One Coach

Are you looking ahead and setting goals for 2010? Here are a few quick tips that your business can use to flourish in the New Year:

1. Find out who your ideal client is and make sure you’re marketing to them.

For any business to succeed, knowing your ideal target market is an absolute must have. Who are the ideal people to purchase your products and services? Why do they want to come to you instead of your competition? Which group of people would you love to work with? Take some time to interview some of your top clients to create an “ideal client profile” and adjust your marketing so that it will speak to them and their wants and needs.

2. Find the time to work on your business, not in it.

When was the last time you evaluated your business operations? Are you too busy dealing with customers, answering phones, creating invoices and running your company? Acquire the necessary infrastructure so that you won’t have to rely on yourself to do everything. Get help in the areas where you don’t excel so that you can spend more time on the things you’re good at. The goal is to have your business perform well without you so that you can spend time on the things that will make your business move forward and grow. Create a model that will ensure things get done right from top to bottom.

3. Create a long-term plan.

What is it that you want from your business? Where do you want your business to be next month? In a year? In five years? Set step by step goals that are achievable. For example, figure out how many sales you must have in order to meet your revenue goals. That way you know what to aim for. Find out what is working and what isn’t and make sure you’re spending time daily to reach toward your goals. Find the right people to help you get the proper strategies in place and keep you accountable. This will help you avoid mistakes and prevent having to rebound from any major setbacks later.

4. Build strong social media channels.

Every business should have a strong presence in social media. It’s not going away. For example, a few months ago Facebook was close to 300,000,000 users. It’s now accounting for more than 70% of the entire Internet population. What’s more is that social media will significantly increase in 2010. Your clients are out there. Whether you’re a dog trainer or a business consulting, it’s very important to start engaging with your target market online.

5. Seek help.

We know that running your business can be difficult and growing your business is even harder. You’ve put all your time and energy into your business and you’ve sacrificed time for yourself and with your family. That’s why at OneCoach, we help our clients take the right steps, in the right order to grow their businesses. We’re committed to helping you achieve your business goals and to live the life you’ve always wanted. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, we’re here to help. Click here to learn more about our Business Coaching programs that are specifically designed to help your unique business succeed.

Is this the year that you and your business will grow to extraordinary levels? That’s up to you.

After redesigning over 100 websites I now have a pretty good idea about the most common web design mistakes.

If your site is making some of these mistakes, fix them now! Otherwise, you are leaving money on the table every single day.

1. Bad Layout
Your navigation and layout have to be simple, obvious, and intuitive. If you expect your visitors to figure out how to get to where they want to go, prepare for them to leave. Don’t make them think, make it obvious for them. Forget about “cool” navigation. Make it simple and elegant.

2. Slow Websites
Keep your website light so it loads fast. There is nothing more annoying than those “Loading… 1%” messages. People don’t want to wait. Studies show that if a website takes more than 8 seconds to load, 21% of your visitors will leave and if it takes more than 20 seconds to load, 43% of your visitors will be gone! This is a tragedy. There are ways to achieve excellent designs that are also very light.

3. Bad Colors Choice
Most web designers are not professional graphic designers. They never learned what colors work well together and most importantly, what different colors mean. Make sure your website uses the right colors for your market and it is not hard on your visitors’ eyes.

4. Bad Music Selection
In most cases I am against music at all. I am talking about music that auto-plays (background music). A lot of people will visit your website from work and they don’t want annoying music popping up. Music also makes websites slow to load. If you decide that you want to have music on your website, choose the right one for your audience.

5. Under Construction Pages
What is the purpose of “Coming Soon” pages? This looks really unprofessional. Just don’t have them at all! Who wants to read an “Under Construction” message? If you want to generate curiosity about a section that you will be adding soon, have some teaser copy and possibly a list-building box: “Sign Up to Be Notified When We Release this Feature”.

6. Information is Hard to Find
This happens very often with your phone number and email address. Let’s say you own a restaurant. Most people visit your website to get your phone number and make a reservation. Put your number at the very top and make it huge!

7. Ads on Commercial Websites
If your website is supported by advertising, displaying ads is your business. But if your main stream of income is not advertising, get rid of ads. They look really unprofessional and they make you look needy.

8. Low-Resolution Images
There is nothing that makes me angrier than web designers who use low-resolution images. They look terrible! There are ways to optimize images so they are both light and visually appealing.

9. Splash Screens
Don’t waste your visitors’ time. They are on your website to learn about your company and services, not to see how talented your graphic designer is and the cool animations he can do for you. Don’t force them to take an extra step. They want information. Give it to them.

10. Passive Marketing
Your website is an excellent opportunity to tell prospects why your company is better than the competition, why they should buy from you, and ask them to take action. Be proactive.

Always make sure that your website is properly serving your potential and existing clients!

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In the last year, social media has become very popular.  Everybody is talking about it and almost every online marketer has used it. However, most of them have failed at it. Why? They just don’t get the way it works. I am about to share with you some of the things we discovered promoting over 80 clients using social media.

1. Don’t Steal Other People’s Work
I see this all the time. Someone takes the time to create a group, sends them great information, and builds a relationship with his followers. Then someone else wants to take advantage of this group that took the owner so much work to put together and starts posting promotional comments about his own company. Needless to say, these comments are always removed and the poster ends up looking like a spammer. If you want to succeed in Social Media, create your own group and post your own content, don’t try to cash on someone else’s efforts.

2. Avoid Self-Promotion
Don’t talk about yourself and your company all the time. People don’t care about it. Give them something of value, build relationships, and get people to trust you. Let them know what you do but don’t try to sell them anything. They will call you when they are ready to buy.

