Your marketing message is like a key. If you’ve got the right one, it will help you unlock doors to new business and start the process of converting them to clients. If you’ve got one that is the wrong size or poorly crafted you’ll be locked out in the cold, wondering why your business isn’t growing faster.

Unfortunately too many independent professionals and small business owners market with messages that just don’t work. They may be too long, too short, too common, too dull, or too self laudatory. The result is they don’t open enough doors to new business.

Your marketing message, elevator speech, unique selling proposition, value positioning statement or whatever you call it needs to describe what you do and the problems you solve in one or two sentences. This may seem like a small part of your marketing effort, but in fact it is one of the most important elements and costs the least to fix.

If your marketing message helps prospects understand how you can help them, you are in business. If it doesn’t then you’ll never reach your revenue potential.

Too Long or Too Short
When asked what they do, most people either come up with a short label, or a long-winded description. You may tell people you are a lawyer, a therapist, in sales, a management consultant or a systems analyst. The problem with labels is that they don’t really tell your prospects anything about what you do or how you can help them.

Regardless of your specific capabilities, when you use a label to describe yourself, people tend to assign a stereotype, based on opinions and assumptions. Say lawyer and people may shy away, say banker and people think boring, say therapist and people think of shrinks, say management consultant and people have no clue what you do.

Your marketing message should help you distinguish yourself and your unique capabilities. Use a label and you’ll be assigned to a category which may or may not be favorable to you, and won’t help your prospects understand the value of your services.

Some people try to avoid using a label by launching into a monologue listing their services and credentials. One management consultant I met, when asked what he did, said he would be happy to explain, but he’d need at least a half hour to share his elevator speech.

Get and keep people’s attention, start a conversation with a marketing message that rolls quickly off your tongue or the page.

Most people, your prospects included, scan verbal and visual content searching for relevant information that will help them solve a problem or meet a need. If your marketing message is too general or takes too long to hear or read, you are history.

Your prospects won’t take the time to find out that you may really have the perfect product or service for their needs.

Take a look at your marketing materials or your web page.

• Are you doing the same thing as the management consultant above?

• Are you spending valuable time and space describing services and credentials when you could be leading with a succinct marketing message that actually explains the problems you solve?

• Or do you let yourself get stereotyped with a label?

Use a Brilliant Marketing Message and Elevator Speech
Whether you are talking to someone in person or in your marketing materials, your objective is to engage them, to get them thinking about their needs and wants. Do this successfully and they’ll soon be wondering how they can’t live without your products or services.

Your marketing message should be the catalyst to conversation. When you use it a connection should be made between your services and your prospect’s needs. If you had a brilliant marketing message that resonated with your prospects wants and needs you’d have more and more qualified prospects contacting you and more and more business.

Does your current marketing message:
• Tell people what you do?

• Start a conversation?

• Create a perception of need?

My marketing message is, “helping small business owners attract more clients and be more successful”. When I use it I get one of two responses. If I’m talking to someone who isn’t a small business owner, they usually want to know how I do what I do. If the person is a small business owner they want to know how I can help them and I’m on my way to converting a prospect into a client.

If you want to attract more prospects and grow your business, the first step is to create a brilliant marketing message, one you can use in the elevator, on your business card, on your web site and in your voice mail message.

It is not easy to describe all you do in a sentence or two. Capture the essence of who you serve, the problems you solve and the solutions you provide and you’ll have a brilliant marketing message.

Don’t let your current marketing message hold you back. Make sure you have one that works as a key to attracting attention, engaging prospects and opening the door to new business.

Here is your chance to make a connection with a prime member of your target market. You want to get her attention, make a positive impression and get her interested enough to continue the conversation. You’ve got about fifteen seconds to do this.

Do you have an elevator speech?

Whether you are in the elevator, or on the phone, the way you start the conversation will determine whether or not it will continue. You could tell anyone what you do if you had half an hour, but with fifteen seconds you’re likely to simply label yourself, as most people do.

Labels don’t tell us much. Imagine you told Barbara, in the elevator, that you are a coach or a consultant. Are you talking about working with high school kids, senior managers, or actors? Few job labels tell your audience who you work with. Most labels are not only vague but don’t help to prompt the conversation to continue.

You could be more specific and tell your prospect you are a tax accountant or an automation specialist. That gives people some idea of what you do, but still doesn’t explain why your prospect should care.

Instead of using a label, you could tell your prospect how you do your work, the processes you use. You might say, “We analyze light manufacturing companies to identify areas where the addition of a programmable logic controller could boost throughput.” If she understands what you are talking about, you still haven’t given her a reason to contact you.

