This post is all about me, Kristen, walking my walk, practicing what I preach and all that jazz.  You see, I’ve been doing some serious soul searching and some business development.  I’m sure you know how that can bring about some major changes.  Well it certainly has brought some major changes for me!  As a result, you might start to notice some changes on this blog.  The biggest of which will be a discussion around trust marketing (building trust with potential clients and your community).

When it comes to maintaining trust with your community, it’s important to keep them informed.  So, here I am informing my community of the changes that are taking place on this blog and in my business.

With the help of a mastermind group, I discovered that I have completely removed myself from my business and I have no focused “expertise” that I’m known for.  Hmmmmm….how can I be a consultant without an expertise? So I’ve spent the last 8 weeks learning what makes me (specifically me) special in my industry.  In the process I discovered that everything I do and have done in my business (I mean EVERYTHING) goes back to trust marketing.  All the processes I’ve set up for my team to follow, all the little details I focus on with my clients.  It all leads back to building trust with their potential clients.  It’s just something I automatically do.  Not something I was ever aware of.  Now that it’s been pointed out to me, I totally see how it’s what I’m all about.

So, I’m standing up and owning the expertise I’ve had all along.  I’m owning my differentiation and I’m standing on a platform that finally feels like I belong here.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to veer away from internet marketing tips for coaches.  In fact, the internet is a great way to build trust with your community.  So, I’m going to continue to give technical and strategical tips on internet marketing for coaches.  I’m just going to be adding in the piece about how to build trust with it.  As I go back and look at my past blog posts, all of them can be connected to building trust with potential clients…I just didn’t point out how.  Now I’ll be pointing out how.

So things around here are changing for the better.  I just wanted you to know so you aren’t surprised when the content of this blog has a new slant to it that it never had before.  I want to keep your trust.

I would love to hear your comments, thoughts and/or questions.

Kristen Beireis, Trust Marketing Expert for the personal transformation industry

I actually enjoy football.  Hubby and I enjoy watching games together, so we watched the superbowl on Sunday.  It’s usually a great game, so I was excited to see what happened this year.  As with every year, I’m always excited to see what creative ideas come through in the commercials too.  I’m a marketing expert, how can I not?!

To be perfectly honest, as a woman, I felt very alienated by the commercials this year.  Yeah, that sounds like my “stuff” coming up, but did you pay attention to the content of the commercials?  Now, I know it’s a mans game and I expect to see very masculine commercials.  That’s not a big deal!   I see them all the time during the season.  This year, I would say 75% of the commercials either made fun of women or degraded them.  Am I the only one who saw this?

From a pure marketing standpoint, I get what they were after.  The target market for the commercials is men.  So, they created masculine commercials that appealed to men.  I get that. That makes sense.  Did it go too far?  It’s a major social event each year, a lot of women DO tune in to watch the superbowl.   Many of them watch FOR the commercials even.  Then there are those women, like me, who watch their favorite team throughout the season that still enjoy the final championship game.  So, I would say the audience watching the commercials during the game could be 30-40% women. Oh, and studies have shown that women still make the majority of the buying decisions in the household.  Hmm….so, why would you alienate us?

This is where I think things got mixed up.  The commercials did a great job of appealing to their target market of men.  At the same time too many didn’t consider a large part of the audience that would be watching those commercials.  Here’s where some balance is needed.  Yes, we always want to create marketing that appeals to our target market.  In fact, those are the people we want in our business the most.  At the same time, we need to consider who is going to be stumbling upon our marketing and make sure we don’t alienate them…especially if they are part of the decision making process.  You can be considerate to one group at the same time you are being attractive to another, right?  YES!  That’s the goal.

Think about it like this.  As someone in the life changing field, you need to build a HUGE amount of trust with your audience before they buy from you.  Will they trust you if you alienate their counterpart?  Up front, maybe…but once they go to making a decision and they bring that counterpart into the decision-making process, it’s a whole new ball game.  So, be aware of who you are speaking to and who might be an integral part of the decision making.  Make sure you don’t alienate in your marketing.  Be considerate and you build trust.

What are your thoughts on this?

Hey everyone!

As you may know, I was out for the last two weeks as I attended Marketing to Millionaires and did some networking on the west coast.  It was an amazing experience and I am so grateful I decided to embark on this journey.  Although, I don’t think my brain has ever been so crammed full of information to process before!

First of all, at Marketing to Millionaires I got to meet some amazing people that I had only known via the internet and had a phone call or two with.  Meeting in person really made those relationships stronger and cemented several that will be long-lasting.  Not to mention, I met a lot of new people that I am now continuing to build relationships with.

Kelly taught us a lot about marketing to the affluent.  It’s a whole different ball game from the mass marketing that we all learned when we started our businesses.  It’s a different way of thinking when communicating with this group.  It also takes a much higher level of investment in the relationship.  I am now completely rethinking how I work with my current clients and how I will attract new clients as a result of this training.  Not only that, I have new positioning for my business and I’ll be rewriting my website content soon (stay tuned for more on this!).  It’s all VERY exciting!  For once in my career, I feel like I know exactly what I need to do to achieve what I want.  It’s awesome!

