This week I was invited to be the guest speaker at The British Association of Beauty Therapy And Cosmetology’s AGM (www.BABTAC.com).

I can’t tell you how wonderfully heart-warming to be in a room with so many people who are passionate about this industry and improving it. They were literally bubbling full of ideas and so positive.

The sheer energy in the room made it abundantly clear that 2008 to 2009 is going to be a fantastic year for the health and beauty industry. Business owners in the rest of the economy might be letting the whole media-doom-and-gloom thing take over their lives, but not in this industry.

In fact if you’ve read the latest copy of Professional Beauty, you’ll see an article about how this industry can be recession-proof when you take the right approach with your marketing. They quote Deirdre McNulty of the Kline Group as saying after recent market research “there will be no slow-down and … with an ageing population and strong efforts by marketers to promote youthfulness, the desire for anti-ageing solutions continues to drive the entire market”.

So this week, take a look at the treatments, products and services you provide and ask yourself ‘am I taking advantage of this upwards trend?’. What else can you do to emphasize how your solutions will help with anti-ageing and de-stressing?

To your success!
Rebecca

PPS Here’s a photo of me with BABTAC Chairperson Val Cooke and Vice-Chair Angela Bartlett. Not only did we have a great time at the AGM but I also got to see the beautiful Gloucester countryside for the first time. If you ever get a chance to go out that way, do - it’s so stunning!

PPS… Have you checked out my new Home Study Course yet? Its packed full of ideas on how you can attract more new clients while getting your current clients to come back again and again. Make this year THE ONE for you!

There are three main goals in most businesses:

1. To attract potential clients
2. To convert those potential clients into actual clients by getting them to book or buy from you
3. To cultivate those clients into regular clients who come back again and again

Doing activities that focus on all three of these means you will have a strong client base which always books ahead and is extremely loyal. Which is the whole goal!

For each of these three steps you need to have specific strategies which will bring you new leads and get their contact details on your database and that will then convert them into paying clients and then get those paying clients to come back. If you just focus on one and neither of the other two steps, you can end up with holes in your marketing approach.

Obviously the level to which you do all three depends on the type of business you’ve got… If your business is mostly focussed around repeat business then you’ll probably end up spending more time on step 3, but if your business is mostly focussed around doing intensive bursts with clients then they are healed and you move on to the next client, then you’ll probably want to spend more time on steps 1 and 2 to get a continual flow of more new clients in.

For example

• In a Beauty Therapy Business clients should come back every 4 to 6 weeks
• With Laser Hair Removal clients come back regularly for a few months then hopefully only about once a year for top-up treatments
• In most Counselling or Chiropractic Businesses, clients come in regularly to start off with then only for maintenance type sessions every now and again

However no matter what type of business you have and how often you ideally want your clients coming in, you still need to get their interest to begin with, convince them to book and then get them to come back at some point in the future (be that regularly to begin with then only occasionally or be that every month without fail).

So as with everything, there is the easy way and the hard way of achieving this…

There are ways of implementing these steps that are going to be more time consuming and those that will be less.

And I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get into business for myself to spend hours staring at a spreadsheet or pounding the pavement with fliers.  Funnily enough I personally quite enjoy the spreadsheet / planning aspect of things, but that’s not all I want to do.  I want to get out there and help my clients.  And I want a better lifestyle for myself and my family.

You’ve got your reasons why you got into business for yourself and it could be a multitude of contributing factors… lifestyle, money, health, change in circumstances, a specific end goal…. Whatever it is, I bet it wasn’t to spend hours filling in spreadsheets or pounding the pavements with fliers.  If you wanted to do that, you’d have trained to be an accountant or a postman, not a therapist or practitioner or even an entrepreneur!

And part of what we do is being and entrepreneur so we should be able to live that lifestyle where we get time for ourselves.  Where we don’t have to work 100+ hours a week just to make sure all the work gets done.

The best way of ensuring you don’t end up doing this is to have a full marketing plan that addresses all three areas equally each and every month.  Then you need to follow this marketing plan.

