Industry markets have ups and downs. Your business needs to attract clients consistently regardless of market trends. These are strategies to help you attract clients consistently for online service providers.
First things first. You need to be very clear WHO your ideal client is before you begin trying to attract clients. If you need help with this, try downloading a Storyboard worksheet.
“Getting crystal clear about your target customer will help you create the type of business that fulfills and rewards you rather than just waiting around for anybody with money or somebody who needs what you sell to happen upon you.” EndeaverCreative
You should also know what their main pain points are and how your services can help them (your potential client). If you know these, it will help you when you produce content to speak their language.
Strategies to Attract Clients Consistently
- Past clients can bring in new clients
- Free offers attract clients
- Use social media strategically
- Add a valuable new service
- Form strategic & referral partnerships
- Increase your pricing
- Blogging strategies
- Increase brand awareness
1. Past Clients Can Bring In New Clients
Past clients are always a good place to start. Set up an automation to send out an email to past clients in good standing with your business when they left.
If they left under distress, regardless of fault, do not add them to the email automation. All others should be included, as they may be in a different place today than when they left.
Oftentimes, giving a small discount may be enough to bring them back. Another option (or pair them together) is to offer them a reward to send the email on to someone else who could use your services.
Key Takeaway: Past clients are often overlooked as a source for leads; however, they can be quick client converters as they sing your praises to someone else.
2. Free Offers Attract Clients
Free offers can be key to any strategic marketing plan to attract clients consistently. If you don’t have a free offer on your website, this is a good time to do it. Giving away something small helps bring potential clients into your marketing funnel. The best thing is that it gets them on your email list.
Now they are a warm lead because they’ve already shown interest in what you are providing. And it allows you to send them emails on a regular basis for as long as they stay on your list.
Making an appealing offer is all about knowing your ideal client. If you know who you are providing services to, then you know their pain points. You know what they need.
Start with their pain points and what they are searching for on Google and social media. What are the answers they are looking for at this time that you can help answer?
- What do they need?
- How can you provide 1 or more answers to this problem?
- How will you deliver the solution to them (in what format)?
You can develop a free offer around providing an answer or solution to that problem. Then you only need to choose how to provide that solution. What format will this take so they may access the solution you provide as a free offer?
Free Offers vary from free strategy sessions to free course offerings.
List of Possible Free Offers for Your Prospective Clients:
- Free Audits
- Free Session
- Checklist
- Discount (don’t recommend)
- ebook
- Guide
- Mini Course
- Masterclass
- Quiz
- Templates
- Webinar
- Workbook
I know I may have missed something, but this is a good broad list of possible free offers.
Key Takeaways: Free offers may not make immediate clients, but it puts you in their inbox repeatedly. Even if they do not open it, they see your name on a consistent basis (or brand) on a regular basis. Treating them well and offering more tips than anywhere else will keep them on your list.
3. Use Social Media Strategically
A good way to draw in new clients is by using social media strategically. Part of the strategy for social media must be consistent posting of content.
After setting up your profile and/or business profile, you have to be consistent.
Other social media strategies can include:
- Choose only 1 to 2 social platforms to be available on (able to respond to engagement); you cannot be everywhere (you can use a scheduler on other platforms if you feel you must be on others).
- Producing content regularly – I recommend blogging and taking parts of this and turning them into social media posts. This way you only have to produce 1 piece of content each week.
- Be genuine – be yourself, don’t try to pretend to be something you are not.
- Begin to stand out as an authority in your industry
- Be available and respond to your engagement
- Offer help while online
- Don’t just preach at them, but be vulnerable at times and share how you made mistakes starting your business.
- Create videos <preaching to myself here>; they get the highest views.
- Check your analytics – see how your content compares. How does the audience respond to one post versus another, and what was the difference?
- Share evergreen content – if you did a podcast interview, or were featured in a magazine, share these more than once throughout the year.
“You must show others love by commenting on their posts; otherwise, you tend to look selfish. So, show you care and want to be involved in the community by engaging in the posts of others – just not your competitors. Choose those in your ideal prospect audience, so they will see you interacting.” Fearless Business Boss
Key Takeaway: Social media has long been a necessary part of marketing. Do it strategically, and you can have a consistent client attraction marketing channel.
4. Add Valuable New Services
Another way to help attract clients is by adding a valuable new service. Sometimes clients may even be asking for this service.
