Change The Way You Look For Customers

I received an interesting story in my email this morning. In an ezine from one of my favorite writers, Michael Masterson, he explained how one of his clients was taking on the obesity issue. The CEO issued his employees a challenge: as a takeoff from The Biggest Loser, he was also going to stage The Biggest Loser contest within the office. He gave people time away from the office to work out, and even brought in a personal trainer to help them achieve their goals. The winner would get money, prizes, etc from the office.

The story was very motivating, and I loved the idea. But I also got to thinking about it from a different aspect.

For most personal trainers, they head to the gym and wait for individuals to come into the gym and request working out with them. They get their clients throught the gym, or by networking in the community - looking for one client at a time.

But the personal trainer in Michael's story has a completely different approach. He is getting business MANY at a time. Because he entered the corporate world, and with the CEO's blessing, he has multiple clients immediately, and can work with them in groups and individually, and probably can build up his client base for years to come.

Also, he now has the experience of working in a corporate environment, and can bring this philosophy to other corporations. In other words, he can add clients by the dozen in one shot!
I've talked to personal trainers at the gym, and they always complain about how scarce business is. Picking up one or two new clients per quarter is a big deal to them.
But by tweaking the way you connect with people, the personal trainer in Michae's story can add dozens of new clients any time he chooses!

How can you tweak the way you think? How can you step away from the pack - and the way most people market their businesses in your industry - and find a huge pool of potential customers?

It's out there. You just need to think about it.

Where Do You Rank On Google?

You have a website. You know it has the potential to bring you in leads (and sales). But is it working for you? Do you know if it's working for you?

For many businesses, the only way they drive traffic to their website is by telling their customers to visit it, or to list their web address on their brochures. If this sounds like your business, let me ask you a question. Are you concentrating on gaining rankings in the search engines?

Take a few minutes and spend some time in Google. I have a sample image here for you. When you type in a search phrase, Google provides results in several ways.

1. The top section, highlighted in a light color, is top sponsored links. These are results that the companies listed here are paying for.

2. The right hand side also contains a variety of sponsored links. Likewise, the companies sponsored here are also paying for links.

3. The terms listed in the main body section are the natural results. These companies worked hard to achieve top listings under popular search phrases.

Think about your own search patterns. When you do a search, how many pages do you click through to find a site with relevant information? Chances are you look through the first page of results (the first 10 pages of top producing results), and you may click through to the second and third pages, but you probably don't go much further.

Which means if you aren't ranking in the top 10 under your key phrases that people are searching for you on, you'll never come into contact with the people looking for you.

As a business owner, you have two jobs when it comes to Internet marketing.

1. Figure out what people are typing into the search engines to find you.

2. Consistently get top rankings under those key terms for more exposure.

Tip: You don't always want top placement under the most obvious key word.

Let me give you an example. As many of you know, I have a photography background. So we have a site dedicated to helping photographers.

Ranking under the term "photography" would only bring me minimal results. Instead, we've focused our efforts on the terms that people are searching for us under.

Under the terms:

Photography Business - we're 14 out of 272,000,000
Photographic Studio Secrets - we're 1 and 2 out of 1,400,000
Wedding Photographer Equipment Checklist - we're 3 and 4 out of 990,000

I could provide many more examples, but I'm sure you're starting to see the value. As people search for things relevant to my business, they are finding my site, clicking through to my site, and buying from my site.

Is your site doing the same?

Lori Osterberg has created three successful businesses in the past 10 years, and along the way discovered the secrets of taking a local small business and turning it into a worldwide success. She now shares this passion with people all over the world, and speaks, writes and mentors on using technology to grow your business – and stay small at the same time! Receive her FREE ezine at http://www.visionofsuccess.com/.