Without a marketing plan you could spend hours and hour at your computer typing stuff up or hours and hours of physically stuffing fliers in letterboxes because it has suddenly gone quiet.  However with a solid, well-thought-out marketing plan, there will be a continual flow of new and returning clients coming in rather than feast and famine type periods.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rebecca Kepple specializes in helping business owners massively increase their client base and profits.  To get instant access to her free insider secrets report ‘The Top 7 Secrets for Massively Increasing Your Client Base’ visit: http://www.wellbeingbusinesssecrets.com/freedownload.

© Copyright Rebecca Kepple 2008

Want to use this article on your site or in your newsletter?  This article may be reprinted provided no part thereof is edited in any way and this ‘about the author’ section is included

The Internet is such a big place that it is becoming increasingly critical to ensure that your website collects visitor’s contact details.

Why? Because the alternative is that visitors click into your site, have a look around, think ‘hmmmm that’s interesting, I think I might come back later and find out more when I’ve got a bit more time’. Then they click away and they are gone… forever.

While they might intend to come back, they forget, they lose the website address, they forget to write your url down and so on. If you want each and every potential visitor to your site to become a potential client, then you need to capture their contact details and then keep in touch with them so they don’t forget about you.

The easiest way of doing that is to give something away for free on your website.

You might give them something physical like a voucher or some samples or alternatively you might give them something non-physical like an entry in a competition to win something or something digital like a recording, an e-book or a report. Digital and non-physical items are the best because they don’t cost you anything whereas a physical item does.

Regardless of whether is it is a physical product or service you are giving them or something non-physical which has perceived value, the client need to feel as if whatever you are offering is of high enough value to them for them to give you their name, email address and/or phone number.

You also need to ensure that whatever it is you are giving away is going to be of interest to your client. Giving away an e-book on ‘making more money’ isn’t necessarily going to be of interest to a client who came to your site looking for someone who does waxing in their local area. However an e-book on ‘How to have smooth, hair-free legs in 14 minutes’ might be!

Let’s say for example you are a holistic therapist and all these new people are calling up or going onto your website to check out what specific types of massage you do and how much it all is. You have potential clients who are right there on your website right now, interested in the Reiki, Reflexology and Indian Head Massage treatments that you offer. What now? How do you translate those website visits and those enquiries into cash? What can tip the scales to turn those visitors into revenue or profit?

Well, what about offering them a free download of relaxation recording that they can listen to before their appointment with you? Or a guide how to let the stress ooze away after work?

Whatever you decide to give away, it needs to be relevant to your business and what those clients are looking for. It also needs to be good value for their time. If your potential clients are taking the time to enter their details and read or listen to whatever it is you’ve given them, they need to feel as if it was worth their time afterwards.

Then when they start to receive communications or newsletters from you letting them know your latest offers, they will think back to the great freebie you gave them and think ‘yes, I really ought to book a massage’.

This is where it comes back to truly understanding that the market has evolved from the days when all that was required to build a successful business was the odd advert in the local paper. That still works for some types of clientele but for most, we need to focus on getting those client’s contact details and then building a relationship with them through our newsletters and marketing until they are in the right place in their lives to book or buy.

And your website is a great place to start. Take a look at it today and see whether it is capturing potential client’s details for you or if those visitors are drifting away and eventually purchasing or booking elsewhere.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rebecca Kepple specializes in helping business owners massively increase their client base and profits.  To get instant access to her free insider secrets report ‘The Top 7 Secrets for Massively Increasing Your Client Base’ visit: http://www.wellbeingbusinesssecrets.com/freedownload.

© Copyright Rebecca Kepple 2008

Want to use this article on your site or in your newsletter?  This article may be reprinted provided no part thereof is edited in any way and this ‘about the author’ section is included.

Now if any of you have read the E-Myth by Michael Gerber, you’ll know that happy clients who come back and back don’t just jump at you out of nowhere. To attract and retain clients who rave about your business, you have to be providing a technically great service backed by good business practices, all of which needs to be delivered with a smile.

