Tag: client attraction

Categories
Sales & Marketing

3 Keys to Writing Copy that Attracts and Invites (and Doesn’t Feel Sales-y and Slime-y)

If you’re like so many conscious/heart-centered entrepreneurs, a lot of traditional copywriting probably makes you pretty uncomfortable. (Copywriting is writing promotional materials, nothing to do with protecting your intellectual property.)

 

But everyone tells you that you need that “type of copy” if you want to make money.

 

So what do you do? Make money and feel slime-y and sales-y with the copy you’re using — or don’t make money, but feel like your copy is at least aligned with your core values?

 

Well, I’m here today to say it IS possible to do both — write copy that attracts, inspires and invites so you make money AND feel good doing it.

 

And I’m going to share 3 keys to get you started.

 

1. Know your ideal clients. I’m a big fan of ideal clients. Because unlike target markets or niche markets, your ideal clients are the heart and soul of who you’re meant to serve.

 

You see, target markets and niches are more about the external — their demographics. Ideal clients are about the internal — what drives them, what gets them up in the morning, what keeps them awake at night… what their core values are.

 

And if you base your business and your marketing around that, you’re going to attract the perfect clients into your business — the ones who you love to work with and who love working with you. (Doesn’t that feel fabulous?)

 

Now if you haven’t done this before, I really encourage you to do this exercise — I want you to create your ideal client avatar. Spend some time getting to know your ideal client. It doesn’t matter if he/she is real or in your head; either way it’s a big help to do this.

 

Start by writing out a detailed description of that person. Be as complete as possible. Then I want you to post it, so every time you sit down to write copy, you see your ideal client.

 

You may want to add a picture as well so you can really “see” your ideal client as you write.

 

Now once you have your ideal client set, then you can move to the second key.

 

2. Pretend you’re writing a letter to a friend, NOT writing marketing copy. If your friend came to you and told you about a problem she had, and you KNEW you had the perfect solution and wanted to help, how would you craft that letter? You would be passionate, right? And you would probably also be very comfortable asking her to take action, because you know in your heart if she does, her life will change.

 

Well I want you to bring that same passion into writing your marketing copy. You care about your ideal client, right? So you ARE writing to a friend — a friend who has a problem you can solve. And you know how wonderful your friend’s life will be once she’s solved the problem.

 

That’s the place to come from when you write. And when you do, all the hype-y and sales-y stuff melts away.

 

3. Focus on their transformation. Now you’ve probably heard “write benefits and not features,” and that’s true — I want you to do that. But even more than that, I want you to focus on the transformation: how much your ideal clients’ lives will be transformed once they’ve bought your products and services.

 

If you focus your copy on that — writing “you” instead of “I” (in fact, you should have a 2:1 or even a 3:1 ratio of “you” to “I”) and how your product or service will transform your ideal client, they’ll be that much more excited to work with you.

 

Categories
Success Attitude

What My Zumba Instructor Can Teach You About Your Biz

I admit it. I’m addicted to Zumba.

But it didn’t happen right away. For a year I flitted in and out of classes, not really clicking with it but since I kept hearing from my friends how much they loved it I kept trying it.

And then I ended up in a class with a woman named Tiger. And I was hooked.

Tiger was born to teach Zumba. Her passion and love for it are infectious plus she’s an excellent teacher (in fact she’s been honored at a statewide level she’s such a fabulous teacher.) Her classes are packed, and her teaching methods and style has influenced all the Zumba instructors at the YMCA.

But, it wasn’t always this way. In fact, she almost got fired after her very first class.

In that class, she started with 18 students. By the time the class was half over she had 9. But the time class ended it was down to 6. And the next day her boss asked Tiger to come to her office.

Her boss told her she had been flooded with complaints about Tiger.

* Too much hips

* Too Latino

* Too sexy

* Too loud

(I’m unclear what they actually thought Zumba was all about since that’s pretty much the definition of Zumba but whatever.)

Her boss told Tiger she couldn’t teach anymore unless she toned it down. So she went home and said to her husband “They won’t let me teach because they think I’m too sexy.”

Her husband answered “Oh they’re a bunch of old white women, they don’t get it.”

