Everyone has certain goals they want to reach. It might be weight loss or finances in your personal life, or specific business growth goals in your career. Regardless of what milestones you want to achieve, you won’t get there if all you have is the end result in mind.
There are four easy steps you can take to ensure your goals are met. It’s a process that allows you to map out where you want to be and take steps to get there with ease.
In order to know what steps you need to take, you have to know how you’d like your journey to end. This is your outcome or end result. You have to be able to concretely define what you want that result to be.
This is the bottom line of everything that you’re attempting to do. Many people aim for something without ever knowing what they want the end result to be. The problem with not knowing your end goal is that you won’t realize it once you’ve reached it – if you even reach it at all.
Your end result changed from a generic goal of losing weight and getting in better shape to the end result of competing in the marathon, which has a specific length and is on a specific timetable.
Only you will be able to determine your end goal. It might be to finish college, grow your business by $50,000 in the coming year, lose 25 pounds, and so on. Have a large, verifiable goal to reach.
Knowing the end result is imperative for whatever it is that you want in life. You need to know this to be able to work your process. This might mean that you figure out different end results for different areas of your life.
What would make you happier, specifically? Visualize that end goal that you want. For now, don’t worry about timing. You’ll be working on that as you develop your specific goal setting strategy.
Goals are something that can be used to improve your life. By having goals, you can check to see if you’re on track for how you want your life to turn out. Goals are helpful tools that can keep you headed in the right direction when you need to make a decision that involves changing some aspect of your life.
Encouragement is a by-product of having goals. Whenever you have a setback, goals can encourage you to keep going. By seeing how far you’ve already come, you realize that you’ve already made some strides forward.
Dreamers who do very little action taking often focus on long-term goals, forgetting that they need a specific path to get them there. They stay paralyzed, feeling the long-term goal is too far out of reach.
Having short-term goals means that these are things that you do in the present or in the very near future – such as within a week or a month. An example of a short-term goal might be setting up an email autoresponder system within the next 14 days so that you’re ready to build a list.
A long-term goal is usually something that you can’t reach as fast as a short-term goal. A long-term goal is one that you plan to reach within a few months or a year or longer after making it.
Long-term goals will be realized over time as each of your shorter milestones are achieved. For instance, your long-term goal might be to have a list of 100,000 subscribers.
So, your short-term goals might be:
…and so on.
Each time you’re able to look at your list and cross off an item that you achieved it helps you build momentum toward reaching your ultimate goal. Whatever your goals are, you shouldn’t let them just sit there as nothing more than an internal dream that you have.
You need them around visually so that they can help remind you of what you desire out of life. You need to be able to see whatever it is that your goals are so that you’re reminded to take action.
You can create a vision board with pictures that will help keep you motivated. Or you can write them down in a notebook and list the reasons why you want that goal.
Reaching any goal will require you understanding what it is that you already possess that can help you meet that goal. It also takes you understanding what you lack in reaching that goal so that you can level up your skills to achieve it.
If you wanted to run a marathon and you were in fairly good shape, you would understand that your physical condition was something you already had. But if you were out of shape, you would understand that you couldn’t run a marathon until you got into shape.
You would understand that you lacked the physical conditioning. Defining that would help you set mini goals of getting fit, so that would then feed into your larger goal of the marathon accomplishment.
You can dig down and create mini goals for as many sub-levels as you want, too. For example, physical conditioning is a mini goal to competing in the marathon. But what are some mini goals for the physical conditioning?
Creating mini goals helps you focus all of your energy on the bigger goal. Focusing on the bigger goal can make you feel overwhelmed and cause you to talk yourself out of trying.
Each mini goal that you set needs to be specific, too. This means that you divide these up into tasks. You would need to use a calendar in order to set a date for reaching each task that falls under your mini goal heading.
You then break down the date by the time that you have to work on the goal. When you have goals that have a conclusion date, it helps you stay on track to reach the bigger picture.
Goals, even mini goals with a conclusion date of “whenever” rarely get finished. You need to know when you should start that mini goal and when it needs to be completed.
Give each task under the goal a deadline. For example, a mini goal of walking a 15-minute mile within 15 weeks might require you (if you’re starting from a 30-minute mile) to shave one minute off your time each week.