In fact, Michael Gerber talks about in his book that the key reason most businesses end up failing is because the person who started the business was what he calls an excellent technician but not someone who is strong at understanding what’s required from a business perspective.

And while things have moved on a bit from when Michael Gerber first wrote the book that in essence is

There might be much more business help available out there these days. There might be way more self help books, far more marketing seminars and business owners in general might be much more switched on in terms of what’s required but in essence most people still get into business not because they want to OWN a business, but because they are incredibly GOOD at what they do and it just seems like the next logical step.

And that’s where a lot of people are today.  They become very very good at whatever service they provide, they want the lifestyle that can come with being self employed or a business owner and so they start their own business… a clinic, a practice, a salon, a spa, a mobile company… And then they realise if they want to make that clinic / practice / salon / whatever successful, they realise they’ve got to master the business skills too.  Because even if you are the most amazing therapist, coach, stylist, healer, therapist or practitioner in the world, you won’t make any money if clients don’t know you are there.

They can’t book if they don’t know your phone number.  They can’t buy anything if they don’t know where you are or what your website is called.  And they can’t become regular clients if they’ve never met you.  Which means the amazing therapist who started the business ends up feeling as if they are wasting their time because the business isn’t doing as well as they want it to.

So that’s why I‘ve done so much work over the years on learning what works.  I felt very much the same way.  I was working so hard to get my clinic going, we had amazing service but noone was coming in.  And I realised that while we could carry on giving the best service ever, it wasn’t any good if I was going to end up bankrupt because we didn’t have any clients coming in.

So I watched what the bigger more successful businesses were doing, adapted their strategies, copied them and then kept testing and refining them till I came up with a blueprint for running my business which worked.

And these strategies that I used in my first therapy clinic, I’ve used again in other practices since then and in fact I’ve even adapted the exact same strategies to use it in my current business today even though now I run a coaching business and membership site instead of the spas and clinics I used to run.

As Michael Gerber says, to get around the fact that most people’s key skill is their ability as a technician (or therapist or stylist or coach for many of you on the call), and they are in new territory with the business side of things, they need to find systems that work, adapt them to their business and then apply them over and over again for guaranteed success.

Some questions to think about… What about you?  Where do your key skills lie?  Is it in the technical, service side of things or is on the business side?  And what do you need to learn to move your business to where you want it to go?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rebecca Kepple specializes in helping business owners massively increase their client base and profits.  To get instant access to her free insider secrets report ‘The Top 7 Secrets for Massively Increasing Your Client Base’ visit: http://www.wellbeingbusinesssecrets.com/freedownload.

© Copyright Rebecca Kepple 2008

Want to use this article on your site or in your newsletter?  This article may be reprinted provided no part thereof is edited in any way and this ‘about the author’ section is included.

Most clients who book appointments with you both enjoy whatever service you provide and can clearly see the benefits of this service. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have booked in the first place.

For example if a client books a massage, they can clearly want a massage and they know they will feel better afterwards. Or for someone who gets their hair cut, they know their hair is going to look better for it and they can look in the mirror afterwards and get proof of this.

What is the possibility that when that person comes in for their massage they think… “Gee this is great, my sore calf muscle is finally relaxing a bit.  But you know what, after this, I’m not going to book in for at least another 6 months because I actually enjoy hobbling around when it hurts a bit”?

Not very likely.  When that person books in for their massage they know its going to help them and they’ve got every intention of coming back again to ensure their calf muscle is fully rehabilitated.

And when that person comes in for their haircut, what’s the likelihood of them thinking… “Wow, I love this new haircut but I actually quite like it when the style grows out and there’s lots of split ends.  I don’t think I’ll book another hair cut for at least 8 or 9 months”?

Again not likely or they wouldn’t have bothered booking their haircut in the first place.

In reality those people are probably thinking “gee, I must book in for often, my hair looks fantastic” or “wow my muscle is really relaxing, I must ask if I should come back next week to get it completely back to normal”.

So in our marketing processes, we need to educate our clients.

