Part 5:
Do your potential clients know about you?
Since starting my business a couple of years ago and working with many entrepreneurs in the process, I’ve noticed that numerous solo-businesses struggle with getting more clients due to the fact that potential clients do not know about them.
It’s often the case where entrepreneurs excitedly start their online businesses. They know they have a service that will make a difference in people’s lives and because they are excellent in what they do, they often expect people to naturally know how good they are and how they can help clients.
What happens is many solo-preneurs get everything just right to perform business and then …they wait!
They wait and think “Oh, the clients will come to me”… and when the clients do not line up and are not eagerly waiting to work with them, they get discouraged and start wondering if being self-employed was the right decision to make?
The truth however is: if you want to take your business from merely surviving to thriving, you HAVE to get out there in a really big way and consistently market & promote your services.
It sounds simple enough, but people often shy away from marketing and promoting their services due to inherent false beliefs that it is ‘sleazy’; or you have to ‘sell’ yourself – much like a door-to-door salesman trying to sell you something you don’t need.
Marketing and promoting your services however doesn’t have to be sleazy at all. When it is done authentically, your marketing simply offers the solutions your clients are already searching for.
Therefore it is actually your duty to inform people how you can take away their pain and problems with the services you offer!
To effectively market and promote your services:
- Get your message and your services in front of the clients you want to work with;
- Go to the places where your clients are already gathered for you.
- Actively meet new people, speak to them and start engaging in conversations. Don’t wait and assume clients will come to you. You need to give them a reason to do so.
- Have confidence in yourself, your services and your business. If you don’t have a genuine belief in the importance and the value of your services and don’t know that it can really help your clients or even change their lives, you clients won’t have confidence in you either.
- Realize that when you promote your business, you’re not pushing people to buy what they don’t want. Instead, you’re offering them a solution to the problems and pain they experience.
- Make every marketing action count so that it helps to achieve your ultimate goals. Don’t just do marketing for the sake of marketing. Do the necessary planning and follow a structured plan that gives you a diversified outreach and maximizes your returns.
- Market and promote your services daily, consistently and persistently. It doesn’t help much to only crank out a couple of marketing activities when the appointment book looks a bit empty.
Marketing and promoting is like planting a seed. It rarely gives instant results. When you plant a seed in the ground, it needs constant attention in terms of water and pruning to help it grow into a lovely tree that will eventually bear fruit.
Thus your marketing needs daily attention to bring consistent results.
Mastering the marketing aspect of your business is the best skill you can learn to take your business from merely surviving to thriving.
To your success
P.S. Your assignment for this week: Have total conviction about what you do and from this moment forward consistently market and promote your services. I guarantee you’ll start attracting more clients than you are now. It works!
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Click here for Part 4: Package Your Services
Click here for Part 6: Create Prosperity
