Content Mastery Guide

Editor and Ghostwriter

Alicia Forest talks about how to create the information products that your target market wants to buy

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Linda: Is there a way to ask your prospective clients directly what it would take for them to become a customer or client?

Alicia: Sure – that’s where your email list of potential clients and customers comes into play. I think there’s still lots of solo business owners who don’t quite grasp that building that email list is critical in creating an online business that produces income consistently.

I survey my email list, usually once a year, where I give them actually topics, programs, and the like to choose from (and they can add their own ideas as well), and I use that information to inform my offerings for the next several months or so.

I also ask periodically on discussion lists and forums that are made up of the solo business owners I work with. Plus, I ask “what’s your biggest challenge with building your business online” to everyone who signs up for my Creating Client Abundance ezine.

Linda: How do you make sure you’re creating the specific information products that your market REALLY wants and will buy?

Alicia: I’m really glad you asked this question, Linda, because this will be a huge shift for some folks listening to this – especially for those who aren’t make the number of sales they’d like to.

What I see happen a lot is that many solo business owners create products/programs/services that they think their prospects need – offerings that seem the most logical to them that will help their prospects do, be or have better – but then they can't seem to sell many – or any of what they put out there.

There are three important factors to creating a profitable product for your niche:

1. Always know your niche before you begin to sell them anything.

Get inside their heads, feel what they are feeling, enter the conversation on your niche’s mind, and intimately understand the problems that your niche is experiencing. The more you are able to do that, the more effectively you’ll be able to create what it is that they want.

2. It's not what you want to sell that matters. It's what your niche wants to buy that matters.

It’s actually irrelevant what it is that YOU want to sell to them – at least in the beginning of your relationship with your potential client or customer.

You may have already learned this lesson. I know I have, where I got so excited about creating something that I thought would be great for my niche, and I went ahead and put it together, and then watched in dismay as hardly anyone bought it.

On the flipside, when I created 21 Easy & Essential Steps to Online Success System™, I was asking my niche all along what its biggest challenges were, and asking them what they wanted, and then I continually asked them what they wanted to so I could be certain I provided it for them – and my results this time were hugely different. Over 40% of my list bought the first edition of 21 Steps (which is an incredible conversion rate, by the way!).

3. Give them what they want now so you can give them what YOU want later.

To give you an example, I’m in the process of writing a book, which answers many of the challenges my niche is struggling with, and much more, but I didn’t specifically ask them if they wanted a print book to help them solve their problems.

Yet writing and publishing a print book is something that I’ve really wanted to do, and I feel confident that this particular product will sell because of three things:

(i) It solves the problems my niche has told me it wants solved. So, over time, I’ve already done my research to know this.

(ii) It’s a first-level funnel offering (< $50). It’s much less risky to create and offer something that you haven’t specifically asked your niche if it wants it if it’s a low-ticket item. I’d never put together a more complex product like a multi-media package or live event before making sure it’s something that a significant number of my list would be interested in enough to invest in it.

(iii) Because there’s a certain percentage of my list who’ve bought something from me before, so from that I can take an educated guess a certain percentage of those people will also buy the book.

If you will only ask your market, it wants to help you create the products it wants to buy!

Thanks, Alicia, for all of these great gems!

Weaving a theme

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In her Claim Your Expertise session, Karen Batchelor and I discussed ideas for her information empire. Completing her website was central to her plans, and so that's where we started.

The most exciting thing for me about Karen's website project was how we used the name of her business, Midlife's a Trip, as the theme for the entire site, and for Karen's service offerings.

Instead of an introductory coaching session, she offers a Midlife Day Trip. Instead of a menu of services, she provides a Midlife Trip Checklist. Karen's upcoming members-only program? The Passport Club! And so on.

The fun has continued as we've worked on Karen's newsletter, and a series of articles discussing what must be packed for a midlife trip (your ID, your emergency contacts list, etc.). Each of those items is a metaphor for the transformational coaching concepts that Karen uses to help her clients during this challenging and exciting time of life.

Weaving a theme through Karen's website, service offerings and other writing projects has been extremely rewarding and creative for me. What was it like for Karen?

"Within the first ten minutes of my Claim Your Expertise session, I knew I had found the solution that would turn my marketing plans into reality. I was stuck and overwhelmed with the task of merging my website and blog, which involved a complete rewrite of the website content.

With Linda’s help, the first phase of this project was completed in just one week. I was and continued to be amazed with her ability to bring each project in on deadline or before.

We even had to speed up the website launch because a local paper was doing an article on me the day after Memorial Day. With Linda’s help and patience, my new site was ready in time for the increased traffic generated by the article. I know that without Linda’s focus and attention to my project, there’s no way it would have been done in time.

