Like a city cannot work efficiently without great infrastructure, neither can your business grow without systems that make it easy to become and stay a member of your community. 

The difference between poor and thriving cities comes down to very few factors. To thrive financially and become popular, a city needs to provide safety, a warm atmosphere, opportunities to feel involved and prosper - and a great infrastructure.

Imagine if a city did not appear on Google maps and nobody knew where it is. Imagine if, when trying to arrive at the city, you went sent in all kinds of directions, there was nobody to ask for directions in a language you could understand or if there were no roads arriving at your destination.

A sales funnel is basically the path visitors take on the way to buying your product or service. Your job as a marketer is to make it easy for them to understand what your city is offering, explain who lives there so they can understand if they would like to belong...

Investing time in defining and finding your perfect audience is one of the best investment of your time you'll ever make. 

Just putting your product or service out there and hoping the right people see it is just a waste of your time and money. There are really two big problems in skipping doing thorough audience research:

1. You’ll design and explain your product in a more general way which makes it harder to relate to for your perfect customer, and for any customer really. Nobody wants 'average' or one size fits all.
2. Your spending money getting in front of people that are not your target market and thereby reducing your ROAS (return on ad spend) as well

There are different ways to approach this.

1. Market analysis -> Segments -> Pick a niche -> Perfect customer profile
2. Analyse customers -> Profitable segments -> Survey -> Perfect customer profile

In this case, we’ll assume you don’t already have an audience or lots of profitable customers....

It’s never been easier or more difficult to build a powerful personal brand business.

• On one hand, there are really no barriers to keeping skilled people from sharing their knowledge and create a profitable personal brand.
• On the other hand, there is so much information out there about how to do so, and most of it has become irrelevant because what used to work is no longer working.

But for sure, if you are ahead of someone and you have great teaching skills, you can help them solve problems and build a business doing so. Zero barriers - except maybe your mindset and beliefs. You just need to figure out how.

With that in mind, here are five things that personal brand entrepreneurs should be doing each week. Most of them, you need to do a lot more of when you are new in the game, but all of them are things you should continue doing far beyond the start-up phase.

1. Have a real conversation with a customer

Talking to your customers might appear so obvious a task it does not...

The short answer...it's worth a lot!

Spoiler alert
This article claims it does NOT have to be painful
Watch the video below!

Yeeeeaars ago, a survey and article Joseph Epstein in the New York Times indicated that “81% of Americans feel that they have a book in them — and should write it.”

I am pretty darn sure, the number among coaches, consultants, speakers, teachers , and others who are building a business based on their personal brand, is a lot higher!

Anyways, even among “normal” people, there is a good chance ANY person you meet would love to be in your shoes if you are an author!

As humans, we feel an urge to share good ideas.

We are superior to all other animals because this is a key strength of ours.

We feel an obligation to make a contribution to the survival, safety and happiness of others when we can.

From personal experience, I can tell you “my” authors are standing proudly in their own...

How to know your copy will trigger the right emotions and attract the right people

I think everybody can agree headlines are important. They attract customers and trigger actions. In marketing in general, great copywriting is one of the most desired skills. Using the right words can make up success or failure for an otherwise similar campaign.

But how do you know which words your tribe will resonate with?

Once you have read this blog post or watched the video, you will have a much bigger toolbox for creating great headlines that make people stop scanning and dive into your content.

You will also get my personal empowerment tool to force yourself to create more interesting headlines!

Ray Edwards, author of ‘How to write copy that sells’ outlines 5 essential qualities.

A compelling headline:

1. Grabs attention within 2 seconds.
   The ONE JOB of the headline is to get the reader to read the next sentence. To make the reader stop scanning.
   
   
2. Screens and qualifies readers.
   ...

Increasing your marketing budgets, launching a new product, increasing your prices... 

There are many, many ways to increase your revenue. 

However, the devil lies in the detail and here are 5 areas that are sometimes overlooked or less prioritized. Maybe there is an idea in there for you too?

1. Warm up your prospects and educate them to be ready to buy. When you are selling intangible products the trust factor is much bigger and you need to earn your *ask*. First, you need to give, give, give. Your prospects should feel they know what you can do for them, they should like you, and they should trust you. Your funnels should be built for that to happen in a natural next-step flow.
   
   
2. Spread your wings and capture leads with discoverable content. With a solid content creation strategy, you will be able to repurpose your content and position this content in numerous contexts. Some of your content should be timely and relevant for taking action right now. Other content should be...

Conversations on the topic of list building seem to lack nuance with a tendency to focus on which media is performing best. The thing is, your first question should be, how your niche is distributed in 5 different audiences based on your current relationship.

Are you targeting cold traffic who have no idea who you are or warm traffic who have previous knowledge of who you are and some level of trust?

WIDEN THE NET USING CONTENT - COLD TRAFFIC

• Cold Audience 1: Friends of Friends
  
  Some of the people in your niche won’t know you at all. When they see your name for the first time, they will have no idea about who you are or what you can do for them. But there is an opportunity to engage those who already know you in activities that are broadcasted in the news feeds of their friends on social media. Who would you listen to more? Someone you never heard of or someone your friend listens to?
  
  Activate and engage your followers in activities RELEVANT to your business...

For some of us, the idea of writing a book can be all too intimidating, and we tend to be our own greatest roadblock when it comes to getting started. And while you can treat yourself to fancy new notebooks and shiny pens meant to motivate your writing, putting pen to paper isn’t actually the most efficient use of your time.

Rather than write, you should speak. In fact, this is one of the tips I give in my book, The Proven 10-step System to Rapid Book Publishing, a guide to speedy and smart self-publishing. Grab a recorder and find a comfy seat, a quiet room, or a space with hallways and stairs should you prefer to pace while you talk.

Afterwards, you’ll want to hire someone to transcribe the audio for you so that you can be putting your time and energy into the tasks where you are actually skilled. The basis of these audio exercises is not for you to waste time typing, but rather for you to get comfortable with speaking your ideas, a skill that can lead to...

If you are a business owner or entrepreneur and you are looking to grow your business using digital strategies, one of the most popular and efficient tools is book publishing.

Online entrepreneurs are publishing more books than ever. Why? Because, unlike what many people think, doing business online is super personal. And really, anyone teaching great stuff can easily publish a book. With a little help in just a few months!

Building a strong trustful relationship with your audience (read: prospects for other information products) is crucial for building and growing a successful business online. Publishing a book allows your audience to get to know you and learn how you think and if they relate well with you and your content.

It allows them to position you as an authority and build a strong belief that you will be able to help them solve significant problems.

In a book, you have the opportunity to share your ideas, knowledge and proven systems and provide value right there....