After the event, I arranged some time to meet up with others who weren’t attending.  I took my Project Manager, Carrie, with me so that she could meet one of our clients that she manages and others.  It was awesome to meet all these people in person.  I think we really strengthened our relationship with the client!  As for my other friends/colleauges it was great to meet up with them in person and find out what’s up with them.  I was also introduced to some amazing new people that I will continue to keep in contact with.

Oh, and then there was the day I was able to meet with my brother.  I only get to see  him once a year usually, and this year I got to see him twice!  It was great to hike in the woods, shoot a bow and arrow, and visit with his new furry friends at the house.

Needless to say, I truly enjoyed my trip. Now, I’m beginning to implement the strategies I learned from Kelly and I’m following up with the amazing contacts I made.  I now know that these kinds of events are totally worth it from a learning and networking standpoint.  I’ve grown HUGELY over the last two weeks and I have a commitment to my business that I’ve never had before.  If for no other reason, this was worth it!

Have you been to an event like this?  How has it changed your relationships and/or business?

How many products or freebies do you have floating around on your website?  When people sign up for or purchase one of these products, do they hear from you again?  And I’m not talking about the autosubscribe to your newsletter.  I’m talking about a follow-up campaign that keeps building a relationship with those who have already shown interest.

I’m sure you’ve heard it before that repeat customers are more willing to purchase from you than a newbie.  I’m sure you know that keeping in touch with them will create more income for you.  Right?  Then, why focus SO much attention on getting them to download or purchase something if you aren’t going to continue to harness that relationship?

I’ve seen it all too often.  An experienced coach who is GREAT at attracting new clients, but has 20 different lists in their autoresponder that they haven’t spoken to since the day they purchased or downloaded something.  That’s lost money right there!!  A follow-up campaign can keep you in touch with them and when they are looking for the next thing you offer, they will be ready to buy!

If you want to successfully build a relationship with this group of people, here are a few important things to consider when setting up your follow-up campaign:

1)  If your autoresponder system allows for an HTML and a text version of your messages, use both! A branded HTML e-mail is going to be remembered sooner than a plain text e-mail.  So, you want to make sure that you get that branding in front of anyone who is willing to accept an HTML e-mail.   This will reinforce trust and continue to help them remember who you are.

2)  Be consistent. If you get wishy washy in who you are within different e-mails, people will subconsciously think you are wishy washy as a business owner.  So, you want everything to be consistent; your signature, your logo, your colors, your subject (not word for word identical, but have the same format and feel).

3)  Be conversational. From the opt-in message to the 3 month follow-up message, have a conversation with your reader.  Share with them who you are as a business.  Ask questions.  Encourage them to write you back.  Invite them to participate with you in the design process.  Offer them special opportunities because they are in a certain group of people.

4)  Be a coach. As a coach you have a unique opportunity to start challenging their thinking.  Do it in every e-mail that goes out.  They may not get it right away, but if you have a campaign built around one concept and you keep coming at it from different ways, they are going to eventually get it and when they do, they will be ready for something you offer.

5) Provide opportunity. In every e-mail you want to provide them an opportunity to continue THEIR growth.  Do this by sharing resources, pointing towards other opportunities (that are the next step in your marketing funnel) etc…

Every purchase or download  is an opportunity for you and your potential clients.  Treat them with respect, be transparent and make sure you get your branding in front of them as often as possible through the entire campaign.  In the long-run this will create relationships that lead to more purchases and more clients!

I would love to hear your thoughts on follow-up campaigns.  Please leave any questions, tips or suggestions as a comment.

You may or may not know that I was on The Passion Project Show with Katherine Reschke a couple weeks ago.  Katherine does this weekly podcast through Blog Talk Radio and she focuses on “Passions That Pay.”  You can listen to the podcast at http://www.passionsthatpay.com/the-passion-project-presents-kristen-beireis/.

I don’t really want to go into all the details on podcasting and it’s benefits.  I’ll save that for another post.  What I DO want to share with you is the benefits of Interviews.  The interview Katherine did was a great way for her to talk about her topic of passions and relate that back to building businesses as an entrepreneur.  It was also a great way for listeners to get to know me as a person.  I also had opportunities to provide valuable information to potential clients who may have been listening.  We talked about everything from my passions as a child to my current passion in my business (Twitter! Of Course!).  She asked very detailed questions to get me talking.  So, it was beneficial for both of us in the work that we do.  Not to mention, it’s a way for people to HEAR my voice which always is a great way for clients to get to know me.

Text interviews on a blog are very much the same way.  It’s beneficial for both of you.  If you share a target market and have similar but not the same services (I call them dovetail services), you will be able to provide benefit to the blog readers and your own business.  It’s a win-win situation for any type of interview.

One thing that I want to make clear.  Not EVERY interview is going to be beneficial.  You really have to look at target market.  Most importantly, you want to look at who you are and what gets you talking.  I love talking about my passions, that’s the main reason I did the interview with Katherine.  Now, we do share some of a target market, but the biggest benefit is that I now have  a recording of me talking from a place of passion and enthusiasm.  THAT is HUGELY attractive to clients.  So, if you really want to benefit from an interview, make sure the content is something that resonates with you.  Make sure it’s something you can get behind.  Make sure it’s something you can talk about for days.  All of this will create an interview where your potential clients can connect with you and get to know you.  You’ll create trust and a sense that they already know you.

Have you done any interviews?  Post a comment including topics you like to talk about in your business.  Let’s see if we can’t get some interviews going between the readers of this post!