Whether you are an executive coach, lawyer, accountant, or automation specialist, when you start talking about the processes you use eyes glaze over and minds shut down. While you may have developed processes that no one else uses, prospects don’t car about the process, at least not initially.

One of the most common mistakes people make is assuming their message should be about themselves. If you are in business to provide services and products to clients and customers, your marketing message should be about their needs and wants. Here’s the difference:

• “I’m a marketing coach.” (It’s about me, and who really cares?)

• “I help independent professionals attract more clients and make more money.” (It’s about what I do for others and should prompt the question, “How do you do that?”)

Your prospects’ primary concern isn’t you. They want to know what you can do for them and how you can help them profit, financially, physically or emotionally. They want to know if you can solve a problem for them.

To get attention with a short sentence about the problems you solve, you might tell Barbara you “help reduce manufacturing operating costs and increase profits”. Cost containment is a continual problem for any CEO and should pique her interest and prompt follow up.

Stop shutting the door to new business with your business marketing message. When people ask you what you do, avoid using a label or a discussion of process. Instead, quickly clarify who you help and what type of problems you solve. One sentence should do the job.

Talking about what you do in a new way takes a little getting used to. The first couple of times you stop yourself from saying, “I’m an executive coach or consultant” and replace it with a marketing message or elevator speech that describes how you actually help clients, it will feel awkward. Keep using and fine tuning your small business marketing message and soon it will not only give prospects a clear idea of what you do but you’ll be comfortable using it.

Once you have a 15 second marketing message that works you can use it in the elevator, in the airport, on the phone, and at parties and watch your business grow.

Bill is a financial advisor looking for clients. Working from his stack of leads he picks up the phone and starts making calls. The first person he gets on the phone has lots of questions and it turns out is just looking for free advice.After a half hour Bill finally gets him off the phone.

Bill’s next call finds a highly interested prospect. After 45 minutes, he’s ready to sign her up, when he discovers she only has a couple of hundred dollars to invest.

At the end of the day, Bill has spent eight hours on the phone and still hasn’t signed up any new clients.

Do you ever spend time chasing leads that are just a waste of time?

Martha is a graphic designer who has plenty of clients but her profits have been shrinking instead of growing lately. One of her long-term clients calls her daily with a question or a complaint.

Just when Martha thinks a project is done, this one client changes her mind and wants it redone. And while the customer is always right, this customer’s lack of respect and professionalism is starting to get under Martha’s skin.

Have you ever had to deal with clients who waste your time or are unrealistic in their demands?

A common mistake is to try to appeal to everyone, with the result that you attract to many people who don’t want to pay for your services and clients you’d rather not work with. A more profitable marketing strategy is to position yourself and your firm to attract just those clients that want to work with you and who you’d enjoy sharing your expertise.

Imagine that every lead you pursued turned into a client, one who you could be honest and direct with, a client who you looked forward to working with. You’d make more money and have more fun.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could pick and choose your clients?

While you can’t completely control who contacts you, you can use your marketing to position yourself to attract promising lead generation prospects and people who would make good clients.

Define Your Ideal Client
If you want to attract the perfect client, you need to know who they are. Take out a piece of paper and write a couple of paragraphs describing their characteristics.

- What business is your ideal client in?
- What’s their role in the organization?
- Where are they located?
- What type of person are they?
- What’s their situation?
- What are the problems they want solved?
- What are other characteristics that are important to you?

Use Your Small Business Marketing Message
People are far more likely to contact you whey they have a clear idea of who you help and how. Increase the number of qualified prospects who contact you with an effective marketing message and you’ll reduce the number of “tire kickers” who waste your time.

Use Articles
Write and distribute an article and/or provide it on your web site, to help people understand your approach, who you help and how you can help them. Prospects who like and agree with your thinking will want to contact you and work with you.

Use Questions to Qualify Prospects
You can’t be everything to everybody and it’s a waste of time to try. Create a short list of questions to qualify prospects. Use these questions when you call them on the phone and in the service inquiry forms you provide on your web site. If prospects don’t meet your criteria, you can keep them on your mailing list, but avoid wasting your time by calling them.

If you’ve called one of them and they don’t seem like a good prospect, get off the phone in 3 minutes or less and move on to a more promising prospect.

Clarify Expectations
It is tempting to want to sign up every prospect that wants to work with you. This is particularly true when you are just starting up your business or when business is slow. But before you close a deal or sign an agreement, make sure they clearly understand what you will do and when.

