The hardest thing about getting more clients today is that they don’t need you the way they used to.
That’s tough to hear since the lifeblood of your business is your clients.
Whether your company is just starting out, mid-cycle or established, you need a repeatable and consistent process to get more clients.
But how do you get more clients?
How do you get, not just more numbers, but higher quality clients?
If you Google this question, you’ll find a lot of advice online but the vast majority lacks substance.
Rather than advice which you most likely wouldn’t take action on, this blog post is a 30,000-foot view listing 30+ tactics that will make an impact. I’m providing substance by offering you a single and specific step-by-step system for getting more clients.
Feel free to skim the headings and the bold text to get a feel for the system, then make sure to dive deep in the information and align these tactics to your business and most importantly – take action.
Steps on How to Get More Clients
Step 1. Display your love for your client in a public domain, i.e. a Website.
The term “clients” suggests that your buyer is under your protection. Whereas a customer is simply someone who buys a commodity or a service.
Your business is based on another person’s well-being; therefore, they are your client. You must show them that their well-being is important to you in a public domain, somewhere they can see without interacting directly with you.
The first place this should be is on a website.
Raise your hand if your current website appears to your potential clients that their well-being is important to you.
Probably not.
I’m sure you have brand messaging, testimonials, photos of your team, list your services maybe even a unique value proposition, but is it evident that you love those you serve?
Or is it, all about you?
Today, you need a new approach to reach and engage clients.
You need to build a strategic and buyer focused website as the foundation of your system to get more clients.
You may be aware that you need to show that you’re an industry expert, an authority. But that method is still based on you.
If you love your clients, you MUST solve their problems before they want to buy from you.
Coming from a place of love and care with the desire to educate, help, and solve their problems leads us to the next step.
Step 2. Provide value to your client before they buy
Digital technology has changed how your clients search for information, interact with each other and buy your services.
The massive popularity of these technologies has made it possible for you to have a better understanding of your client’s decision journey.
During this decision journey, your client is looking for various types of information to help them define your perceived value to them as it relates to their questions.
Proof: A CEB study of more than 1,400 B2B customers across industries revealed that 57% of a typical purchase decision is made before a customer even talks to a supplier.
Throughout this process, all decisions and transactions are based on perceived value.
If you are only providing ”value” at the final stage of your client’s decision journey, the point of sale with your clients, you’ll have difficulties getting more clients. Sure, you might make money, but you won’t have a repeatable system for getting more clients.
If you’re happy with where you are, why are you reading an article about how to get more clients to your business?
You’ve completed step 1, so how can you provide value?
Through your website. Your website must provide this value exchange in many ways across the buyer’s journey.
You do this by creating noteworthy content that will attract clients.
Content should be in the form of Frequently Asked Questions, blog articles that teach and educate, videos that walk prospect clients step-by-step through a process or explanation, live webinars where you offer value and make yourself available to your prospective clients, etc.
With these value-creating activities in place, you will now move to step 3.
Step 3. Attract prospects to your business
The two previous steps will position your prospect clients to come to you. Attracting rather than you having to go out and find them or wait for referrals.
To examine the links between the earlier steps and attracting prospective clients, a.k.a lead generation, you must understand how the client-focused website and value based content work together to bring you more clients.
When these steps are followed it creates value not only for your prospective clients but it also shows Google and other search engines that your business is a source of knowledge to the users of their search engines who are looking for answers.
Search isn’t the only component impacted, all digital marketing is fueled by this effort.
Digital marketing: outbound marketing (search and display advertisements), inbound marketing, social media, and the mobile device revolution will provide channels for attracting prospects to your business.
For the content to attract prospects, it must align with the types of words your clients use when at the various stages of the buying journey.
As a part of your planning, write out the Key Terms that potential clients use when searching. Take those terms and create questions that can be answered with helpful information that builds trust and brings the prospect through the buying process.
At this point, you have more prospect clients, a.k.a Leads. Now move to step 4.
Step 4. Capture prospects at earlier stages in the buyer’s journey
Capturing prospects at the earlier stages means you have to get the right data at the beginning of the conversation.
You can’t track that which you don’t see. Therefore, to identify prospects at the various stages you’ll need to capture important information that enables you to track them. In most cases online, you will use Leadin, HubSpot, Marketo, Kissmetrics, Pardot, etc. By feeding contacts to these systems of tracking, you will be able to bring them to sales-readiness.
You need more than software, you need to think about Step 2, the value you’ve created.
You have a website that displays your love and understanding of your clients and content that offers tons of value without having to buy, now you need to put some of the content behind gates. Gates means the content will be provided when the person provides their email address or answers questions in a form.
These forms exist on a landing page. The landing page has a sole purpose, describe the value being provided in exchange for information about the person.
Once the form is filled out, you will be able to track the prospect client throughout their buying journey.
Step 5. Nurture captured leads
If capturing prospect buyers earlier in their decision process is new to your business than you typically engage prospects who are ready to buy, these new leads are not. Leads who are not ready to buy must be nurtured.
The purpose of reaching out to these newly captured leads in the early stages of the buyer’s journey is to answer any remaining questions.
The nurturing emails are best deployed as an automated set of emails. Each email in the series will offer a helpful blog article addressing their common questions and provide resources that move them through the decision process.
Once the prospect buyer is in the final stage of the buying process, it’s appropriate to recommend your solution.
We call it a “workflow,” you may know it as a “drip campaign.”
Again, once you adequately answer the questions, the lead will be more likely to consider becoming your client.
Conclusion
This article focused on how to get more clients to your business with incremental and linear growth through a client acquisition program.
Your business is already focused on growth by getting more clients, but let’s not forget that you can grow by increasing the size of the transaction and by increasing the frequency of each client’s purchase. It’s not always about getting more volume, but getting more from the volume you do have.
If you use the step program outlined above, a process that shows you love and care for them, you’ll position your business to get more clients in a repeatable and predictable way.