“I have to tone it down if I want to teach,” Tiger said.

“You don’t change a thing,” her husband said. “You teach it the way you want to. And if they don’t like it, we’ll find a place that does.”

So Tiger went back to her boss and begged to be given another chance. “Will you change?” her boss asked.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Tiger said, fingers crossed behind her back.

And of course she didn’t change a thing. Her next class she taught it exactly the way she had taught the first one. But this time she had younger students who loved it and told her boss. So her boss finally gave her a class of her own to teach. It was the smallest class the Y ever had — about 6 students. In 3 months it was up to 40.

And the rest, as they say, was history.

So there are a lot of things to take away from this story, but the one I want to talk about today is the idea of ideal clients.

As successful Tiger is as a Zumba instructor, in front of the wrong crowd (i.e. the opposite of her ideal clients) she was a complete failure. Once she found her ideal clients everything fell into place.

And that’s why knowing your ideal clients is so crucial to the success of your business, and why trying to market to everyone leads to spinning your wheels. Because not everyone is going to become your customer (it honestly doesn’t matter how good you are or how much they need what you’re selling, they just aren’t). And all you do is dilute your message when you try to talk to everyone instead of just to your ideal clients.

And even if you end up getting your non-ideal clients in your business, those are the ones who will be harder to please, who will be more likely to complain you’re just “too sexy.” And at the end of the day, ask yourself: Are those the people you really want to be serving in your business?

Because chances are you’ll probably be a lot happier if you have a business filled with clients who love how sexy you are.

Categories
Sales & Marketing

3 Steps to Filling Your Pipeline with Eager Clients and Customers

If your primary source of business revenue is selling services, there is no worse feeling than having an empty pipeline (especially when you’re completing projects with your current clients).

So how do you keep a full pipeline with eager clients and customers? Let me share 3 steps to get you started:

Step 1 — Know who your ideal client is. If you don’t know who you’re trying to put into your pipeline it’s going to be pretty hard to get them in there.

But this is deeper than just taking on anyone who waves a check in front of your face. If you want to fill your pipeline with clients who are EAGER to do business with you, you want to attract your IDEAL clients.

So what is your ideal client? Your ideal clients are the ones who you love to work with. They’re the ones who are a perfect fit for what you offer. They are NOT “women between the ages of 20 and 50 who are married with 2 children and trying to start a home-based business.” That’s a target market and that’s different from ideal client. Ideal clients are about an attitude, a shared vision or goal. An ideal client description would look more like this: “mothers who have been stay-at-home mothers but their children are now starting school and they’re ready to start working. But they don’t want a job, they want something they can do at home and have flexible hours so they can still put their kids first.”

See the difference in the description?

Now, you might be someone whose pipeline is empty and you REALLY need the cash flow, so while an ideal client is nice, you’d be happy with anyone who waves a check in front of your face.

First off, I get it. I’ve been there myself. However, as I know you know, taking on those less-than-ideal-clients while might be necessary for financial reasons, usually turn into a bigger headache than what you signed up for. I know you sometimes have to do this, but wouldn’t it be better to NOT have to? Start now focusing on attracting your ideal clients into your pipeline. Will a non-ideal client slip in from time to time? Of course. And if you so choose, you can take the on as a client. But start it off right by building that solid foundation first.

Step 2 — go where your ideal clients are. Now that you know who they are, it’s time to hang out where they’re hanging out. Don’t know where they are? Then go back to step 1 and do more digging. If you really know your ideal clients, you’ll know where to find them. Then you can focus your lead generating activities in the places where they are.

Step 3 — nurture your leads. Once you have your leads in the door, now it’s time to build a relationship with them. The best way to do this is through a consistent follow-up system, such as an ezine and/or direct mail piece. If you have a weekly ezine or something that goes out regularly to your leads, you don’t have to worry about remembering to contact them.

It takes AT LEAST 7-13 touches to turn a prospect into a client. In this “new economy” this number is even higher (I’ve found you need to be a little more aggressive to get the same level of sales as you would have a few years ago.) So if you have an easy and automatic way to stay in touch with your prospects, you’ll find building that relationship with your prospects that much simpler.