3. First Give, then Ask
Don’t you just hate it when someone sends you an email every other day asking you to do something (check out a website or register to get their free ebook) but they don’t do anything for you? We encourage some of our clients to join lead groups. The first thing we recommend that they do is to send leads to other members. Then these members start sending leads their way. That’s how it works. 95% of the people take, take, and take. They never give. Do things the other way around and I guarantee that you’ll be noticed.

4. Use Your Real Name
I get about 10 friend requests per day on Facebook and LinkedIn from companies. I ignore all of them. If you want to network with me, tell me who you are and show me your face.

5. Do It Only if You Enjoy It
I love meeting people and networking. I love having conversations with strangers and exchange ideas. I am not always thinking about how I can make money out of the person I am talking to. If you don’t enjoy the process, you are not likely to be successful at it. People can read between lines and they can tell if all you care about is their money.

6. Don’t Annoy Your Followers
Send them a message or a request only if they will be useful to them and don’t do it ten times per week. I immediately unsubscribe from lists that send me more than 3 messages per week. This guy sent me 15 emails per day last week! That’s not the way to get others to buy your stuff. Monitor the number of people that unsubscribe from your lists. If that number is too high, revise your strategy.

Follow these tips and you’ll have a strong basis in utilizing social media for your business!

Many people believe that social media is just a fad, or that perhaps it’s not for them. This change, however, isn’t going away. Nearly everyone’s target market is on social media. Consumers are now looking for advice and reviews on a product or service at social media sites. It’s a way of building brand awareness and reputation.

As with any type of media, it takes time to catch on, but social media has experienced an explosion in growth like no other type of media. Look at how many years it took to reach 50,000,000 users for each of these mediums:

• Radio: 38 Years
• TV: 13 Years
• Internet: 4 Years
• iPod: 3 Years
• Facebook: Less than 9 Months

Businesses are educating themselves on the proper strategies to use social media as a platform to help take their business to a new level of customer interaction. Are you doing the same for your business?

Below is a video produced by Eric Qualman of Socialnomics. It highlights the impact that social media has made in our personal and professional lives.

Social media is now an integral part of business. In order to survive and thrive, many small businesses are implementing this application. Is your business taking advantage of social media? Amy Porterfield of Social Media Examiner shares important news on what is happening in the world of social media. Here are a couple of the major recent findings:

By 2010, 26 Million (1 in 7) U.S. Adults Will Use Twitter Monthly. Studies have shown that in 2009, Twitter will be accessed by 18 million U.S. adults on a monthly basis (which is a 200% increase over 2008). It will continue to grow an estimated 44% in 2010.

In September 2009, Facebook officially hit the 300 million-user mark, making the social networking site nearly as large as the U.S. population.

Americans Spend 17% of Online Time on Social Media Sites. Americans are now spending a lot more time on social networking sites as social media platforms continue to grow. There has been a 6% increase on time spent at social networking sties.

Advertisers are paying attention to this trend as online ad spending increased by 119% to $108 million in August 2009.

Want to know more? Click here to read the full article.

Is your website fulfilling its purpose? Is it driving leads, building relationships and generating sales to your business every day? Watch this strategy video with John Assaraf and Adrian Ulsh to learn the fundamentals of making your website effective and stand out from your competition.

To learn more ways to grow your business, sign up for a complimentary Business Growth Assessment.

We’ve just launched seven powerful business-growth strategy videos that will help you attract more clients, drive more cash and grow your business even in this recession!

You can receive them for free by going here.

Here’s what you’ll learn in these seven FREE videos:

• The Right Mindset To Grow Your Business – Using The Natural Laws of The Universe
• Attract More Clients – Discover The Ideal Client That Will Make You Wealthy
• Automatic Wealth – Using The Unlimited Potential of Your Sub Conscious Mind
• Your Client’s Decision Making Process – Finding The “Hot Buttons” That Compel Your  Prospects To Buy From You
• Accelerating Your Manifestation – The Neural Reconditioning Process
• Elevator Pitch – What To Say In Less Than 10 Seconds That Move Your Prospects To Buy What You Sell
• Marketing That Works – How To Create Competition-Crushing Marketing

Get Started Today with these Seven FREE Videos Today!

This is the fourth is a series of posts excerpted from a conference call between OneCoach CEO John Assaraf and Tony Rubleski, president of Mind Capture Group. See the first post in the series here.

Diversify or die! That’s the way of the marketing world today. You absolutely can not be reliant on one type of media. The strongest way to combat the thousands upon thousands of daily marketing messages is to be a media mix master. Start your approach with offline marketing and use that to get direct exposure and drive traffic to your Web site; a symbiosis.

And with any endeavor involving more than one step or element, you must have a plan in place – projections, ideal client, target audience, budget…the whole nine yards. If you don’t, you’ll crank through your marketing bucks as if you never had any in the first place. You have to have a marketing plan – that’s what drives business to your door.

Read the rest of this entry »

What do you do if you’re about to lose the roof over your head?

OneCoach CEO John Assaraf will be among the guests addressing that question on Larry King Live, tonight, July 30 at 6 p.m. Pacific (9 p.m. Eastern). Tune in to hear John’s perspective on how to keep the right mindset now amidst so much gloom and doom.

You can send questions to John and other guests by e-mail or video at the Larry King Live site here.

Tune in to Larry King Live tonight to see John!

With gas prices way up and still climbing, CNN talk show host Larry King will focus on the turbulent economy in tonight’s show. Among his expert guests will be OneCoach CEO John Assaraf, who will share strategies on how to thrive financially and personally, in any economic climate.

Tune in to Larry King Live on CNN tonight, Wednesday, June 11, at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, to see John and other guests answer questions and share expert advice on how to manage your money right now.

You can e-mail in your questions for John and the other guests here.

Make sure to tune in and watch!