 Once you decide to offer a high-value webinar to your audience, the first big step is to choose a topic. You can probably already think of some great topic ideas, but how do you choose the right one that will offer value and drive participants to take action? Talk to Your Salespeople One way to get feedback on your ideas is to talk with salespeople in your organization or others who work for you. What products are they pushing now? Which items do they hope will be big sellers in the coming months? If you can align your topic with these products, it’ll directly result in sales. Survey Your Industry Search for topics that are trending in your industry right now. Look at trade publications and news articles. Listen in on conversations on social media or online forums. You may want to subscribe to newsletters or find some other sources of the most up-to-date information where you can find great ideas. Even better, try to predict topics that will be trending in the coming months. Audit Your Content Look back over your past content. Identify the topics that performed best and consider these or similar topics. Even something like a short blog post could be the starting point for a webinar if you can expand on the topic. Choosing a topic this way also helps you with content creation as you can repurpose old content into your webinar. Get Ideas from Industry Leaders Look at webinars and other content in your industry that leaders in your industry are creating. The goal here is not to copy their topic idea. Instead, looking at the this will show you what’s popular right now. You may be able to cover a similar topic but give it your own unique twist. Another way you can use this information is to create a webinar on a topic no one is covering yet. What’s Exciting to You? One great way to choose a topic is to choose whatever you’re most excited about right now. If you’re excited to talk about a topic, your passion will come through in your presentation and your expertise will make it valuable for your audience. Just make sure there’s interest from your audience in this topic before you move forward. Go Straight to Your Audience Probably the best way to get ideas is to ask your audience. Ask what they’d like to learn about in one of your webinars. Keep this line of communication open and you’ll always have great topics that they will love. Once you start regularly holding webinars, you can ask as part of the exit survey and get feedback directly. Whatever idea you settle on, whether from the market or your audience, test it out by asking some audience members if they’d be interested in it or not. Use this feedback to refine your topic or choose something more appropriate. The best case is to offer a webinar that’s within your area of expertise and relevant to your audience. About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.
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 You’ve planned a great webinar with the perfect topic and you’re ready to offer it to your audience. It’s sure to be a hit. But first, you have to let the people know about the value you’re offering. Here are 11 tips on promoting your webinar so you get full attendance. Identify Your Perfect Participant. In the early stages of planning, create a profile for your perfect audience member. Identify who they are and what problems they face so you can help them solve these challenges. A good customer profile will also tell you where to find people who would want to join your webinar. Get Your Message Right. What value is your webinar offering? Create a message the explains exactly how people will benefit by attending your webinar. What changes will they see in their lives once they’re done? Email Marketing. Tell your email subscribers about your high-value webinar with a link where they can sign up. If you don’t have an email list, you should consider building one. Social Media. Tell your followers on social media about your webinar. Mix it into your usual posting schedule and gradually increase content about the webinar as the big day approaches. Find the best times to post where you get the most engagement from your audience. Blog About It. Write blog posts about topics related to your webinar. You can then tell readers, “If you found this helpful, I’m offering a webinar…” and give them a link to sign up. Press Releases. Create a press release about your event and share it on press release websites. You can post it on your blog, social media, and website as well. Create a Dedicated Website. Create a website just for your webinar. It should include nothing but information about the event along with a sign-up form. You can drive traffic directly there. Put a link with a call-to-action in your social media profiles, blog sidebar, and forum and email signatures. Consider Paid Advertising. It might be worth it to spend a little cash for advertising. Social media ads and other online advertising give you the chance to extend your reach to people who otherwise wouldn’t have found you. Get Guest Presenters. Find guest presenters to join you for your webinar. They can share their own unique expertise along with yours. If they’re well-known in their niche, they’ll bring their audience members too. Get Influencers Talking. Identify influencers in your niche and reach out them to promote your webinar. In exchange, you can do some work for them or offer another incentive. A mention from them to their audience can really boost sign-ups. Use Testimonials. Once you hold your first webinar, seek testimonials from happy participants and use these to promote your next one. Start planning and promoting your webinar early. The sooner you start, the more chances you’ll have to get your offer in front of the right people. Also, set goals for how many participants you’d like to see. If you don’t hit these targets, try to find out why and change your promotion mix next time. About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.  You may have heard that offering a free webinar to your audience is a great way to increase your sales. Webinars are getting increasingly popular year by year and many businesses are using them to reach entirely new markets around the globe. But how exactly does a webinar boost your profits?
