4 Ways to Get More Clients for Your Business (Ep 47)

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Dawn McGruer brings you actionable digital marketing lessons every other week. Whether you are an aspiring or experienced marketer, learn the latest SEO, content marketing, social media, email marketing, and online marketing tactics that are working today.

 
Dawn McGruer:
Welcome to Episode 47 of Digital Marketing Made Easy, the podcast that is all about literally getting your brand and your business visible so you can get more clients and grow and scale your business. Now, you are joined with me your host, Dawn McGruer, and I am a bestselling author of Dynamic Digital Marketing, as well as award-winning trainer, speaker, and strategist.

Now, what I want to talk to you about today in this podcast is how to get more clients for your business because it is one of the biggest things. Majority of clients I meet are either in a category where they are in feast and famine. They’ve done quite well for their business, they’re getting clients on board, could be a startup, could be a growth business, but they’re going through periods of the feast and famine where they have an abundance of clients or they have clients that they’re working on projects and then they have to find the next one. And there is a delay in getting that pull through.

Switch things up a little

Or the other type of client, and you may fall into this category, is that you are a business that’s been going very well, but other things have happened. So maybe something that you’re offering, could be a product or a service, is not getting the same traction. You’re not selling as much as you had before. It could be that there’s a change in economy, a change of market, a change in consumer behaviour and demand. So you have to switch things up a little bit.

So these are my fail-safe, absolute go-to strategies that I use every day within our business, but also with all of our clients. Now, within the academy, we started way back in 2005, and we had zero clients. And I’m not joking, we had zero clients because the academy was born from the agency. Now, I’ve owned a marketing agency since the age of 21. I’m 43 now, and I have multiple businesses. But they all started at ground zero.

So how did we actually grow the academy to a point where we have trained and certified over 30,000 students? Well, let’s roll back the clock to 2005. The academy came from the idea that we were creating within the agency strategies for our clients. But the biggest problem was there was a huge digital skills gap. And we needed to bridge that gap fairly quickly so that our strategies could be implemented and that we could empower our clients to really master the world of online marketing and social media so that they couldn’t just implement the strategies, they could grow and scale their business.

Now, from that point, we obviously started to pull through some of our clients and their teams. And we started slowly. We started looking at number one, getting referrals, also looking at our amazing customers.

Now, if you imagine that you don’t have to pay a bean, not one penny to get somebody to actually work with you when they’re a customer, there’s no acquisition cost. Now, the exciting thing is there that customers on average will spend about 33% more with you. Now, go a stage further. If you can get those people who are your biggest advocates to become referrers, to become affiliate partners or referral partners, it’s even better because you’ve now created this ready-made community where you’re working with people who already know how good you are. You’ve either exceeded or delighted their expectations in some way. All of the social proof is there. And as human beings, there’s nothing better that we want than to refer.

Building momentum

But if you switch that relationship up and you use these amazing advocates for your business, your customers, you have two angles because you can upsell and cross-sell to your customers, but you can also empower these people, these amazing clients of yours to draw in more clients and incentivize them to do just so.
Now, it only takes one, two, three clients to be referred to make a huge difference. And what I love about online marketing and marketing as a whole and even business is that small, steady steps build massive momentum. So once you get this going and you get into the habit of actually asking for referrals, then it becomes really easy.
Now, I’m all about the ebb and flow. I’m about making marketing as easy as possible and having as much impact as we can. And this takes me on to point two.

Now, how do you get more clients? Well, we’ve covered word of mouth and referrals, building relationships with these people, building the community so people will refer. And also that you can get customers to spend more with you on a more regular frequency and obviously not pay any advertising or recruitment costs.

But visibility is number two, because I know that when I show the behind the scenes and I talk about my journey, that these are the most inspirational posts. And strangely enough, they sell more without selling because those who go onto social media, and you may have seen this yourself, that we’ve probably all fallen into the trap at some point, that if a business is on social media touting their wares, and by touting, I mean going on and talking about buy me, buy me, buy me. And this can be come to an event, come to a course, come to a conference. It could be buy this product. It’s just to sell, sell, sell, because we have to go back to understanding what social media is.

Social Media

Social media has two purposes. And you will have succeeded in the objectives of social media if you’re growing your audience and you’re gaining engagement. Now, if you’re posting on social media and you’re getting no traction and people are switching off, then guess what? Your content isn’t resonating with them. It’s not landing. You’re not building a relationship, you’re not getting engagement, and you certainly probably won’t be seeing any financial impact.

