Many business owners just scrape by, serving clients who are struggling themselves. But in spite of the economy, there are many businesses and people who have been unaffected and are willing to pay for premium-level services and products.
When you’re trapped servicing a low-paying market (which, let’s face it, much of the country is these days), you encounter a ton of hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing concerns like:
- People don’t buy from you because they can find what you offer at a lower price somewhere else
- People don’t buy at all because putting up with their problem is easier than forking over money to solve it
- Your bank account is scarily low, leaving you worried, anxious and maybe even a tad desperate.
You get the picture.
So, well-heeled clients sound like the answer to your prayers, right? The challenge to landing those clients, however, is (at least) three-fold:
- You don’t know exactly who is looking for what you have to offer
- You don’t know how to find or attract them
- You don’t have anything to offer them that they’re truly interested in
So what’s a busy business owner to do? There are several ways to overcome these problems.
In dire times, businesses try to offer everything to everybody. That’s exactly the wrong strategy. And here’s why.
When you market to everyone, your ‘target’ won’t feel special. She won’t believe you have a solution that addresses her needs, so she keeps looking until she finds it. And it likely won’t be with you.
The solution is :
[shareable]focus on a small set of specific clients and do everything you can to understand them, their worries, pains, dreams, hopes and desires. [/shareable]
Once you know who they are, ask yourself, how are they spending their time?What do they read, listen to, or go to?
Are they attending networking meetings? If so, which ones? Many networking events are populated with people hungry for business, and not necessarily looking to invest in solutions.
Think about it. When you need to buy something, do you go to an event to buy it? Probably not. You might go to ask people you trust for recommendations, but if you found exactly what you were looking for, I’ll bet you’d be a little bit surprised.
So you have to get visible where your market is looking. That could be online, on their smartphone, or in industry-specific or niche publications. If they’re suffering with a big problem, they may have complained to their friends and colleagues. So developing a referral strategy with the right people can be really productive.
Then, once you’ve found them (or they’ve found you), you must make sure your marketing message hits them directly between the eyes. You have to be so clear about how what you’re offering is exactly what they need that they go “Duh! It would be a mistake NOT to invest in that.”
This underscores the importance of knowing who really needs what you have so when they hear your message, they say “S/he’s talking to me!”
I remember participating in an event, and one of the attendees remarked “I felt like the speaker was inside my head, saying out loud what I had only thought in the privacy of my own brain!” That’s what you’re going for!
So, when you know who they are, what they’re gnashing their teeth over, and have a solution aimed directly at their pain (or dream) with a message that feels like it’s directed personally to them, the right people will refer you, find you, and happily pay you for your expertise.
[guestpost]C.J. Hayden is the best selling author of Get Clients Now!TM: A 28-Day Marketing Program for Professionals, Consultants and Coaches.[/guestpost]