Welcome back!

Did you know that when sliced bread was invented, it wasn’t a widely-accepted invention? In fact, it was almost a complete failure, as the inventor focused entirely on the inventing process instead of spreading the word… it wasn’t until Wonder came along and started marketing it that sliced bread became a household staple.

As Seth Godin talks about in the video below, marketing just doesn’t work the same as it used to – you must speak directly to your target market – the people who care about your products and services the most – loudly and clearly so your products and services can take off and have impact. Otherwise, you’re just stuck with a patent for sliced bread, without any shelf space.

Watch this video from Seth Godin’s TED talk. I took away a lot from it, you will too:

What did you think? Let me know if your comments below.

Like this post? Check these out:

• How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 2 (0)
• How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 3 (2)
• How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business (2)
• Solo-press (0)
• Does Your Business Go through Feast-Or-Famine Cycles? Your price structure may be at fault… (1)

This is part 3 of a three-part series on how to productize your service-based business.

What systems can I use for my product?

If you’ve been doing business on the internet for any length of time, there’s no doubt you’ve bought a few info-products. As soon as you get into their funnel, you’re put on a list where you get follow-up emails, helpful advice, ideas on how to implement the product, a monthly (or more frequent) newsletter, and more.

All this follow-up is made to help you, the consumer, understand the product and for the author to build rapport with you. It’s been estimated that it takes between 7-10 contacts with a person for them to buy anything from you. These contacts not only reinforce the content you’ve bought, but it also allows you more face-time with the author – thereby getting through those 7-10 contacts. This system is invaluable to any business.

Your system will allows you to help your customer use the product, and it will also builds rapport and shortens the amount of time it takes for them to buy a product from you.

Building Your System: It starts with email

As we discussed in Part 1, AWeber is my #1 favorite follow-up tool. Why, you ask? AWeber is a robust tool that allows you to segment your list and send out messages specifically to that list.

For example, if you have three items in your product funnel – product a, product b, and product c, you can have all of them filtered into one main list (newsletter) as well as having them on separate lists. So, this way, when you’re sending out your newsletter you can send advertisements specific to where your leads are within your funnel.

Neat, huh?

With many other tools, it would take an eon to get this set up – but with AWeber it’s simple as pie. THAT is why I love AWeber so much.

I have an Autoresponder/Broadcast System – Now What?

Now it’s time to systemize.

This process is designed to allow you to communicate and build rapport with your clientele and readers without having to spend a lot of time speaking to each person individually.

Set up an autoresponder system for each product. During each phase of your funnel, you want to ensure you’re communicating with your customers, especially directly after they buy.

After each purchase, set up a series of autoresponders – anywhere from 5-100 messages – to help entice your customers to consume the product they just bought, to help educate them about other things going on in the area of interest, and to open dialog.

You can use your autoresponders to:

• Give step-by-step instructions on how to complete a task related to your product
• Give industry insights not included in the product
• Reference supplemental materials so customers can better utilize & understand your product
• Ask for feedback, testimonials, and questions

Following Up Systematically

Following up is the key ingredient in your funnel – you can have as many products as you like, but you’re not going to be as successful unless you follow-up using the autoresponder. This is how we generally follow-up in a product funnel:

1. 1. Free Report/Newsletter
   1. 7-message autoresponder series, supplemental tips to free report.
   2. 1 email inquiring for testimonial.
   3. Promote Tier2 Product at bottom of each message
2. 2. Tier 2 Product
   1. 7-message autoresponder series, supplemental tips to product.
   2. Additional 3-5 messages on topical information and interesting links.
   3. 1 email inquiring for testimonial
   4. Promote Tier 3 Product at bottom of each message
3. 3. Tier 3 Product
   1. 7-message autoresponder series, supplemental tips to product.
   2. Additional 3-5 messages on topical information and interesting links.
   3. 1 email inquiring for testimonial
   4. Promote Tier 4 Product at bottom of each message

And so on…

As you can see, with each product, the customer interacts with you between 8-15 times (not including regular newsletter). Each time you give the customer new information, it adds to their ‘rapport’ bank and the closer they get to moving up your list.

