How To Dominate A Niche – Go Bowling!
By · CommentsHave you ever wondered why they don’t put the pins straight across the lane in bowling? …
They don’t because it’s hard to knock the pins down when they are straight across.
But what happens when you arrange them in the bowling pin format you’ve seen, with one pin in the front, two behind it, and three behind that? …
With that set up, you can knock them all down quickly if you hit the first pin right.
So, what about your business?
When targeting your market, are you putting the pins straight across and making it harder for yourself?
If you find that you’re having a hard time connecting with your customers, that the response to your message and offers is lukewarm at best, if you have a hard time charging what you’re worth and getting it, then you may have set yourself up for this.
There is an easy solution … go bowling!
Ok, so by now I hope you know that “everyone” is not your customer. It’s been hammered into you that you should focus, focus, focus on a specific group of people that you can help best. That part is true, but still I find that most people are left with …
“How do I figure out who my target market is? Aren’t I limiting myself?”
There’s a specific way to focus on your best target market without limiting yourself.
The more specific you are with your target market, the easier it is to attract them, provide value, and get paid obscene amounts of money.
Although most businesses figure out “in general” who their target market is, they really don’t go far enough in specificity because of the fear of limiting themselves. Do you fall into that trap?
Here’s how to make it work.
- Pick your target market, be specific.
- Take that target, and break it down into three subgroups. These subgroups are going to be your initial bowling pins.
- Decide which subgroup you could impact the fastest and the most (think “low hanging fruit”). Put that one in the lead pin position.
- Of the remaining subgroups, decide which is most closely related to the first group (the greater the similarity, the better), or which is the next easiest to tackle. This becomes your pin two behind the lead pin.
- Do the same for the third subgroup.
An Example
I help “experts and service business owners” (people like you with brilliance and expertise) attract as many high-paying ideal clients as they want with clear and creative strategies. An expert is someone who makes a living with their intellectual property (what’s in their head).
But “expert” is still too broad and vague to really target, plus there aren’t really “expert’ groups that hang out together.
The solution is to break it up and turn them into bowling pins.
Three types of experts are “coaches”, “authors”, and “speakers”. Each of them is an “expert” on their topic, but they deliver their brilliance to the world differently.
Coaches like to work with people, authors like to write, and speakers like to speak to groups of people (who knew?). So, although there are similarities, there are also big differences in terms of what they want, their challenges, and what drives them.
Not only that, but they hang out together. There are many coaching associations, author groups, speaker associations, which makes them easier to reach separately than together as experts.
So not only is it easier to resonate with them separately, but they are easier to reach separately too. This is good.
Now, all we have to do is choose which one is the lead pin, the second pin, and the third pin down the left side. Which group would be your first? That’s for you to decide.
By choosing them this way, you can focus better AND you’ll be able to knock the other pins down easier too.
Action Steps
If you want to get more traction in your market, more profits in your bank account, and attract your high-paying ideal clients more easily, then do the following:
- Be Specific – Make your target market as specific as you can
- Be Even More Specific – Break it up into three subsets or microniches
- Prioritize – Pick one of those microniches to be your lead pin
- Focus – Market to your lead pin only and don’t stop until you’ve got significant traction in that lead pin before trying to add one of the other two.
Tell me how it goes!
Fear And The Meaning of Entrepreneurship
By · Comments“Everyone should become a millionaire. Not for the money,
but for who you become in the process.”
Jim Rohn
Today I’m doing something I’ve never done before.
A few weeks ago my daughter asked me “Hey Dad, would you be willing to speak to my Career class about being an Entrepreneur?” I said “Sure!” I’m always willing to support my daughter and talk about entrepreneurship to teenagers.
“But you gotta do it in French,” she said.
My gut instantly tied itself into a knot.
“Oh,” was all I could come up with at the time.
I was born and raised English, but did have the benefit of having learned how to speak French when I was younger. However, I haven’t had much chance to speak it in the last twenty years and didn’t quite have the French vocabulary for Entrepreneurship. What to do?
Bailing out would be totally justifiable. I could easily say no and no one would question it. I could save her and I the embarrassment, and save me the discomfort of speaking terribly in front of a tough audience of teenagers.
So, I did what any right-minded entrepreneur would do. I said …
“Yes. I’ll do it.”
After all, isn’t that what entrepreneurship is all about?
Entrepreneurship is a lot about doing things that we’ve never done before. We do them because we want to do them, because they’re important, and because we like the challenge that will make us grow. Entrepreneurs lead the way.
If I had said “no”, wouldn’t that have been anti-entrepreneurial?