Boost Your Content Marketing Efforts The webinar is an essential part of your content marketing strategy. The idea behind content marketing is that you offer your audience free content with no strings attached in order to build a relationship with them. Because the content is free, it allows you to draw a large number of leads into your sales funnel. If you can offer real solutions to their problems, you’ll build a solid, trusting relationship with your audience. Then later, when you pitch products and services to them, they’ll be much more likely to buy. How to Monetize Your Webinars There are a few ways you can earn directly through your webinar if you choose to do so. One is to charge people a fee for signing up. But keep in mind that the market is glutted with free content and educational opportunities. You’ll have to market your webinar well in order to drive home the unique value it offers. You also may not get as much exposure as you would with a free event. Another way to earn through your webinar is to pitch products at some point during the presentation. While teaching your participants how to do something, you can talk about products you offer that are relevant to the topic. You can also use your webinar as an extended advertisement for paid educational opportunities. For example, offer a month-long course that goes deep into a specific topic. You can then take one part of that topic and offer it as a free webinar to give people a taste of what the full course covers. How to Earn Money from a Free Webinar The best way to get the most out of running a webinar, however, is to offer it free of charge and free of advertisements or other monetization. If you think strategically and place this content within your overall marketing mix, you can use it to boost your sales. Here are some best practices for doing this. Tie Your Content in with Your Products. Create a webinar that tackles a certain problem your audience faces that your products can solve. You can teach your participants how to resolve the issue themselves, but also offer products and services that will solve the problem more easily for them. Offer True Value to Your Audience. Pack as much value into your free webinar as you possibly can. If they feel they’ve received great value from your content, they’ll buy from you whenever they need your products. Keep in Touch. Always end up your webinars with ways people can keep in touch with you. Use those channels of communication to stay on their radar. The more you create opportunities to stay in touch, the more likely they’ll buy from you. Offer Incentives. Offer incentives that are exclusive to your webinar participants as a way of saying thanks. This could be a discount, access to exclusive content, or anything else you think they could use. Pay It Forward The whole idea behind content marketing is to pay it forward with genuine help and education for your audience. Lend your expertise and experience to help people solve their problems. There’s no need to push products and services on them. If you build a strong relationship through your webinar and other content, they’ll buy from you when they’re ready. About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.  The goal of any business is to grow. But if you’re a small business owner, solo entrepreneur, or freelancer, how do you do this? Even if your customer base and demand suddenly expands, how can you keep up? There are 3 keys to growing your business without needing to invest a great deal in facilities or employees. These are techniques that any business, big or small, can use to scale up and work smarter — not harder. Save Time with Automation There are automation tools for almost every task a business does. Automation allows you to take repetitive tasks that drain your time and let a computer program handle them for you. One other reason to entrust a computer is to reduce human error. For example, accounting tasks that involve crunching numbers are great to automate. Start with the simplest, most repetitive tasks first. Look for automation tools that can perform these tasks for you. Choose a few to research and read reviews. Start with free tools to save money and take advantage of free trials if you’re considering premium programs. Automate one task at a time and then move on to the next. Delegate to Your Team You don’t have to do everything yourself. Even if you have just a few team members, don’t be afraid to delegate tasks they can do for you. This gets the task off your schedule and also enriches your employees by teaching them new skills. Look at tasks that don’t necessarily need to be performed by you. For example, if you’re checking social media every day and responding to comments and shares, you could probably train an employee who understands your brand and company well enough to do that for you. Take a task you think you could delegate and consider which of your employees might be a good candidate. Training takes time. You’ll need to show them how to do it, monitor to make sure they’re doing it right, and also be there to assist if they have problems or questions. Start Outsourcing Whether you have a team or not, you can outsource tasks to someone outside your organization. Many freelance workers and service providers are offering various types of help online, so it’s easy to use the Internet to find someone suitable. Outsourcing helps you get tasks off your to-do list, but it offers an even more important benefit. There may be some tasks an outside service provider could do better than anyone in your organization, such as graphic design, programming, or content writing. You can find service providers through web search, social media, or freelance service websites. But the best help comes from referrals. Ask business partners and associates if they have anyone they can recommend first. When is the Right Time? The right time to start automating, delegating, and outsourcing is right now. Don’t wait until you feel you need it. This will make your business run smarter right now, and when it’s time to scale, you can scale up smoothly. Check out INNOVATE ACADEMY FOR ENTREPRENEURS self-paced learning, which teaches you