The funnel is a win-win situation for everyone involved. You increase the trust level of your clients and move them along the funnel, and your customers get the information they sorely needed as well as solving a problem with which they’d been struggling.

When you began reading this series, you were at the beginning of productizing your service-based business. Hopefully, this series has helped you to not only create products and systemize the process of moving your leads through the product funnel, but it has also helped you gain clarity with your upcoming products and systems.

Like this post? Check these out:

• How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 2 (0)
• How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business (2)
• The Solopreneur’s Guide to Delegation (16)
• Is Your Business The Next ‘Sliced Bread’? (0)
• Solo-press (0)

This is part 2 of a three-part series on how to productize your service-based business.
Find Part 1 “Are you Ready to Productize Your Business” here.

Productizing Your Business: Developing Your Products

In the last installment, we brainstormed your potential products, and we covered beginning your product funnel. In this installment, we’ll go more in-depth on developing products and getting your nose to the grindstone.

From the brainstorm, you figured out what you like to do, what your clients get from you, and the problems you solve. Now it’s time to take those ideas and flesh out your funnel into problem-solving info-products.

Won’t Developing Solution-Based Products Put Me Out of Business?

This is a common question from service-professionals creating info-products. When we’re creating products, we don’t want our customers to only buy the products and leave – right? We want them to buy the products and then eventually buy more products and/or upgrade to our one-on-one services.

By creating solution-based products you can:

• Save yourself energy from doing time-consuming repeat tasks – tasks that your customers want to know how to do anyway
• Give your clients time to work with you (without having to be with you in person) so they’re jazzed to learn more when you send out a newsletter or another problem-solving product
• ‘Systemize’ your revenue so you can focus on your ideal clients – which still helping everyone else.

Developing Your Product Line

Photo Courtesy Jim Sneddon

As we discussed in part 1, developing your product line to fit neatly in your funnel is tantamount to your success as an info-product creator. Let’s review the general funnel again:

1. Freebie (free newsletter w/report, etc.)
2. Small price point product ($10-$50)
3. Mid-Price product ($51-$100)
4. High-Price Product ($100-$700)
5. Highest Tier (reserved for your ‘ideal’ client – $700+)

As your customers move up the funnel, you will help them to solve bigger problems. A social networking expert might have a funnel that looks like this:

1. Freebie (“Social Networking 101″ + newsletter)
2. Small Price (“Can Twitter really make me a client magnet? A Twitter Strategy Guide”)
3. Mid-price – (Audio: “Using Your WordPress Blog To Increase Visibility using StumbleUpon, Digg, and del.icio.us”)
4. High Price Product – (Home Study Course – using Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn to increase get clients and become a web superstar”)
5. Highest Tier: One-on-One Social Networking strategy and ongoing Coaching

As you can see, there are multiple places where you can have a variety of products in your funnel – ranging from ebooks, reports, newsletters, software, audio, home-study courses, etc.

How do I know what format to use for my products?

The format, placement, and cost of your product are entirely dependent on how much value it has for your customers. The bigger problem it solves, the deeper in-depth it goes, the higher the cost. Your home-study course may be the top tier, and an ebook may be just below it.

In fact, if your product is better off learned in-person, you may hold a monthly free teleclass for 100-200 callers so they can learn hands-on. You must pay attention to your market, and cater to what they need.

Bundling multiple products together will allow you to charge more for your product. For example, your home study course may have some audio, an ebook, and a short coaching call included. Therefore, when you’re beginning this phase, look for ways in which you can combine different formats to appeal to more customers, and put those products in the higher-tiers of your funnel.

Order Of Operations: Start with FREE!

When you first get on your roll for creating products, you automatically want to begin with the highest-priced product – it is, after all, the one that has the most information and probably is most interesting.

