This post originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com - #Growing Your Business
Follow these guidelines, and you can finally stop spending so much on ads.
4 min read
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When running a client-based business, the weeks and months can feel like roller coasters. Clients naturally come and go, depending on your packages and your churn rate. As entrepreneur Melyssa Griffin says, “Getting clients can be one of the most difficult and anxiety-inducing struggles for a business owner.”
So, what if there were “laws” for attracting clients that worked every time? Perhaps if you stayed ahead of the curve and instituted practices that would bring clients to you regularly, you wouldn’t have to scramble to invest in ads the next time you feel low on clients. With that in mind, here are three laws any entrepreneur should follow to attract new clients.
1. Appeal to them with content they’re likely to engage with.
The first and arguably most important way to attract new clients is to use content marketing, which entails creating value-driven content for your social media pages, blog or anywhere else your ideal customer might search for information on your business. As Jay Baer blogs for Convince & Convert, “Smart content creation doesn’t have an expiration date.” As long as your expertly tailored content is floating out there on the web, it’s likely to find your target customers one way or another.
Related: 6 Innovative Ways to Attract New Customers
And regardless of how it finds your target customer, the creation itself is important because it establishes you as a leader. In a blog post for Pennington Creative, Heather Mcdonald puts it well when she says, “When customers are vetting companies, they’re looking for something more than a price tag. They want to do business with people who know their industry and are experts in their field.” If you can answer your target customer’s questions and provide them with the answers and insights they need from a Google search, they’ll remember your company as the expert.
2. Utilize social media networks.
In today’s digital age, there’s no reason you shouldn’t utilize social media networks to attract new clients. After all, you have a whole world of potential customers in the palm of your hand. How to utilize them, however, is a loaded question with dozens of potential answers, all of which should be considered in tandem. You should offer quality content and branded stories with smart hashtags, but perhaps the most important thing to do is to be conscientious of the community you’re building, both on your business’s social pages and your own.
Alice Jackson recommends in a blog for Design Hill that replying to every comment and direct message you receive can help build organic engagement. The more that your followers can feel like they know you — either your personal brand or you as the founder on your company page — the more they’ll come to trust you. The same is true for if you receive a message on LinkedIn or Facebook. Reply, even if the message appears to be automated or part of a mass-emailing list. You’ll start to become top of mind.
3. Mirror your ideal client.
It’s a simple rule of attraction: Like attracts like, so you’re more likely to attract clients if you’re mirroring their actions and interacting with their social circles. Kent Littlejohn, CEO of Client.com, swears by this law, explaining, “You need to remember that your reputation precedes you in the business world, so in order to make sure your potential clients have an interest, do high-quality deals and hire your own high-quality, high-ticket people as a way of breaking into networks of ideal clients.”
Because everything comes down to the crowd you’re in for networking, make sure you’re hiring and engaging with the type of people you want to work with, i.e. mirror them.
Related: 5 Simple Adjustments That Bring in High-End Clients Consisently
This is also an ethical matter, too. In all of your business dealings, act as you’d want a client to act towards you. Chances are that the reputation you’ll build for yourself will warrant referrals, even from those you’ve hired. And the more referrals, the more clients, which means more referrals and more client attraction. These laws will get you there.
