1. Know Who Your Ideal Client Is.
Why this is so important: The most important first step to any business is knowing what type of customer they want to attract. What is the client profile? The beauty of an online business is you can breakthrough all geographical limitations and truly build a global brand.
Best Practices: Regularly review who you want to work with the most. Define your ideal dream client by gender, age, career, income level and problem they need solved.
Be sure to clearly define the alignment between the programs, products and services you offer with the ideal dream client you are trying
to attract. Getting crystal clear on this information will impact every other aspect of your business.
Once I clearly defined my ideal client, my marketing message became much stronger, my paid advertising converted more regularly and I more consistently attracted the exact person I wanted to work with.
MORE: Attract 5 New Clients This Week With The Perfect Free Offer
2. Get Really Clear on the Benefit’s You Offer.
Why this is so important: This rule goes hand-in-hand with rule #1. Truth is, part of determining your ideal client is based off of knowing what benefit your programs, products and services offer. The other part of determining those benefits is reflected from what you know your ideal client is struggling with the most.
Best Practices: One of the biggest mistake online business owners make when describing their programs is they focus 
too much on the features and not enough on the benefits.
A great analogy to help you determine which is which goes like this: When speaking to your ideal client, (whether written or verbally), remember to spend 90% of the time describing the destination and 10% of the time describing the plane.
That means that your clients only care a little bit about the plane, (your program features), but they care a lot about the destination, (your program benefits).
For example: Having a Private Facebook Group is a feature of your program. The accountability, daily access to you and community support are all benefits that feature offers.
MORE: 3 Steps To Creating Programs Your Ideal Clients Can’t Resist
3. Create a Clear Marketing Message On Your Website.
Why this is so important: Once you’ve determined who your ideal client is and what benefits you
offer them you’ll want to make sure that the information is clearly displayed on your website.
When someone lands on your website they more than likely will come to your homepage. On that home page you’ll want
to have your marketing message clearly displayed at the very top of the page. Make it easy for them to learn what
you do and who you serve.
You literally have about 10 seconds, (or less), to capture their attention so that they will hang around to get to know you better. When you capture their attention they will click around on your website to check out your programs, blog content and helpful resources. This is a great way to make more sales.
Best Practices: The 3 components to a really noteworthy homepage is:
- A header that clearly defines who you are and who you serve.
- A clean, uncluttered, page that gives them easy directions on how to get to know you better.
- No more than 5 or 6 tabs at the top to eliminate overwhelm.
MORE: Is Your Website Sending The Wrong Message To Your Ideal Client?
4. Develop a Free Offer That Is Valuable Enough To Get Their Name and Email Address.
Why this is so important: I always say, “Your email list is the gold in your business.” It’s true! When you have a list of the names and emails of the people who have raised their hands to say they want to hear more from you, it’s the perfect opportunity for you to nurture those relationships and build trust with them.
Best Practices: A really compelling free offer that sits loud and proud at the top of your homepage,
(above the fold), is often the difference between capturing a new name and email for your list or them clicking away.
Developing a compelling free offer doesn’t have to be complicated or take days or weeks to finish.
Each free offer that you have should contain a few key elements.
- Easily solve a specific pain point of your ideal client in a few quick and easy steps.
- Allow your new subscriber to implement your information and see results really quickly,
making them want to know even more about you. - Stay in alignment with a paid program, product or service that you offer so it will be a natural progression between free content and paid content.
MORE: Attract 5 New Clients This Week With The Perfect Free Offer
5. Develop Multiple Price Points of Paid Content To Satisfy All Budgets.
Why this is so important: Not every new lead that you come in contact with will be ready to purchase your most expensive program. In fact, chances are they won’t purchase it because they haven’t had the opportunity to get to know you yet.
Creating programs and services that have multiple price points is the quickest way to turn a new lead into a paying client.
Best Practices: Map out what programs, products or services you can offer in three price point levels.
Level 1 will be $97 or below. This is great for someone that is new to your world and wants to dip their toe into working with you.
Level 2 will be $97 – $497. This is a great pricepoint for someone that wants to get more serious about getting results and wants more personal attention from you.
Level 3 will be $497+. This level is where your client will get even more personalized attention from you. They may even want to work privately with you, which should be your highest priced program.
MORE: Client Testimonial Acquisition Formula
6. Build an Email Marketing Sales Funnel That Makes Sales on Autopilot.
Why this is so important: Too often I see online business owners create amazing free offers that
quickly get new email subscriber leads and that’s where the marketing ends.
No follow up emails, no information on how they can work with you and no relationship building.
I’ll be honest! It takes some thought to plan out an email marketing sales funnel but the rewards are so worth your time.
Taking the time to write a series of emails that deliver valuable tips and strategies, shines a light on your unique gifts and expertise as well as leads a new prospect to your Level 1 priced program, product or service is as much for their benefit as it is for yours.
Best Practices: Start with a very simple “5 email” sales marketing campaign.Here’s what that would look like.
New lead subscribes to your free offer.
