Have you been in business for more than three years? Have you passed the five year mark? Do you have certifications in SEO or Social Media or Coaching? Have you spent thousands of dollars on online courses?
Do you attend webinar after webinar and after each one, you learn of a new something that you are not doing… so you start to put that into action… only to get distracted and sidetracked by the next webinar?
Is your spouse tired of supporting your “online job”? Because you are “just about to make it big”? Do you know that you are on the “brink of success” because you truly believe in the law of attraction?
Have you maxed out your credit cards investing in your business? Do you attend seminar after seminar and invest thousands of dollars on one course after another?
Have you finally identified the ONE reason why you can’t be successful? And if you can just fix that one thing, you are SURE to be successful?
Maybe you have a business. But it is just not generating you the income you need. Does your business always take in just enough money to pay the bills?
Is your business still in survival mode?
If this is you. It is time for a change.
It is time to stop trying to find the reason why you are not successful.
It is time to stop learning.
It is time to stop hanging out on Facebook because you are “doing social media”.
It is time to stop going to seminars to “learn that one golden nugget” or to “network”.
It is time to stop buying courses!
If you are truly ready to get your business out of survival mode it is time to take action!
What actions? Let me ask you a few more questions.
Do you have a business website?
Does your website have sales pages on it that specifically talk about your offers?
Do you have a blog?
Are you updating your blog with new content daily?
Do you have a Facebook Page for your business?
Are you updating your Facebook Page one to two times a day?
Do you have a Twitter for your business?
Are you updating your Twitter 5-10 times a day?
Are you using Hootsuite and Ifttt.com to share your updates to Twitter and other social media sites?
Do you have an offer to create a list?
Do you have an optin offer on your site?
Have you identified exactly who your target market is?
Have you identified what other types of businesses have access to your target market?
Have you created strategic partnership plans and written them down?
Have you reached out to create strategic partnerships?
Have you offered your services for free in exchange for referrals?
Have you created webinars or teleseminars to teach your audience about your services?
Have you created an email auto responder sequence?
Are you guest blogging on high traffic blogs?
Are you creating sales presentations in powerpoint format and putting them on Slideshare?
Have you created videos of you talking and sharing your tips and expertise?
If you feel like I am speaking directly to you, you have a choice. You can continue to run your business on survival mode… or you can role up your sleeves and get to work.
2012 has killed many SEO agencies. Someone just told me the other day about a publicly traded SEO company that was valued at 2.1 BILLION and is now valued at 800 million. Since April 2012. Google changed their algorithm. Google used to rank sites based on the number of links. Whoever had the most links won. That is no longer the case. Google now favors brands. Just search for any major e-commerce type of product and you will see. There are no more mom and pop shops showing up. It is all brands. If it is 2013 and you own a digital marketing agency and you are still alive.. Congratulations! You have passed GO!
It is time to do what should have been done all along.
Create high quality content.
Market that content.
Get targeted traffic to the site through a combination of social and paid traffic.
Have a well designed site that captures leads.
Convert leads to customers through a well developed email marketing campaign.
It is your choice, what are you going to do?
If you are not bloggging every day, start blogging every day.
If you are not using social media to promote your blog posts every day, start.
If you are not creating strategic partnerships to grow your business, now is the time.
Step One: Start Blogging Every Single Day. If you can join a 30 Day Blog Challenge with a group of other entrepreneurs.. I highly encourage it. I joined one, and it has truly inspired me to write every day.
Step Two: Comment on Two Blogs where your target market hangs out each day.
Step Three: Start Promoting Your Blog Posts with Social Media. Use Ifttt.com and Hootsuite.com to broadcast your blog post to a wide audience.
Step Four: Create an offer. This can be to get weekly tips in your newsletter. As you blog, think strategically about blogging on a series of topics so that you can put them all together in an ebook later.
Step Five: Create a webform to capture leads on your page.
Step Six: Start to offer free webinars as an optin offer to grow your list and gain more visibility. Promote the webinars on social media.
Step Seven: Create a strategic partnership. Think who has access to your audience that you could offer a complementary service to. Offer your service to them for free in exchange for referrals if you don’t have anything else to offer them right now.
Step Eight: Reach out to industry blogs and offer guest blog posts or offer to become a Lead Blogger on a specific topic.
Step Nine: Create an email auto responder for the people opting in to your list.
Step Ten: Send an email to your list with your offer. Make your offer limited and time sensitive.
I have nothing to sell here. Just a desire to see more of you succeed. Let’s get more businesses out of survival mode in 2013!
Great advise Nichole. When you’re curious & like to learn its hard to resist more free training. We need to be doers, not just hearers. I’m going to compare this post with my to do list and check off what’s done and add what’s still needed.
That is right Valerie! We need to just do more!