the ABC’s of growing your business the right way and helps you achieve your business goals. HERE  All your hard work is finally paying off. It’s a dream come true when you see your business start to grow. But this dream could quickly turn into a nightmare if you’re not growing the right way. Here are the 7 mistakes small businesses often make that slow down their growth, and how you can avoid them. Growing Without a Plan If you don’t have a solid business plan that includes how you’re going to grow, this guarantees that your growth will be chaotic. Things will change that are out of your control, and you’ll find yourself always on the defense. If you grow in a careful and controlled way, you will lead this growth and work toward your goals. Thinking the Same Actions Get the Same Results A common mistake is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results. Of course, once you find something that works well, you should do it again. But over time, you need new ideas to try and add to your arsenal. Many businesses become stale and stunt their growth by failing to evolve. Failing to Get Feedback Every idea you try and action you take gives you feedback. If you don’t listen to this valuable feedback from the market, you’ll never fully grasp it. Monitor the results of your efforts and especially new ideas, and you’ll learn what works and what direction to go. Focusing on YOU and Not the Market The success of your business doesn’t depend on you but on meeting the needs of your market. You need to know your target market well. This includes your ideal customers, your competitors, and the industry you’re operating within. Many businesses fail to grow because they don’t keep an eye on what’s happening in their market and they become out of touch. Chasing After Every Idea There are a million ideas you can try in your business, but what you need in order to grow is focus. You can’t afford to waste time on avenues that don’t lead anywhere. You’ll encounter many business opportunities, but you need to be able to distinguish which will get you profits and results and focus on these above all others. Working with the Wrong People Many businesses don’t pay enough attention to who their partners and associates are. If you’re working with or hiring the wrong people, you won’t grow the way you want to. Avoid toxic and negative people. Surround yourself with people who share the growth mindset and believe in delivering value to those around them. Growing Too Fast Of course, you want to see your business grow as fast as possible, but growing too fast can cause plenty of issues. Too much investment, too much outsourcing, too much of anything brings more risk than it’s worth. Healthy business growth should be focused, slow, and steady. This is how you meet your long-term goals. About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.  A great deal of time and effort goes into growing a business successfully, and every business is a little different. However, there are 5 essentials to growing a business and if you keep these in mind, you’ll be able to make the right decisions that lead to sustainable growth. Your Product Fulfills a Need No matter what product or service you sell, it needs to fulfill a need that your target audience has. It must solve a problem and make their lives better in a tangible way. Most products save time, money, or headache for the people who use them. Clearly identify how your offerings uniquely solve customer problems and get regular feedback from customers as you grow and the market changes so you can continue meeting their needs. Information is Key Great business leaders are information junkies. They’re hungry to know everything they can about their customers, their industry, and their competition. Things can change quickly and you need to know about this change even before it happens. Establish information sources and ways to constantly get feedback from the market, and use this information to guide key decisions as you grow. New and Crazy Ideas In order to grow, your business needs a steady flow of new ideas to try out and use for feedback. This is where business opportunities come from. These don’t have to be amazing, world-changing ideas. They just need to be something you can test and see what happens. In fact, the more outside-the-box, the better. The more ideas you can generate, the more you can try out and see if they have any value. You should always be thinking of new products, markets, marketing channels, and content types to explore. Get Ready to Scale Before You Scale When a business starts to grow, it can feel like things are quickly spiraling out of control. You now have more orders coming in and you have to ramp up, while at the same time fulfilling those orders. It can get hectic, so you should lay the groundwork before you actually need it. Things like hiring outside help, implementing automation tools, and training your staff on new tasks shouldn’t be done in a hurry. Start now before you really need them. A Strong, Clear Vision If you haven’t already done so, create a statement that clearly explains your business’s vision. How does your business uniquely make your customers’ lives better? It’s important to identify this in the early stages and keep it in mind as you grow so that you don’t stray from the path. If you’re a small business with a family feel, for example, you want to keep this family feeling even as you grow. Start Planning Now When you think about your business growing, it probably seems like a dream in the distant future. But even if you’ve just started your company, it’s time to think about how you’ll grow and lay the groundwork so you can do so successfully. Do you want to learn more about the keys to growing your business? Check out INNOVATE ACADEMY FOR ENTREPRENEURS an affordable self-paced learning environment. Learn the ABC’s of business and help to achieve your business goals. About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.  In order for your business to grow and reach its full potential, you need to adopt a growth mindset. Your mindset has a profound impact on the direction of your business and whether it will grow or stagnate.