You don’t want them emailing you every five minutes or expecting you’ll answer their phone calls at two in the morning or provide additional services for free.

Make a short list of questions to ask that will help clients define what they are looking for. When you talk with clients use these questions to clarify their expectations. If you can meet these requests, use their answers to provide a summary of services. That way you will both be working from the same script.

Get Rid of Problem Clients
With only a limited number of hours a day and years in your life, you’ll be happier and more profitable if you focus your small business marketing on clients that understand and appreciate your expertise. They’ll be far more likely to return and refer you to others.

If you have clients who are unpleasant to work with or are taking up too much of your time, find a way to tactfully get them to look elsewhere.

Use these small business marketing strategies to position your firm to attract the prospects you want so you can pick and choose your clients. You’ll have more fun, increase your profits and be more successful.

It doesn’t matter if the economy is headed up or down, there are plenty of people looking to spend money to solve their problems and meet their needs. People are happy to spend money on things they want, whether it’s a five thousand dollar painting, five-dollar cup of coffee, a golf lesson, a new computer or a new web site.

With all these prospects searching for products and services to buy, how can you ensure maximum lead generation and increase your profits?

Makes sense that the best way to get people to spend money is to give them what they want. But — and here’s the amazing thing – most small businesses don’t market to what their prospects want.

Too much small business marketing is about the business owner and what he or she wants, not what the client wants.

Typically, ads or web site pages begin with:
- The name of the business
- A picture of the product, the owner, or the company’s headquarters
- A list of product names
- A company history
- Company hours and contact information

Many small business owners use this format because they see everyone else doing it. While it may be the most common approach, it’s usually the least effective.

When a prospect views an ad or a website that doesn’t speak to their needs, they ignore it. Even if the prospect wants the product or service you’re selling, chances are they won’t respond.

They’ve got too many choices of similar ads from competitors and will end up just choosing the last one they looked at. To stand out from your competition, get a response to your marketing and increase your sales and profits, you need to take a different approach.

To get attention and grow your business, you need to focus your marketing on what your prospects want, then once you’ve got their attention you can work on building a mutually profitable relationship.

Give Your Prospects a Reason to Buy

Your prospects are out there searching for your products and services but they’re doing so as fast as they can surf the net, flip the pages of a magazine, sort their mail or scan the yellow pages. Give them a reason to stop and read your ad, sales letter or web site. “Welcome” or a company name or simply naming your product won’t grab their attention.

Tell your prospects how you are going to help them. Tell them how they’ll benefit from your products or services. You want this information to jump out at prospects when they see your materials.

You may be thinking, “How can this work, when every large corporation in the U.S. features its brand name in their ads? Every magazine I read is full of these brand-focused ads.”

Focusing on a brand or company name is important for multinationals like Coke or Nike, but keep in mind that these companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year building brand awareness and maintaining their brand image in every media and every market. Without a hefty advertising budget, this approach won’t work for you.

Give your prospects a reason to stop what they are doing and read your ad or your web page. Give them a reason to read the first paragraph, then the second, and lead them to contact you and buy from you.

REI sells outdoor sports gear and apparel in stores and online. Their Christmas catalogue is a great example of giving prospects a reason to buy. They identified a problem that plagues their customers at Christmas time; figuring out which gifts to give friends and family.

REI speaks to that need on the front cover of the catalog with a great photo of a woman and a man climbing a snow covered mountain and a single line of text; “We’ll help you find great gifts for everyone on your list.”

Inside, below each product photo, they’ve listed the product benefit; “Keep him toasty even in winter’s worst”; or “Built for deep snow and bitter cold”; or “Keep kids happy on hikes with their own hydration”. Below that is the description of the product. Finally, below that, you’ll find the name and price of the product.

Getting your prospects interest and their business is simply about helping them get what they want. The first step is to give them the information they want. Your next step is relationship-building, helping your prospects get to know your business and to trust you. You’ll find out more about this in next week’s article.

Are you as successful as you want to be at helping your prospects get what they want? Do you know how to get their attention? Do you know how to get prospects to trust you? Then, do you know how to get them to take action and contact you? What are the crucial steps to getting a client to commit to spending money with you?

I had a similar call from a corporation that was spending its time and money driving traffic to its website. With 6,000 visitors a day, they were only getting a couple of inquiries per week.

Both businesses were spending a lot of money to get attention but weren’t converting this attention to lead generation.

Are you having the same problem?

