Tom Buford Marketing

I’m having a great time with the new blog and will still be covering a lot of information on how to Charge What You Deserve and GET IT in your business, but lately I’ve been enjoying sharing a lot of content on how you can effectively market your products and programs.  SOOO, is that sounds groovy to you and your biz, please stop by and check out the new site

Peace out
Tom

Hey there.  I just created a video that covers some steps to get traffic to your
products and programs so that you can increase your sales.  I hope you enjoy!

I want to ask a big favor too.  After you are done watching, leave a comment
below and let me know what you think.  I would also love to know what else
you need help with.  Thanks!

Be sure to leave a comment and let me know what else you want help with.

Cheers

Tom

Are you ready to start guest-blogging your way to more subscribers? That’s today’s topic.

If you’ve been on the internet for any length of time, you know that a blog is an ongoing online journal on a certain topic, which usually invites interaction with readers in the form of comments on the blog posts. Many blogs allow or even encourage guest posts from other writers in their industry.

By becoming a guest blogger on a popular blog, you can get additional subscribers in two main ways:

1. It increases your trust factor. In order for people to give you their name and email, they need to trust you. As a guest blogger on the blog of someone they already know, like and trust, you have the opportunity to have a little bit of that trust rub off on you. This vote of confidence goes a long way in gaining the trust of potential new subscribers to your email list.

2. It extends your reach. By guest blogging you significantly increase your center of influence, beyond those you normally reach.

If you want to have success with guest blogging you need to understand the target market of the blog you’re visiting. Your posts should connect with the audience and offer them value. Do this by studying the blog  – what have readers responded to in the past? What topics are typically covered? How long are the posts? Do they include multiple images or none at all? You want to look like you belong, while still offering something uniquely yours.

When trying to find blogs to guest appear at, start with who you know and who knows you. Then start looking for leaders in your field and approach them. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to secure guest-blogging spots. All bloggers need content, and it takes a lot of time and energy to create so you are providing them a service. It’s one day they don’t have to think of what to write!

Recommended Resource:

If you’d like to learn more about guest blogging – I highly recommend you check out this report:  How to Blog Tour

Once you’ve secured a blog to post on and you understand what the readers want, it’s time to sit down and write. Here are some tips:

-        Begin with the end in mind. Choose a goal for each blog post. In this course, we’re working on building your subscriber base, so your goal will be to send the readers to sign up to your email list. Think about your ‘irresistible offer’ and work your way backwards from there.

-        Write useful information, but don’t give it all away. Remember that your goal is to bring them back to your own website to sign up for your list. Craft your post so that the reader is impressed with the information, but left wanting to learn more. Then create your offer to send them exactly where they’re dying to go.

-        Respect and thank the blogger. Do everything you can to make your visit is a pleasant one for the host and the readers. That means offering to add the post yourself, thanking them publicly for accepting your post, promoting your post via Twitter & Facebook, and anything else you can think of to be a very welcome guest. That way you’ll be welcomed back again, anytime!

Guest-blogging is one of the best ways to reach a targeted market.  Try it out and you’ll see that building an email list doesn’t have to be complicated or confusing – you simply need to take action!

ACTION STEP:
So right now, make a list of five sites you could approach to guest-blog.  Then go do it.  Yes, right now!

Cheers
Tom

PS. If you’re thinking about guest blogging be sure to check out this course. It’ll save you time and get you better results: How to Blog Tour

One of the most effective ways to set yourself free from trading dollars for time is to begin establishing your fees based on value. At the end of the day that is precisely what service professionals are being hired for; to offer value to their clients.

So why is it that we set fees based on the number of hours that we work or sessions that we provide? Because that’s what we see others doing. But that’s NOT what the most successful coaches out there are doing. They are charging what they deserve by setting fees based on the value that they deliver.

Alan Weiss, business guru and author of Million Dollar Consulting, describes it like this:

“The secrets of receiving high fees are:

1. Base fees on the client’s perceived value of your assistance.

2. Ask for them.”

Nothing more.

Review and add to your “value inventory” all the time. These are the things that you need to be focusing on. It’s not about how many sessions a coach offers her clients; it’s about the results that she delivers. I can’t stress this enough!

Here are four things to keep in mind when establishing fees based on value:

1. Take time to nurture the relationship with your clients and prospects.

2. Never feel obligated to share details about your business such as the number of days in the week or hours in the day that you spend working.

3. Don’t blurt your fees too soon.

4. Don’t negotiate your fees without removing value. This may sound cold, but it really isn’t. Once somebody sees that you are willing to go down on yours fees, they immediately devalue your service and feel they can get away with it again. This doesn’t serve you or your clients.