Businesses encounter many challenges as they scale. By repeatedly facing challenges and learning from them, you change and evolve. This is why the growth mindset is such an important factor to business success. Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset The growth mindset is different from the fixed mindset. Most of us believe things are the way they are, and they don’t change over time. This is a way of thinking that believes we’re born with talent and intelligence, and we do what we can with them. The growth mindset says that talent and intelligence are just the starting point. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not these qualities but perseverance and the capacity to learn that allow us to do amazing things. To put it more simply, the fixed mindset says, “I can’t do that.” The growth mindset says, “I can’t do that yet.” The 9 Qualities of the Growth Mindset Unafraid to Fail. You will inevitably make mistakes along the way. The growth mindset sees every failure as a valuable learning experience. You take what you learn from the experience and use it for next time. Accountable to Yourself. People with this mindset don’t blame others for what happens. They take accountability for their words and actions. Not Concerned with What Others Have. If you think this way, you’re not jealous or envious of the success of others. You’re happy for the people around you who succeed, and you draw inspiration from them for your own success. Positive. People like this are unfailingly positive. Not only are they positive, but they surround themselves with positive people and steer clear of negativity. Constantly Learning. The key feature of the growth mindset is that you’re hungry to learn. You want to know about everything. But most of all, you want to learn through experience. You’re excited to try something new and see what happens because you know experience is the best teacher. Obsessed with Efficiency. People who think this way are always seeking to streamline and make things more efficient. They’re trying to work smarter, not harder. Priority Setting. Successful people are good at setting priorities and focusing on the most important things. They don’t get lost in the little details or easily distracted. Resilience. The growth mindset makes you resilient. You’re ready to get kicked to the floor and get right back up to try again. Gaining Expertise. A person with this mentality seeks to become an expert in their field and gain deep expertise. How to Cultivate the Growth Mindset The good news is that the growth mindset isn’t something you’re born with. Anyone can cultivate this mentality through reframing the way they see things and adopting a few success habits. Many things will contribute to the success of your business, but one of the big ones is simply how you see the world. About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs with practical knowledge and tools to become architects of their business vision and transform their vision to reality.  Growing a business requires a great deal of work and perseverance. But there’s more to it than that. Good leaders set aside time to look at the long-term and plan strategically. Then, they can guide their business’s growth, no matter what challenges they face. But this isn’t just for large corporations. If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur, you need to be spending time on strategic planning in order to grow your business. Proactive vs. Reactive Without strategic planning, you’re always on the defense. You can only react to what happens in a way that reduces risk and puts your business in the most favorable position possible. The idea behind strategic planning is to be proactive rather than reactive. It involves seeking challenges to face and developing contingency plans for obstacles you will need to overcome along the way. Your Business’s Long-Term Plan How far ahead do you think into the future? You probably have a solid plan for this month or this quarter, but what about a year from now? What about five or even ten years from now? Long-range business planning starts with spending time looking into the future. Decide where you want to be in one year, five years, and ten years. Imagine what your business will be like at that time. Visualizing it in concrete terms helps you set goals and develop a plan for achieving those goals. Make Your Goals Your goals for the future should be documented. For example, rather than saying that you’d like to have more clients, write down that goal, choose a number and decide by when you’ll have this done. Research shows that making goals specific and set with deadlines makes them more likely to be reached. Strategic Questions and Contingency Plans With your picture of the future visualized and goals set, it’s time to start thinking about contingency plans. You should have a plan for any unexpected setback that could happen along the way. For instance, if there’s some change in the market, you don’t want it to take you entirely by surprise. You should have a Plan B already drawn up and ready to go. Brainstorm things that could happen. Imagine you’re a skeptic hearing about your long-term plans. What questions might they ask you to challenge you? Ask yourself these questions so that you’ll think realistically about what could potentially happen in the future. Define Your Company Vision If you haven’t already done so, define your company’s vision. Explain how your business helps your customers and clients in a unique way. Frame this as a statement of around 100 words. This will help you clarify your vision for the future and keep you on target as you work toward your goals. Man Makes Plans and God Laughs There’s one great paradox of business planning. You can’t move forward without a solid plan, but plans are liable to change. But with a good plan and a clearly defined vision, you can get started knowing where you want to go. Keep your eyes open for changes in the market and then adjust your plan accordingly. This is how you grow and steer your business toward success. Do you want to learn more about planning for business growth? Check out INNOVATE ACADEMY FOR ENTREPRENEURS, which teaches you the ABC’S of growing your business HERE. About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.  