You must create your free product first. The whole purpose of creating products is so that you don’t have to spend so much time with one-on-one clients, I know, so it seems like the best place to start. However, if you jump ahead and create the time-consuming ‘whole enchilada’ package, chances are it won’t sell very well.

Why? Because (and this is especially if you don’t have a list) going from nothing to hundreds of dollars is not an easy purchase for anyone to make. You may have a lot of people thinking about your product, but few will buy.

Instead, begin with your free product and work up:

1. Start off with your free product and newsletter, and begin to market it like crazy. People love to get free stuff, and when they sign up you immediately begin building a relationship.
2. Then, move on to the next product tier. And then the next, and the next. Move up the ladder, because as you go, you’ll have mucho inspiration – fodder for the high-tiered products higher in the funnel.
3. Stay the course – keep promoting your Ezine & Free Product – this is where your potential customers are coming in. You’ll treat them like gold – give them great information and treat them like family. In return, they’ll move through your product funnel and keep buying from you.

“The Internet will help achieve “friction free capitalism” by putting buyer and seller in direct contact and providing more information to both about each other”

Bill Gates

In our next installment, we’ll look at systemizing your product line – how to make it work days, nights, weekends, and when you’re on vacation.

This is part 2 of a three-part series on how to productize your service-based business.
Find Part 1 “Are you Ready to Productize Your Business” here.

Like this post? Check these out:

• How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 3 (2)
• How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business (2)
• The Solopreneur’s Guide to Delegation (16)
• Is Your Business The Next ‘Sliced Bread’? (0)
• Solo-press (0)

This is part 1 of a three-part series on how to productize your service-based business.

Are You Ready to Productize Your Service-Based Business?

Having a service-based business is highly rewarding – you get to work with people and see results first-hand, you increase your expertise and know-how with every project, and it defines you as a “client superstar” to your clientèle.

However, service-based businesses also have their limitations: you’re restricted by the number of hours that you can work and the number of clients you can have. You want to help more people – and you want to make a profit – so maybe it’s time to take it to the next level – it’s time to productize your business.

How do you create products for a service-based business?

When Carol first began the process of productizing her business, she was confused. She’d seen many internet ‘gurus’ launching products left and right, but she couldn’t find her inspiration. How could she create products appealing to her potential clients, without alienating them from future purchases?

Brainstorming Your Products

For many people, this is the most difficult part of the productizing process – finding out what to create! It’s important to remember here that the best-selling products solve a problem. It’s good and well to write about the things you love, but it’s even more important to create products that help your clients to fix something in their lives.

Finding the balance between your passions and your clients problems will take careful consideration:

• What are you most passionate about in your business?
  When you began your business – you had a driving force – you wanted to do something. What was it you wanted to do? What problem did you set out to solve?(Supplemental question: do your clients focus on that? If not, skip this section)
• What Makes You Unique?
  If you work with women in mid-life, or solopreneurs who need a website, they all come to you looking for your unique take on the world. The problem, as you see it, speaks to your clients and potential clients. What makes you a unique problem-solver for your clients, and how do you do ‘it’?
• What service do you do that you can outsource to your client?
  It’s not outsourcing in the traditional sense, it’s helping your clients help themselves. So, whether your clients need help with getting their relationships on the right foot or getting their Facebook marketing strategy in place – what steps of your processes can you outsource to your clients?

When you’re productizing your business, you want to create several products so customers can move through your sales funnel. By moving through your funnel, you can ensure that the clients you work with are not just ready to work with you, but they’re right in line with your ‘ideal’ client.

After a productive brainstorming session, Carol realized that most of her clientèle came to her with issues surrounding career growth. In realizing this, she formed several product ideas ranging from an eBook for developing a career strategy to Skill Growth Group Coaching Sessions. Armed with a cache of product ideas, she was ready to begin creating her products.

Build Your Marketing Funnel

“Build the Funnel” is your new mantra. Say it now, “build the funnel.” Ahh, that’s nice, isn’t it?