That’s a doable mini goal, and the timeline is specific enough for you to have clarity in reaching it. Everything that you do under a mini goal should be something that matters. The more specific it is, the better it will be keeping you on track.
Mini goals need to be created in such a way that you’ll be able to see progress. If your goal is to start your own business, then one of your mini goals might be to write a business plan.
Next, you would write down when you need that plan finished by. Another mini goal could be having a mentor look over the plan and give you tips on how to further polish it up.
Each step that you take should have a purpose that propels you toward the end result of your bigger goal. If you can remove the mini goal without it impacting the overall goal, then odds are high that the mini goal may not be needed.
List the deadline that it needs to happen by. Make notes under the mini goal that tell you what you must learn to reach that goal. Is there a class you need to take? A book you have to read or a seminar you must attend?
All of those should be listed under the mini goal. Make sure that you understand if completing the mini goal can be done alone or if you’re going to need someone else’s help with it.
You should list all of the possible roadblocks that could happen during the course of trying to reach each mini goal. After you list the roadblocks, write down all of the ways around them.
What this does is help you be prepared for whenever a setback crops up. They will – and it’s always best to have your offensive strategy in place before you need it.
Before you can take any action, you want to brainstorm ways to achieve your goals and mini goals. You want options, not a single path that you think will work. It allows you to think outside the box.
Some people refer to brainstorming as creatively solving a problem before it happens or while it’s ongoing. Without brainstorming, most people come up with between two and four ways that they can reach their goals.
When you start brainstorming from a research perspective, you often find better ways to do things, shortcuts and money savers. Don’t be afraid to network with others and ask for their best practices, too.
As you write down your thoughts, you may start to see how some of them are connected and might possibly overlap one another. This will help you see how you may need to prioritize or even group certain action steps.
When you brainstorm, you’re free thinking – and that can often let your mind pinpoint a better way to do something. Some people find it helpful to brainstorm on their own, while others can’t seem to move their mind away from a certain focus in order to come up with action steps.
If this happens, it can be helpful to brainstorm with someone else who understands the end result that you want. Brainstorming with someone else is as simple as having a conversation.
You simply tell them what you want to accomplish and say that you’re trying to come up with action steps that you need to take. Many times, having someone else to bounce ideas off of can yield new ways to get things done that you may not have thought of on your own.
Brainstorming can also be helpful when it comes to seeking a solution about an action step. Some action steps require more effort than other ones do. You may end up needing to do more or find additional help.
If you don’t have someone to connect with as a personal contact or even an online forum friend, you can start researching the best way to achieve certain goals online.
Be very specific when you search. For example, if you needed the mini goals to build a list, you might type in “steps to build a list” and see what came up. You might discover a blog post or infographic that details these steps:
Maybe you didn’t have one of those listed in your mini goals, but now that you’ve seen it online, you can add it. It’s easy to forget all of the small steps involved in achieving a larger goal, and you don’t want to forget something important along the way or feel caught off-guard if you realize it in mid-stream and have to reorganize your goals on the fly.
It shouldn’t require much time to brainstorm – or research. If you’re visiting other sites, just pop in quickly, scan the resource to see if you already have those steps on your list, and jot down anything that might be missing.
Once you’ve finished, it’s time to take action. You’ll be putting into place the ideas that were generated from your brainstorming session. When you begin to implement change, you have to understand that it’s normal to feel a sense of unease.
Most people are resistant to change. Just know that it’s normal and don’t let it throw you off course.
Create motivation as you start making changes. You have to be your own biggest fan when it comes to what you’re doing. Celebrate all of your small milestones. It doesn’t have to be expensive or huge – just recognize your efforts and honor your accomplishments.
The fact that you’re working toward a goal and doing things to get you to the finish line is something that should be respected and admired. Sometimes, there’s nobody there but you to toast to your success.
As you implement change, make sure that you monitor what happens as you make the change. You want to be alert to head off any negative situations or obstacles that arise from implementing your action steps.
There will be some obstacles that you can’t foresee and that you can’t head off. For those, you’ll want to try to get to the root of the problem quickly. Understanding why there’s a difficulty implementing a change can help you know how to get back on track.
