Beverly Gracelyn Warner

Beverly
Gracelyn
Warner

Born April 26 at 7:17 PM

7 lbs 11 oz

21-in long

Still waiting....

for the baby to arrive. Spent a little bit of time catching up on MPM emails and some follow ups to my team. Otherwise the focus of the day has become "prepare for the baby". It is really "anyday" and there are still things to do. I understand I'll never be totally ready with everything the exactly the way that I plan it or want it to happen but I'm trying to take care of the most important things while making sure I get enough rest.

Just wanted to give everyone an brief update...

Sandy W

Just a quick update

Just a quick update...there is still no baby born yet...Still waiting.

But the car seat is ready, the laundry is done (so she has something to wear), my bag is packed, and we're getting closer to being "ready".

The weekend was spent resting (I am definitely fighting fatigue) in between "getting things ready". For MPM, I downloaded a free template (I'll post the link in the "free Tools section" once I test it to make sure its what I am looking for) for a landing page or entrance into my "marketing funnel". I've been thinking about all the things that I want to put on there--a video with me telling "my story.", pictures, and which one of the 101 ebooks I want to give away as a thank you for visiting my site.

I realize that I could spend A LOT of time thinking about all the details and trying to get everything looking just right. But the fact of the matter is, it will be a work in progress. I will need to continually be making changes and so forth so it is important to get something as a starting point. Once I am getting traffic to it, I can tweak it, add bells and whistles, etc based on the results I see from the traffic I get.

I'll keep you posted. It sounds like the baby will be coming either sometime this week on her own, or sometime next week with some help from modern medicine.

Sandy W.

Who is my target market?

Last blog, I discussed what a marketing funnel is. One of the first things to decide when setting up a marketing funnel is...who is my target market? Most of the generic systems that I have been using as resources say to set up your "target market" to be other internet marketers. It does make some sense if you are going to be building an online business to target people who are already familiar with online businesses. If you believe the statistics, 97% of internet marketers fail, so that means that 97% of your target market are looking for help...

When it comes to a target market, a very broad target (like "internet marketers") will make it easier to pull more people into your "funnel". However, as people move into your "funnel" and learn more about you, you will have to build a relationship with more people in order to find those who are interested in you: interested in your help and eventually interested in joining your business.

However, I have played the numbers game. I have called MANY, MANY free business opportunity leads and know that, while the leads are effective, you have to call many many many more of the free leads in order to see results. Leads that I have purchased, while you pay them, are more targeted and usually are actual people interested in a business (rather than a fake phone number or email or someone that wanted a free hat).

So I'm interested in narrowing my target market a little bit to a group of people that I think will be attracted to my personality, and eventually to My Power Mall. Based on my current situation, I think that I relate the best to moms and in particular, new moms. So I am going to work at attracting mothers of young children into my marketing "funnel". These mothers would be people who are interested in making money online, or who already are involved in an online business but are looking for some help.

Speaking of being a new mom...I'm still waiting for the arrival of our little girl. It's six days until my date.....It's been very busy these last few days (which is why I've been blogging less frequently) trying to "get ready". Next week is my last week at my day job, so I spent much of today trying to wrap up loose ends and get everything documented on various projects so that my colleagues can take over in my absence and my clients still get the service they deserve and pay for. Last night my husband got everything out of our attic so we could get out the baby stuff...the swing, the bibs, the clothes...so the rest of the night will be spent sorting and so trying to decide what we need out now, and what we can pack up until we move. Thanks to bzm and my earth angel, I've been able to keep focused on what is important and let go of what is not as important....

Good night!
Sandy W

What is an Online Marketing Funnel?

What is an online Marketing Funnel? If you have been in internet marketing or have been trying to build an online business (or any business really), you may have run into the term. I know that I have seen many different versions and many different opinions about it. In a traditional sense, picture a funnel:
The idea is simply to get as many leads as possible into your "funnel". Then as you build a relationship with those leads and get to know them, you will be able to "sort out" those who are not a good fit for your business opportunity, and those who are a good fit for your opportunity. Typically the number of leads that enter your funnel are a lot less than those who "exit" the funnel by joining your business opportunity.

The idea sounds really simple, but how do you go about setting up your "funnel"? How do you attract people to want to join that funnel once it is set up?

