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Marketing

The Advice You Actually Need to Get More Clients

Buckle in because I’ve got a cup full of tea, and I’m standing on my soapbox for this one.

Everyone is trying to get your attention and teach you how to get more clients, especially when it comes to using social media. At least 5 times a day, I see posts go up in Facebook groups asking how to get more clients.

Inevitably, there are 30-50 responses for every post and rarely any clarifying questions being asked of the original poster, an almost sure sign in most cases that the advice being given will be an unfortunate regurgitation of the same information over and over.

And many people loudly handing out this generic advice will later post about their own struggles getting clients.

Most answers are variations of: just talk to more people, post consistently on social media, create content that shares value and solves a problem, book more coffee chats/ connect calls, network in Facebook groups.

On and on.

But when that’s still not working (because let’s be honest, you’re likely already doing one or more of those things), they don’t really know what to tell you. So the responsibility for failing falls on your shoulders.

It’s not that what they’re teaching is wrong… necessarily.

But it might be wrong for you.

The problem is that without a clear strategy, without teaching which client-getting actions should be your priority and HOW to implement them, the chances of you actually getting more clients are hit or miss.

Table of Contents

Set Yourself Up for Success

No one, and I mean NO ONE, is an overnight success. There is always a story behind every claim of overnight success. You know the ones…

I made $5k with just one email.

I made $100k last month. Let me show you how.

This one trick got me 7 clients last week from Instagram.

I speak often about my own journey of busting it for years, building and selling businesses, freelancing at $1-2k a month forever. It took me really looking at my sales process and getting specific training on that before I was able to scale my business and quit my corporate job.

So yes, I set a goal to match my cushy corporate salary in 3 weeks, and I did beat my goal. I signed more than $5k in new clients in 18 days and was making $8-10k per month in less than 4 months. It was amazing, and to this day I’m proud of myself!

However, it was also only possible because I knew exactly what internal problem I needed to solve (my sales process was nonexistent, and I didn’t know how to run a sales call), and I hired a coach to teach me how to do that.

If marketing and social selling is your thing, let me tell you about my coaching options here.

More than that, I already had the essential building blocks for success in place. So when I applied what I was learning, I saw success very quickly.

If you want to see big results, you need to set yourself up for success, too.

You need to make sure you have the essentials in place:

  1. A portfolio (or case studies) and/or testimonials. There is no way around this. People need to know they can trust you and that you’re qualified to work with them.
  2. An offer that is an absolute no-brainer for your potential clients. You need to be able to break down not just your offer but your process. Clients love when you can show them how you’ll lead them through their project and what that process looks like for them.
  3. An audience—you need people to actually sell to, whether that’s an email list, social media following, Facebook group, connections on LinkedIn, etc.

Create On Point Messaging

In marketing, messaging is everything. Okay, that might be a bit dramatic, but it’s really important.

Messaging is essentially what you’re saying to people, and it serves as a kind of beacon to those you need you. It helps them get familiar with your services, get to know who you are, learn about your values and the problems you solve.

It even builds trust and helps you overcome sales objections before you ever meet the person.

The best messaging has your ideal clients thinking you’re a psychic, and that’s how honed in you want to be. It’s an opportunity to get on your client’s level and feel what they feel, their hopes and dreams and struggles.

Messaging is another reason why having some sort of niche is important—don’t worry if you’re earlier on and don’t have a highly defined, it just needs to be small enough to speak to common dreams and goals and struggles. You can continue to refine and narrow your niche as time passes.

But it’s important to do because it allows you to speak to a really specific group of people and really dial in your messaging.

A few quick tips for messaging that’s on point:

  • Focus on your ideal client’s goals and desires as much as their pain points. Clients nowadays want to see just as much about how you’ll help them achieve XYZ as how you’ll help them avoid or get out of their current frustration.
  • Do regular market research to help you stand out from your competitors, but make sure you’re in a good mindset during that time. Avoid second guessing yourself in the process.
  • Ditch the industry jargon and talk like your people talk. Use the same words they do, and if you’re not sure what those are, schedule connection calls with people who are similar to your ideal clients and have yourself an informative chat.
  • Connect with your audience using emotions and stories, and infuse all of your content with your personality.