You also want to keep in mind that while you’re implementing change now, you’ll see some small benefits right away. However, seeing the end result of some of the other changes may take a little time.
As you implement these changes, make sure that you’re continually revising your goals because as these changes take place, your goals will also change. It’s okay to fix goals along the way, too.
Sometimes, when you’re on the path to something greater, and you’re educating yourself, you discover fantastic new ways of doing things! This might mean changing a mini goal, or even altering your large goal completely!
One thing you shouldn’t do, though, is allow yourself to get distracted by too many good possibilities to the point that you’re forever chasing a shiny new object and never following through on the action steps you’ve mapped out to reach one milestone in your personal or professional life.
Having a strong mindset is critical to any goal setting strategy, so click on the featured resource below to get a free report on how to develop a strong mindset. Download, it read and take action 🙂
You don’t have to have any experience to be successful with an online business. Anyone can succeed – even if you’re brand new to working at home because you can learn as you go along.
There are many different avenues you can choose to take to get started. Much of your decision will be based on personal preferences, time available to implement it, and tools you need to launch it.
In this post we are going to cover 1 of the best (and simplest) business models to get started online.
Are you ready? Ok, let’s get started…
A great online business that you can choose is to become a service provider. A service provider is someone who offers his or her services to those who are seeking help.
There are many different types of service providers, and you choose one based on your skills and this is why it is so easy to start as you can build upon the skills you already have.
Some write fiction or non-fiction books for others. As a ghostwriter, unless the contract specifically states otherwise, you don’t get to claim the words that you write. You’re the unseen, unknown writer for someone else unless you have a prior arrangement.
Many celebrities and other public figures hire ghostwriters. You’ll need to have the ability to write in the language you were hired and set a competitive price so people will want to outsource to you.
You might choose to become an affiliate manager. This is a job in which you would oversee the core operations for someone who is selling their own info products. This can be an individual or a business.
The type of tasks that you would do might change day to day. For example, you might be responsible for making sure that the people who wanted to become an affiliate were top quality as well as check out their ability to promote and their promotion site.
You might also have to monitor affiliates to make sure that all the promotions are being handled correctly.
Sometimes affiliate managers are paid a salary, and sometimes they earn a percentage of the money the launch brings in.
Another area for a service provider is a VA. This is a virtual assistant, which means you basically help individuals or businesses remotely. So, you might have a client in California while you live in Wyoming.
The type of work that you do as a VA will be determined by the field that you’re in as well as what the client needs.
Sometimes it’s posting articles on a blog. Other times it’s answering emails in a customer service manner.
You could also become a site builder if you want to be a service provider. This is someone who builds an online site for clients.
The skills that you would need in order to this include knowledge of web design language, some graphic design skills (but this isn’t a requirement because you can outsource this task), and communication skills so that you understand the client’s vision.
You would need to stay abreast of changes within various search engines to see what best practices allow site owners to rise to a page 1 listing on their search engine. It’s more than just knowing keyword phrases.
You’d need to know both onsite and offsite search engine optimization strategies. Learning SEO isn’t difficult. There are courses, both free and paid, video as well as eBooks and other reading material that can teach you.
You might like becoming a service provider because you can choose the type of work that you do and can set your own hours. The amount of income that you can earn is up to you and you can also make money fast as a service provider because the client will often pay upfront or at least half now, half later.
To get started in any service provider area, you would want to make sure that whatever you choose is something that you do enjoy doing. If you don’t enjoy it, the work will make you miserable.
You also want to make sure that you either have the skills or can develop the skills that will match the type of work you choose to do. For example, if you’re already good with PhotoShop, you might find that doing graphic design type work is a good fit.
You could create banners, eBooks, images for websites, custom designs for clients and more. If you know that you like to write and you have a good grasp on grammar and punctuation, then you would most likely find copywriting or ghostwriting enjoyable.
What you can do is showcase work that you’ve done for family, friends or for a charity or cause. For example, if you want to get into providing design services, but you don’t have any previous work that you can show potential clients, you can create a flyer for the local animal shelter – or even make something up just to show samples of your abilities.
You can donate some time and skill to a cause that you believe in and use what you’ve created or done in your portfolio. It doesn’t matter whether the work you’re showing was something that you were hired to do or if it was just a freebie because potential clients just want to see how you compare to other providers in terms of quality and value.