Now, when you look at turning your connections into paying clients, the magic starts to happen when you start to talk like a human being. And what I mean here is is that we need visibility, we need behind the scenes, and we need inspiration. We need to see that you are the person, the go-to person for whatever it is that you do. And carving out this personal brand and really positioning yourself as a specialist in what you do comes from good storytelling. And by storytelling, it’s talking about different topics, soapbox topics, and I mean finding something you’re passionate about and sharing what you feel about that topic. I often talk about what success is for people and what we’re taught versus what reality is.

So it has to be something that you are really clear on. And when you look at your social media, you have to think that quality over quantity is key. There are so many people out there who have social fatigue it is untrue. And you can tell because the content is on a churn. It’s just like they’re pushing it out. They’re on a broadcast mode and nobody is engaging.

Now, when nobody engages, it causes huge problems because it means that you’re actually doing something that nobody wants. So try and think about what you engage in. Think about the storytelling and the people that you see as key influencers or that you enjoy seeing their content. What was the last thing that you comment, liked, and shared?
And you’ll start to really get an eye for it. You’ll start to understand that people don’t want to be sold to. They go on social media to be entertained. And when they read something that they think do you know what, that could be me, I really kind of relate to this or I can see how this would really help, then you’ve started to get this relate, the relationship going. You’ve started to get people resonating with what you’re saying.

A solid call to action

And as soon as you start talking with your audience rather than at them, it’s a game changer. Because guess what? If you put call to actions in there that are solid and you’re asking people to do certain things, like direct messaging, get in touch, bring it back to basics.

Now, this brings me on to point three of getting more customers. When we talk about bringing it back to basics, we are talking about human nature. How do we form bonds in business? Well, one of the key things we do is we speak to people. So could you get people on discovery calls? I know that they are the absolute number one way of me conversing a client.

Now, if someone’s going to work with me, especially one to one, one thing that I never do is get somebody else talking to that person because it’s a relationship between me and that person. If someone’s going to invest to do one-to-one work, they at least need to understand the person that they’re going to be working with because number one, I need to understand whether I can truly help them and that I have the relationship with that person, that the dynamics are going to work and I feel that they are an ideal client and vice versa.

So you have to think about try and take out some of the automation that we’ve put into our lives and the disconnection and really humanize that contact. And think about when you’ve got customers in the past, when you’ve generated leads in the past, where did they come from? Did they come from referrals? Did they come from social media? Where do
these people come from? And what was the most persuasive piece of content that pushed them over to becoming a customer? Okay?

Remember they are people

So you have to think about bringing it back to basics. And this could be doing online masterclasses, workshops, events, hosting things where you’re as close to that person, that it’s not a physical meet up, but it could be online. Think about bringing everything back a notch and humanizing the way that you interact, the way that you build these all-important relationships because people buy people. We do not market to a niche or an industry.

So many people I talk to, I say, “Who’s your ideal client?” And they say, “Oh, I market to the manufacturing industry.” No, you don’t. You market to a human being, a real-life breathing person who has emotions, who has feelings, who has challenges, pains, problems, and has desires. And your whole content has to be aligned to that person.
So try visualizing your ideal client in their working day. What is their day to day? What’s their motivation, their mission, and vision? How could you help them achieve that? How could you solve any current issue they have? How could you build that bridge? And this is exactly the sort of content that does well.

Now, if you think about point four, my last point of this podcast, this is probably the biggest part. And this is the bit that honestly I would say has grown my businesses, my clients businesses tenfold. It’s the bit where people have maybe been in feast and famine, that they’ve got out of it. And now you imagine putting all of these four points together, what a big difference this can be for your business.

Decluttering

So before I finish off on point four, I want you to do one thing. I want you to declutter. Get rid of the huge digital to-do lists. 80% of it will not be serving you. 20% will have impact. And front load these all-important tasks and keep thinking about is what I’m doing as a marketer or an aspiring marketer, could be developing, could be a seasoned professional marketer, actually moving the needle in my business? Is it actually resonating with people? Is it building the relationships that ultimately are generating leads and turning them into paying customers? Are you creating content on social media that isn’t turning those connections into paying clients?

Think about if you are doing something and it is not impacting, it isn’t generating the results you desire, stop it. No one will die. Okay? And think about the things that have served you in the past that have helped you scale the business, that have helped you get leads, have helped you get customers and focus in on there.

Now, my last and final point is about clarity. Having a clean route to your product or service, which gives you the confidence to sell without selling because you have an understanding that is so crisp, so clear on that customer journey and how you can help them, you can’t help but exude it through your social media, through your content, through all of your marketing channels.