Marketing is a lot like farming. You can’t just head out to your fields and bring in a bountiful harvest. First, you buy seed from the money you’ve budgeted. Then you plant, your seeds and tend to them. Finally in the fall if you’ve done the right things to help your crop grow you’ll have a bountiful harvest.

You may not be interested in becoming a farmer, but if you want to see your business grow there are three ways thinking like a farmer can help you.

1. Learn How to Collect More Leads
A farmer needs seed and lots of it to bring in a bountiful harvest. You need a lot of quality leads to increase your clientele.

If your ads or mailings aren’t resulting in a steady stream of inquiries, find out what’s not working and change it. By changing a couple of sentences of your marketing copy or your offer, for example, you can increase response rates by a factor of ten or more.

2. Learn How to Increase Your Lead Conversion Rate
A farmer who had spent his savings on seed wouldn’t plant his field, then go on vacation and come back months later expecting to find a healthy crop. While you may be the exception, this is the way most people market their businesses.

According to The Yankee Group, between 40% to 80% of new business leads aren’t converted simply due to lack of follow-up.

Many businesses spend m0ney on getting attention and then don’t follow up on a prospect’s interest by giving them the information or contact opportunity they want. What you tell a prospect and how promptly you respond when they show an interest determines whether they continue to stay in touch.

Of the people who see your ads, what percentage respond?

Of the people who visit your web site, what percentage contact you?

Of the people who contact you, what percentage become clients and customers?

Could you increase your lead conversion rates by improving your Internet, phone and mail follow-up?

3. Learn to Use Systems that Generate Leads, Nurture Them and Increase Conversion Rates
Today’s farmers are as technologically and information savvy as any of us. Farmers use GPS in their tractors to plant their crops, the web to connect to weather forecasting and crop price information web sites to track their markets.

Using high tech information and machines to get the work done, today’s farmer has a system for buying seed and supplies, planting, maintaining and harvesting his or her crops. They make good use of systems and machines to increase their chances of bringing in a bountiful harvest.

Having the right lead generation system is equally important to your small business marketing. In the case of the corporation mentioned above, a simple change to their online lead generation system increased leads from 1 or 2 a week to 80 a week.

John called from Boston, Massachusetts for ideas on how to market his new product. He wants companies like Black and Decker to license, produce and market a unique hydraulic hand tool he and his partners have patented.

These two clients are as different as night and day in terms of the products and services they offer, but both have the same objective and are stuck on the same problem. They’re having difficulty with lead generation and both want more qualified prospects to contact them.

Are you getting your prospects’ attention? Do you want more prospects to contact you?

I review a lot of marketing copy, ads, web sites, and sales letters for people who want to attract more clients and most of them have the same problem. They’re missing at least one of the three core elements essential to lead generation and helping prospects become customers and clients.

Whether you are marketing yourself as a real estate broker, accountant, business coach or you sell advertising in Anchorage, Alaska, your marketing should be structured around these three elements:

1. Problem
This is what your prospects are thinking about and what prompts them to open the yellow pages, use Google to search the web or call you. They’re asking themselves questions like:

How can I get more clients? Where can I get an iPod? How can I keep more of what I make? How can I keep my figure? How can I avoid losing everything if my house burns down? How can I avoid wasting m0ney? How can I eliminate back pain? How can I eliminate stress?

When you know what your prospects want, you have the key to getting their attention. Lead with a quick sentence or question about your prospects’ primary concerns; what it is that they want to Get, Keep, Avoid or Eliminate.

2. Solutions
Once prospects have learned that you understand their concerns, they want to know if you can help them Get, Keep, Avoid or Eliminate what they want. Tell them about the solution you provide to their problem and the benefits it provides. Using their list of concerns and wants, explain how your product or service can help them.

Credentials and technical features may matter to some, but it’s the results your product or service provides that will convince a prospect to buy. Write a list of five to ten results your product or service provides and use these in your marketing copy.

3. Call to Action
Is this the point in the process when you tell your prospects to buy? Yes, you do want to give prospects the option to make an immediate purchase, but in most cases, they won’t. Remember that 80% of people scan and research their options for weeks, if not months, before making a purchase.

Prompt your prospects to buy but make sure to also give them a reason to contact you so you can build a relationship with them. Tell them which actions to take and why.

Where should you use this small business marketing sequence?

Everywhere you market. If you contract with Holly for one of her 15 second radio spots, lead with a problem, then describe the solution and the results and tell people how to contact you. You’d use the same formula if you were writing copy for a postcard mailing piece or the pages of your web site.