When I had my VA Agency, a client asked if I could provide social media services for them. I said, ‘Yes.’ This sent me on a journey of learning (taking courses) and developing better skills to be able to provide great social media management for our clients.
Once I began offering these services to one client, I sent out notifications that we offered this service, and I had other clients sign up. Not to mention the new clients who were attracted because of this service.
If you don’t want to provide a service that clients often ask about, then consider bringing on a subcontractor who can provide these services for you.
Key Takeaway: Adding services can attract more clients as you become the all-in-one provider when you add subcontractors to help you.
5. Form Strategic & Referral Partnerships
You can also form strategic and referral partnerships that can help bring in more clients for your company.
You may be familiar with the term referral partnerships, where you get a special link that registers in a software system if people click on that website link. If the person purchases something from that link, you get a small percentage or a reward of some kind.
A strategic partnership is when you are willing to partner with someone who provides specialized services or products, and only partner with them for those services/products.
For example, let’s say you offer email marketing. Sometimes you get requests to do design work for free offers, but you do not want to do design work, so you partner with someone who can offer that service. This is a strategic partnership as long as you do not partner with anyone else to provide that service.
This potentially means you can earn more from this partnership than with referrals. If you are getting referrals or have a strategic partnership set up with others, they may earn a small amount by sending you new clients. The new clients are always worth a small fee.
This can help you attract clients consistently.
Key Takeaway: Forming partnerships across complementary services can boost your client attraction because someone beside you is promoting you.
6. Increase Your Pricing
Most online service providers do not realize how underpriced they are in the market today. I speak with them all the time and encourage them to charge more when they are underpriced.
“I’ve seen too many new online service providers set their pricing too low, especially in the beginning. This is where competitive research can also help achieve a good pricing strategy.” Fearless Business Boss
Imposter Syndrome accounts for many of those who are not priced properly.
“a psychological condition that is characterized by persistent doubt concerning one’s abilities or accomplishments accompanied by the fear of being exposed as a fraud despite evidence of one’s ongoing success.” Merriam Webster Dictionary
Increasing your pricing and package pricing can actually bring in more high-end clientele to your business. When you are underpriced, it often attracts tire-kickers who are unwilling to pay properly. It’s a strange phenomenon, but when you are priced right (higher), you attract higher-paying clients who value your work.
Key Takeaway: Increasing pricing can help you attract a better, high-paying clientele that values your work.
7. Blogging Strategies
I am a huge proponent of blogging. It is the first marketing strategy I tell my clients to start doing.
SEO Blogging – writing articles that are Search Engine Optimized (SEO) so you are found more easily online.
tammy durden
One of the best strategies for SEO blogging that has worked for me is to create article titles around the questions your potential client is searching. In other words, create a title that offers a solution to their problem.
An example would be if you provide email marketing, you might create a blog title, “How to create a free offer to grow your list quickly.”
Then, as a prospective client looks for ways to grow their list quickly, your article may pop up for them. Another way to have your article come up is to give bullet points or numbered points in the article so the search engine can summarize it easily.
One thing to keep in mind today is that Google is no longer the only real search engine that matters. People are searching on every platform today, including social media platforms.
Key Takeaway: Write articles that keep in mind what your potential client is searching for and help provide the solution for them. And make certain you add bullet or numbered points in your blog. This is how you will be found more on search engines and gain more traffic across platforms.
Expert Tip: Utilize the Yoast SEO plugin. It will help you keep your SEO in check and will also challenge you to write well, as it grades it.
8. Increase Brand Visibility
Lastly, to attract clients consistently, increase your brand visibility. You can do this by creating more videos and posting them not only on your website to introduce yourself, but also on social media. You can share tips and how-tos that help your audience.
One of the best ways to boost your visibility is through appearances. Appearing in others’ videos, podcasts, online magazines, and conferences (summits, etc.) can boost your profile or business brand.
Make the most of your appearances by sharing everywhere you can. One of the reasons appearances boost your brand’s visibility is that the other business is also going to share it with their audiences. This can attract others to start following you and build your list of potential clients.
Key Takeaway: Be certain before agreeing to an appearance that their audience is also similar to your audience or at least has some crossover.
Final Thoughts
No strategy is perfect and always produces consistent clients. This is why it is so important that you have several funnels built for attracting clients.
Nurture your leads consistently with good, high-quality content to keep your audience engaged.
In today’s online noise, it can be hard to stand out, but offering great tips, showing up for others, and producing consistent content can help.
Share a tip on how you consistently attract clients.
