Stay up-to-date via RSS!

I remember the days when I thought marketing was a scary, if not downright dirty, word. Since the media influences so much of the way we look at the world, it’s easy for us to put marketing in the box for people who are ‘different’ than we are. It’s as if they have been blessed with some type of magical ability that resembles something like the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter. Once you open your business, you’re either sorted into the House of Marketing or the House of Fear of Marketing.

However, marketing is a part of our life that we just have to accept. Even better, we need to learn to enjoy it because it’s up to all of us to market ourselves day in and day out - and not just our businesses.

From my own experience with marketing and breaking out of my comfort zone, I have learned 3 very important attitudes that I need to embody if I want my marketing to be successful and not be so darn afraid all the time.

1. Patience

Results from marketing never happen as quickly as you want. If you’re writing articles, blogging, putting up videos, or being active on Twitter, there is that hope that you’re going to wake up in the morning with tons of emails requesting consultations. Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen that way. But it’s nothing to be scared of either.

When you put a marketing message out into the world, you’re investing in your business. It may not always take money - but it certainly will take time. However, when you start to find out what works and what doesn’t, you’re earning back your time by having something you can measure. Maybe your articles won’t be successful for you until weeks later. Or it may take months until your video brings in a client who swears by your services and refers new clients to you all the time. When you realize it works like this, there’s nothing to fear.

2. Confidence

As a coach, you’re offering potential clients services they need to be even more successful. It’s up to you to fully realize this and flood your marketing with this realization. Every day when you wake up, remind yourself that you’re in a position that helps people remove all the blocks they’ve formed in the past while helping them see the path for the future. This is a huge benefit and addition to anyone’s life.

When you have confidence in what you do, finding creative ways to market your business without fear come easily to you. A healthy dose of confidence will help you put up that YouTube video you’ve been wanting to do or to finally get that new digital information product that you’ve been working on published.

3. Service

Ultimately as a coach, you’re providing services where you have to give a large part of yourself to your clients. So, it shouldn’t be too hard for you to create marketing materials that can bring more clients into your practice. Why is this? Because you embody the mindset of what make marketing works. The number one mistake people make is they think “How can I write an article?” or “How can I create a video?” but they should be thinking “How can I write an article that helps? or “How can I create a video that solves a problem?”

When you look at creating tools for marketing based off the right types of questions, you see it as just being in service to other people rather than what you used to think marketing was about.

Bonus Tip

Working with an Internet Marketing virtual assistant can not only take away your fear of marketing but also your concerns about growing your business online. I’d love to talk to you today about growing your business online. Click the Book Now button below so we can get to know each other.

I’m a self confessed self development fanatic. I love listening to lectures, attending teleseminars, and settling down with a book for hours. But I also spend just as much time implementing everything I’m learning.

We’re so fortunate to have so many training resources available online to grow your business. But, I’m going to be honest here, the last thing you need is another training course. If you haven’t implemented anything you’ve learned, you’ve wasted a whole lot of money.

The funny thing is, it’s this same group of people who will say that it costs too much to hire an internet marketing virtual assistant.

And then I figured out the answer why.

Internet marketing trainers are awesome at selling the sizzle.

Virtual assistants are only good at selling the steak.

When you go onto a preview call with an Internet marketing coach for their latest program, they’re going to share their own successes with you. It’s a wonderful thing, don’t get me wrong. But if they’re only sharing their success and not how their systems have helped their students succeed, then it’s time to be wary if you’re buying sizzle or steak. All they’re doing is selling you potential - something that a lot of students don’t even end up implementing.

So that’s why I’m writing this note to you. Ask yourself “When am I going to stop training and actually start implementing?”

Before you whip out your credit card for another course, you have to be merciless about asking what you’re actually going to get out of the class. Will you have an actual addition to your business or are you just getting excited about something that ultimately leaves you disappointed because you have no clue how to implement it?

Just a quick example. There’s so many coaches who talk about building an email list. But have you even started doing it? What does your opt in page look like? Have you been testing different headlines? Even better, are you modeling your own opt in pages and headlines after the ones who are selling you the sizzle and not the steak?

Think about this. Then, I invite you to do one of two things. Leave a comment saying how much you loved (or hated) this post. Or book a consultation now. I don’t have much sizzle to give you - but I can cook up a darn good steak.