That’s right; each and every page of your marketing can benefit from using these three core elements.

For example, most web sites have an “About” page or a “Products” page. In most cases, these are comprehensive, descriptive and boring. Before you write or rewrite them, stop and think about your objectives. What do you want you prospects to think and do when they read or hear each of your marketing pieces, including your web pages?

You want to get peoples’ attention, to position yourself as someone who provides solutions to their problems, and you want them to contact you.

Include these three essential elements (Problem, Solution, and Call to Action) in all of your small business marketing and your conversations, and you’ll increase response rates and generate more new business whether you’re designing industrial tools or circling Anchorage to provide traffic reports from your plane.

Back in 1999, before Google became the universal search tool, people struggled to find their way around the Internet. There were a dozen major search engines (remember Excite, Altavista, Hotbot, and Lycos?), another dozen minor ones, and more cropping up each month. But none of them were very good.

I got frustrated trying to work with the available search tools. Figuring others were having the same difficulty, I built a website called SearchIQ.com. I listed all the available search engines and reviewed how well they worked —or, in most cases, didn’t work at all.

Within a few months, my site had a following and soon was receiving over 300,000 visits a month, which was a big number back then. By the end of the year, SearchIQ.com was listed as one of the top 50 sites on the Internet.

I hadn’t built the site to make money; it was a project on the side. All I knew was that by investing only a few hours a week giving helpful information away for free, I was getting tons of traffic to my site. People wanted and needed to read my search engine reviews.

That’s when I discovered the huge value of Free as a business model. Late in 1999, an editor at ZDNet contacted me and made a generous offer to buy SearchIQ.com. ZDNet’s business model is simple; they publish reviews of products and information and because they pull in massive amounts of traffic, they can make money on advertising revenue.

My timing couldn’t have been better. I sold the site to ZDNet just before the Internet bubble popped. What happened to SearchIQ after I sold it? Google quickly took over as the dominant search engine, making my search engine review site obsolete. (I’d like to think Google’s success is due to the glowing review I once gave them…)

In fact, Google itself started off without any ads, giving away its service for free. And it continues to give away its search services — along with a whole host of tools, email service (the widely popular Gmail), calendars, document storage, etc for FREE. In doing so, they make billions of dollars each year in advertising revenue.

Free is everywhere, not just online. Cell phone providers give away cell phones, magazines publishers give away subscriptions, cable TV companies give away DVRs – to name a few. The idea that you can make huge profits by giving away something for free or for almost free is no longer a radical concept.,,

It’s the new model of doing business.

“But Charlie…How Can I Make Money Giving Stuff Away Free?”

Most business owners try to extract as much money as they can from the customer upfront. They EXPECT the prospect to read their ad, respond to the ad, call them and buy all in ONE step. A few will. But there are a HUGE number of good prospects who will walk away, unready or unwilling to buy now.

This “buy now or nothing” mentality doesn’t work anymore. A whole generation has been raised on getting music for free and getting information online for free. And in a down economy, it’s what more and more what people want.

So if you want to succeed in business, get with it, and start leveraging the power of the FREE business model. Here’s how it works: when you offer something for free, you attract many more people faster who are interested in your product or service, often at a far lower cost than if you spent money on traditional advertising.

That’s what bands including Radiohead do on MySpace. They give away songs to attract a loyal following, people who then go on to buy cds and attend their concerts.

It’s not just high tech companies that use free. When I wanted to teach my son to ski, the local ski area in Vermont, Mad River Glen, provided my, then under 5 year old son, with ski boots, skis, ski poles and his lift ticket, all for free. By the time he turned 6, like me, he loved skiing and I was paying for all of the above.

Almost free works too!

If you own a computer there is a good chance at one time or another you’ve gotten a FREE or almost free printer thrown as part of your purchase. At our house we have half a dozen Lexmark and Hewlett Packard printers that cost almost nothing or that came free with the purchase of a computer.

How can these printer manufactures give their printers away at a loss or for free? They know that to keep their printers running, you’ll need to buy their printer cartridges, printer cartridges that each cost more than the printer itself. And that’s where they make their money, not in printer sales but in ink cartridge sales.

Ryanair uses the same almost free strategy, selling tickets from London to Barcelona for as low as $20. Less than the cost of two movie tickets here in Connecticut. Then they make their profits on ancillary fees, a share of related reservations, advertising and fees on credit card sales.

But be warned – just giving a product or service away for free or at cost doesn’t guarantee you’ll ever make a penny. For instance, Twitter’s free service has a huge following, but they’re still trying to figure out how to pay their bandwidth bills.

