Imagine this. You’ve successfully taken your business off the ground. You’ve got clients, and you’re making some profit. But things could be better. You could be working with clients who feel just right for you and your business. Clients who value your services and your expertise and are prepared to pay your worth to work with you and get results. If you’ve spent time, money, and energy trying (and struggling) to grow your business, here are 5 easy steps you can follow to get more of the right type of clients. So, are you ready to find out how to get clients fast?
Let’s go.
1. Be clear on who you serve
Is the online world ‘saturated’? Well, it certainly is very busy.
Can service-based businesses still be successful in such a crowded market? Of course!
There is definitely a lot of ‘noise’ online. But if you’ve been letting some of these myths hold you back, know that these aren’t the stories you need to believe in. Truth is – there’s a little corner on the internet with your name on it. You just need to go and claim it!
And you can do that by becoming crystal clear on who your target market is.
So, I suggest you take some time out of your week to work on your business (rather than in it) and ask yourself the following questions:
- Who do you serve right now?
- Who is your ideal client?
- And if you find there’s a discrepancy between the two, who do you want to work with going forward?
When thinking about your ideal clients, you can delve even deeper into who they are by asking yourself more specific questions about them. And if at all possible, ask them directly – ask your ideal clients. You can easily do so on your social media (Facebook groups can be a great way to do this) or via your newsletter, for example.
So what else can you ask yourself about your ideal clients?
Questions about your ideal clients
Here are a few examples of things you may want to find out about your ideal clients:
- What are your ideal customer’s goals and values?
- What is their demographic (if relevant to your business, think about age, income, etc.)
- But also, what are their current challenges or pain points?
- What are some of their objections to buying your services?
- And where can you find more of your ideal clients?
The key to not being ignored in a crowded market is to be 100% clear on who you want to serve. Think about it – you can’t find more of the people you want to help if you don’t know who they are! So be specific and aim to identify the absolute best person you want to serve.
2. Know what problem you’re solving
Knowing who you’re serving isn’t everything. You also need to be crystal clear on the exact problems and challenges that they’re experiencing, so you can be sure you’re the one to provide them with the right solution to their problems.
So think about:
- What specific challenges are your clients experiencing?
- What keeps them up at night?
- But also, what do your potential customers want and need?
Being clear on what problem(s) you’re solving helps you evaluate (or re-evaluate) your service offering. Are you sure you’re selling services that provide a solution to your ideal client’s problems? If not, it might be time to make some tweaks to your packages.
Speak your ideal clients’ language
Once you’ve identified your clients’ challenges and are clear on the solution you provide, hone in on the way that your target market describes their problem(s). Don’t put words in their mouth and never assume that your prospective clients have a problem they don’t think they have! That’s a recipe for disaster! Instead, pay attention to the words and phrases your ideal clients use and to the questions they seek answers to.
It’s important that you also understand how your ideal customers are searching for their specific problems. You want the exact expressions they use to look for a solution to their problem(s).
To help you with that you can:
- Ask your existing clients. If people who are already working with you are asking you questions, chances are that others just like them may want to ask similar ones.
- Look in your inbox or on social media. Do you have any email chains in your inbox where prospective or existing clients have asked you questions? What terminology did they use? Or did they reach out on social media? Go and grab those messages – they are a precious piece of the puzzle when it comes to your marketing efforts.
- Find out what people are searching for online using tools like Answer The Public, Keywords everywhere, or the free ‘People also ask for’ functionality on Google or any of the other search engines.
- Ask friends and family. If you don’t have many clients yet or are introducing a new service or pivoting your business, try and identify any friends and family or business associates in your networks who might be your ideal clients. (And remember – if they’re not your ideal clients, you might not get the information you’re looking for!).
Once you’ve done this, you should be in a much better position to describe the problem(s) you’re solving through your services in a way that ‘speaks to’ your audience. This is the first step to help you craft a marketing message that works.
So how do you do that exactly?
3. Create a clear marketing message
When looking for a solution to their problems, your potential clients are looking for specialists. So be a specialist – not a generalist.
Be clear on what you do (and only you can do) and craft a clear marketing message. This is key to everything you do (both online and offline) to promote your business. If your marketing message is confusing, your strategies and tactics might be ineffective. And there’s a risk your business might end up in a bit of a muddle as a result! And that’s not what you want.
Not to mention that when putting a marketing message that isn’t clear into the world, you might be wasting tow of your most precious resources – time and money. And you can’t afford that.
So let’s look at crafting (or improving) your marketing message.
How to come up with your marketing message
Unlike what you might have been led to believe, your marketing message isn’t simply the answer to the ‘Who do you help?’ question. It’s more about what you do for your ideal client.
So to craft your marketing message, think about your individual expertise and about what you help your ideal customers achieve. Then ask yourself the following questions:
- What makes you unique? How do you – and only you – solve your ideal clients’ problems? Focus on what makes your business unique and helps you stand out from your competitors. And while you do this, remember to re-connect with the reasons why you started your business in the first place!
- What words and phrases do your ideal clients use? As I explained earlier, it’s important for you to pay close attention to the terms your ideal clients use. So set aside some time to look through your social media exchanges, your emails, or record some of your client calls (with permission) and play them back. Your marketing message needs to be in the same language that your ideal clients use. You want them to feel you’re talking to them and them only.