You may want to create a website offering your services. This way, potential clients can look you up and have quick access to your online portfolio. You can create a blog using WordPress for around $10 plus hosting. For great, affordable hosting, go here.
For example, “Graphic Designer (or whatever it is that you do) for Hire” because when people are searching for a service provider, they’ll use the keywords describing the service they’re looking for.
If you want to land clients now, you can start on sites like Freelancer and Fiverr, but the pay as a beginner, especially in the beginning, may be pretty low unless you have specialty skills that are highly sought after.
The advantage of using sites like these is that they do have clients already looking for freelancers and you wouldn’t have to build a site of your own. Whenever you land a job, always have a contract to protect yourself and the client.
If you want to learn about 4 other online business models you can try, from affiliate marketing, to FBA/eBay and more, check out the featured resource below for a free report that expands on this post and covers 5 online business models that you can choose from. Pick one and get started today… 😊
Despite the recent growth of various online marketing strategies such as social media, email marketing still remains to be the most effective marketing tool for websites. A mailing list is therefore one of the greatest assets a business can possess.
Building this list however is not an easy task. Some websites have even resorted to buying lists in a desperate attempt to increase their subscribers but in the end this proves useless and even damaging.
The first step in creating a successful opt in page is increasing the traffic to it. Without people visiting the page, you have no chance of building your list. Below are some helpful strategies through which you can boost the number of visitors visiting your opt in page.
To get as many people as possible to visit the opt in page, you need to put your website in front of as many eyes as possible. The best way of doing this is through search engine optimization.
With an increased ranking, more web users will see your website and possibly visit it.
If you are just beginning to build your mailing list, getting the traffic you need naturally can take time. To jumpstart the list, make use of paid advertising. You can advertise using Google, Bing or Facebook ads among others.
Ensure that you have crafted your ads, especially those on Facebook, well enough so as to attract as many people as possible.
Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus are some of the best social media websites that you can use to triple the traffic being received on the opt in or squeeze page. Facebook is especially effective at this.
All you need to do is create a fan page and then get people to join it.
Be careful however not to spam your fans. Instead, strive to provide value and make offers that they cannot refuse.
This is another popular method of jumpstarting your list although you will have to pay for it. It involves using someone else’s list to market your website and create your own subscribers.
Of course, you can only use solo ads with other related websites. For those in marketing and business niches, a form of solo ads is Safe Swaps – http://safe-swaps.com
A word of warning though; not all solo ad vendors are made equal and there are a lot of poor providers out there so this is NOT for the novice marketer as you can lose a lot of money quickly. In all honesty, paid advertising via the likes of Google, Bing and Facebook are more reliable.
Many websites owners do not realize the potential that forums hold in getting more people to visit an opt in page and subscribe to emails. You can easily build a list with hundreds of subscribers simply by using forums.
As you build your authority on a forum, more people will be curious to find out what you are offering.
Article marketing has long been said that it no longer works. However, it should still be part of your traffic generation strategy, as you’ll still get traffic from those searching for information around a particular topic.
To increase the number of people who follow the url ensure that the article contains helpful and informative content and use more than one article directory.
Even better, post the articles to directories in a certain niche rather than general directories. Here’s an article directory where you can submit your articles: http://ezinearticles.com
Media releases are particularly effective at getting people to check out what you are offering.
To increase the effectiveness of press releases, create them regularly and submit them to different news websites.
Get in touch with popular bloggers and ask whether you can submit a blog post.
This tactic is all about exposure and you are borrowing the site owners expertise. The more popular the blog, the more traffic you will get.
People love winning things, and a contest of any kind will receive a lot of attention.
Ensure that the reward for the winner is appealing enough for people to want to participate.
YouTube is the most popular video hosting website. Take advantage of the millions of visitors who visit it every day to boost traffic to your opt in page.
Learn how to create a viral video that is both helpful and interesting. In the video and description, provide a link to the opt in page. You can also encourage people to share their video on their websites for more visibility.
After you have attained considerable traffic increases, remember that there is also the work of getting people to actually join your mailing list. But once you have established a steady stream of reliable traffic, you have tackled this major first step in email marketing.
