than previous years or about the same…or slower…not what I’d want to see.

Unsubscribes
I also look at total unsubscribe numbers from year to year. I don’t get too wrapped up in people unsubscribing. If you are doing adequate promotion of your services (you have to promote if you want to make any sales) you will have people unsubscribe. That being said, I like to have an idea if unsubscribe numbers are outside the norm and if there might be a particular reason why.

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Are you monitoring your business stats?

By Lisa Nelson  |  Project Management

business-statsAt the end of every year, I look back at my business stats and compare how my business did this year versus the previous year. This allows me to identify if my business is growing and meeting my goals or if I need to shift the plan for next year.

I encourage you to step back and review your business stats.

What stats to monitor and how?

The easiest way to monitor your stats is to set up a spreadsheet…I actually encourage you to do this monthly or quarterly, but for the example here we’ll just cover annual.

All right, I’ve opened up my tracking spreadsheet so I can share with you exactly what it is I monitor and you can use this as an example to identify what you should be monitoring.

Continue Reading…

  • Are you losing dollars and missing opportunities?

    As a project manager, I take the day-day project management pieces off my clients plate, freeing up their time to convert new clients, create new programs, and frankly...just show up and do what they’re good at.

Does your brand represent your business and you the way it needs to?

By Lisa Nelson  |  Marketing, Website

A brand is more than your logo. Your brand is the experience your customers have with you and your business that leads them to buy. Your brand is determined by the reason or reasons why you do what you do…your values and beliefs.

This in turn influences everything encompassing your business, including the visual aspect of your business. Your logo, your colors, your website layout, your handouts, your fonts, your image choices, your communication style, etc.

A clearly defined brand will allow you to more easily connect with your target client and make it easy for them to say “yes” to working with you.

It’s time for a rebrand.

I started the Health Practices Online branch of my business back in 2010. Businesses naturally evolve and mine has changed significantly in the past five years…in ways I love! I’m long overdue for my visual brand to catch up to the service and experience I actually provide to clients.

Creativity and flushing out ideas from a different point of view….not exactly my strengths. Do you remember Kristen Domingue from the September event Your Wellness Business: From Practice to Profit? Happy to say I signed up with one of her programs to receive one-on-one insight into the changes I needed to make with my visual brand to better connect with my ideal client.

My education and background stems from being a dietitian. I worked hard to obtain my dietetic registration and I’m proud to be a part of the health field. It’s a natural fit for a significant number of my clients to also be health professionals. However, a majority of my clients do not come from a health profession.

I’m blessed that my client roster fills mostly via word of mouth referrals and returning clients. But imagine the impression someone gets when they visit my website or receive my newsletter and they do not work in the field of health. It screams THIS IS NOT FOR YOU!

Hence, the reason it’s time to rebrand to ensure I connect with both health and wellness professionals, as well as some of the other industry I enjoy serving.

The rebranding process.

Have you ever done a rebrand? I’ve been in business several years now and didn’t really know the right way to figure out the branding piece. I want to give you a highlight of the steps in Kristen’s branding process so if you are in a similar position you have some guidance on where to start.

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