- And finally, what’s your voice? What words and phrases do you use all the time? What are the core messages you share with your clients again and again? For example, what are the expressions you repeat on a daily basis? Are you normally quite informal? Cheeky? Or more formal and detached? It’s important that your marketing message reflects your own tone of voice. You want people to have the same experience with you no matter how they come across you and your work. So make sure you put your personality into it.
Make some notes at the back of these questions, and you’ll be able to create a much clearer marketing message that will help you reach more of your ideal clients. Faster.
4. Decide how you are going to reach your target market
So you’re now much clearer on who you want to serve, what problems they’re experiencing, how you solve them, and how you can best communicate with your audience. It’s now time to go and find your clients.
But where are they?
Finding your ideal clients online
If you’re looking to find more clients online, social media is the obvious place to start. Having said that, trying to be on all platforms at once using a multitude of different media (video, text, visual, etc.) may be a recipe for disaster. You’ll soon end up overworked, overwhelmed, and feeling like you’re constantly chasing your tail. And as a result, you may struggle with content and consistency and feel like giving up altogether.
So instead of trying to be a Jack of all trades, focus your time and efforts on one or two main social media platforms and become great at them.
But which platform(s) should you pick?
There’s no right or wrong answer here – whether you pick LinkedIn or Instagram is up to you. But know this – having a great marketing message and sharing fantastic, valuable content won’t get you anywhere if your target market isn’t on that platform!
So, find out where your ideal clients are, experiment to see what you enjoy and where people interact with you the most and pick the one or two platforms you’ll use to reach your audience.
- For example, if you’re a service provider (i.e. you specialise in web design development or graphic design) and offer a B2B service aimed at professionals, business owners, or personal brands, LinkedIn may be a great place to start.
- If you’re a small business that offers a B2C service like family photography, Facebook or Instagram may be better platforms for you.
Finding your ideal clients offline
If you’re looking to reach more clients offline, here are a few options you can explore:
- Join a local networking group. You may not find direct clients in the room, but don’t forget that your fellow networkers know people too! So don’t just go into meetings with the intention of dropping off your business cards are run. Instead, join meetings with an open attitude – aim to help and add value. But also, be clear on the type of people you’d like to be connected with if you want your networking buddies to recommend you and refer you to their contacts.
- Host a workshop. If you offer a service that allows you to do this, why not organise a local class or workshop? Choose the topic wisely and strategically, and you will attract the right audience. You might even find prospective clients who are interested in working with you on a one-to-one basis, for example.
- Speak at an industry event. If relevant, you could also look for an event (seminar, talk, conference, etc.) and offer to be a speaker. Unless you have extensive speaking experience, you might need to do this for free at the start, but as long as you have a valuable, interesting topic or angle to cover, event organisers are always looking for new voices. So what have you got to lose by pitching to a few of them if they’re right for your business? The experience will put you in front of all the right people, and you might be able to attract more clients this way.
5. Create a 30-day specific action plan
So now that you’ve covered much of the groundwork to get better clarity on your ideal audience, on the problems you solve, on how you craft an effective marketing message and how you’re going to reach more clients fast, what’s next?
A plan.
To escape overwhelm and combat uncertainty and procrastination, you’ll want to come up with a specific 30-day action plan.
Why a plan, though?
The importance of planning
You may not be used to this way of working, especially if you’re a solopreneur wearing all the hats in your business. But having a plan will help you in several ways:
- Focus and accountability. If you’re serious about attracting new clients and fast, you need to take action. And in order to do that consistently and effectively, you’ll need to stay focused. Having a plan will help you become more efficient and more productive.
- Setting goals. Now that you have all the information you need, it’s time to be specific. How many new clients do you want or need? When do you need them by? And what will you do differently to attract more of your ideal customers into your business? How will you use the data you’ve gathered to help you reach more of your target market and close the sale when the time is right?
- Getting results. What are goals without plans? Dreams. (Yes, that’s Dave Ramsey). Having a plan behind your marketing allows you to employ the strategies and tactics that you need in order to convert more leads into sales. Not to mention that it will help you reduce your costs.
So what are you waiting for?
Why create a 30-day plan?
A 30-day plan will help you focus on the objective at hand. Once you’ve identified how many new clients you need by the end of the first month, it’s important to start looking at what you can do, week by week, to get yourself closer to your goal. A 30-day plan is long enough to allow you to get some results, but at the same time, it’s short enough to enable you to tweak and adjust if you’re not obtaining the results you’re after.
Would you like my help to attract more clients quickly?
If you feel you’re struggling to get results in your business and have spent time, money, and energy trying to grow it and scale without success, it might be time to try something different. The ideas and questions in this blog post will help you look at each of the elements of your marketing so you can achieve better and faster results. The question is – will you do it?
I know you have the knowledge, the experience, and the qualifications to drive your business forward. But the truth is that doing it on your own isn’t easy! The day-to-day running of your business can be overwhelming. So if you feel you’re doing ‘all the things’, but the right clients are still hard to come by and want some help to spruce your marketing efforts up, get in touch. I can help you attract clients who understand your value and are willing to pay for it. So if this is you, feel free to take up my offer for a FREE 30-minute telephone consultation.
