 We’ve all lost clients or customers. Sometimes it’s our fault. Sometimes it’s theirs. Sometimes it’s out of everyone’s control. But no matter the reason, there is something to be learned from a lost client. A system to review lost clients will help keep your business improving and growing. READ MORE: Download Your FREE Weekly Social Media Planner Today! Exit Interview Typically done when you leave a job, an exit interview is also a great way to review what went right—and what went wrong—during your business relationship. You’ll want to review:
This is not the time to get defensive. Be open to their criticism (if there is any) and use the information to genuinely improve your business. READ MORE: Download Your FREE Weekly Social Media Planner Today! Be Honest With Yourself One of the most common reasons for client loss is that the customer is simply not a good fit. Maybe you suspected it when they signed up, or maybe not, but now that they have moved on, ask yourself:
If you can identify a bad client/match from the start and decline the work (or better still, refer them to another business that is a good fit) you’ll find you have a lot less stress in your day-to-day business. READ MORE: Download Your FREE Weekly Social Media Planner Today! Misunderstandings Sometimes, client loss is as simple as a lack of understanding on your client’s part. Do you clearly state:
Do you also have a system for staying in touch with a client who has gone quiet? Sometimes all it takes is a phone call to get your wayward client back on track. Many business relationships have been salvaged with a simple phone call or email, so if you haven’t heard from a client in a while, pick up the phone. READ MORE: Download Your FREE Weekly Social Media Planner Today! Here’s the bottom line: Client loss happens. But if you can learn from each client, and use that intel to improve your business, then even a lost client can be turned into new profits. To Your Success! Lindsey x www.digital-duchess.com 
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 If you think all a farmer has to do is wait until he harvests truckloads of delicious food, then think again! That farmer has worked hard all year long to prepare for that week or two of reward. READ MORE: 50 things to blog about checklist He prepared the ground following last year’s harvest. He planted seeds in the spring. He watered and fertilized and protected his fragile crops from pests and drought and poor weather. And finally, after months of work, he enjoys the results. Your business works the same way, and if you take a page from the farmer’s playbook, you’ll soon be reaping the rewards, too. Preparing the Ground READ MORE: 50 things to blog about checklist This is your brand, your voice, your very presence in your market. If you’re just starting out—like that farmer after his harvest—you’ll spend your time simply becoming known. Hang out with other like-minded business people in your niche. Join forums where your ideal clients spend their time. Build a website and start your mailing list. This is the prep work that will form the foundation of a solid business in the future. Planting the Seeds Your seeds are your content and products. With each blog post you write, every product you create, you’re planting a seed you can harvest later. But unlike the farmer, your seeds will produce over and over again, endlessly. READ MORE: 50 things to blog about checklist In fact, you’ll likely find that blog posts you wrote years ago will continue to bring in new clients year after year, with no further help from you. Products can be sold over and over again, or reworked into new offers. Podcasts, videos, eBooks and more all continue to work for you, month after month, year after year. When you think about it that way, it’s easy to see that planting seeds is a critical part of every business. Nurturing Your Crop READ MORE: 50 things to blog about checklist Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just “set it and forget it”? Unfortunately, that style of business rarely works. Instead, you must spend time nurturing.