As an Internet Marketing virtual assistant, I have the fortune to offer a wide variety of services that help coaches get their business online. But nothing excites me more than seeing a coach create their first information product. I know I shouldn’t pick my favorite service among my offerings - but I can’t help it! When you publish your first product, you start to look at your entire practice in a different light.

But as with many other worthy pursuits, creating information products is ignored because you may perceive it as taking too long or being much too difficult. Well, here’s the good news - your first product can be created in 3 weeks or less.

Here’s the best news - I’m going to give you 5 ideas that you can start putting into action today.

E-Books:

Choose one of your clients that you’ve helped significantly. Ask them if you could write up their situation as a case study. If they say yes, write up the case study and then give pointers of how your future readers can use that information in their own life. Type it up and then you have the makings of your first e-book. Don’t make it more complicated than it is.

CD Product

Most CDs have 12 tracks or so on them, right? Choose 12 principles that align with your coaching practice. Record yourself talking about those 12 principles, your experiences with them, and a few case studies. Then, you can work with someone to get the CD files uploaded to Kunaki.com where you can buy copies for under $2.

DVD Product

Next time you give an in person workshop, use it as an opportunity to record yourself. The longer the workshop the better because then you can break this down into a multiple DVD product. Just like with the CD, you can also upload the files to Kunaki.com and order the DVDs as you need them.

Audio Workshop

One of the great things about the Internet is all the free stuff you can find! One good example is the availability of bridge lines to hold conferences. I found a great website, Rondee.com, that will schedule and record the conference for you. Invite some of your clients to the workshop, record it, and then sell it as an MP3 or a collection of CDs.

Interview Product

Finally, if you want to combine all of these together, interview a group of your clients who have seen success through your methods. You can take these interviews and create an e-book, CD, DVD, and Audio workshop from them. The interviews will give you tons of content to pull from to grow your product into a high ticket item.

Interested in learning more about how an Internet Marketing virtual assistant can help you create best selling information products? Click the button below that says Book Now so we can schedule a FREE 15-20 minute consultation today. We’ll work out your next steps to growing your business online.

Making the jump to hiring an Internet Marketing virtual assistant isn’t always the easiest one for coaches. To make it easier, I wanted to share a few of my thoughts about some of the attributes of coaches that I’ve met who desperately need a virtual assistant.

1. You’re Not Earning Any Passive Revenue

In order for your practice to grow, you have to start creating digital information products as soon as possible. There’s no easier way for you to earn multiple streams of coaching income. But if you’re too overwhelmed with the amount of clients you have, this usually goes on the back burner even though it’s just as important. Let’s face it - if you’re even thinking about money while helping your clients, you can’t be there for them 100% like they need you to be.

Hiring a virtual assistant makes your wishes of creating products to earn passive revenue a reality. They can take over the bulk of the processes required to get your digital products up and running.

Did you know that all it takes is a few interviews with your most successful clients to create a product?

2. You’ve Never Made A Website Update

A big mistake I see many coaches making is that they think they can build their website and then people will come. Even worse, they’ll build the website and when no one comes, they think it’s because online marketing is ineffective. Not at all! Many changes need to be made on a website to optimize it so people can easily find it online.

If you don’t even know what types of changes need to be made, that’s when you need to hire an Internet Marketing virtual assistant. Sure, you could learn it yourself. But then, you’re taking away your time from either being with your clients or working on projects to generate passive income.

By the way, when hiring an Internet Marketing virtual assistant, you want to ask them what their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experience is. If you find one who understands it and knows how to put it into action, don’t let that VA get away.

3. You’re Not Producing Content

Coaches, you are so lucky! Because you’re working face to face with interesting people all day, you’re a fountain of potential content. Anytime you help someone, that information can be turned into articles, blog posts, podcasts, videos, e-books and so on. You have all the potential to create massive amounts of content, something which most Internet business owners struggle with constantly.

But if you’re still living in the getting paid for your time world, you’re probably ignoring this very important business building activity. An Internet Marketing virtual assistant can put you on a schedule to create content consistently (yeah, I love the alliteration too) and then submit it for you so you can start building your online presence.