Whenever you start doing something new, you can easily see your progress. But once you reach a certain skill level, you plateau. Your growth appears to slow down and you feel like you’re stagnating. Imagine you’re learning a new language. Just starting out, every day you learn how to say something new. But after a few months, you’re not sure how to make progress in leaps and bounds anymore. It feels like you’re not improving. You can plateau in anything – your diet, your business, learning a musical instrument. How do you overcome this frustrating situation? Time for a Change of Strategy When you hit a plateau, it’s the universe telling you that it’s time for a change of strategy. What has worked until now to spur growth isn’t working anymore. To put it in a positive way, you’ve become too good at what you’re doing. In order to grow, we have to steadily meet appropriate challenges. Right now, the challenges aren’t challenging enough. It means you need to do something new. Maybe it’s time to launch products in a new category. Maybe you’ve done all you can with your current audience and it’s time to branch out. Look into some new marketing channels or add a new strategy to your mix. Look for a Change Perhaps there’s been some change that has occurred without you realizing it. Look at demographics, sales, or traffic over the last year. See if something has happened that has caused your business to stagnate. What could you do to overcome this? The reason for your plateau may not be something you’re doing. Maybe something has changed in the world or market that’s impeding your growth. What change can you make in order to adapt to what’s going on? Track Your Progress You may be growing but just not seeing it. It’s easy to see how you’re learning when you just start out, but harder as you get better at it. Go back and look at the milestones you’ve achieved. Write these down somewhere and track your progress so you can remind yourself how far you’ve come. Ditch the Echo Chamber Sometimes plateauing is just a matter of perception. You may be surrounded by people who pat you on the back and encourage you, but what you need is some stern criticism and productive feedback. Identify people who are at the next level where you want to be and spend some time around them. Adopt the Growth Mindset You can prevent and deal with plateauing best if you adopt the growth mindset. This is a set of beliefs that sees humans as dynamic beings that evolve and develop over time, not as something static or fixed. It helps you to overcome the limiting beliefs that are holding you back. Do you want to learn more about success habits? Check out the course, BUSINESS SUCCESS HABITS, which teaches you the A to Z of adopting habits for business success and helps you achieve your business goals. HERE About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.  The growth mindset demands that you adopt a new attitude toward making mistakes. We have to welcome failure because it’s a key part of the learning process. In fact, you learn more from messing up than from doing things right. However, this attitude is not second nature for most of us. Here are some ideas on how to overcome your fear of making mistakes so that you can grow and take action. Who Says You Shouldn’t Make Mistakes? What keeps many of us from getting over this fear of making mistakes is perceived pressure from outside. Maybe you yourself don’t think it’s such a big deal, but you worry that others will ridicule and judge you. It could be pressure from outside that makes you unable to take risks. If so, it might help to realize that no one is judging you. In fact, those around you will more likely be impressed to see you taking risk, even if you don’t succeed. What’s the Worst That Could Happen? Many people find it helpful to think about the worst that could happen if they try something and fail. This helps to dispel the fear because you realize the worst-case scenario is not so bad after all. Will you wreck your business? How much money will you lose? Will there be permanent damage that can’t be undone? Once you consider the worst that could happen, visualize the best that could happen. Often by comparing these too, we can see that the potential reward far outweighs the risk. Shut Down Your Inner Critic Your inner critic is the voice inside your head that shoots you down before you even get started. When setting goals, we all want to be realistic. Your inner critic goes far beyond “realistic” and simply prevents you from taking action. When you’re about to take a risk or try something new, this voice stops you by focusing on mistakes you could make. You can dispel your inner critic by identifying it and calling it out, literally. Speak the positive to yourself…out loud. Learn to recognize when you’re being self-defeating. Once you know this is happening, you can remember that succeed or fail, you’ll learn something valuable, and ignore it. Welcome Your Mistakes It may be helpful to realize that you are definitely going to make mistakes and welcome them. This is an essential part of growing and you will learn from whatever mistakes you make. People who seem brave don’t have any more courage than the rest of us. They are afraid and take action anyway. You can too by making this a habit. Reframe with Positive Language The language you use is very important in forming how you think about what you do. Learn to frame things using positive phrases rather than negative, and it will change your attitude as well. For example, you just launched a product that didn’t sell because you didn’t do your targeting well. Instead of saying you didn’t do it right, reframe it to say, “I need to work more on my targeting next time.” You’re focused on how you can improve rather than how you failed. Do you want to learn more about adopting the good business habits? Check out the course, Business Success Habits, which teaches you the ABC’s of developing habits for business success HERE. About The Author Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality. |
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