It doesn’t take much effort to update your blog posts or tweak your products, and the rewards can be fantastic. READ MORE: 50 things to blog about checklist Of course, being a farmer is a long-term investment. The work you do today may not pay off for weeks or months to come. But with a strong history of consistent “farming” in your business, you’ll soon see that those long-term rewards are paying off consistently as well. To your success! Lindsey www.digital-duchess.com   We’ve been told (and told and told) for years that “the money is in the list” and that “your mailing list is your biggest business asset.” But if your list numbers are hovering in the low four-figures—or fewer—with no sign of growth on the horizon, such advice can seem a bit unhelpful. The fact is, building a list is a catch 22: You can’t get sign ups without traffic, and it’s difficult to find traffic when you have no list. What’s a busy entrepreneur to do? Here are a few suggestions: READ MORE: Download Your FREE Facebook Ad Campaign Checklist Paid Ads Make List-Building Easy By strategically placing ads in front of your target audience, you can drive tons of traffic to your opt-in offers and enjoy conversion rates of two or three percent or more. Even better, with some tweaking and split testing of your offers, you can carefully refine your ads and copy so that you’re attracting your exact ideal client and filling your list with buyers who are ready to take action, rather than freebie seekers. READ MORE: Download Your FREE Facebook Ad Campaign Checklist All you need to run paid ads to your opt-in pages is:
Best Ad Placements Once you have your components in place, the only question remaining is where to run your ads. You have dozens of choices, from Facebook to Twitter to Google to YouTube to solo email spots. READ MORE: Download Your FREE Facebook Ad Campaign Checklist The key is to first determine where your market is most likely to be hanging out. If they’re on LinkedIn, then running ads on Twitter will be a waste of time. Keep in mind the cost as well. Ads on Facebook are generally less expensive and less competitive than a Google Adwords placement. Start Small, Then Refine Once you’ve decided where to place your ads, it’s time to set your budget and begin running a small set of ads. Consider setting a small daily budget, such as $10 or $20 at the beginning, so you can get a feel for how your ads will perform. Watch the traffic, track your conversions, and create split tests of your landing page and ad sets to determine which performs the best. READ MORE: Download Your FREE Facebook Ad Campaign Checklist You can also refine the audience you’re targeting based on the stats you receive. For example, if you find that men between the ages of 20 and 30 are clicking but not opting in, you might want to remove them from your audience. At least at first, it’s best to avoid running ads for paid products. Conversions for a free offer will far outshine those to a paid product—especially if your program is expensive. After all, those who are clicking on an ad most likely do not know you at all, so it takes a much bigger leap of faith to offer up a credit card number than it will to provide an email address. READ MORE: Download Your FREE Facebook Ad Campaign Checklist Ad Copy Blunders to Avoid Have you ever clicked on an ad because you saw an adorable pair of sandals that you just had to have, only to land on a page full of sneakers, with not a sandal in sight? It’s frustrating, to say the least, and that kind of ad to landing page mismatch will kill your conversions. READ MORE: Download Your FREE Facebook Ad Campaign Checklist Your ad copy is making a promise to the reader. If your landing page doesn’t fulfill that promise, your readers will click away, and you’ll have wasted the money you spent to get them there. Before running any ads, be sure your ad headline, image, and copy all match the message on the landing page. Paid advertising was once a tool used only by big companies or marketers with a lot of money to spare, but today they’re more cost-effective than ever, and the technology makes them easy to create and monitor. If you haven’t yet tried your hand at this useful traffic generation method, it’s time to do some experimenting. You might just find your list numbers—and sales—growing. READ MORE: Download Your FREE Facebook Ad Campaign Checklist To your success Lindsey www.digital-duchess.com   For entrepreneurs, coaches, and business owners in nearly any field, product creation is the best way to:
READ MORE: 149 quotes you can cut and paste for your own social media Step 1: Identify a Need As a business owner, you have great insight into the wants and needs of your ideal client. You chat with them on Facebook, answer their email questions, respond to the comments they leave on your blog, and even work with them one-on-one. What is it they need the most help with right now? This is the product you should be creating, because you already know you have a built-in audience. READ MORE: 149 quotes you can cut and paste for your own social media Step 2: Gather Your Documentation If you’ve been creating content for more than a few weeks, chances are you already have all of the answers required—all you have to do it organise it. Some places to look for content you can repurpose include:
READ MORE: 149 quotes you can cut and paste for your own social media Step 3: Create the Solution Now that you have your content, it’s time to put it together in a way that will make sense to your audience. Will you…
