Last Saturday Clark and I attended a business seminar put on by our Church here locally. It was REALLY good! It inspired us both on how we could improve our Work-From-Home businesses. Here are our notes:
F.I.T.
Financial Intelligence Test
Move away from transaction-based business toward Service-based model.
“Discover your own Gold Mines.” – Make sure that what you do, is what you know. Don’t go into a business of a bakery, if you have no idea how to cook! Don’t sell car parts, if you haven’t a clue how to change your own oil in your car. Do what makes sense, sell what you know!
*Did you know that 75% of people who purchase ‘how to improve your business’ books, only read the first 2 chapters?
I.D.E.A.L.
- Income
- Depreciation
- Expandability
- Asset Appreciation
- Leverage
7 F’s
- Find the biz
- Fund the biz
- Fix or Fortify
- Franchise (systemize)
- Farm (grow)
- Flip it
- Finance on the way out
3 Requirements (must be in place; or DON’T get invovled)
- Synergy
- Leverage
- Scalability
Top 5 Website Mistakes
1. Flash Intro — SEO, 3 out of 4 people exit upon arrive.
2. Worry about how pretty it is — The purpose is to A) generate leads B) generate business from leads . Having a CLEAN website is far more important than how ‘pretty’ it is.
3. Have a POWERFUL Headline — Essentially you have 7 seconds to attract your visitor. Within those 7 seconds if you do not have eye-catching text (headline) a clean and readable website without distractions (Flash) then you more than likely will not keep your visitor interested and he/she will leave.
- *The principles are the foundation – the foundation never changes.
- *The domain changes from industry to industry
- A good idea would be to hire a copywriter to write ‘eye-catching’ text for your website. Unreadable or uninteresting text can turn-off a visitor permanently. Well worth the investment to have your website well written to advertise and sell convincingly your product(s).
4. Must have a way to capture customers. The right-hand, upper side of your website has been studied extensively to be the #1 best place to place information capturing forms (i.e. FREE reports lead to sign ups, or in the case of a blog — ‘Subscribe to blog’ links. Newsletters DON’T WORK).
5. No call to action —> the next step.
MYTHS
False: It’s all about the HITS!
True: Visits are the important metric.
False: “I don’t need a website in MY business”
True: Not having a website is like not having a phone.
False: “I just need a brochure site for now.”
True: You should be generating leads from your site every day of the week.
PAID GOOGLE ADS – Don’t work! Statistics show that 1 out of 7 people don’t click the paid ads in Google Search Results
*Paid marketing, however does work.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization, meaning optomizing website with rich high-ranking keywords to up your ranking in Google Search Results – ORGANICALLY {not paid to rank high}) is different than SEM (Search Engine Marketing, meaning advertising your site to attract visitors).
“If you want to sell what Mr. Prospect buys, you have to see the world through Mr. Prospects Eyes.“
False: “I took a class on the internet, so I’m up to speed.”
True: You have the basics, learn MORE detail. Or hire.
Research your business idea (and keywords) BEFORE you invest time and money into starting it.
a. Anybody who tells you they can get you to the #1 position in Google is LYING.
b. Instead, take the long-tail keywords (the low-hanging fruit) and get more results.
c. “Have you done it for your own site? What cusotmers have you done it for?”
d. Get a team of experts. You need: 1) A CPA (A picture of the past) 2) A business Attorney (to tell you what you CAN’T do) 3) A mentor/coach to get a fresh perspective
*Typically, the lower the price you sell at, the lower the credibility. Instead provide superior service. Be in the relationship business.
Research drives the structure of your business and website.
What do you do with YOUR time?
- Identify your MVC – Most Valuable Customers
- Identify their needs
- Identify characteristics
- Identify how to duplicate them
*Twitter for this Newsletter
How to build a business
- Attract more customers
- Find out what they want/need & sell it to them — speak to THEM on your website, not all about yourself and ‘why you’re qualified’. Make your website INFORMATION based for the buyer and create verbiage for them to make a relationship with and attract them to return.
- Get them to come back more often
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The lesson of this is that even if the sender looks legit, doesn’t mean the email is. If you feel at all suspicious, check out the header information of the sender. Here are a few links to some tutorials on how to locate the header information in your email program:
