Digitally Enhanced: How to Enhance Your Web Presence to Attract More of Your Ideal Clients

How to enhance your web presence to attract more of your ideal clients

Sprout Publishing, Geelong, VIC, Australia.

ISBN 978-0-9943284-0-3

Copyright © James Crook, 2015.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express prior written consent of James Crook.

Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorised editions.

For information please contact james@jamescrook.com.au.

First published in Australia 2015 by Sprout Publishing.

Design by Jennifer Morrison of www.morrisondesign.com.au

Book production by Michael Hanrahan Publishing.

Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing.

The author, James Crook, is available for public speaking and consulting.

For more infomation please visit www.jamescrook.com.au

Disclaimer: While the author has made every effort to provide accurate information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for any errors, or for changes that occur after publication. The publisher does not have any control over, or assume responsibility for author or third party websites or their content.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

What’s the big idea?

Downloadable Actionsheets

Part OnE: POSITION

1 Getting Clear On Your Purpose And Position

2 Developing A Suitable Strategy

Part TwO: PRESENCE

3 It’s All About Me

4 This Is Your Website On Google

5 Lead Magnets

6 Blogging For Authority

7 Show People The Real You With Social Media

Part ThreE: PROMOTION

8 How To Use Social Media Like A Boss

9 Nothing Wrong With Paying For It – Advertising Online

10 Nurturing Your Leads

11 What’s Next?

Conclusion

Enhance Yourself

Endnotes

Acknowledgments

To my wife, Elicia

for your support, encouragement

and, most of all, inspiration.

And to my wonderful children,

Toby and Aniela,

who bring me more joy

than anything else in this world.

introduction

What’s the big idea?

The way we communicate is changing rapidly.

Today, you likely talk with friends using technology that didn’t even exist a decade ago. You chat, organise to meet, buy something online, post a photo of yourself or do any of a hundred other tasks that have integrated themselves seamlessly into our lives. Studies show that the brains of young people growing up in today’s world have developed physical differences to those of previous generations, due to the communication devices they are using from childhood.

These changes create huge opportunities for business. Yes, many startups are working on creative and inspiring ideas to advance this new technology, and that is an exciting space to be in if you’re lucky enough to work there. But, more importantly, these new methods of communication are revolutionising how every business connects with their clients and services them.

You have new, easy ways to get your message out to your audience that make this the best time in history to start a business. Technology is on your side, giving you power to reach around the world to connect with your ideal clients. You can also meet with those clients using video technology, and deliver services to many of them remotely.

The advantages here are doubled by the fact that many larger and older institutions are not moving quickly to fill the gaps in their efforts, and still rely on marketing and business practices that are becoming less effective every year.

If you’re starting a new business, especially if you’re a ‘corporate escapee’ who has expertise in your field, the opportunities available online allow you to build a reputation, target a niche audience, make sales and then deliver your services to virtually anywhere in the world.

Professional service firms that have relied on traditional marketing must embrace this new style if they wish to thrive in this environment.

This book shows you how to achieve all this.

You’re an expert in your field, and you’re in business as a consultant or professional service provider. However, you’re most likely not an expert at branding, marketing, sales – or any of the other things that are required to run that business successfully. If you’re previously from the corporate world you probably had teams doing all that, quite separate from the practical work of service delivery.

Luckily, the techniques available online mean that you can run an outrageously successful business without needing to do ‘sales’ in the traditional sense. No cold calls, no flaccid networking events, no pressure tactics. Your marketing efforts can be targeted at exactly the right people, so that you spend less time and effort trying to convince people whose needs are less attuned to your services in the first place.

I first experienced the power of online marketing when I was studying at university and working part-time in my father’s small business. Dad’s a cartographer and at the time I was doing some simple drafting for him drawing maps.

Dad is a classic technician-turned-business-owner who cares deeply about producing beautiful, clear maps for his clients. By the time I was working for him, he had learned enough about marketing and sales to run his business well, but his passion was for the service he was providing.

In the late 1990s he signed up to have a website created for his business. The site was built for him by a company he’d never heard of and which didn’t really understand him or the work he did. The site sat there online but didn’t do anything at all for him.

A couple of years later, I suggested that I have a go at building a site for Dad’s business. This was the first commercial website I ever built and, while it would look very amateur by today’s standards, at least I made sure that the site communicated the artwork that my Dad was so proud of to the people who wanted to use his skills.

It’s almost 20 years later and I now work with hundreds of businesses each year, showing them how to use digital marketing techniques to be more effective and efficient. While the tools we use have changed totally (at least three or four times) since my first experiments in the ’90s, I have found many business people face the same three challenges now that they did then.