Be sure to leave a comment below and let me know what you are doing to Charge What You Deserve.

Cheers

Tom

I just wanted to wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving Weekend!

I hope that whatever you’re doing and wherever you are that you have a great weekend and enjoy time with friends, family or taking time to be with yourself!

Even if you don’t celebrate the holiday I want to let you know that I am thankful for YOU and your taking the time to read my emails, listen to my calls and, in general, put up with my eccentricities

Cheers
Tom

It’s like pulling teeth to convince some service providers that they NEED to narrow their niche. I understand that it can seem very scary at first, but service providers such as coaches, trainers, speakers and consultants need to recognize that they can’t work with everybody. And, in fact, they will be able to actually help MORE people by narrowing their niche. One of the best marketing tips that I ever got was that I needed to make my market smaller.

Here are 5 reasons why it’s important to narrow your niche if you’re a service provider.

1. You’ll know what to sell.
To be successful, you need to create solutions to urgent problems. You can’t identify a market’s urgent problems if your market is “everybody.” But these problems become very easy to identify once you begin to narrow your niche.

2. You’ll know HOW to market.
Every market will have a different set of emotional “hot buttons” and triggers. They will also identify with different types of marketing approaches. This is a great reason to narrow your niche. Once you learn exactly who your market is, you will know exactly how to market to them.

3. You’ll know WHERE to find your audience.
Trying to solve all problems for all people creates an obvious problem: where do you begin? When you narrow your niche, you will know exactly where to find them. They will be hanging out on very specific forums, blogs, social media sites, networking groups, etc. One of the greatest challenges that many business owners face is knowing exactly how to find their market. Fine tuning your “who” will make the “where” a simple question to answer.

4. You’ll spend less money on marketing.
Since you now know exactly who you want to work with and where they’re hanging out, doesn’t it seem fair that you can expect to spend less on your marketing budget to get in touch with them? Yup! This is a great way to really get the most bang for your marketing buck.

5. You’ll be able to work less and make more.
Wow…now that’s a good reason to narrow your niche! And it’s a valid reason to boot. The more you can narrow your niche, the more efficient you can work. Your thoughts, energy and marketing ideas can go into “ultra laser-focus” mode, making you a lean, mean, money-making machine. OK, no more metaphors, but you get the picture.

So, what can you do with this new inspiration to narrow your niche?

Action step:
Take out a sheet of paper and write down exactly who your ideal clients are and what they need MOST that you can supply. Answer the following questions:

Who are they?
What do they like?
Where do they hang out to learn or gather information?
What hobbies do they have?
What’s their biggest fear?
What’s their biggest desire?

Take 10 minutes to answer these 6 questions and you’ll see that your marketing vision will become much clearer.

Service professionals and other business owners often struggle with two important details in their businesses:

1. Having a product to sell
2. Having an audience to sell TO

Creating a simple expert interview series is a great way to kill two birds with one stone, metaphorically speaking of course.

But first, what is an expert interview series?

An expert interview series is simply a compilation of audio interviews with experts on one specific topic or a variety of topics that, when combined, create a valuable information product.  For instance, the first audio product that I created for my company, Charge What You Deserve, was a compilation of expert interviews on the topic of fee-setting and how service professionals can actually attract better, more eager clients if they start charging more for their current services.

I combined these audio interviews with word-for-word transcriptions and a short outline into a valuable, best-selling information product.  By the way, all of the interviews were done over the telephone.

An expert interview series can come in physical form, such as CDs and a transcription workbook, or it can be delivered in a digital format, such as MP3 audios and PDF workbook.

So, as you can probably guess, the act of conducting and compiling the interviews yields a very valuable product that can now be sold.

The next step is to build a list of prospects who are eager to buy the interview series.  This is actually very simple if you plan ahead and arrange for your experts to share your project with their “fans”, newsletter subscribers, blog readers, social media followers, etc. by sending them to your website for a sample of the interviews.  Then you just need a way of capturing contact information, such as a simple opt-in or sign-up box, in return for the sample you provide.

Don’t let the technical aspects trip you up.  The entire “flow” of building a list of prospects, creating an interview series, and generating an income from it is actually quite simple and the project can be very rewarding and a lot of fun.  This doesn’t, and shouldn’t,  have to take months to complete either.  The key is setting the intention and moving forward.

Hopefully this has helped to inspire you to create an expert interview series of your own.  Remember, the content that you share can be life-changing for those who are ready to receive it.

