Are you investing in your business?

I’m not just talking about time. Of course you’re investing time, right? If you’re not, then you’re likely not very successful.

But what about money? Are you investing money into your business?

Over the past decade, I’ve worked with hundreds of small and medium-size business owners. Some have been startups with funding while others have had large marketing and PR budgets.

But I’m not talking about those businesses. I’m talking about small business owners. I’m talking about corporate trainers, business and marketing coaches, personal development experts and other service providers. I’m talking about clients whose businesses are generating less than $150,000 per year. In other words – small businesses. [ continue reading & share your thoughts → ]

I’m certain that you market your business. But, do you advertise your business?

I’ve heard so many web-based small business owners do their best to avoid using the word advertise that I’ve begun to wonder why. I’ve worked with enough clients offline to know that it’s not small business owners in general. Offline businesses use advertising constantly to get the word out about their business.

But it seems different for online small businesses. Somehow it seems that the word advertise is unclean or dishonest or something. While I haven’t quite put my finger on it, it is obvious that online small business tend to look at advertising differently. They often don’t consider placing ads – even Google Adwords.

This strikes me as odd because a few, well-placed advertisements can often drive far more than business than their cost.

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With small businesses one fact is true today, your business website should be a central hub for your business.

Your business website should effectively represent your brand while providing ways for your leads to easily engage you. All roads in your business should lead back to your website, making it the pivot point for all your marketing. And you want to treat your website that way.

Furthermore, having a website opens the possibility to not just market to your leads, but to create a powerful touch point for engaging your audience in conversation and building relationships with your prospects and clients.

So if you want a successful business, and I believe you do, it only make sense to create a website that fuels the growth of your business.

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If you have a website, it serves one purpose – to sell something!

Whether you’re selling goods and services or ideas and opinions – websites are about selling. If you have an offer, you want people to buy it. If you like something, you want people to try it. If you believe something, you want people to believe it too. And if you know something, you want other people to know it as well.

It doesn’t really matter how you slice it, the point of a website is to sell something. Otherwise, what’s the point of having a website? To display pretty pictures for everyone to see? Of course not. Websites are about selling because as people, we’re selling all the time. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

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I’m constantly amazed at the amount of content that gets published to the web every single day.

If I just count myself, I probably published a total of 100 website pages from 1997 to the end of 2006. Since then, however, I’ve published more than 2000 articles/posts on the web between my 3 websites, articles I’ve submitted, guest blog posts and content I’ve written for the membership sites I’m a resident expert in.

That’s remarkable. And if you consider that I wrote daily from the beginning of 2007 until some time late 2008, it’s even more remarkable that I’ve produced that much content. Interesting thing is I’m not close to being as prolific as many of the bloggers out there.

But what’s happening with all this content? How are people using it once it’s published? Or two weeks later? Or a year later? Is there something more we can all do with our content then just publish it online and move on to the next post? Perhaps there’s something more we can do with all this content – something that generates income.

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It seems I’ve always been an do-it-yourself type.

Whether it’s been remodeling my kitchen, building a pole barn, learning to kayak or developing websites, I’ve been one of those people who like to do things myself. Usually I read a little, research a little, make a plan and jump right in. And it’s worked pretty good – most of the time.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with doing everything yourself. It’s certainly serviced me well. I’ve learned a great many things and have gained a number of skills over the years. And the confidence I’ve gained in doing things myself has led me to take on projects I might otherwise shy away from doing myself.

It’s also meant that sometimes things don’t go so well. Sometimes I waste more time and spend more money than I would have having a professional help me. For instance, redoing the lighting in my kitchen during a remodel. What would have taken an electrician and his crew less than a day took me 5 long days doing it myself.

So while I’m definitely an advocate of doing it yourself, there’s times when doing it yourself isn’t wise…

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If you’re a life coach, business coach, leadership coach, spiritual coach – heck, any sort of coach at all – you may want to pay attention to this post…

Do you know that you’re not really marketing your coaching practice to a target audience, that you’re not communicating to a niche market, and that you won’t find your next coaching clients if you ‘engage a marketplace?’

It’s so true. Yet most of the websites that promote life coaches seem to think that’s exactly what they’re doing – talking to a market or an audience.

Is your life coaching website getting you coaching clients?

If you ask a life coach whether their website is getting them coaching clients – most often the answer is no. I know this for a fact because I teach coaches how to use their websites – really their entire web presence – to build a following and get more coaching clients. And most of the life coaches I work with come to me with website copy that is trying to speak to an audience.

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Want To Increase Sales? There’s almost limitless methods for doing so. And all those methods boil down to one thing:

Be in front of your audience when they need you.

That’s it. That’s the key to increasing your sales. Think about it, when you’re at a restaurant, do you care with the bathroom is? Not til you need it, right? Or an ATM. You likely pass dozens of them every day and don’t notice them, right? But what happens when you’re out of cash? Every ATM comes into focus. What’s more, you might scurry to find one.

So many small business owners don’t consider this when they market their business. They work hard on their vision and business plan. Then they focus on their offer and how best to communicate that offer to a target market. Ideally, they’re wanting to position themselves as an expert in a select niche market.

But no one cares that you’re an expert until they need an expert. In other words, no one cares that you can solve a set a problems until they are faced with those set of problems. Then, they go out and look for a solution.

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If you have a small business website it should serve one purpose – generating sales.

Sure, it should inform your visitors of your offers and give them social proof of your abilities through testimonials. Without a doubt, your website should generate and capture leads. And most importantly your business website should move your visitors toward buying your offers.

While there’s nearly infinite ways to do generate sales, a few necessary pieces need to be in place on your business website in order to generate more sales effectively. Most of this is really common sense. Yet after the more than 20 Business Website Assessments I’ve done in the past month, these basic elements are consistently being missed on small business websites.

Yet, these basic elements are so fundamental that you want to be sure you’re not missing them on your website.

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