The first advice I have, is to think about what is your selling...If your answer is "my business opportunity" than you will struggle. Your "funnel" will have to be really big (i.e. you will have to bring in a lot of leads) in order to get some to end your business opportunity. The goal is to pick a target market and think about what that market really needs. For example, here are some of the broader "target market" for an online business:

• stay at home moms
• internet marketers
• bargain hunters
• non profit fund raisers
  
• college students, etc

Once you identify your target market, you want to determine what it is that they are interested in. If you immediately try to sell your business opportunity, there is so much competition, you will not see a good return on your efforts. Really what you are selling, is not your opportunity, but you and what you know! Tell your story and attract your target market to you. Once you have attracted your leads to your "funnel", you want to spend time building a relationship with them. This means that you need to share content about how you can help them accomplish their goals.

Once you have built a relationship with your target market, your leads will know you, they will like you and then they will trust you. Otherwise, they will have stopped following your information been eliminated from your funnel. This is the time that you will find many will ask you about your business opportunity and want to find out more about how you are reaching your goals through your business opportunity.

Please follow my blog to follow my journey of setting up a marketing funnel...

Sandy W.

Wednesday April 8

Today was spent nesting--no not because I had the "surge of energy" to clean...but because my family is coming to visit tomorrow afternoon and I wanted to make sure all the dust bunnies were taken care of (so the Easter Bunny would not be jealous).

I did get a chance to listen to the Monday night family call/coaching call and check up on my emails/social networking sites.

That's all for today!

Moving forward one step at a time

I feel like I have so much to do to get ready...I need to have everything ready at my job to drop at a moment's notice and someone be able to pick it up where I dropped it. I still have things to do at home to get ready for an additional family member. There are other things going on and its difficult to determine where to start and what to do.

Starting your MPM business can be just like that. There is so much to learn that you can easily feel overwhelmed. It's easy to think that you do not know where to start or that you still need to learn more before you begin. Those were excuses that used to keep me from accomplishing anything with MPM. It's important that daily action is taken, no matter how small, so that time does not get away from you without getting results too!

So today I called my downline members (left a message) and watched some social networkign instructional videos. I checked the number of hits on my business site and its up to 442. It had been a while since I had checked. I also replied to several emails/twitter messages to aid in buildling meaningful relationships. Small actions daily is much better than no action or inconsistent actions!

Sandy W

April 6th

Today was a day of extremes...it went from really sunny to a huge storm, back to sunny, etc. I think it oscillated back and forth three or four times today.

Last time, I briefly touched on setting up my facebook profile, but I wanted to review a little bit about how I am telling "my story" to position myself as an expert in building an online business.

The main goal is to provide people visiting my site (whether it is my facebook profile, my youtube channel or my space profile) an opportunity to get to know who I am and feel like they can connect wiht me and work with me. I begin with a little bit about me, why I am interested in making money online, and how I can help others to do the same.

It's not about promoting my business opportunity.

Sandy W

PS Quinn-not sure if you follow my blog regularly but can you send me your email address? you did not leave me your contact info in your comment on my last blog.

Goals Part II

Big Z's Mom has an excellent post about how to get your business off to a good start. She also challenged me with my goals posts...that nine months is too long of a time to set your goals without considering short term ones as well. So in order to reach my goal of 10 downline members is 9 months, I need to be getting 1.1 sign ups each month. I know...it's impossible to get 1.1 sign ups...so I am going to set my goal at 2 sign ups each month. To work that goal "backwards" or setting the action plan, I still think that I can reach that goal by making new 5 contacts a week and following up, following up, following up with my existing contacts.

But what do we do when we discover that we are not reaching our goals? It's difficult. I was discouraged tonight because one of my downline members has decided that MPM is not for them and asked me how they cancel their WCM. It's difficult not to think, "what should I have done differently to help them?" "Why would they want to cancel their mall?" "What if I had...".

I'm the first to admit that there probably are things that I could have done better. But it also is up to each member to build their own business for themselves...they cannot have their sponspor build it for them.

I think we need to look at why we had not reached our goals, and based on what we learn, craft new goals and succeed at them. Here are some reasons that we may not accomplish our goals:
1. The goals were not reasonable or attainable in the first place
2. The action plan associated with the goals was not adequate to bring us to those goals
3. The action plan was not followed.

In my case, it is usually the third option to explain my short comings. I was frustrated at the pace of my social networking tuturial that I was trying to follow step by step (I'm one of those people that love to have easy directions laid out for me to follow). It has been two weeks since the last tutorial was released. But I realized that only I am responsible for my business and I needed to press on toward my goals anyway. So I set up my own facebook profile today, to keep things moving in my goal of getting myself viewed as an online expert. I had an existing facebook account, but its is mostly for sharing family pics and so forth. I created an account just for my MPM business and worked on "telling my story" in my profile. I will save the details for tomorrow's blog.

Sandy W