5 Ways to Ensure You Consistently Have Clients

 There’s plenty of positive aspects to entrepreneurship… getting to do work you love, setting a schedule that works for you and your ideal schedule, the possibility of making a tangible impact on the people and society around you… but unfortunately, thrills don’t pay the bills.

There’s also a feast or famine cycle that’s inherent to the small business owner lifestyle. One month you’ll have so much work you’re struggling to keep up, and the next you’ll be digging for pennies under the couch cushions.

But just because this happens to “everyone” doesn’t mean that you have to play along with the game. With a little bit of thought and sustained effort, you can keep your client stream consistent.

How to get a consistent stream of clients:

1. Promote yourself regularly.

It’s challenging to think about the “next” thing while you’re engrossed in current client projects, but it’s important to look ahead in your calendar. Don’t wait until you’ve wrapped up that big project or ended a contract before you start looking around for the next one.

You’ll be more confident about promoting yourself and taking on projects suited to you if you start looking before you hit that couch-scavenging stage.

• Try plugging your e-newsletter on a weekly basis through your social media feeds.
• Share testimonials from happy clients on social feeds and in your newsletters.
• Share snippets of your working life… nothing confidential, obviously, but enough to let people know you’re actively engaged with projects.
• Heck, you can even announce that you’ve got client openings for the summer/two months out/etc, and invite people to book a chat with you.

Remember, people need to be reminded that you exist. It may feel icky to promote yourself so bluntly, but people only see about 1/18th of your posts (and take action on even fewer of them).

2. Maintain good relationships with past clients.

It’s always good to check in with your past clients — especially the ones you really loved working with. This doesn’t have to be a “Hey, I’m looking for work,” sort of email, but simply a friendly, “I was thinking about you and was wondering how things are going!”

You never know when they might have a new project to work on, and keeping in touch keeps you top-of-mind when their colleagues are looking for someone to hire.

Pro tip: If you collect their contract information (email, phone number, address) in your contract, it makes it super simple to follow up later with a card or a note.

3. Make it easy-peasy to contact you.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… make it easy to get in touch with you! Don’t bury your booking link or contact info three pages deep on your website. (And definitely stop doing these other things that are driving your potential clients away.)

Busy entrepreneurs can’t waste 30 minutes looking for your email address. Make it super simple for them to send you a message, tell you what their project is, and get information about how you work.

4. Shoot for quality, not quantity.

The worth of your work is not in how much you churn out, but in the results you get for your clients. This applies no matter what you’re doing… whether it’s a gorgeously handcrafted wedding dress that makes the bride feel amazing, a gallery of family photos where Mom feels good about how she and her kids look, or webcopy that turns readers into customers and gets all the likes and shares.

Do your best work, and the results will do the talking for you. Follow through on the expectations you and your client talked about in your discovery call and outlined in your contract. People who do good work are hard to find, and your reputation will spread.

5. Generosity is not a short sighted act.

There’s a fine line between giving away all your hard work, and giving enough away so that a potential client has a good idea of your knowledge and professionalism. Some entrepreneurs, especially newbies, can struggle with undercharging and giving away too much of their time, and that’s not what I’m talking about here.

Being generous with your knowledge through blog posts, free webinars, and answering questions in public forums can reinforce your position as an expert in your field. Once people realize they can trust your expertise, they’ll start hiring you to meet their needs.

How to Attract Your Ideal Clients

 There’s a lot of information on the internet about ideal clients – why they are important and how to figure out who they are. If you’re reading this article, I’m going to assume that you know who your ideal client is or at least have an idea of who you do and don’t want to work with.

Knowing who your ideal client is is one of the most important steps in growing a successful online brand. If you don’t know who you are talking to, it’s impossible to create a brand that will propel your business forward.

What I want to talk to you about today is how to attract your ideal client and make them fall in love with you.

1. MAKE SURE YOUR OFFERINGS MEET THE NEEDS OF YOUR IDEAL CLIENTS

Do you know what your ideal clients are looking for? Do you know what problems they have and do you have the products and or services to help them resolve these problems?

Instead of thinking about what you want to offer, think about what your target market needs help with and create your offerings around this. For example, my ideal clients are not just looking to rebrand because they don’t like the look of their current brand. My ideal clients are looking to up-level their business and know that they need a strategic plan in place to go alongside the visual side of their branding. They understand that rebranding is so much more than how their business looks from an identity perspective. This is why I created The Flourish Experience and I only work with clients who are ready to up-level their brands in order to reach the next stage in their business.

2. KNOW YOUR WORTH

If you don’t value your knowledge and experience, how do you expect someone else to? An important step in attracting your ideal clients and making them fall in love with you is to feel completely confident in the value you give to your clients.

Often by not feeling confident in ourselves, we refrain from putting ourselves out there which brings me nicely onto step three.

3. START MARKETING YOUR BUSINESS WHERE YOUR IDEAL CLIENTS ARE

One of the most important things you can do is to just put yourself out there. Yes, having a strategy in place is extremely important in order to focus your efforts and grow your business. However, if you have been putting off marketing your business and increasing your visibility because you feel like you need a plan or you need a perfect looking brand identity, then please don’t worry about those things right now, just put your best content in front of your ideal clients.

Marketing isn’t something that quickly grows your audience overnight. Nurturing and growing your audience takes time so by starting to put yourself out there, whether that be a video on Instagram Stories or a blog post filled with value, you are taking those all-important first steps.

4. CREATE A CONSISTENT BRAND IDENTITY

You may wonder why I have put this as step four instead of step three and I have a good reason.

All too often as entrepreneurs, we allow things to stop ourselves from growing our business because they are not perfect. We refrain from putting ourselves out there because we don’t have a plan or our brand identity isn’t perfect or because we are consuming SO MUCH INFORMATION that we just feel overwhelmed.

Don’t let the fact that your branding isn’t perfect, stop you from getting in front of your ideal clients. HOWEVER, your brand identity plays a very important part in your brand growth journey so it is something that needs to be addressed.

If you don’t feel like your current branding is attracting your ideal clients then it’s time to change it. Whether that’s an entire rebrand or ensuring that you are consistent across all platforms.

5. PUT OUT QUALITY VALUABLE CONTENT FOR FREE

One thing that often comes up during my strategy sessions with clients is that they are scared of putting their best content out there.

There are two main reasons that I hear as to why this is the case.

The first being that they worry that by giving out all of this free information, they are going to do themselves out of business as their audience will just do things themselves. Well, I can tell you now that this isn’t the case. Yes, there will always be a proportion of your audience that will DIY but there will be those out there (your ideal clients) that will read and watch this valuable content, decide that you are the expert for them and hire you to do the job.

The second reason is they worry that their competitors will copy their content and replicate it for themselves. Again, yes there may be some business owners that are too lazy to think for themselves and will just copy an article they found online but they will never do well because they are not you. The whole point in building a personal brand is so that people buy from you. By simply copying what someone else is doing, they are not using their own unique voice.

So please, don’t worry that your potential clients won’t buy from you or that your competitors may steal from you, just keep putting out valuable content and position yourself as the expert in your field.

6. GIVE THEM THE BEST POSSIBLE EXPERIENCE

Client experience is a key element in building a successful personal brand. This doesn’t just mean from the moment that they are a client but from the moment they first come into contact with your brand.

Think about all the touchpoints that your audience have with your brand and how you can enhance their experience to make it as seamless as possible.

I hope that’s helped you to think of ways in which to attract your ideal client and make them fall in love with you.