How connected are you to your clients? How about your potential clients? Face-to-face conversations are always good, but connecting with people online can take your business to a whole new level. Don’t miss out on your chance to capitalize on the valuable expertise you have by connecting with your clients online.
Here are 9 rules for using the Web that will ultimately help you turn a profit:
1. Share content you’re interested in. What do you read about in your free time? What are people always asking you about? These are the types of ideas you should consider building your content around. If you’re excited about it, your audience will be, too.
2. Determine the best medium to package your content. Can you make words come to life on paper? Do you have a great speaking voice that will turn into an amazing audio course? Do you come to life on video? Regardless of your method of delivery, keep in mind that different people will learn in different ways. You can always repurpose your content by writing it once, recording the audio and turning the audio into a video course.
3. Capture their contact information. While providing an endless array of free content on your website is a great idea, the only way you are going to be able to monetize your content is if you ask your “friends” or visitors to provide you with their name and email address in exchange for the value you are providing them. No matter what type of content you give them in whatever type of format you choose, make sure they are going to hugely benefit from it.
4. Build a relationship with your audience. Now that you have their contact information, the way you can begin to build a relationship with people is by delivering small pieces of educational content over a period of time, with the goal of continuing to build value and deepen your relationship with them. If you provide valuable information, your audience will start to trust you—when they trust you, they are going to be more willing to buy from you, if not now, at some point in the future.
5. Offer your product or program. As part of the relationship-building process, offer three to five pieces of value-added content. After that, offer your information for sale. You can even position it along the lines of, “If you’ve liked all the free content I’ve been sending you, you’re going to LOVE this product/program/service. Check it out HERE.”
6. Be prepared when they don’t buy (because most won’t). The average conversion rate for cold traffic is 3 percent within the first week of offering a product, program or service. Does that mean that the other 97 percent of your audience doesn’t like you? Does it mean they don’t like your content? Not necessarily. Generally speaking, when people don’t buy your services, they aren’t sure that the content you are providing is going to help them solve their problems. If you sell (1) the right stuff, (2) to the right people, (3) at the right time, (4) and at the right price, you will be successful.
7. Start creating products and programs that will deliver your message. In the world of content delivery, there are only two main types of information products: the free content to build buzz and the fee content to build a business. Free content includes videos, blogs, two- to three-page newsletters and short audio courses you use to give people an introduction to you. Fee content is that which you believe your audience—based on their needs and your expertise—will buy.
8. Build a website that provides tremendous value. While brochure-style websites used to be an effective way to share your expertise, in today’s content-driven world, when people have problems, they want products or services that are going to help solve them. Become a problem solver!
9. Take your time (but get cracking!) There are a variety of courses, books and live workshops that will provide you with ALL of the tools you need to build a completely virtual information business. Don’t try to do everything at once. Start with ONE product/program/service that most inspires you, work on that one idea first (book, audio, video, etc.), get it running smoothly, and then move on to the next one.
Interested in learning more great tips to expand your business? Check out our ACE webinar, Using the Internet to Grow Your Fitness Business on October 24, 2012, at 11 a.m. PST.