How to Attract The Ideal Clients for Your Business
The product or service you are selling is great. You believe in it with your whole heart, and you know it will bring light to the life of those who need it. Perhaps, at first, you thought to yourself, ‘with this kind of product, why would I need any marketing? Clients will line up, and my business will become a success story (or at least pay back the expense and I’ll be able to make an honest living)’. But as good as your product may be, you feel something just isn’t working. You feel you’ve tried everything (you’ve even invested in promoting ads), and sales are still not increasing, plus people aren’t showing much interest… does that sound familiar?
If the answer is yes, it’s time you stop burying your head in the sand and start taking the right actions needed to attract the clients that are right for your business!
Using this guide, you’ll learn how to attract the ideal clients for your business and convert them from potential leads into turning clients.
How to attract clients to your business #1: Know your target audience
The most important thing you should do, before anything else, to attract the ‘right’ clients for your business is to understand who your ideal clients are. This might sound obvious, but it’s the type of information that most entrepreneurs and businesspeople lack. The product or service you are offering (or will offer in the future) was meant to solve a specific issue or improve the lives of those who purchase it. This is why it’s very important that you understand what your ideal clients appreciate and what issues they are facing, so you can help solve them.
You should know your ideal clients as much as you do your best friend. Yes, this might seem too far-fetched to you, but I guarantee you that once you thoroughly understand your audience, its values, ambitions, and issues, you would be able to talk to them at eye level and offer them the best service possible. In turn, they’ll want to buy the services or products from no one but you.
Start Implementing – if you have no idea who your ideal client is, or if you’re receiving leads that don’t fit the product/service you are offering (or its prices), you’re probably talking to the wrong people.
Take a step back and re-evaluate who your ideal clients might be by answering the following questions:
- What are their values?
- What challenges and issues do they have?
- How are these issues expressed?
- What’s important for them when they purchase a product/service?
- What kind of objections could they have to the product/service you are offering them?
- What do their lives look like now?
- What would they like their lives to look like after they purchase your product/service?
How to attract clients to your business #2:
Make sure the product/service answers your ideal clients’ needs
You thought you have the best product in the world, one that will fly off the shelves the minute you launch it. However, in reality, you’re hardly generating any sales or even any interest? It’s quite possible that your product doesn’t match the target audience you defined for your business.
Instead of thinking about what you want to offer, and designing your product/service around it, think of the problems and needs of your ideal client and create your proposal according to the needs you want to answer. For example, my ideal clients don’t consider photography and creating stunning photos as a hobby, or something that’s ‘nice to have’. My ideal clients want their business to look professional, aesthetic, and appealing to generate more sales. They know that they need quality photos to constantly communicate their brand’s image. That is the reason I have created The Photo Booth and have been working solely with clients who are willing to raise the quality of their visual content to reach the next level in their business.
Start Implementing – do you “really” know what your ideal clients are looking for? If you are still unsure, go back to the previous tip and take some time to answer the question, “What challenges and issues do they have?” Once you have a better understanding of what their issues are, you will be able to understand if you are “really” offering them products/services that will help them solve these issues, or it’s time to switch up what you’re offering (or, alternatively, update the definition of who your ideal clients are and approach the exact target audience for the services you’re already offering).
How to attract clients to your business #3: Know your message like the back of your hand
Once we’re convinced that we know our ideal audience and that we’re selling a product/service they actually need or want, we can move on to address the objective that many entrepreneurs and small business owners fail at – conveying the right message to the ideal client. Even if you have the best product/service in the world and the product you are offering fits your clients like a glove, no one will buy it if your message is unclear or imprecise. Yes, your marketing message is critical!
Many times, we launch a great product/service but we have trouble defining it correctly simply because we’re looking at it from our current perspective (of a person who is no longer dealing with the issue) instead of from the customer’s perspective (who is currently dealing with the issue). Your goal is to make your ideal clients see themselves and identify with the message you convey.
Start Implementing – knowing your business’ brand mission, vision and goal will help you create a concise message that you will be able to consistently share to attract your ideal clients. Take the message I have created for My Store, for example – “Stunning digital products that will make work quicker, more organized and less stressed!” – my goal was to convey to my ideal client that these are products that solve issues of time constraints and frustration. What is your message? What ideal client issues does your product/service answer?
How to attract clients to your business #4: Market where your audience hangs out (and of course, where your audience buys!)
Marketing – a beloved word by some and hated by others. It really doesn’t matter if you’re former or latter if you’re selling a product/service you, you simply can’t do without marketing. Marketing is obviously a vast field and manifests in many ways and strategies. But one thing is sure – whichever type of marketing you choose to promote your business – in order for it to be effective, you have to focus your resources where your ideal client is.