The first is not having enough clients, or not having enough of the right kind of clients. When first starting out this can be difficult. Your personal network of contacts may be able to sustain you for a while, but at some point you need to attract new clients by getting in front of the right people and making a memorable first impression.

This stems from another common challenge – that of not being well known and, therefore, finding it difficult to make an impact on the right audience. Unless you’ve held a high-profile position in the past, working a corporate job usually means that while you were doing that job your expertise was supplied under the brand of the business you worked for. You may have a handful of personal contacts who know you but, beyond that, your employer is the one who has improved their reputation on the back of your skills.

The third challenge is a consequence of the first two, but is the most biting. Many experts who strike out on their own are undervalued for the service they provide. Consulting can be very lucrative but, without a reputation and without the right clients, you may struggle to find people who are willing to pay for your services at the level you know you are worth.

These three challenges often culminate in causing highly skilled business owners to work harder and longer, doing their productive, billable work during the day and working on marketing and paperwork in the evenings and weekends. This approach might be exciting for a short time but it’s not sustainable, and it affects your life and relationships outside of work. I call working like this the ‘Pressure Zone’ for business owners, because it can feel like you’re overwhelmed by difficulties and burdens.

Luckily, it doesn’t have to be this hard.

Many entrepreneurs are able to take advantage of the opportunities available online to create a business and grow their audience quickly and easily, and make great profits while doing it.

I’m fortunate that in my job as a web consultant I get to see a wide range of businesses and come into contact with people across different industries and locations. I work with those who get it right, and with others who are well and truly stuck in the Pressure Zone. It’s my job to help both groups of people to greater success, and in doing so I’ve identified the mistakes that many people make and developed the ‘Digital Impact Strategy’ to show you how to avoid them and ensure you have an outrageously effective digital impact.

In this book, I focus on showing you how to use the blueprint with a specific content marketing technique that leverages your own expertise in order to create digital impact. Basically, this means you share the skills you’re good at, and use those to attract new clients. This is the easiest technique you’ll ever find because you don’t need to an expert at marketing to make it effective.

First, you need to be able to articulate clearly what your message is and where your highest value lies for your clients. This is outlined in the first part of the book –‘Position’ – where you can discover how to find and communicate your core message.

The second aspect of this technique is covered in part two – ‘Presence’ – which focuses on setting your website and social media up for success, so that you make a consistently fabulous first impression, no matter where someone first finds you online.

Online ‘Promotion’ is the third step, and the focus of part three. In this part you will see how to make yourself better known using the most effective techniques available online right now, including social media, pay-per-click advertising, and being found in a Google search.

Getting all three ‘Ps’ in the Digital Impact Strategy working for you will lead to more of the right kind of clients, which will naturally help income and cashflow as you’ll be busier and can charge more to these clients who are attuned to your value.

Throughout the book, I cover tools that can help you automate your business and make life as easy for yourself as possible. I also help you investigate how to turn your expertise into various types of products, so that you can leverage your time better and create new income streams from your growing audience.

It doesn’t have to be hard! Given the right strategy and tools, being successful online is easier than you think.

Building a strong position, presence and promotion online creates a firm foundation for success and provides you with a business that brings you recognition, wealth and fulfilment as you enjoy working with your ideal clients using your core area of expertise.

This is an exciting time to be in business.

But I’m not in marketing or sales!

Starting your own business is a challenge if you’re used to the normal corporate life of employment – that is, where you have a succinct job description and KPIs, and you know that if you do your tasks well you’ll be considered successful (and get paid regularly).

When setting out on your own you need to build an entire ecosystem around you to replace the roles of everyone else who worked at your previous firm. Think about all the people there – those doing management, human resources, accounting, business development, marketing, sales, even cleaning. All those roles are now yours.

Over time, you will enlarge this ecosystem by outsourcing key areas like bookkeeping, and using software to make other areas as easy on yourself as possible. As your business grows – and if you want it to keep growing – you must outsource everything you can to other people or systems and concentrate on the high-value activities that you do to serve your clients.

However, at the start it is often necessary to do everything yourself. This is the most practical way to begin for many people, and I actually like to encourage starting this way because it gives you a feel for how your business runs and what needs to be done to make things work. Plus, doing everything yourself can be fun and exciting for a while, and it’s an opportunity to learn many important new skills.

In the list of responsibilities of new business owners, I find many people have the highest objection to sales. I hear comments such as, ‘I hate doing sales’ or ‘I don’t want to come across like a salesman’. Sales can be seen as something slightly sleazy, with images coming to mind of high-energy individuals in power ties reeling prospects in and then high-fiving each other every time another one is hooked.

Truly authentic sales is nothing like this.

The way I think of it is this: if you’re an expert in your field, other people or businesses need the skills that you have. Providing your skills to them will solve a problem for them or improve their lives in some way, and this has value to them. They will happily pay