To monetize those freebies, you must entice the user to pay for something else. The key lies in determining how to convert the attention you get from giving away something for free into cash in your bank account.

Case Studies:
How To Use FREE To Build Any Business

Online Business Example:
Traffic Geyser is a software product that distributes videos to various video and social media sites on the web. Note that instead of “pitching” right off the bat on their home page, they do something smart – they give away useful content for free.

Traffic Geyser realizes the average visitor to their site may not be ready to invest in their software immediately, so instead of “going for the sale”, they offer useful information to capture email addresses and follow-up. Notice the free videos they offer talk about issues related to video marketing; what types of cameras are best, Mac or PC, etc. Although these topics aren’t directly related to their software, they will likely be of high interest to their target market.

Offline Business Example:
If you and your family happen to move into the 51101 zip code of Sioux City, Iowa, don’t be surprised if shortly after you arrive you receive an offer in the mail for a free oil change from the local Speedy Lube.

Why?

Because Owner Chris Peterson has discovered a very powerful free marketing technique “I have seen an 85% return rate on the customers that came in for the free oil change offer. Many needed other services besides the free oil change coupon, and we have gained some very loyal customers.”

To do his mailings, Chris uses a company called Moving Targets that specializes in ‘New Mover’ mailings.

Action Steps: What Can You Give Away To Bring In More Leads?

The goal of your business should be to turn a profit. But in the end, HOW you turn that profit (as long as it’s legal and ethical) shouldn’t matter. If you’re clinging to the idea that “I charge $XX for my products & services, period. I’m not giving anything away free” … you’re severely limiting yourself.

Using free as a marketing model is a tried-and-true technique being used by some of the biggest, most successful companies in the world. You too can use it today to attract more people faster who are interested in your product or service.

1. How can you use this business model to grow your profits?

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2. What can you give away for free to attract prospects?

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3. Obviously the goal isn’t just to give things away for free. What’s your free to paid services upsell sequence?

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4. When will you start using this idea?

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While Kris is a hard working, smart entrepreneur, his marketing and his business struggled because he as doing a few simple things wrong. And when he learned what to do differently, it took him just one month to land thirty new projects and put his business on solid ground. It’s a remarkable story.

Key Profit-Building Concepts

•   Your primary job is to grow the business, not produce or deliver the product.
•   You are the brand and your relationships with key customers is your primary competitive advantage.
•   Relationship building is the primary way to grow your business. Staying in touch, each month, with your best customers, is a great way to generate more business.
•   If you want referrals you need to set that expectation with your clients and do it it when they are delighted with your services.
•   The secret to getting all the referrals you can handle? Ask!
•   The cost of getting referrals and more business is zero.
•   Immediate followup is critical to converting referrals into new sales.

Your Action Plan
After you listen to the interview, the next step is to put what you learned into action to increase your profits. Start by:

1.  Identifying what you do to build relationships.

2.  Creating a system to strengthen existing relationships and build new ones.

3.  Putting your referral strategy into action.

[Content protected for Insiders Club Premium members only]

You’ll discover the low-cost strategy that any business owner can use to multiply their profits in the next 12 months. Listen all the way through to hear how one dentist used this simple strategy to grow her practice from $150,000 to over a million a year.

Listen to David Meerman Scott reveal a fast and easy way to become slightly famous and leverage that into immediate sales. Then read the enclosed how-to newsletter and take the first steps to become well known to your target market and get all the customers you want.

David is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, seminar leader, and the author of the best-selling new book World Wide Rave. His previous book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR, is an award-winning BusinessWeek bestseller that is now published in 24 languages.

David is a “recovering VP of marketing” (his words) for two publicly traded technology companies. Marketing programs he developed are responsible for selling over a billion dollars worth of products and services worldwide. Listen to the cd to discover the simple strategies you can use too to reach more customers and get sales moving.

If your answer was, “Get attention,” you’re on the right track. The question is how are you going to do it?

How can you get the phone ringing and get a flood of people to contact you and buy from you — especially if you don’t want to spend a fortune on advertising, mailing or search engine optimization?

A few years ago I answered a phone call from Mike, who had just visited my web site for the first time and was ready to sign up as a client.

Let me repeat that. I’d never spoken to Mike before and he’d been to my website for the first time just a few minutes before he called, but he was ready to pay thousands of dollars to start working with me.

We talked for 15 minutes and he signed on to have me help his company generate more leads with their web site and grow their travel certificate business. Over the next six months he became one of my biggest clients and we worked together for five years. I helped his company make millions of dollars and in turn, I made hundreds of thousands.