Email #1: Delivers promised free offer and sets the stage for what they can expect from you in the coming days and weeks, (i.e. more follow up emails).
Email #2: Checks in with them to make sure that they received Email #1, reminds them of the download link for the free offer and gives them a simple tip or strategy for implementing what you taught in the free offer.
Email #3: Includes a case study or solid strategy for going even further with the information you provided in Email #1. Start to shift the conversation from the free content that you offer to your Level 1 program. (Remember… the free offer is in complete alignment with your paid program so this should be a natural transition in conversation.) Include a link to your sales page.
Email #4: This email talks 90% of the program benefits, (the destination), and 10% about the features. Include testimonials and case studies of past clients. Include a link to your featured program at least 3 times through the email. If you choose to you can offer a limited time discount code.
Email #5: Include another tip or strategy, remind them of the discount code and that they only have XX amount of time to take advantage of your offer. This is a great time to reiterate the benefits your program offers and why working with you will completely change their life.
MORE: A Simple 5-Step Sales Funnel That Generates Consistent Revenue
7. Promote your Free Offer On Social Media.
Why this is so important: One of the greatest opportunities we have as online entrepreneurs is the power of social media. This is a marketing vehicle that wasn’t even in existence just one generation ago.
As an online marketer we are now in control of our own marketing systems. We don’t have to hire 
anyone to do it for us. We aren’t locked into expensive print ads or advertising agencies. We can literally
do everything ourselves with a much smaller budget than ever before in history.
Best Practices: Now that you are armed with the clarity of who your ideal client is and what benefits you offer,
you are positioned perfectly to market your free offer on social media.
The first thing you want to do is choose two social media platforms, (for the sake of this example I’ll use
Facebook and Twitter); where you believe your ideal clients are spending time.
Facebook and Twitter move at different speeds so the number of times you can post without
overdoing it is much different.
When posting on Facebook make 20% of your posts related to growing your list and getting your
brand in front of the right people.
Twitter, on the other hand, moves much faster so you can literally post every hour consistently around the clock.
MORE: The 5 Specific Types Of Facebook Posts I Use To Grow My Facebook Page & Increase Engagement
8. The Secret Sauce To Marketing & Content Calendars.
Why this is so important: There are two types of calendars that you should have in front of you every day. The first is a marketing calendar so you know what you will be marketing to generate revenue. The second is a content calendar so you know what you will be free content you will be promoting and when.
Best Practices: Marketing Calendar: At the beginning of each calendar quarter map out what
programs, products and services you want to promote. Calculate how much you will sell each for and
how many clients you need to meet your revenue goals.
Having a specific income goal mapped out will be the difference between hitting your target revenue and
falling short.
Content Calendar: This calendar is a little different. This is where you plan out the topics of upcoming blog posts, social media posts, free offers, etc. Typically this is free content that is used to grow your list and increase brand awareness for your and your business.
MORE: Attract New Clients With Benefit Rich Headlines & Better Copywriting
9. Spare Yourself The Agony of New Content Creation… Repurpose Instead.
Why this is so important: I remember the days when I would get splitting headaches trying to come up with fresh content to write about. I felt like it was never good enough. That’s why I’m so happy that I learned about the practice of repurposing.
Repurposing is built on the premise of taking content that you’ve already created, (free and paid), 
and breaking off pieces of it to create new content. You can also use that same content but repurpose it into
a different modality.
An example of repurposing would be if I took this post and created a slide presentation and uploaded it to
SlideShare.com. Same information presented in a different way.
I can also take pieces of this post and break it into lots and lots of social media posts that include a link back to my
website where this post lives.
Best Practices: I’ll give you a couple of examples here.
1) When you want to create a new free offer for list building, take a piece of the paid program you have and create your free offer from that. It will make a natural transition from your free content to your paid program for the new subscriber as well as make life super easy on you because you don’t have to recreate the wheel.
2) Choose a previous blog post that you’ve written that had great feedback or response. Break that blog post apart into other content: new social media posts, new free offers, shorter blog posts, an audio, a video or even a slide presentation. Anything you dream up will be much easier because you are using content that you already have.
MORE: The 3 Fastest Ways To Grow Your Email List
10. Rinse & Repeat Rules 4-7.
Why this is so important: Your goals as an online entrepreneur are to grow your email list and drive
the people on that list to purchase your programs, products and services. Of course that is a nutshell
perspective but you know what I mean.
Rules 4 – 7 are the heart and soul of the entrepreneurial objective. Plug the holes in that process and watch
your business explode.
Best Practices: I used to try to plan an entire year out when it came to content and marketing. It’s impossible. Things change, opportunities come and it’s impossible to know today where you will be in 6 months.
Follow these 10 rules consistently and I can promise in one year you’ll be much further along in building your dream lifestyle business than you are right now. Just know it takes time and dedication to build an amazing business. It takes tweaks along the way to get it just right. Be patient with yourself and watch your profits grow.
MORE: Attract 5 New Clients This Week With The Perfect Free Offer