Now, this is about when you nail your niche and you understand the positioning and the message for your ideal client. And everything that you’ve created, be it landing pages, guides, master classes, sales page, they all sing the same song. And they feel so congruent and so clear that people understand what you do, who you are, how what you do or product or service can help them and how it solves their pain, problem and challenge, why do they need it, and why do they need it now.

Now, the last bit on this is about how much does it cost? Because for me, I am all about being authentic, being totally transparent, and showing up in a way that everything is clear, that people can see exactly here are the three things we do. So within Business Consort, Digital and Social Media Academy, yes, we’ve trained 30,000 students, but not all in the same thing.

We have three core offerings, and I am so clear on those offerings, I could literally recite them. Now, the great thing is here is that when I think about how to promote and talk about my business, because I have that clarity, because it’s so simple, it’s very easy for them to understand, it’s easy for me to convey, but it’s also very clear for the motivation of why someone would need it.

So for instance, if someone’s doing a certification, they get a certificate on completing a fast-track course. That will be perfect for somebody who wants to upscale, learn the eight powerful ways to market the business online. We show it in a framework, the Dynamic Digital Marketing model. They know the eight models they’re going to learn, the outcomes of those models. They know they get a free book. The book covers everything within there in more detail. It has tips, tools, activities. There’s a workbook that goes with it. And you can start to see that it’s super clear.

Then the second thing we do is qualifications. People don’t wake up and just suddenly think I want to do a qualification. People might have a lifelong dream to graduate at Westminster, and this is amazing because great, if they want to do a degree, that’s half the battle, okay? But they don’t think about, oh, today I want to wake up and do three assignments and study maybe from little as 12 weeks to 12 months to graduate with my diploma, get my honorifics, collect my scroll on stage, and wear my cap and gowns. Those are things that they ultimately know are the vehicle, but the end bit is, is that ultimately most people want a pay rise or promotion, a new job, or they want to invite their friends and family to celebrate an amazing achievement like a qualification.

So we have certifications, qualification, and mentoring. Now, if people want to do the certification, the upgrade, then do the qualification. And the mentoring can be for businesses of all shapes and sizes. We do it one to one, we do it in group, we do face to face, we do it online, and we even do team training within there. Now, those three core offerings, as I say, are super clear. The customer journey of how we actually pull people into those and get people excited about them is super clear from our point because we’re thinking about the ideal client.

Now, displaying your offerings, your core products or services on your site is a big part because the messaging and the positioning has to be there. People need to really understand that if they do this, what it’s going to do for them. And generally in business, it’s around improving performance or productivity or profit, the three Ps. Generally, we can roll everything back to those.

And you have to be super clear that if you look at your own content or your website or your sales pages, does it really sing to you? Does it really align? And if you’ve got your ideal client to look at it, was there a piece of content on there that maybe a customer of yours looked at and said, “That’s what got it for me. That’s what nailed it. That’s why I chose you specifically, and I chose X, Y, and Z.”

So doing some customer research, looking at the way that people come into your business, and looking at the clarity and the messaging and positioning, is it strong enough? Is it geared in a point whereby you know that people will come on and go, “That’s me, that’s me, or that’s me. And this is the one for me.” Because we are a nation of self-serve and we absolutely love to do a bit of research before we’re ready to buy and inquire.

Now, one last stat and fact for you, 97, yes, 97% of people who land on your landing pages or your website are just browsing. Okay? So only 3% are ready to buy and inquire. And your job is to make sure that that 3% choose you and that you capture the interest of the other 97% by offering other free things. Now, it could be downloads, coupons, masterclasses, guides, checklists, you name it. But think about what that journey is like and walk it. Put yourself in the shoes of your potential customer. And believe you me, this will be half the battle. When you truly understand your ideal client and the journey they go on, then it makes it 10 times easier to convert them into paying customers.

So I hope you enjoyed this podcast and my four ways to get more clients into your business. Remember, referrals, visibility on social media and storytelling, bringing it back to basics, building that all-important relationship, getting as close to your client and using methods that have worked within your business before, and getting that all-important clarity and messaging so that your positioning and your messages give you the clarity and confidence, and also for your customer, that make it super simple to want to sign up and get your product or services.
So join me on the next episode for more digital marketing tips. And don’t forget, you can follow me, Dawn McGruer, and also Business Consort on all the social channels.

Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast. Take a screenshot and share on social media and we will send you a special gift to say thanks. Just remember to tag Business Consort in your post. Oh, and don’t forget, you can access more free resources to help you develop your digital skills on our website, digitalandsocialmediaacademy.com.