READ MORE: 149 quotes you can cut and paste for your own social media Creating a product doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming. Sure, you can design a massive, all-inclusive course if you like, but when you’re just getting started, that’s a daunting prospect. Instead, work with what you already have, and you’ll have your first product up and selling in no time. To your success! Lindsey x www.digital-duchess.com   If the very thought of PowerPoint makes your eyes glaze over, you’re not alone. The world is filled with incredibly boring presentations, and you’ve no doubt sat through your share of them. Now that you’re preparing your own presentations, how can you ensure your audience doesn’t feel the same way? By creating engaging, fun slides that grab and hold their attention. READ MORE: You Will Never Be Stuck For Words Ever Again Bullet Point Poison While you may want to outline—and yes—use bullet points in your notes, the last thing that should appear on your slides are bullets. They’re the hallmark of an amateur presenter, and should only be used as a last resort. More Slides, Not Fewer It’s a common mistake many new (and even experienced) presenters make: too few slides. As a general rule of thumb, plan at least one slide per minute, on average. So a 45 minute presentation should have 45 slides, give or take a few. READ MORE: You Will Never Be Stuck For Words Ever Again Fewer Words, More Images You’ll often see presentations—particularly in the corporate world—that contain nothing but words. Some presenters even read right from their slides. Talk about boring! Instead, mix up your slides to include words, images, screenshots, graphs and other visually appealing elements. Use images that match your personality and style. Don’t Forget Branding Like all of your web properties, you want to be sure your slides are clearly branded. Your site colors, logo, tagline, URL and other elements help to remind viewers of who you are and what your business is. Consider creating a PowerPoint theme that you can use for all your presentations. READ MORE: You Will Never Be Stuck For Words Ever Again Clearly State Your Offer The last few minutes of any presentation are typically reserved for your offer, so don’t skimp out here. Be sure your offer is clearly presented on your final slides, including the URL, any discount or bonuses, and the deadline for claiming them. Finally, take the time to study the slides of the presenters you truly enjoy. Chances are if you are attentive to their presentation, others are as well. Follow their lead when it comes to number of slides, types of images, and how the offer is presented, and you’ll soon be wowing your audience, too. To Your Success! Lindsey www.digital-duchess.com   Ask nearly anyone who runs an online business what their biggest struggle is, and chances are they’ll say “more traffic.”
You need traffic to build an email list. You need traffic to make sales. You need traffic to fill your coaching programs. So the big question is, where do you get all that traffic? Sure, you could buy ads, but if you aren’t careful, you might just fill your list with less-than-ideal audience members, and that will do nothing for your sales. You could focus your time and energy on search engine optimization, but unless you have years to build your business (and who does?) then SEO should not be your top choice. READ MORE: 50 things to blog about Good thing you have other options. Be a Guest Everyone needs content. It’s the one thing that remains consistent among all content creators—there is never enough. That’s where you can help. By guest posting on other coaches’ blogs, you can “borrow” some of their traffic. You can’t simply regurgitate old content and send it out in a dozen directions though. To get the best results, you’ll want to:
Partner Up No list? Here’s a quick way to “borrow” someone else’s list to kickstart your own: Schedule a free event with a partner. READ MORE: 50 things to blog about Here’s how it works.
This is a win/win for both of you, as you gain the traffic, while your affiliate gets a bigger payday. Just be sure you have a good funnel in place, so that your new list members can benefit from all that you have to offer. Get Interviewed Want to really show off your expert status and bring traffic back to your site, too? The easiest way is to get on the interview circuit. Just like authors with new books and actors with new movies, coaches and service providers can get in front of new audiences simply by answering questions about what they know. READ MORE: 50 things to blog about Of course, you’re probably not going to appear on the Today Show or Oprah (although that’s not impossible), but there are still plenty of opportunities out there for coaches and consultants in every niche. Look for interview and speaking opportunities on:
Start by reaching out to your colleagues and to podcast and blog hosts you most admire. Get the word out with your friends and your list that you’re looking for opportunities. READ MORE: 50 things to blog about Even if you don’t yet have a list of your own, it’s easy (and fun) to kickstart your audience growth simply by making yourself available for these and other opportunities. Each guest post, podcast interview and webinar is another chance to get in front of a whole new market, so take advantage of it! To your success! Lindsey x www.digital-duchess.com  You want to write that epic blog post. Like the author that longs to create the next great novel, you understand the rewards that can come from a single blog post when it is written correctly.