Show them you are the expert and give them the knowledge to understand how they can help themselves.  It’s like the Chinese Proverb “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”

If you take the time to build those relationships and you teach your clients WHY their hair starts to look a bit icky after a few months and HOW it is going to benefit them to book in more often, then they will make that decision themselves that they ought to book in more often.

And if you then start showing them what they can do in their day-to-day life to keep their hair looking good until their next appointment… they will respect you and trust your opinion.

And then if you are in regular contact with them, they will never go anywhere else.  Because they trust you, they like you, you’ve been helpful to them and you take the time to share your expert knowledge with them.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rebecca Kepple specializes in helping business owners massively increase their client base and profits.  To get instant access to her free insider secrets report ‘The Top 7 Secrets for Massively Increasing Your Client Base’ visit: http://www.wellbeingbusinesssecrets.com/freedownload.

© Copyright Rebecca Kepple 2008

Want to use this article on your site or in your newsletter?  This article may be reprinted provided no part thereof is edited in any way and this ‘about the author’ section is included.

In the latest book from Ken Blanchard’s “The One Minute…..” series called ‘The One Minute Entrepreneur – The Secret to Creating and Sustaining a Successful Business’ he gives an interesting definition.

If you look after your customers they will come back to buy again and if you motivate your team, they will help you build your business.

When was the last time you reviewed at what are doing to look after your customers and team?

Business is, in essence, about relationship building and the profit you make is the fruit of that relationship.

It’s a bit like people you might have gone to school with.  How many of them are you still in contact with?  If I look back to all those years ago, I’m only still in touch with a handful of the people I went to school with.

For the people that I’m still in contact with, we have a great relationship.  Since we are all busy nowadays, we might not see each other that often but we email lots and we chat regularly on the phone.  I know what’s happening in their families, they know about mine, and we still value each other greatly as friends.

But if I was to bump into anyone else that I went to school with in the supermarket, I’m sad to say its now been so long that I’m not sure if I would recognise them.

I bet if we did met in the supermarket, we’d end up going for a coffee and having a good long chat.  I bet they are still the same wonderful people that I knew in school.  However until that day when we might meet up randomly or re-discover each other on Facebook somehow and rekindle that friendship, I don’t count them among my closest friends.

Whether it’s personal relationships, or business ones, if you don’t stay in touch you lose that feeling of closeness.  But if you do stay in touch the relationship stays strong.

The same goes for both clients and your team.

If you want to build a strong relationship with your clients where they would never even think of going to someone else or missing their appointment, then you need to nurture this and allow it to flourish through regular contact.

Send an email, do a newsletter, make a phone call.  Reach out, make the effort and it will be rewarded.

For a team that supports you all the way - that will do everything to help you success - you need to look after them.  Make them feel supported, cared for and most of all, trusted, and they will help you move your business forward.

Most people genuinely want to be successful.  Very few ever try to fail.  If anyone in your team isn’t doing very well, perhaps look at it a different way and ask why.  Do they have the environment and help they need to be a success?  What else could help?  How are they feeling inside when they come to work?

And if you are the only person on your team, this includes looking after yourself.  If you are the only one building your business, its even more important that you feel supported.  Take a moment out when you need it.  Surround yourself with family and friends that really care and who look forward to hearing how your day was.  Do what you need the most to keep yourself motivated and energised.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rebecca Kepple specializes in helping business owners massively increase their client base and profits.  To get instant access to her free insider secrets report ‘The Top 7 Secrets for Massively Increasing Your Client Base’ visit: http://www.wellbeingbusinesssecrets.com/freedownload.

© Copyright Rebecca Kepple 2008

Want to use this article on your site or in your newsletter?  This article may be reprinted provided no part thereof is edited in any way and this ‘about the author’ section is included.

Animals really are wonderful things. They can put a smile on your face with the silliest of actions, comfort you when you are down and make you giggle with laughter when you least expect it.

My little kitten Milly is now almost a cat. She’s nearly a year old but she’s still really small. And the other day I was catching up on admin and feeling a bit bored with it when I heard a funny noise… she had crawled right up to the top of the curtain, made a hole in it, stuck her head through the hole and gotten stuck.