Have Better Conversations

One of the best and worst pieces of advice I hear is to “just talk to people,” and your business will grow.

In fairness, it’s perfect advice for when you’re new, especially when you’re trying to hit those first $3-5k months.

Unfortunately, when you’re scaling your business, say to 6 figures or $10k months, it’s awful advice. You simply don’t have the time to sit and talk to everyone all the time.

You’ve got to be intentional about who you talk to and how.

I like to think of everyone I meet as falling into one or more buckets, and I have an entire section of Clickup devoted to keeping track of all of these relationships.

  • Collaboration or referral partners
  • Peers
  • Influential people to follow and/or learn from
  • Potential clients

For each bucket, I think of a few characteristics that will help me identify them from the outside. As I’m having conversations with these people, I can ask more qualifying questions and further sort people. Those who don’t fit into a bucket are those that I simply “bless and release,” as they say.

Now, here is where I see a lot of people go wrong.

They either get stuck in endless superficial conversations that go nowhere or they find themselves in a position where they don’t know how to transition from getting to know someone to a sales conversation.

But here’s the thing… you’re not trying to slyly move someone into a sales conversation.

That’s DM sales mistakes 101.

Instead, you want to truly get to know someone, find things you have in common, build a rapport with them, and then ask questions that allow the other person to reveal their problems.

If they’re having trouble growing their podcast and it makes sense for you, offer to be a guest and share your recorded episode with your audience. Boom, collab partner!

If they’re struggling with some limiting beliefs and you happen to coach on exactly that, offer to share a free training you created last month. Boom, potential coaching student!

If they’re looking for a VA and wonder if you have any recommendations and you know you are their knight in shining armor, shoot your shot. Boom, new client!

It all starts with you leading the conversation where you want it to go. Ask questions, and figure out what it is the other person needs THEN offer to share the ways you can help.

Sometimes this is a service you offer, and other times it opens doors for you to be a connector, a referral partner, or a collaborator.

Get a New Perspective on Social Media

When you’re looking for meaningful ways to find new clients social media seems like a no-brainer. It’s organic and free. All it costs is your time, and that’s often a preferred resource to spend when you’re scaling.

So much so that in my Skyrocket to Profit program, I don’t actually talk about ads in the core program. Because most people aren’t there yet. Instead, we have an entire Masterclass on incorporating paid ads into your marketing strategy a bit later, so that it hits you when you’re ready.

Especially with organic marketing, though, it’s important to use social media strategically or you’re likely to get sucked into the black hole of the internet. That starts with what platforms to use.

I very much subscribe to the idea that you should choose one or two platforms and master them before expanding onto other platforms. As you scale, you’ll have more content in your content bank and can more easily repurpose that content for an “everywhere AF” visibility strategy across a myriad of platforms.

No matter where you are in that process, though, being selective about the platforms you’re using is important.

I see the advice to “go where your ideal clients are” often, but I recommend taking it a step further. You want to go where your people are, yes, but really you want to go where they find solutions to their problems.

If your ideal clients are moms who use Pinterest to find crafts and activities for their kids, and you run art classes for kids online, Pinterest is probably the place for you to be. While Pinterest is more specifically a visual search engine rather than a social media platform, you get the jist.

Just as important as where you are is how you’re using it.

We want to get away from this idea that you can magically attract people to you by just putting out great content and waiting. There are a sea of people all competing for attention on social media apps, so if you’re working an organic (no paid ads) strategy on social, you’ve got to make your content attractive and do the attracting yourself.

Get really clear on what you do, who you help, and how to work with you. Then go out there and find people who need your magic.

Engage with them, build relationships with them, invest in their goals and triumphs, and be there for them on the tough days.

Use social media to be social!

When you’ve got content and messaging as a solid foundation and a connection strategy all backed by a proven track record of success, you’ll find that you’ve got everything you need to generate endless leads and sign more clients with ease.

Tiffany Barry