If you want to know more about building your list after they have opted in, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about simple list building to expand your knowledge further.
OK, in the previous posts (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) we talked about the first 3 steps in the process of attracting leads to your business, namely the automation system, so you should’ve picked your autoresponder or CRM of choice and been experimenting with it, creating your lead magnet to entice readers to opt-in and give you their email address and setting up your squeeze page to show readers the free offer.
The three previous steps were pretty easy. Even if you create your own lead magnet from scratch, and you need time to learn how to use your autoresponder or CRM, you can complete the other three steps in a few days at most.
You might think traffic is the hardest part, but it’s actually a lot simpler than you think to get traffic! We’re going to take a look at a few of the best strategies for getting traffic, both free and paid.
As far as free traffic goes, there’s only one method that’s quick enough to generate traffic starting today, doesn’t have a hefty learning curve, and provides quality traffic that can convert: social media.
While you can still use other social networks, most of your effort should be focused on those sites that have a higher concentration of your target demographic.
We’re going to look at a few of the most popular social networks, and how you can locate your target demographic on each one in order to find out which one(s) you should concentrate on.
Locating your target demographic on Facebook is relatively simple. Begin by searching for a topic related to your niche and find pages and groups that fit your niche.
For example, if you are offering a dog walking service, you’d want to search for things like groups for pet owners in your city or state.
Find out how many people are in those groups, and how many groups there are. This will give you a rough idea of how many people you can reach on Facebook.
Otherwise, you should be able to pipe in if people happen to ask about dog walking services.
You can also start your own group, which is your best option. This will give you a source of traffic you can turn into leads anytime.
You should also start a Facebook page for your business, and you can even include a link to your squeeze page on your Facebook page.
Pinterest is like an online corkboard. You can have multiple “boards”, and then pin images with links, sort of like bookmarking a page.
You can find out how popular your niche is on Pinterest by performing a search, and then clicking “Boards” to find out how many people have boards related to your niche AND how many followers those boards have.
You can also search pins for the niche and see how many repins each one has. This will let you know how interested people are.
You’ll need to have some interesting content to pin, so it’s a good idea to have a blog or website that you use to post content related to your field.
For example, you could have a dog care blog for your dog walking service and post useful information for pet owners.
One important thing to note is that Pinterest is heavily imaged-based, so you’ll need good images to pin that relate to your article.
For example, if you’ve posted an article called “5 Tips for Housebreaking Your Puppy”, you’d want to include a photo of a dog being trained, or something related to housebreaking a puppy, and have the title of your article on the image.
If you take a look at Pinterest, you’ll see that most images are taller than they are wide. That’s because they take up the most screen real estate since images are constrained by width but have much more space to expand lengthwise. Thus, try to make sure your images follow the same format.
Instagram is a great platform for visual content, and you can get a lot of traffic from it, especially if your business is related to fashion, beauty, art, lifestyle, food and cooking, crafts, or other topics that are popular.
This will show you how many posts are currently on the site using that phrase, as well as lots of related phrases.
For example, when I search for “dogs”, I see millions of posts with such hashtags as #dogsofinstagram, #dogs, #dogstagram, and #dogsitting.
You can also click the “People” tab and click some of the top profiles to see how many followers they have. This is another good indicator of interest in your topic.
There are three important steps to getting traffic from Instagram:
There are other social networks that can be effective, too, depending on your market. I suggest giving each of these a try to see how they do for your particular market, but you might want to concentrate your efforts on the other sites we’ve talked about earlier in this chapter.
I don’t recommend using paid ads until you’ve thrown a good amount of free traffic at your squeeze page for a while and tested conversion rates.
Once you’re happy with how your page is converting, you can start sending some paid traffic to it.
Let’s look at some of the most effective paid ad platforms. These are generally the most profitable, but they may not work for all niches equally, so be sure to track your conversions carefully, tweak ads as needed, and kill any ads that aren’t performing.
Facebook is generally considered one of the best advertising platforms, because ads are typically affordable and convert well. This is mainly because of how well they are able to target ads to the appropriate parties.
Remember when we talked about how important it is to get qualified leads? Facebook is brilliant for that, because they have incredibly advanced targeting options.
Sticking with our example of using a local dog walking business, you can target people in your city, or surrounding cities, AND who are dog owners. You can seriously get THAT specific!