She looked hilarious stuck up there by the ceiling mewing at me to get down. I knew I ought to tell her off for ruining the curtains but I just couldn’t because I was laughing so hard (I rather wish I had though – now it’s a game and about once a day she climbs up there just to get my attention).

Anyway it got me thinking about the power of animals… they are fantastic medicine to put a smile on your face and fill your heart with warmth. If you’ve got a little critter of your own, take some time out to appreciate it today and you may find yourself looking at the world a little differently!

PS… Here’s a picture of little Milly helping me write my newsletter!

Well… I’ve decided to run the London 10k run on 6th July for the MS Trust. Its an amzing charity who do an enormous amount for people with Multiple Sclerosis. Every little bit helps so if you can, please sponsor me and help out the MS Trust!

http://www.justgiving.com/rebeccakepple

Hey,

Well, Sunday’s the big day for my SOLD OUT Blueprint For Marketing Success Workshop and I’m really excited!

Everything is all ready so I’ve just popped out to pick us up the finishing touches… muffins and pain au chocolat to nibble on during the morning sessions and delicious fresh fruit for the afternoon ones. Yum!

If you’re one of the lucky ones who is coming to Sunday’s workshop, I look forward to seeing you there!

Otherwise, I hope you have a fantastic weekend and enjoy putting your feet up a bit

Best wishes,
Rebecca

PS… Are you on Facebook yet? It’s a great way to socialise with like-minded people and swap ideas. If you are interested, I’d love to add you as a friend! My link is:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=583711422

There are a million and one ways of marketing. However the key to success in today’s market is to make sure that instead of trying to ‘sell’ to your potential clients, you get their details, keep in contact and build a relationship with them.

This is called Lead Generation and it means that instead of a new customer just being a one-off bit of extra cash in your bank account, they become lifelong, happy clients who rave about you to all their friends!

Now there are two massive benefits to this approach:

1. The more happy clients you’ve got who are raving about you to their friends, the more referrals you’ll get. Which means you’ll get new clients calling you out of the blue all the time who are already sold on how great you are, instead of you having to work hard to find them and get them interested.
2. The other massive benefit is that marketing just got waaaaay easier! No longer do you have to feel the pressure of dreaded ‘sales’. All you are trying to do is pique some interest and get their contact details. In fact if you can get them interested enough, they will GIVE you their contact details so you won’t even have to ask!

And even better, most of the best ways of getting someone’s contact details are cheap or even free. Sounding good so far?  Definitely.

The key to making this work though is to ensure you’ve got at least 5 or 6 Lead Generation methods in place at all time.  The reason being is that if one source of potential clients dries up then you’ve still got several more to keep you going.

How many lead generation or marketing processes do you have in place at the moment?

I personally have a list of about 25 that I’ve found work really well for this industry and I try to make sure I use about 10 of these at any one time.  This means I’ve got a constant, steady stream of customers contacting me all the time, no matter what the season, economy, market or situation.  Which creates a solid business and an owner who can sleep at night!

The reality though is that most people find themselves so busy they only try 1 or 2 methods, if any.  They might have chucked out some fliers once or twice but they never really get a response so eventually they just gave up.  Or maybe they had some brochures printed and it costs thousands and noone came in.  Sounding familiar?

If you’ve experienced this and you aren’t happy with the level of new clients your marketing is generating, then take an hour out, go back and look at the marketing you did and check… were you trying to sell the potential client something, or were you just asking for their contact details?

Albert Einstein once said insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Have a look and see if you can approach your marketing from a different perspective for different results.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rebecca Kepple specializes in helping business owners massively increase their client base and profits.  To get instant access to her free insider secrets report ‘The Top 7 Secrets for Massively Increasing Your Client Base’ visit: http://www.wellbeingbusinesssecrets.com/freedownload.

© Copyright Rebecca Kepple 2008

Want to use this article on your site or in your newsletter?  This article may be reprinted provided no part thereof is edited in any way and this ‘about the author’ section is included.