Entrepreneurship is not just about the money. It’s about personal growth. As Jim Rohn said so brilliantly “Everyone should become a millionaire, not for the money, but for who you become in the process.”
Putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations IS the point.
So here I am, getting ready for my daughter’s class, working out my presentation, and trying to figure out the French translation to key entrepreneurial words like fun, pride, fear, risk, unknown, freedom, responsibility, change, and many more.
So the next time someone asks you to do something uncomfortable, say “Pourquoi pas?!” (Why not?!).
After all, you’re an entrepreneur.
Mark
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Update: It went well!
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7 Ways To Stop Using Numbers In Your Titles
By · CommentsHaving a great title for your blog post, article, teleseminar, or product is critical for grabbing people’s attention. After all, if people don’t notice you they won’t take the first step, everything you’ve planned after that is wasted. So, having a great title is critical.
Using numbers in the title is big these days, because it works and it’s clear (I like them), but there has to be more to life than just numbers.
Here are 7 other ways to create great titles without using numbers:
1. How To
e.g. “How To Tie Your Shoes Without Bending Over”
A classic that always works. Simple and straightforward.
2. Clear Benefits
e.g. “Win Friends And Influence People”
(A classic best-selling book that still sells well after ten million years on the book shelves.)
Just tell them what benefits they’ll get. Be clear. It works.
3. Step By Step
e.g. “Learn This Step By Step System For Tying Your Shoes Without Touching Them”
People often want the safety and predictability of step by step system that gets them a result. They don’t want to think too much, so this appeals to them.
4. Secrets
e.g. “Secrets A Monk Told Me About Tying Shoes”
Everyone likes a good secret.
5. Ask A Question
e.g. “Should You Ask Questions?”
If you ask a question, people can’t help answering it in their mind. On top of that, they’re dying to know if they got the right answer, so they’ll read further to find out.
6. Critical Mistakes To Avoid
e.g. “Critical Mistakes You Should Avoid When Creating Captivating Titles”
People always want to know what mistakes they are making or about to make.
6 ½. Personal Experiences As A Personal Interest Story
e.g. “My Jaw Dropped When I Realized This”
People love stories, especially personal interest stories.
7. Have Fun
e.g. “7 Ways To Stop Using Numbers In Your Titles” (I thought that was funny)
Don’t be serious all the time. A fun title once in a while is good for the soul.
If you’re stuck trying to come up with a great title, try these. They work.
Mark
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(c) 2010 Mark Lengies
Stop Giving Your Time Away Free!
By · CommentsIf you tend to give your time away free or at a discount … Stop doing it! There is a better way.
Don’t you hate it when prospects ask you questions, so you give, give, give your time and expertise for free, but then they say thanks and you never see them again?
If you’re like most entrepreneurs trying to get new clients, you often reduce your rate or even give your time away free just in the hope that they’ll come back for more. But it usually doesn’t work!
Why is that? …
They don’t come back because they don’t value your time or expertise. They don’t value it because you don’t value it. Stop doing that!
One of the challenges of running an expertise-based business, where you sell your time and expertise for money, is that the very nature of a service makes it really hard to acquire new clients at full rate without a few steps of pre-frame ahead of it.
The problem is that to a new person your service is invisible, nothing but a promise and a risk. There’s no way for them to know ahead of time whether you’re good or not. They can’t touch your service, hold it, or feel it. And even after they have used your service, they often still don’t know whether it was good or not (think accounting). To them, you are a risk and an unknown.
If you were them, would you pay full price? Probably not. That’s why expertise-based service businesses are often forced to spend some time up front helping new customers understand the value, and generally getting people to know them and trust them.
But this takes time, a lot of time. If you spend a half hour free (more likely one hour) with every curious person and only one in five (more likely one in ten) become a client, that’s two and a half hours for every customer you get. If you charge two hundred dollars an hour, that’s $500 of your time given away. And it’s time you give away free or at a discount. This is not a good way to go.
So what to do? … There are three solutions.
1 – The Power Of Information Products
What if there was a magic tool that would automatically attract clients, educate them about you, help them appreciate the value you offer, and build trust so that when they do call you, they are ready to get going right away and are willing you pay you what you’re worth.
How great would that be? Fantastic I say.
That tool is an information product, like a book, ebook, audio, video, special report, or combination thereof. You can quickly easily turn a small portion of your expertise into an info product.
Even if you just give the info product away, you’ll be able to attract a growing stream of high paying clients.
More importantly, once you’ve created it, you can let it do the heavy lifting without much additional time on your part, which leaves you with more income generating time.