READ MORE: 50 Things to Blog About How do you do this? Sometimes you may have all the right ideas in place. You just need to use the correct tools, like the following 5: 1 – Time Okay, so you may not think of this as a tool. However, time is the most valuable tool that exists. It is one of the few things that you have in common with the most successful bloggers and online marketers and business owners. Don't rush your blog posts. Take the time to research, write, edit, proofread and write several drafts. Truly epic blog posts are usually long, so you need to give them the time necessary to write them properly. READ MORE: 50 Things to Blog About 2 – Coffitivity Did you know that "a moderate level of ambient noise is conducive to creative commission"? In layman's terms, that means a little bit of background noise, just the right amount, can make you more creative. Coffitivity.com is a white noise generating site that provides café background sounds at different levels of intensity, to keep your creative juices flowing. READ MORE: 50 Things to Blog About 3 – Research Here is where the majority of unsuccessful bloggers go wrong. They know so much about a certain topic, they do little research. They know they haven't written a blog post in a while, so they just start winging it, using their fast market knowledge to create content. Successful bloggers do lots of research before they write. They don't assume they know everything. Consistent research eventually reveals epic content ideas relevant to your niche or marketplace. READ MORE: 50 Things to Blog About 4 – WordCounter Posts over 1,500 or 2,000 words deliver up to 5X more traffic than shorter posts, on average. WordCounter.net makes keeping track of your word count simple. READ MORE: 50 Things to Blog About 5 – Headline Helpers If your content is amazing, it doesn't matter if it doesn't get read. Your title or headline is super important. It is the first thing that stops Web servers in their tracks, and gets them to take notice, that is, if it is constructed properly. Neil Patel, serial entrepreneur and founder of QuickSprout, has compiled a blog post that will help you create the perfect headline. This free resources available here. READ MORE: 50 Things to Blog About 6 – Evernote Evernote is a free personal notebook that sinks to all of your electronic devices. Inspiration can come at any time. Evernote is always there to ensure you capture all of your great ideas, no matter when or where they appear. To your success! Lindsey xx PS Check out my awesome online courses that will help you take a step towards a better business. CLICK HERE 
Feeling like your list isn’t growing as fast as you need it to?
You’re probably right. In fact, your mailing list is the one asset that determines the ultimate growth of your business. Today’s most successful entrepreneurs, coaches, and service providers know that their results are directly tied to the size of their mailing list. You probably know that, too. Now the only question is: What can you do to grow your list faster? Plenty! In this new 4-module course, I’m going to share with you the exact techniques, tools and strategies other business owners are using to add new subscribers to their list every single day—and you can do the same! >> FIND OUT MORE BY CLICKING RIGHT HERE Inside, I cover everything from how to design irresistible opt-in gifts to how to be seen as the expert you are. We’ll dive deep into traffic generation (both free and paid), testing and tweaking for better results, and I’ll even share my top tips for building stronger relationships. >> GET STARTED RIGHT NOW BY CLICKING HERE Your list really is your most important asset, but it’s never too late to kick start your growth. And I’ve got just the plan to get you started. >> IT’S ALL RIGHT HERE To Your Success! Lindsey xx www.digital-duchess.com Download 149 Quotes You Can Cut & Paste & Use in Your Social Media
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Of course you’re building a list. Every smart, successful business owner knows how critical list-building is to their business growth. The only problem is all the conflicting, confusing advice you get. How can you know which landing page creator to use? How can you decide whether or not to run paid ads? How can you develop an opt-in incentive your market really wants? How can you keep your subscribers engaged? And what about conversion rates? How can you increase opt-ins and open rates and click-throughs? Feeling overwhelmed yet? You’re not alone. What you need is a step-by-step blueprint that lays out exactly how to grow your list so you can get on with growing your business. Your step-by-step guide is right here, just click on this link. In this comprehensive 4-module course, I’m going to show you: * How to build credibility with your list members * How to create irresistible offers they’ll love * How to get all the leads you’ll ever want * How to test and track (and improve) everything In short, this is the plan that will put your list-building efforts into overdrive, so you’ll never again feel like you’re working too hard for too few results. Find out more about Email Marketing: From Hot Mess to Mega Success in 7 Days right here. If you’ve ever struggled with list building, you really don’t want to miss this. To Your Success! Lindsey Archibald xx www.digital-duchess.com Download your FREE Weekly Social Media Planner below