One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make with their marketing is choosing to invest in channels that aim at the wrong people, simply because they think they have to be there. Instagram is a great example of that, since most business owners rush to invest their entire marketing time and budget on Instagram without familiarizing themselves with other alternatives that might be more beneficial and profitable for their business.
Start Implementing – conduct a market research and surveys to understand where your ideal audience is, where and how they consume their content and where they look before purchasing anything. In most cases, successful marketing spreads over several channels. Try to understand what the most important ones are and prioritize them before wasting your marketing budget in the wrong place. For instance, if you’re selling your product/service directly online, it’s important that you make sure that your website is adequate presents the values of your brand in the best way possible. You should do this before you start marketing on Instagram and directing people to it.
How to attract clients to your business #5: Maintain a professional and cohesive branding
If you’ve correctly followed my recommendations so far, but you’re still unable to relate to your ideal client – your business’ visual branding might be the source of the problem.
But wait, you might be asking yourself, “what is a visual branding anyway?”
“Visual Branding” is the aesthetic definition of your business – from the logo, color scheme, and all the way to the images that represent it. Your business visual branding is the first thing people see, whether it’s on the business website, Instagram or physical store. That is why it’s so important that your business visual branding is appealing, unique, and clear (meaning, identifiable with your business). People are very visual creatures, one of the main things that influence us when making decisions is the visual appeal of the object we’re purchasing. I’m obviously not only referring to items whose entire purpose is aesthetical, like a picture to hang in the living room, a statue or a coffee-table book but also products that we purchase for nothing more than their aesthetic value, for instance, a bottle of wine we bought thanks to its luxurious design.
However, visual aesthetics is not only important when selling a specific product or service, but also in establishing a strong foundation for the business behind it. Any experience a person has with your brand either reinforces it or weakens it. You need to stop for a minute and think of the visual experience that your brand offers your ideal client in different meeting points – when scrolling through Instagram, when they see promotional ads online, when they open your newsletter, etc. Is the visual experience cohesive throughout the various platforms and does it add or undermine the meaning of your brand?
Your brand’s visual consistency also builds trust. That is the reason your marketing has to be unique and consistent throughout the entire brand – the business branding should be a reflection of the business identity and attract the clients you intend to attract. For instance, if you’re trying to sell something at a high price range, such as gold and diamond jewelry, or even premium services, but your business visual branding (the logo, website, Instagram feed, photos, etc.) seem cheap and unprofessional – most chances are you’ll lose a big chunk of your potential audience. Read here more on how quality photos can attract clients and improve your business’s sales.
Start Implementing – your brand’s visual identity serves a very important role in the journey of developing your brand. So, you simply cannot ignore it. If you feel that your current brand isn’t attracting your ideal clients, it’s time to change things up. Whether it’s a complete re-branding or keeping the current one while cohesively applying it to all the platforms on which your business is active – it’s time to buckle up and upgrade your business’ appearance.
A Bonus Tip 🎁
How to attract clients to your business: Share quality and valuable content for free.
And another final tip you should implement in your business…
One of the most efficient and successful ways to connect with your ideal audience is winning their trust and, later on, making it your consumer audience through content.
Often, when I suggest this method during my strategy and consultation meetings, there is a lot of fear. Small business owners are afraid to share their best content online for free online for two main reasons:
1. They’re afraid that if they give away all that free information, their products/services will become unnecessary (because their audience will simply settle for the free stuff). So, yes, there will always be a certain part of your audience that will settle for those free tips, but there will also be quite a lot of people (your ideal clients) that will enjoy the value you gave them through the free content you shared. Those people will decide that you are the expert they need and will purchase your products/services – they will want to receive more of that amazing value they’ve “tasted”. Yes, just like when you taste a product at the mall and then want to buy the entire packet 😉.
2. They’re afraid that if they publish free valuable content their competitors will copy off them. So yes, it can totally happen (I admit I have experienced this myself quite a few times, both free and paid contents). There are unimaginative people who are too lazy to create their own things and just choose the easy and immoral route. It’s both annoying and infuriating, but the bottom line is – copying will never be as good as the original. People can try and copy things, but if you build your business that way, you’ll never succeed; karma’s a bitch.
So, don’t worry about your ideal clients not buying or your competitors stealing your content, simply keep sharing valuable and quality content and establish yourself as an expert in your niche. By the way, it’s also one of the reasons I highly recommend opening a business blog.
Start Implementing – make a list of possible ideas for content that would excite, teach and help your ideal audience. Start creating and sharing in places where your audience can be found!
What have you learned from this guide? Which methods are you using to attract the ideal clients for your business?
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3 Responses
A beautiful and comprehensive article, if the mentioned steps are applied, for sure, there will be success in the business
Thanks!
This blog is extremely helpful for beginners in business like me. You have rightly pointed out the way we should focus on the needs of individual client primarily to achieve long-term business success. Also, the solutions that you have provided to tackle the issue of catering to client needs are highly informative.