As some of you know, I am a singer.  As a singer, I am addicted to American Idol and watch it every year…okay, I skip the auditions and sometimes don’t tune in until the top 12.  I just can’t stand to watch people make fools of themselves and contort their voices to do things they shouldn’t even be trying to do (that’s a whole other topic though!).

I was watching American Idol a couple weeks ago and it hit me.  The entire process of American Idol is an exercise in differentiation!  If you watch the progression of each contestant through to the finale, they learn where their “place” is in the music world.  They are forced to try different genres for a reason.  It gives them the experience to find where they fit and stand out in as many places as they can.

A few will know what their differentiation is going in.  Adam Lambert was one of those people last year.  He finished 2nd, which is an honor and got him some huge exposure to producers who would’ve never seen him otherwise.  Why didn’t he finish on top?  Numbers.  There weren’t enough of “his people” in the audience to vote for him, but you can bet his albums will sell within his target market. He’s already been at the top of the charts (above Kris Allen, the winner) several times since his album came out.  He differentiated and it got him noticed by those who really want what he’s selling.

One of the things I find most interesting about the process of American Idol is that in order to find out where they fit in the music world, the contestants have to find who they are.  The ones who aren’t secure in who they are usually get voted off quickly.  So, there’s an inner knowing and confidence that’s required in order for the contestants to stand out.  It’s not just about having the best voice.  People vote for the contestants they can relate to.  Just listen to Simon.  Usually his negative comments challenge the contestant to own up to who they are.

I find the same to be true in the world of coaching.  A coach who does the work and finds out who they are, owns it, and creates differentiation based on that will find themselves with a stream of clients coming in.  Clients that are the right clients.  Their people.

Those who are unsure, hesitant, or don’t quite know who they are as a coach yet will flounder and run around in circles trying to get clients that trickle in.  In a world where there are more and more people hanging out the “coach” shingle every day, you’ve got to stand out and find something unique about what you offer.  The unique piece comes from who you are.

Oh, and by the way.  When you offer something that no one else in your field is offering, it raises the amount of trust a client is willing to give you right off the bat.

So, what can we learn from American Idol?  Own who you are and differentiate around it.  If you do, you’ll be the next Coaching Idol to take the stage.

What are your thoughts?  I’d love to hear from you in a comment.

Kristen Beireis, Trust Marketing Expert

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?

Do you think about who you connect with on LinkedIn? I’m really picky as to who I connect with on LinkedIn.  Maybe it’s just me, but I think this network requires that you be picky.  Have you noticed what your options are when you get a connection request?  You don’t have the option to “ignore”, but you can say you don’t know them.  To me, this says don’t accept people you don’t know.   That’s point one.

Point two?  LinkedIn is a professional network. It’s not a “social” social network.  It’s not about weekend trips and games with your Hubby or dinner with your friends.  In my mind that kind of chatter is actually distracting on LinkedIn.  The conversation on LinkedIn needs to be a professional one.  More like going to a networking meeting and discussing your job or business.  Anything else is distracting and annoying, to be blunt.

Here’s my philosophy on LinkedIn.

1)  I connect with people I know and people who might be a client only. If you think you can offer services to my clients, I want to know who you are first.  People know me as a marketing manager and implementer for life changers.  I get web designers/developers, social media experts etc… trying to connect with me all the time on LinkedIn.  I see my network on LinkedIn as a way to recommend people.  I don’t recommend people I don’t know.  If you want to be a potential JV partner or referral partner, connect on my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter and help me get to know you.  Once I know you and I’m confident you can help my network, then I’ll be happy to connect on LinkedIn, as well.

2)  Automation is not recommended 100% of the time. I’ve noticed that some people have their twitter stream feeding into their LinkedIn status updates.  This seems like a great idea, doesn’t it?  Think about it.  On Twitter, you can talk about any kind of topic.  If you connect your catch all (this is all about me, my life, and my business) twitter stream with your LinkedIn account, it’s not in integrity with what the network is about.  Now, if you have a business only twitter account, then, yes, by all means connect that one up with your LinkedIn status updates.

I’ve just recently noticed that http://ping.fm allows you to create “groups”.  This makes it easy!  I have a personal group, a business group, and a few others.  I can post to all my networks at once if I want.  For business stuff I do that, including LinkedIn.

3)  Be aware of the conversation. One of the great features (that I don’t take advantage of enough yet) are the groups on LinkedIn.  There are some really great groups that are having amazing conversations.  So, check them out and sign up for a few.  At the same time, be aware of the converstiaon.  I see way too many people just throwing up promos left and right, without participating in discussion.  Remember Yahoo groups?  Same thing was/is happening there too.  Stick to the topic.  Put your promos in your signature, unless there is a specified way to send promos to the group.  Ask the administrator if you don’t know.

So, what are your thoughts on LinkedIn?  Do you agree that it should be professional conversation only?  What is your philosophy?

Okay, I’ll admit it.  I’m a HUGE fan of AWeber.com.  I’m an affiliate for a reason (and yes, the links I use in this post will be my affiliate links)!  They have a great system that I wholeheartedly believe in when it comes to e-mail/permission marketing on the internet.  They GET the strategies and continue to build their system to match. Their latest changes to the system are no exception.

If you use AWeber, I think you will find the new forms features are very useful!  In fact, you may not need a survey program anymore.  That’s right, AWeber now has a way to create surveys.  Woo hoo!!  Did I mention that I’m excited about these new features?  Okay, so I’ll quit gushing and I’ll give you the low-down on what’s possible with the new features.

1)  You can create templates for forms or use pre-made templates that draw attention to the form.

2)  You can customize the templates to include your own fancy graphics, including a different submit button.

3)  The 10 field limit is gone!  There is now a 25 field limit…way better and much more usable for a survey.

4)  When you add in the US Address it’s only considered ONE field.  So, you don’t waste fields with address information anymore.

5)  You can use radio buttons, text boxes, check boxes, comment boxes, selection boxes, date boxes etc…

6)  You now have the option of a branded thank you page.  You don’t have to create your own custom thank you page anymore.  AWeber has a very nice template that adds your banner to it automatically, if you choose to use it.  It doesn’t include whitelist information, so I would still recommend doing your own, but if that’s not an option, use their branded page.

7)  You can pass information from the form to the thank you page without having to know how to play with CGI variables.  So, you can now create one generic thank you page, but for each form it will update the thank you page with specific information.  So, your thank you page can now have your subscribers name, the name of the list they signed up for, or the answers to all the questions in your survey.  So, you only design it once, but for each person who sees it, it’s customized.

8)  Aweber can host it for you.  If at all possible, your forms should live on your domain on your website.  This gives you google credit.  However, if that’s not an option for you then AWeber will now host the form for you.  No copy/paste into your website.  Just send people directly to a page on AWeber’s site and your form will be there.

All of these improvements are going to make surveys and information gathering so much easier for those of us who want to collect names and e-mail’s with it.

I do have a few changes that I’d still love to see.  My biggest is being able to put punctuation in the field names.  At this time, no question marks are allowed and when I do a survey, I REALLY want the question mark at the end of a question.

Now, I did notice that this is so new, AWeber hasn’t updated their knowledgebase with the new functions.  If you’ve ever played with a form in AWeber before, you can do it again.  Just go in and try to create a new one.  See what your options are.  It’s well laid out as you go through the process.

So, what do you think?  Do you like the new changes?  Are you ditching your survey program?  Please leave a comment and let us know what your thoughts are.