Since then, Linda has helped me with other projects, like my first e-newsletter and an introductory letter to my list of contacts. Because of my confidence in her stellar writing skills and extraordinary customer service, I have also referred several friends to her for editing of their books. If you're in the middle of a writing project, or even contemplating starting one, Linda is definitely a person you want on your team. Thanks so much, Linda!" – Karen Batchelor, Midlife’s A Trip

Direct traffic is golden, SEO traffic is a bonus

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In a website statistics tool like Google Analytics, direct traffic, literally, refers to website visitors who actually typed your website or blog address right into the address bar of their Internet browser.

Direct traffic is pretty special. It means someone remembered the URL of my website and used it specifically when they were looking for help with writing or editing.

Next, Google Analytics tracks traffic from referring sites, which is also very special. When a visitor has come from a referring site, it means that someone thinks enough of my work to include a link to my site from their website or blog, or maybe they've even sent the link in a direct email message to a client, colleague, friend or family member.

Or maybe the referral came out of my article marketing efforts at sites like Ezine Articles. Someone read one of my articles and liked my ideas enough to find out more about what I offer.

Direct traffic and traffic from referral sites both represent people who have already warmed up to the idea of finding out more about you. That's much different from just having your website pop up in a list of search results.

I really like what Rick Spence writes in the June 2008 issues of Profit magazine, "… the Web isn't always about the masses. For many niche businesses, Web marketing means drawing your best customers closer and closer." (Read Rick's article)

So do what you can to keep search engine optimization (SEO) on your side – write a lot of fresh content, and write for your niche by using the language they'll use when they're looking for information and help.

Then, turn your attention back to cultivating your relationships, because that's what will send direct traffic and referring site traffic your way.

Writing Prompt: How can you greet your website visitors as if they've all come as direct traffic or from referral sites? How can you treat strangers (search engine traffic) like friends?

P.S. There are also such things as human search engines (Mahalo) and social bookmarking sites (del.icio.us), both of which allow Web users to access search results that are based on human entries versus computer-generated ones.

Getting out my fine-toothed comb

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A quick update on the progress on my upcoming book, The Customizable Style Guide for Coaches Who Write: Look Smarter, Write Faster and Get Better Results from Your Writing – the design is done and I’m just in the proofreading stage.

Of course, I’m also finding things I want to change in the content. Here’s where perfectionism starts to seep in. That’s why I’m making sure to tell a lot of people how close the book is to being complete. I know you all won’t let me dissect it for too much longer.

Watch for a pre-sales offer very soon, and the official launch coming shortly after.

Thanks for your support and good wishes!

Unleashing the Goddess Within

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To follow-up on my Website Manifesto, I'm going to tell the story of a website sales page that I recently edited. Watch for another website story next month!

Sharon Turnbull, PhD, of GoddessGift.com hired me to edit the sales page for her Goddess Quiz. I was really intrigued by her product, impressed by her knowledge and eager to step into her Goddess world.

The existing page was way longer than she wanted it be, because she was trying to explain some pretty complex topics – archetypal psychology and personality assessments. She also has a huge wealth of information to share and she didn't want her readers to miss out on any of it! Maybe she was trying to write the sales page of a lifetime?

In an effort to keep the page to a manageable length, Sharon had included links to a lot of different pages with more information, inviting her website visitors on a long and fascinating journey. The problem was that it was too easy for them to get lost or distracted along the way.

We worked together to bring the focus back to one purpose: encouraging website visitors to buy the Goddess Quiz.

The result? Sharon's Goddess Quiz sales page is now much more focused. There are three outbound links that open as small new windows; one has more information about each of the Goddess types, and the other two are personal stories of how others have benefited from the Goddess Quiz.

I asked Sharon about the difference it made to have my help with her sales page, and here's what she told me:

“Though I was initially dreading having to ‘brain dump’ on someone who knew nothing about my unusual product, everything about you and your process quickly reassured me I'd made the right decision. You listened carefully and took my concerns to heart while gracefully introducing original ideas that literally rejuvenated that tired old sales page I'd been using. You reconnected me to my story and gave it momentum.

Somehow you knew exactly what to change and what to keep in the copy to make it clear and concise. And the tone was perfect – not hard sell, but not too “woo-woo” either. Your powerfully crafted page was right-on-target and you delivered it in a way that was phenomenal . . . not only prompt and efficient, but actually instructive and enjoyable. Linda, you were Goddess-sent!”

P.S. The results are in! My own Goddess Quiz results showed that I am a Persephone. Check out Sharon's Goddess page to find out what that means about me, or take the quiz yourself!