When you’re selling your services and products, it’s much easier to sell to people who know and trust you – and this is accomplished by having a list of customers in your product or marketing funnel.

The crux of your funnel is to bring in customers through low-price or free products, and then increase trust and rapport by developing a relationship with them through a newsletter. Using the newsletter will allow you the opportunity to build a relationship, and to sell your products and services in small increments without being pushy.

Essentially, your product funnel should look something like this:

1. Freebie (free newsletter w/report, etc.)
2. Small price point product ($10-$50)
3. Mid-Price product ($51-$100)
4. High-Price Product ($100-$700)
5. Highest Tier (reserved for your ‘ideal’ client – $700+)

Now, your list can be much bigger, or a bit smaller; your list can have higher price points or lower; but, this is the general outline you want to use.

Place each of your product ideas in one of the above categories. Make sure your highest point products have a lot of value added to them – so if you can add an audio, ebook, workbooks, complimentary products, and more with these products, the more valuable they’ll become to your customers. “Fill ‘er up!” as they say.

Don’t worry about having too much or too few products in your funnel. If you only have a couple of ideas right now – it’s fine! You’ll hit inspiration while you’re working on and promoting these products.

Once you’ve figured out your general outline,  the next step in productizing you business is to use an autoresponder/broadcasting service to bring customers into your funnel. An autoresponder/broadcasting service will allow you to keep all your leads in one place and automate much of your sales process. I use AWeber . I use AWeber for my personal and client lists, and they’re hands-down the best email broadcast service provider available.

When prospects come into your funnel, start by offering them a free product in exchange for their email address. From there, up-sell a bit at a time while giving some great information and useful advice – make your free information valuable and move them delicately through your product funnel.

“Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.”

~Peter F. Drucker

Learn More about the Marketing Funnel with Andrea J. Lee’s Pink Spoon Marketing and Robert Middleton’s Action Plan Marketing – two of my favorite and most-recommended ebooks.

This is part 1 of a three-part series on how to productize your service-based business.

Like this post? Check these out:

• How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 2 (0)
• How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 3 (2)
• The Solopreneur’s Guide to Delegation (16)
• Is Your Business The Next ‘Sliced Bread’? (0)
• Solo-press (0)

Public Relations: The art of creating interest in you, your company, and your product/service by convincing others (namely media outlets such as print, TV, and radio) to report about who you are, what you do, and why it’s important to the world at large.

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? PR is perhaps a little deceiving in definition. PR involves a lot of hard work and dedication. There are several things you must do (and do well) in order for the media outlets to recognize your expertise and your business.

First and foremost: You must be an expert at something. No one will want to book you for their show or write an article about you unless you’ve done your work and are an expert in your field. So, before you go any further, be aware that if you are not already an expert (usually, if you own a small business, you are an expert) you need to take some time and learn about everything related to your product or service. The worst publicity is the kind that says you don’t know what you’re talking about.

You are going to use your audio logo incessantly with the media. Make sure yours is up to par. A great resource for creating a good quality audio logo is Robert Middleton’s Action Plan Marketing; which walks you through the steps of your audio logo as well as defining your core marketing message..).

The next thing to do is to zero in on your buying audience. Take your buying audience and identify various segments – different segments of your audience will require different promotional efforts. Figure out what magazines and newspapers they read, the news and television programming they watch, and the radio stations and programming to which your audience listens.

Now you can zero in on the media audience that will be the most effective in your PR Campaign. If you’re selling high-end computer servers, for example, sending a press release to Parenting magazine is not your best bet. I would suggest gathering an extensive list of all media outlets that might be interested. If you are sending your materials to several hundred media outlets, you will have a greater chance of publication (or booking) than if you send it to only 20. So be exact; but find a LOT. A good resource for finding the best media outlets for your product or service is Bacons MediaList Online. If you need help finding which media outlets are best for your product or service, feel free to email me. I will send you more information.