If you would like to learn more about how to pick a hot topic, find your experts, and create a valuable information product you will be interested in the Interview Wealth Home Study System.  You can get all of the details here: Interview Series Profits

Getting traffic to your website is the lifeblood to your business if you want to make money online.  There are so many ways of doing this that it can be pretty overwhelming.  I want to share 3 ways that I’ve used to get quality traffic to my website.  By quality, I mean having people visit my website who are actually interested in being there.  You can buy, swap and trade traffic all day long, but that does NOT mean that it is quality traffic.

1. Write Content-Rich Articles

The entire internet is driven by information.  This is what makes article marketing such a powerful tool to generate traffic for your online business.  Even if you own a brick and mortar company, you can still leverage the internet to generate a ton of business and stand out from the crowd.

Write short (350-500 words) content-rich articles and submit them to EzineArticles.com.  Search engines love EzineArticles.com because they actually have human beings who check articles to ensure they are unique and relevant.  You can simply add a link to your website and a reason for visiting in the resource box that’s found at the end of each article.

2. Social Media

I know this isn’t the first time that you’ve heard this, but social media is an incredible way to get traffic to your website and/or business in record time.  Submitting articles is very effective, but it takes a bit of time and consistency before you see measured results.  With social media, you can set up Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts in a few minutes, start connecting with like-minded people and get traffic to your website in a jiffy.

As with article marketing, be sure to give people a reason to visit your site, such as a free report, list of valuable resources, coupon for a one-time-only discount, etc.  Here in the internet marketing ranks we call this an “irresistible offer” or an “ethical bribe”.  Whatever you call it, it’s effective.

3. Video Marketing

Don’t worry…you don’t have to be Lawrence Olivier to create effective videos that will begin driving tons of traffic to your site.  In fact, in some markets being too “polished” might even work against you.  The idea is to create a quick tip that you can record with a video camera (your digital camera is probably sufficient) or screen-capture and share it on Youtube.  Once again, be sure to remind viewers to head over to your website for your juicy, irresistible offer.

All three of these tips are free and will work.  However, you must be consistent.  Here’s a quick formula for being consistent without spending countless hours doing the above.

Step #1: Write a short, informative article at least 2 times per week.  Once you get the hang of it you shouldn’t spend more than about 20-30 minutes per article.

Step #2: Create a quick video tutorial using the content from your article and submit it to Youtube.

Step #3: Share a link to your Youtube video on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

That’s it.

I hope this helps you get quality traffic to your website!

I’d love to read your comments, so be sure to share your thoughts below.

If you have a great process or program to help a client achieve a specific goal thenthe money will seldom be the REAL reason they don’t move forward with you. The fact is that most people can come up with the money if they are ready to commit.

What REALLY prevents people from working with you is their lack of confidence that they can actually achieve what it is that they want to achieve.  Sometimes people have been burned before or maybe they’ve struggled their entire life trying to achieve this goal without any success.

As the coach or trainer it’s up to you to alleviate this fear and lack of confidence.

Here are a couple things that you can do:

Be honest and let them know that REAL work is involved in achieving their goal. You aren’t offering some “get rich quick” scheme or the promise to safely lose 100 pounds without having to exercise or improve their diet.  The fact of the matter is that a LOT of people have been sold into believing all of this before and there is a good reason that they are unwilling to really invest in achieving their goals.  Unfortunately, a lot of these people continue to invest on the low end with the same results they’ve always gotten…NONE!

Offer to work with them until they achieve their goal…provided that they DO THE WORK! Your clients MUST be responsible for their own actions.  My good friend and colleague, Suzanne Evans, told me once that you are responsible TO your clients, not FOR them.  Provide your services with the utmost integrity and you are doing your part.  The client is responsible for putting what you share into action.  If you truly believe that your clients can achieve great things by working with you then there should be NO fear in offering this type of guarantee.

So the next time a prospect tells you “I can’t afford that” be sure that they know what the price is for NOT doing anything and let them know that they CAN achieve this goal; but they won’t do it by doing what they’ve been doing in the past.

Now, go Charge What You Deserve.

Peace
Tom

Here are the details if you’d like to listen to the call.

3pm EST/Noon PST

http://AttendThisEvent.com/?eventid=11374176

The call this afternoon will be about how you can have the confidence and knowledge to

Charge What You Deserve and Get It, but I HIGHLY recommend checking out Lou’s

information if you’re ready to take your marketing up 10 notched by using online

video.

Cheers

Tom