4. You’re Busy But Don’t Feel Like You’re Growing

This concept is definitely the more philosophical of the bunch but it needs to be said. If you’re a coach and experiencing this, the source of it is your limited beliefs about how a business grows. You probably hold onto to the thought that to be successful, you have to do everything yourself. By the skin of your teeth kind of thing, right? That work ethic has gone out the window though. A thriving business requires you to eliminate those thoughts immediately.

The first step to eliminating those limiting beliefs is learning to ask for help. Most of the time, you can even go to a VA, tell them what you want to do but don’t know how to do it, and then they can give you an action plan for your next step. This is necessary if you want to go from being busy to actually growing.

5. You Have No E-Commerce Functions On Your Website

If you have ever taken a business building class for your coaching practice, I’m sure you have learned about e-commerce and making your website one of your passive income streams. Again, this is one of those things that coaches say that they’ll get to but ultimately, they are more attached to the being busy than the actual business.

Shopping carts, autoresponders, and etc are absolutely essential for being successful online. There’s no way around them. If you want to focus more on your business, working with a VA can get your e-commerce functions running sooner than you think.

Getting To The Action Phase

One thing I love about interacting with coaches is that they constantly help people with their limiting beliefs. However, coaches themselves are far from exempt from having thoughts that prevent their business from growing. Ask most of the successful coaches and they’ll tell you that they finally stopped getting in their own way by working with someone who know exactly where to go next.

Interested in learning more about how an Internet Marketing virtual assistant can help grow your coaching business? Click the button on the right that says Book Now so we can schedule a FREE 15-20 minute consultation today. We’ll work out your next steps to growing your business online.

If you’re a coach of any sort, you’ve probably been told over and over again to “Stop trading your time for money and start building some passive revenue!” And by now, you probably know that digital products are the best way to do this. Even with this knowledge, you still probably face the nightmare of implementation.

That’s where an internet marketing virtual assistant comes into play.

The truth of the matter is that you don’t need to worry about the implementation. Your role as a coach is to come up with incredible content that helps the most amount of people as possible. There’s always going to be people to help you with the tech stuff. However, your own unique outlook and experience helping your clients can’t be duplicated.

With that in mind, here are 5 information products services that an Internet Marketing virtual assistant can offer you.

1. E-Book Editing and Proofreading

One of the first information products that you should look into creating is an e-book. However, the writing part is hard enough if you’re overly worried with how to make the text be attractive and readable or if your grammar is okay. The secret to this is partnering with a virtual assistant so that you can just sit back and let the words flow.

Then, your VA can take all your words and organize, edit, and proofread them to create something useful and profitable for you.

2. Outsourcing Management

To make the launch of your information products successful, there’s many pieces that need to be pulled together. Perhaps two of the most important pieces to manage are an effective copywriter and a knockout graphic designer. But if you’re not used to communicating your ideas about what your goals are for the project, managing these freelancers can be a challenging time.

A skilled virtual assistant knows how to transform your vision into reality by playing the role of project manager who just reports to you for your approval.

3. Sales Page Formatting

Once you have your graphics created and sales copy written, you need a killer sales page filled with testimonial graphics and eye catching headlines to entice potential customers into buying. Formatting a sales page is an art form in itself. When you work with an Internet Marketing virtual assistant, you get to use the skills of someone who has “been there, done that” when it comes to sales pages.

That way, you get a much higher Return on Investmentt than if you tried to do it yourself and wasted hours of time you could have been creating more content.

4. Shopping Cart Setup

Now that your information product is created, you need a way to get it into the hands of your customers and get your money. To do this, you’re going to need an e-commerce system like 1ShoppingCart or KickStartCart. Do you know how much goes into setting this up? You’d be surprised. You have to get all the payment systems set up, a way to deliver the digital products, as well as making sure your customers know exactly how to get their products (sparing you from customer service nightmares!).

Try doing this yourself and again, you’re wasting hours upon hours that could be better spent elsewhere.

5. Affiliate Program Management

Just like you’re looking to create passive income, the same thing can be said about your clients. If you’ve been coaching for any amount of time, you know that your best referrals are going to come from your most satisfied clients. An Internet marketing virtual assistant can help you set up an affiliate program and connect with your clients to teach them how to promote your new information product.

Oh - and your VA can also spare you from the hassle of having to handle the payment schedule for your affiliates too.

Coaches - have you created an information product before? What was your experience like?

Virtual Assistants - what roles have you played in helping your clients create information products?