2 – The Power Of The Group Presentation
The one time that is good to give your time away free is when you give a group presentation.
The reason this is a good thing to do is that you are building credibility and value with many people at a time rather than just one at a time. This is very scalable and allows you to multiply the value you give the world (and the value you get in return).
The key is to make sure your presentation generates at least leads, and ideally sales. This can be done online through teleseminars/webinars or offline through group presentations.
3 – Save Your 1-on-1 Time As Your Premium Offering
Don’t make your precious 1-on-1 time your loss leader. Stop giving it away free or at a discount.
Your 1-on-1 time and expertise is precious and valuable. Treat it that way. Make it exclusive, scarce, and premium priced. If you value it, they will too.
Your clients can still get your expertise at a more affordable rate through your info products and group presentations.
Conclusion
From now on, place a high value on your 1-on-1 time. Allow people to be educated by your free or lower priced information products and group presentations, so that by the time they call you for personal help they know you’re worth a lot and feel privileged to work with you.
Resource Box:
© 2009 Mark Lengies
Mark Lengies, the “Info Business Coach”, is the author of Internet Marketing Secrets. He helps coaches, consultants, authors, speakers, and info-preneurs grow six figure businesses. If you’re ready to jump-start your business, make more money with less effort, and have more fun … get your FREE INFO PRODUCT STARTER KIT at http://www.InfoBusinessCoach.com … and access Mark’s Business Growth BLOG at http://www.InfoBusinessCoach.com/blog
Reprint rights: You may reprint this article, as long as it is reprinted in it’s entirety, including the resource box and all URL links.
31 Ways To Re-Energize Your Business
By · CommentsAre you feeling stuck in your business? Need a kick out of the doldrums?
It’s time for a change! Get re-energized and take your business to the next level. You’ll earn more and have more fun doing it.
I get stuck mentally, emotionally, and financially once in a while. End of year is typical, but it happens throughout the year. That’s why I often revisit my ways of re-energizing myself and my business. It always helps, so I’m sharing it with you too, to make your next year a fantastic one.
Here’s the essence of re-energizing your business:
- Connect with your passion, playfulness, and authentic you
- Do more of what works, and get rid of what doesn’t work
- Grow to the next level (It’s better up there)
- Connect with other people (Tribe, peers, mentors, team)
- Use leverage
- Get traction
- Make more money
Here are 31 Ways to re-energize your business:
- Simplify it – Your business is too complex and is wearing you down. It doesn’t need to be. More complexity does not equal more income. Simplify and your income will grow.
- Find your 1% – What are you truly exceptional at? What could you be?
- 80/20 your whole business and life. Then 95/5 it. The good and bad. Do more of the best, and get rid of the worst.
- Clean up messes. Throw stuff out. Get rid of clutter.
- Decide to grow to the Next Level. Aim beyond where you want to go. For example, I used to struggle with running 10k, so I joined a group that aimed for running a marathon (42k/26mi). Now 10k is a warm up. Imagine that with your income. Aim 2-5x farther than you want to go.
- Get a mentor/coach to pull you up a level, and a team to support you.
- Think 1-many – You can only do so much 1-on-1 “hours for dollars” work before hitting the wall. Shift most of your business to products or group work (1-to-many) to multiply your income with less work. You’ll have more energy and passion this way, plus provide value to more people.
- Create a mastermind. Connect with other entrepreneurs doing the same thing. It will energize you.
- Learn how to market yourself once and for all. Master it this year and you’ll be set for life. It’s not as hard as you think.
- Invest in yourself – The 3 lowest-risk/highest-return things you should invest in: 1) Education/mentoring, 2) Marketing, and 3) Team. All three will help you grow more than anything else.
- Create ONE information product that converts to sales really well (leave the others alone for now). An information product will build your credibility, provide a starting point for clients, and provide you with another stream of income.
- Be more authentically you. Show your personality. Stop trying to be what others expect you to be. Be willing to be different, stand out, and be a 1%er.
- Face some of your fears. Everything you want next is outside your comfort zone. (A mentor will help you get through those on your way to the next level.)
- Finish a project – Break it up into smaller pieces and get the first piece done.
- Get someone else to finish your project – This is the best option. Train yourself to get others to do it. You’ll get 100x more done.
- Read “31 Ways To Re-Energize Your Life”
- Pick a tribe you love dealing with, and connect deeper with them
- Get away off-site to clear your head, do some writing, thinking, strategizing.
- Charge more – You’re worth it. Build credibility with an info product.