Sometimes, coming up with new content ideas is difficult. You know Google and the other search engines reward consistently delivered, fresh content. This can be a tough situation when the old noggin is not cranking out ideas for new content. Fortunately, you are probably sitting on a gold mine of new traffic right now ... your old blog posts. READ MORE: 50 Things to Blog About Checklist You can simply re-purpose your current posts to make them fresh, giving you new traffic bait without a lot of time and trouble. One huge benefit here is speed. It takes nowhere near the time to rework your old blog posts that it does to create new ones. The following 5 practices are methods that successful bloggers use to create more traffic, without creating totally new content. 1 – Link to other posts and pages on your blog. Google's spiders love internal links. This is when you link from one page or post of content on your site to another. This simple trick can keep readers on your site longer, alerts your readers to relevant content and also increases the average amount of time each visitor spends on your blog. All of those things are great for SEO, meaning more free organic traffic. READ MORE: 50 Things to Blog About Checklist 2 – Rework your titles. You may look over an old blog post and think it is pretty fabulous. It might not need any changing. You may have keywords and related words and phrases, your sub-headers move the reader down the page, and you have a strong call to action. Why not just change the title? This is only recommended on posts that you think may be under-performing. There is no need to change something if it isn't broken. 3 – Once a month, share your most popular blog posts on social media. It doesn't matter how old they are. Your most popular blog posts are popular for a reason. Each month, get them back out there in the social media trenches where they can go to battle for you. READ MORE: 50 Things to Blog About Checklist 4 – Lengthen short posts. Did you know that posts of 1,500 words or more drive more traffic than shorter posts? This is free, generic traffic you don't have to pay for. Beef up the length of your current shorter posts, making them value-rich as you do so. 5 – Improve the readability of your posts. No one likes to read a huge block of text. Break up your content. Add sub-headers. Use underlining, italics, bulleted lists, images and video to make an old, stale blog post fresh and enjoyable. To Your Success! Lindsey xx DOWNLOAD NOW- 50 Things to Blog About Checklist
 If you’re looking for ways to make money online, then it pays to think a little outside the box. Too often we focus only on building websites, on affiliate marketing or on selling services. But in fact there are countless other options, whether that means building an app, or it means creating an eBook. And creating an eBook to sell on Kindle might just be that perfect business model you’re looking for. READ MORE: Check out my Kindle book which sells copies every week Here are some of the ways in which this is an ideal way to make money online… It’s Easy Selling an ebook on Kindle is a business model that literally anyone can emulate. As long as you can write and you have a copy of Word (even that is somewhat optional) then you can create a book and upload it to the Kindle Store. There’s no fee for becoming a publisher and it can all be done in an evening. The only hard bit is writing the book – but you can easily outsource this or purchase the rights to a digital product if you prefer. READ MORE: How to Write Your Book in 30 Days It’s Efficient Selling on Kindle is also efficient in as much as you can re-use old content and recycle your products. For example, once you’ve created an ebook for Kindle, there’s no reason that you can’t also sell it on Nook, on the Google Play Bookstore or on iTunes. You can also create a PDF and simply sell it from your own website. There’s also no reason that you can’t create entire series of books reusing certain elements of your content. READ MORE: How to Write Your Book in 30 Days It’s Truly Passive Making money online is a truly passive form of income. In other words, once you’ve uploaded your book to the Kindle Store, you’ll be able to continue making sales without having to do anything else to promote it. People will find it on the Store by searching and even if the book isn’t a hit, you can still find that this provides an additional source of revenue as occasional sales trickle in. There are many online business models that claim to be passive but almost all of them require some form of maintenance or ongoing promotion. Selling books on Kindle is truly 100% passive! READ MORE: How to Write Your Book in 30 Days It’s Scalable The fact that you aren’t trading time for money when you sell Kindle books means that it is truly scalable. In other words, you can take your effective business model and repeat it over and over again to drastically increase your sales. So you’ve made money from selling one book. What’s to stop you from create another book and selling that too? And then another and another? Even if all these books only make you $10 a week – once you’re selling 100 of them, that’s then $1,000 a week! READ MORE: How to Write Your Book in 30 Days More likely though, what you’ll find is that most of your books don’t make that much money at all – perhaps they make you $1 a week if you’re lucky. But then you’ll have one breakout hit that drives sales for all the others up and that drastically increases your salary. This is a game of numbers and if you play long enough, eventually success is inevitable! To Your Success! Lindsey xx DOWNLOAD Your FREE Book Brainstorming Planner Below and Write Your Book in Just 30 Days |
AuthorLindsey Archibald is a Journalist, Broadcaster, Digital Marketer, Author and Business Coach. Archives
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