What got Mike’s attention and so quickly convinced him that I could help him?

A free ebook.

Mike saw my free offer for the 7 Steps to Attract More Clients within a few seconds of clicking to the home page of my website. He entered his email address to receive the book and get on the mailing list for my weekly newsletter. He downloaded and read my 7 Steps ebook, and a few minutes later called to hire me.

My marketing cost was zero. My profit? Huge!

If you’ve got a web site, you’ve got an opportunity to easily generate a tremendous amount of new business — and it’s practically free.

David Meerman Scott has had his free ebooks downloaded over a half million times, and everyone from online marketers to dentists have successfully used free ebooks to dramatically grow their business.

How A Free ebook Can Help You

Remember that the entrepreneur or the company that gets the most business is the one that does the best job of getting attention and clarifying the value they provide. That’s what your free ebook will do for you.

I’ve used this simple strategy to build a list of over 47,000 qualified prospects for free.

Could you use a list of over 47,000 people who know and trust you and think of you when they need help?

Every business owner can benefit from having a big list of prospects, which is why I’m going to show you the simple steps to take to create your own profit-generating, free ebook.

How can you be sure your ebook will attract all the clients you want? How can you get tens of thousands of people to download it?

Write the book according to the simple formula below.

The Proven, Free ebook Formula For Attracting Buyers

1. Pick a Benefit-Rich Title

One of the primary purposes of giving away your book is to motivate as many qualified prospects as possible to fill in your sign-up or opt-in form on your website and give you their contact information. The simple secret to getting tons of people to do this is to use the title to define the benefits you offer. Give people a solid reason to give you their name and email address.

Names like this don’t work:

“Strategies to Better Business Processes”

“Small Business Accounting 101”

“How to Brush Your Teeth”

Boring — they sound like textbooks. And you haven’t told your prospects what they’re going to gain by reading your ebook.

Names like this do work:

“5 Unknown But Perfectly Legal Ways to Cut Your Taxes”

“Dream or Nightmare: Four Must Do’s Before Starting A Small Business”

“Healthy Mouth, Healthy Sex”

The latter title is the name dentist Melanie Smith used for her ebook. Needless to say, she got prospects’ attention and in 12 months increased her net income from $150,000 to over a million dollars a year.

Wondering how you’re going to come up with a title?

Start by identifying the key words that your target market is likely to use to search for your products and services. Then identify and list words that describe the benefits your business offers or creates for customers.

Which of the titles below would you download?

“Basic Accounting Principles For Small Business Owners”

or

“Dream or Nightmare: Four Must Do’s Before Starting A Small Business”

Action A. List three possible titles for your free ebook.

1. ______________________________________________
2. ______________________________________________
3. ______________________________________________

2. Define the Problems You Solve and the Solutions You Provide

Another purpose of your ebook is to establish you as the go-to expert, the person who has special insight in your field. Your competitors may know as much as you do, but do a better job of communicating your expertise and you’ll gain a huge competitive advantage.

Start by describing the most important problems you solve for clients, and the key concepts of your most people in your target market should know but probably aren’t using.

For example: If you were a financial advisor, you’d want your prospects and clients to understand the concept of portfolio diversification.

This is the basic idea that the best way to manage risk and maximize return on investments is to diversify your portfolio between small cap stocks, large cap stocks, U.S.-based funds and international funds, bonds, commodities like gold, and of course, treasuries.

It’s a simple concept that every investor can appreciate, few fully utilize and, in order to actually execute it, they’ll need your financial services. When you share this simple idea, you’re demonstrating your expertise, and educating your prospects.

Each concept you share should be fundamental. Write about the things that resonate with your target audience. Once they understand it, they’ll want to buy your products and services to implement your solution.

You’re not trying to be sneaky, just simply helping people with good common sense advice (an uncommon commodity) and in doing so creating a perception of need for your products and services.

The simple secret to identifying the core topics for your free ebook is that it’s about helping not selling. And I know for most people who are struggling to attract new clients, the selling mode is usually what they are thinking about. Don’t make this mistake.

Focus on helping and more people will want your products and services.

David Meerman Scott wrote one whole ebook on the single concept of Viral Marketing. The dentist Melanie Smith focused her ebook, ‘Healthy Mouth – Health Sex’ on oral health.

See her table of contents below.

Action B. List the 1-5 most important and helpful ideas you can share with prospects and clients.