- Create one info product just for you (solve your own biggest problem). Trust yourself on this one. Then see if others want it.
- Be more playful with your business – Being serious is draining. Lighten up!
- Do something remarkable and share it with the world – We keep our brilliance to ourselves too much. Let others know!
- Give testimonials to other people – The universe will reward you.
- Let go – of the need to know it all, be perfect, have it all in place, and do it all yourself.
- Experiment more – Make small tests and track results. Be curious and love the result either way.
- Do joint ventures – This will plug you into the ecosystem and move you forward faster with less effort.
- Get better at execution and completing things – more importantly …
- Get better at letting the team execute and complete things.
- Stop being a workaholic. There’s more to life than business.
- Start a blog – Just to give you a place to get your thoughts down. You know more than you think you do. (Plus you’ll build credibility and get traffic.)
- Trust yourself – Stop listening to so many people. (Trust your coach/mentor too.)
Try some of these ideas (or all)!
Let me know how it turns out.
All the best!
Mark
P.S. Which of these do you like the best?
P.P.S. How do you re-energize your business?
© 2009 Mark Lengies
Info Products: 7 Ways To Beat The Economy
By · CommentsBy Mark Lengies (c) 2009
“They’re gone.”
“What do you mean they’re gone?!”
“Sorry, the customers all left. The economy tanked, and they fell off the face of the earth. There’s no one left to buy your stuff.”
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Admit it … you’ve either thought or heard the above conversation many times this past year. Maybe not word for word, but something like it. Or maybe it’s this unspoken sinking feeling that eats away at you like low grade anxiety that never goes away and leaves you with flu-like symptoms.
It’s ok, I’m going to help. I’ll show you the cure before this is over.
A down economy is a great time. It doesn’t mean the end of the world. Matter of fact, it will be the best of times for you … if you do it right.
Remember, you get paid when you solve a problem for your customer.
In a down economy your customers’ problems don’t go away, they multiply and get bigger! If anything, the demand for you should increase!
This is a great opportunity.
So what’s new with your customers?
… Caution. Extreme caution.
People don’t stop buying in a down economy, they just become very choosy and cautious about where they spend their money.
They still have a big problem (maybe even bigger) and want it solved. But they want to be extra sure that:
1) they WILL get their problem solved,
2) you are the best to solve it, and
3) you are credible and believable.
So what does that mean to you?
The opportunity is greater, but you have to do a little extra to prove your case. Luckily, there is one simple thing you can do to solve that and get a flow of customers paying you lots of money in this down economy. Create an information product!
Create An Information Product And Give It Away!
You have an expertise and you’re good at what you do. The problem is, others don’t know that. Even worse, there’s no way to prove it to them until they’ve experienced it.
The solution is to package your expertise into an info product like a book, audio, video, ebook, or special report.
When you give away your time, you’ll never get it back.
But when you give away your information product, then you can easily with little time attract and educate your customers about you, your expertise, and how you can solve their problem. After going through your information product, when they finally do call you they will already know you, love you, trust you and believe that you can help them. This is a MUCH better position to be in than without them starting with the information product.
Here are 7 simple ways to beat the economy and attract a flow of highly qualified customers:
1 – Give a free presentation to a group, and offer your free audio to those interested in taking the next step.
2 – Write an article that wets their appetite and offer them a free information package at the end.
3 – Find other businesses who target the same market, and allow them to offer your information product to their customers for free as a bonus.
4 – Set up a Google Adwords campaign to get traffic and offer them your information product free.
5 – If you use yellow page ads, offer your free information product in the ad if they go to your website.
6 – Give a free teleseminar, record it, then give it away. People love to hear your voice. Unlike writing, people get a better sense of who you are through your voice, plus you can probably deliver your message more thoroughly and effectively by speaking. Recording it is easy, so this is a great way to attract high quality clients.
7 – Start a blog and give away a free Starter Kit with an audio and special report. Blogs build traffic and credibility, while offering a Starter Kit allows you to capture people as they pass through so that you can build a relationship with them over time.
Remember, the first step is always to get people who resonate with you to step forward and begin a relationship with you. Then you can begin selling them solutions in the form of products and services. Giving away the first information product to attract them and prove your expertise is the way to start.
Absolutely critical … Always have them opt-in to your list to get your free product.
Don’t just give it to them without capturing their name and email address. Remember, your list is the most valuable part of your business because it allows you to continue the relationship by communicating with your customers and prospects on an on-going basis.
Create a simple information product today and give it away to beat the economy!
© 2009 Mark Lengies