When you create your ad, pay attention to the type of ad you’re creating. The regular newsfeed and mobile newsfeed formats are considered the most profitable.
Keep in mind that the price you pay for your ads on Facebook is heavily based on your CTR (click-thru rate), so it’s important to design the most effective ad possible.
Facebook has a great guide to help you get started:
>> https://www.facebook.com/business/ads-guide
Bing’s ad platform isn’t nearly as competitive as many others, because they have much less traffic than Google, Facebook, and some other platforms.
However, you can still get a lot of traffic at a very low price, because the lower competition means you can actually get more traffic than you could at the more competitive sites because in many instances you could be the only advertiser in a genre.
Bing has a lot of training if you’re not familiar with the platform:
>>https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/training/courses
There are platforms you can explore as well, such as YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Google AdWords, and many others.
But these can be a little trickier to master than the other three platforms we discussed, as they are either more expensive, more competitive, or harder to master.
Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this 4-part series on lead generation strategies for your business. Now go and put it into action. If you want the whole series in a handy pdf that you can download and refer to at your convenience, you can do that here.
And don’t forget, if you want to know more about building your list of leads, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about simple list building to expand your knowledge further. If you do download it, please read it and take action and good luck 😊
OK, in the previous posts (Part 1 and Part 2) we talked about the first 2 steps in the process of attracting leads to your business, namely the automation system, so you should’ve picked your autoresponder or CRM of choice and been experimenting with it and your lead magnet to entice readers to opt-in and give you their email address.
Your squeeze page is your lead generation page. This is a web page created specifically to collect information from people and once they do, your autoresponder will send them an email which will direct them to the page where they can download their freebie.
As you learnt in the previous post, DON’T send them directly to the download page after they sign up because many people will give you a fake email address just to get your gift.
Your squeeze page should be relatively short. It’s not like a long sales letter. People don’t need that much convincing when something is free, but they do need some.
After all, they don’t want to give up their personal contact details unless they really think your lead magnet will benefit them.
For this reason, squeeze pages should have just enough information to entice the reader into taking action. If it’s too long, people will get bored and leave before they opt in!
Generally speaking, a squeeze page should consist of 5 main components:
To create your squeeze page, you are going to need some form of page builder.
If you are using WordPress there are many plugins that you can use for this purpose and a few of my favorites are OptimizePress and Thrive Architect.
If you don’t want to be restricted to WordPress, you can use something like Convertri or ClickFunnels and they will also host the pages for you.
Quick Tip: REDUCE YOUR WORKLOAD
Remember that you can use done-for-you content (PLR) to create lead magnets quickly. Here are some high-quality PLR vendors in the Internet Marketing and Coaching and Consulting niches:
If you are in the self-help niche and want some high-quality PLR, then check out Tools For Motivation
Please remember to be careful when using PLR as there is a lot of rubbish out there. If you stick with the vendors above you won’t go wrong. They aren’t the cheapest but they are the best and many of them have some great offers and sales from time to time so sign up for their emails to get notified of any specials they may be doing and grab a bargain 😊
Most people collect only the name and email address of their leads, but you might need more information than that, depending on your niche market, and whether you wish to further segment your lists and identify potential customers through demographic based data.
The name and email address of potential customers is probably enough information for general marketing purposes, but what if you’re selling a higher-end product or service like real estate or legal services, or something that requires one-on-one contact like coaching, you’ll want to begin collecting as much information as possible to help you better connect with potential customers.
In cases like this, it’s probably a better idea to ask for name, address, telephone number, and email. You might even need additional information, such as date of birth (if you’re selling something for adults only, for example) or even more detailed information, such as the breed of dog they own, or their income.
In other words, what information do you really need to know upfront, and what can you gather later in the selling process?
Once your squeeze page is set up, and you’ve added the lead magnet to your autoresponder service, it’s time to start sending traffic to your squeeze page and we’ll look at that in the final part of this series…
Don’t forget that if you want all 4 posts in this series in a handy pdf that you can download and refer to at your convenience, you can do that here.
And remember, if you want to know more about building your list of leads, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about simple list building to expand your knowledge further. If you do download it, please read it and take action and good luck 😊