TIP: You must fully believe in what you’re publicizing – the media has a way of sifting through the hype and seeing the product/service for what it’s worth. Enthusiasm is contagious. When you promote your product, be enthusiastic and sincere. Impassioned people always find their way to the top! Believe, from the heart that what you’re promoting will change the world, that you promoting it makes a difference, and that YOU know more about it than anyone else. You can’t fake it!

The next logical step is to create a press release. Generally, TV and radio producers do not have the time to read press releases. Send it to them anyway. It may just fall through the cracks and find its way into an interested producer’s hand. Newspapers and other print publications will usually pay more attention to your press releases than their radio and TV counterparts.

Press releases sent to print publications should differ than those you send to radio and TV outlets. Print outlets can publish a press release at little or no charge; so make sure that your press release is newsworthy and includes all the information (the who, what, where, when, why, and how) as concisely as possible. You should limit all your press releases to a single page. The first paragraph of your press release is vital. Many editors won’t get past this first paragraph if they do not like it. Use this paragraph to inform them of what you are promoting. It should be no more than four sentences and should include all the points you are making throughout the rest of the press release. Do not go into great detail here. Most of the people to whom you are sending your press release will not care about the details unless they read the rest of the press release. If you insist on going into greater detail about you or your product or service, include the details on another page in your media kit. Make sure to include your contact information at the top and bottom of every page you send to the media.

Press releases sent to radio and TV producers should be much shorter. Generally, they don’t have the time to read the press releases. When they do, they just read the headlines and sub-headlines. These headlines should only be one line. They should only take a couple seconds to read; and they should immediately show the value/benefits of what you are promoting. The media is obsessed with certain topics – sex, money, and health – so try to incorporate these ideas in your headlines. Make sure to bullet your main points. Keep the bullets in order of importance; readers probably won’t get past the first three. And keep the list short, five bullets is probably best.

Make sure you record who you send your press releases to. Keep track of their names, addresses, phone number, employer, specialty area, source information, and any other information you have on this particular person. Make sure your list is always up-to-date, there is a huge turnover rate in the media, and you don’t want to waste your time sending your media kit/press release to people who no longer work for those outlets.

Follow up with the editors/producers to whom you send your press release/media kit. Telephone them within 3 days of receiving your press release/media kit (Note: FedEx packages are opened more frequently than any other delivered package – so if you’re sending your press release/media kit out and you have the resources, send them via overnight FedEx delivery). When you get these people on the phone, ask them if they got the press release, if they have any questions about it, or if there’s anything further you can do to help them. Building relationships with media outlets is essential; but it’s a one-way information street. To have a successful relationship, you must be willing to give them information, to do some extra research for whatever project they’re working on – YOU must help THEM in some way. Offer your expertise for whatever project on which they are currently working. Or, if you have no expertise in that area, offer to make contact with some of your associates on their behalf for their piece. These people are addicted to information. The more information you give them, the more apt they are to help you promote yourself! So don’t be shy! Ask if and how you can help them!

Your media kit should highlight your press release. Without a great press release, sending a media kit is an act of futility. Media kits are no longer necessary for initial mailings; they do better as a follow up tactic. Your media kit should be presented in a nice two-pocket folder with your business card included. Keep your media kits short, no more than a few pages; and you can include any of the following in addition to your press release:

• Company history
• Personal history
• Suggested questions
• Brochure
• Articles
• Your photograph
• Testimonials
• Quizzes, trivia, or giveaways

Make sure to print your logo and contact information on the cover of your folder. If you are in a money crunch, print out some labels and stick them on there – but make sure that information is there. You will also want the entirety of your contact information on every page of your media kit. If any of these elements get separated from the rest, you want them to be able to reach you!

Like this post? Check these out:

• Is Your Business The Next ‘Sliced Bread’? (0)
• How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 2 (0)
• How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business – Part 3 (2)
• How to Create Products for Your Service-Based Business (2)