1. ______________________________________________
2. ______________________________________________
3. ______________________________________________
4. ______________________________________________
5. ______________________________________________

3. Lead with a Story

If I wanted to interest you in using referrals, I could write several paragraphs about why it’s important for the growth of your small business.

Or I could tell you the story of how my client Kris from Chattanooga, Tennessee was almost bankrupt at the end of 2007. An experienced video producer, his business was about to fold and he’d already had to lay off all his employees. He knew his work was good and the market was out there, and he asked me to help him save his business and his livelihood.

Using the simple referral strategy I showed him, Kris added over 30 new clients in six weeks. He stuck with this successful strategy and went from struggling at the beginning of the year, to turning 2008 into his most profitable year ever.

Which are you more likely to remember?

The argument about why having a referral strategy is important, or the story about Kris’s fantastic rebound?  Stories grab people’s attention, paint pictures in their minds, and are memorable.

Tell stories.  Illustrate the problems you solve and how you solve them. That’s what David Meerman Scott does on the first page of his free ebook Viral Marketing.

David used a real life example to illustrate the key problem and the solution. There are two simple steps to telling a story:

1. Define the problem or opportunity that existed.

2. Use a story to illustrate the solution.

Where do you find great stories to use in your ebook? Depending on what services or products you are selling, your stories could be about business problems, personal problems or situations that allow you to make your point. Pull stories from:

•   Your own experience (my quirky dad has provided many I’ve used).

•   Your clients (every day my clients tell me stories that illustrate business problems and solutions).

•   The news (that’s where David found the story he used in Viral Marketing).

Action C. Write 1-2 sentences outlining a couple of stories you could use to make your primary point, and grab your readers’ attention so

they stick with you and understand the key concept or ideas you’re sharing.

1. ___________________________________________

2. ___________________________________________

4. Include Your Calls to Action

You’ve set the stage by clarifying the problem and sharing ideas, solutions and/or strategies, and in so doing established yourself as the go-to expert. Now let your audience — your prospects — know who you are and how you can help them.

At this point they’re much more likely to pay attention. That’s what people do when you entertain them and give them something for free. They reciprocate by giving you their attention and responding to your questions or suggestions.

What types of calls to actions should you include?

You could include a full-blown sales pitch for your products or services, but that would undermine the whole helping tone of your ebook. Instead you’ll generate the most interest with the following two strategies.

a. At the end of each section of your free ebook, include a question that picks up on the problem and solution you’ve just detailed.

For example: Imagine you’re a financial advisor and you’ve just told a story about how one of your clients diversified his portfolio in 2008 and made money in the stock market while everyone else lost 30% of their assets.

That got your prospects’ attention, so ask them a question to get them thinking and urge them to act. It could go something like this:

“Ready to discover how you can protect your portfolio and make money in any market? Call George for a 30 minute consultation.”

Use questions at key points in your free ebook to prompt prospects to contact you to get help. They won’t feel like they’re being sold and are more likely to follow through and contact you.

Action D. List 2 to 4 questions you can use to motivate prospects to contact you.

1. ______________________________________________

2. ______________________________________________

3. ______________________________________________

4. ______________________________________________

Quick Tips

•  Include a bio page at the end that is personal and engaging. Tell your readers enough about you so that they see how experienced and professional you are, but also that you’re an interesting person who has a lot in common with them. Include a professionally taken photo if you’ve got one.

• When you’ve finished writing, hire an editor. Even if you’ve written books that have hit the bestseller list, an editor will improve your ebook so that it’s clear, concise and compelling.

• Hire the best graphic designer you can. Your ebook is meant to portray you as the expert that you are. You don’t want the cover and layout to look amateurish. Image is everything with your ebook. Hire a professional to create something you’ll be proud of. The AIGA at www.aiga.org is a good source for designers and illustrators.

• When the ebook is done, let everyone know. Send out an email to your list, to bloggers, to your twitter followers, etc.

• Add an opt-in box to the homepage of your website, top right or top center, and include a link to your download page.

Ready to create your free ebook?

We’re talking about a 15 to 20-page book — with a lot of white space and possibly illustrations. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of three to four thousand words. Or think of it as a 25-minute conversation with a prospect. I know you can do that.

One Last Step

Make a commitment to get your free ebook done. Create a schedule, set a completion date and block out the time in your weekly calendar to finish your ebook and make it available on your web site.

I’m going to repeat a statement I made earlier; remember that the entrepreneur or the company that gets the most business is the one that does the best job of getting attention and clarifying the value they provide. That’s what your free ebook will do for you.