Transforming Businesses into Extraordinary Brands
I joined the awesome folks over at WPwatercooler again for a topic that really got everyone fired up — Red Flags. We’ve all had that client but we didn’t see the tell-tell signs that they are going to be “one of those clients” until it was too late.
In this episode, we discuss the red flag indicators of horrible projects, prospective client red flags, and red flags that indicate it may be time to fire a client and part ways.
Recently I was being interviewed about owning a design business and how we have successfully built a brand and grown the business (and the profits) year after year.
About halfway through the interview the conversation turned to clients and client attraction — how to get clients, where to find clients, and how to keep clients — and inevitably we started discussing networking.
After all, no one can hire you, buy from you, or learn from you if they don’t know you exist. So you must market your business, get out from behind your computer, and network with others. You must share with other people what you do!
The problem is that a lot of business owners, especially designers view networking as not-working, and believe that if you are not working, you’re are not getting paid. So instead they sit behind their computers working and tweeting, and waiting for someone to hire them. But the reality is that networking is the cornerstone of growing a successful business. Through networking you can expand your network, build strong relationships, find strategic partners, find clients, grow as a business owner, and more.
In a perfect world, working with your designer would be a perfect partnership of creativity, communication, and collaboration — at least that is what designers strive for. But that’s not always the case…
A designer begins every project excited about what they will create and about bringing the client’s vision to life — they wouldn’t have accepted the project is they weren’t. They are excited about solving problems, helping their clients succeed, and building a new relationship or strengthening an existing one. They value their client and look forward to becoming their long term creative partner.
Designers have so much pride in their work and so much invested in their clients’ success, that they will often bend over backward, throw in extra work, and go above and beyond your contract just to make sure the final result is as good as it can possibly be. Mainly because the success of your project puts their reputation on the line.
But occasionally, a switch gets flipped, and the dynamics of the relationship change. Something happens, or several things happen, that cause a designer to shift the way they view a client and a project.
It’s the critical point where a client stops being a client and starts being a contract that needs to be fulfilled — where a designer throws their hands in the air and gives up trying to make it totally awesome, and instead just wants it to be good and done.
Start up businesses need clients — any clients. Mid-level businesses need more clients and more money. Established, successful businesses need fewer, better, higher-paying clients. But how does a business owner go about getting clients? How do you get your first client? How do you get more clients? How do you get better clients?
If getting clients were easy, marketers would be out of business! There is a lot of fluff online about client attraction — some people think it’s magic. That you can just sit there and wish for clients and that they will appear. Or that by putting out the right energy, miraculously you’ll attract clients who will come find you.
But seriously, it doesn’t work like that. You have to work to get clients. Client attraction is just a special phrase that refers to the strategies business owners use to get more clients.
So to help you with your client needs, here are 8 marketing tips to help you attract the clients you need:
Recently I wrote the post 5 Marketing Tips to Build a Referral Based Business, covering some of the lessons I have learned by building a successful referral based business.
And as I was formatting the post, I came up with even more marketing tips to help you build a referral based business too — Four more tips to be exact. These tips focus more on communicating with your referral partners and/or affiliates, rewarding people who refer new business to you, and even some things to watch out for when working with referral clients. Hope you enjoy!
Here are 4 more marketing tips to build a referral based business:
Almost all of our new client projects come in through referrals. That means most of our new clients and leads come from others telling their friends, family and colleagues about us and suggesting they hire us.
Our most lucrative clients — and frankly our favorite clients — have been the results of someone else’s referral.
Imagine how different your life and your business would be if your phone rang every day, and your inbox had messages in it everyday from people who want to work with you because their friend recommended you? Imagine how much less stress there would be over marketing? What a relief!
Here are 5 marketing tips to help you build a successful referral based business:
Defining your ideal client is the first step to generating quality, qualified leads with your marketing. The second step is to communicate with your ideal clients effectively — and about your ideal clients effectively.
It’s very difficult for consumers to refer their friends, family, and colleagues to you and your business if they aren’t sure who you serve or what exactly you specialize in. Likewise, it’s difficult for them to see if they are a great fit for your product, program and service.
If you want to succeed in business, you must communicate who you serve, what you do, and how you can help them in a simple, easy to understand, clear way. With that in mind, I’ve compiled five marketing tips to help you communicate to, with, and about your ideal clients and target market:
Talk to any successful business owner who knows their ideal client and they will tell you that defining their ideal client profile is the best thing they could have done. Trying to market to everyone, to create a message that resonates with everyone, to connect with everyone is not only extremely difficult, it is exhausting and ineffective.
But marketing to a specific group of people who share the same common traits, crafting a message just for them, and connecting with them at the events and places they frequent is much easier and more effective because your desired reach is smaller.
Here are 8 marketing tips for small businesses on identifying ideal clients:
In October I spoke at the Today’s Innovative Woman SUCCESS! Summit in Los Angeles. From the sponsors and exhibitors, to the attendees and networking, to the food and parties, the event was fantastic. As a speaker, I spent most of the day being on — speaking from the stage, speaking with attendees at breaks, networking, and answering questions and consulting with attendees at my speaker table or in the halls.
To be honest, I heard, but didn’t really get to dig in and listen to all of the other speakers. Luckily, event host Cathy Alessandra surprised everyone at the event by providing the audio recordings of all of the speakers to attendees for free!
So over the Thanksgiving holiday, I cozied up in my slippers with some hot apple cider and listened to the other presentations from the day and wanted to share some of the great reminders from my client, Joy Chudacoff’s presentation, How to Be Famous in Your Niche Market.
She shared that the first step to becoming famous in your niche market is to make the decision to become famous. If you haven’t felt that desire, why is that? If you have no barriers, what’s holding you back? Joy believes the reason you haven’t made the decision is because you’re avoiding fame and hiding from it, or you may already have some fame, but you’re hiding from even more fame.
Have you ever wondered, How does he/she do it? How does he get so many clients? How does she show up everywhere?” I’ll bet you have. I have. And I’ll bet that thousands of other business owners have too — Why? Because there are TONS of blog posts, articles, and resources available online to teach you how to get more clients, attract more leads, and make more money.
Many articles give you tasks to check off a list and marketing tips to implement — and that’s a problem.
Take this situation for example: Lilly is doing all the right things. She’s taking action to market her business. She has a Facebook page and a Twitter account that she posts to regularly. She blogs at least once a week, she posts articles to article marketing sites, and bookmarks her content with social bookmarking sites. She attends networking events and publishes an email newsletter.
She is working hard, but she isn’t seeing much benefit. She is doing all the right things, but she isn’t getting new clients or even new leads fast enough. She feels like she’s spinning her wheels and she’s frustrated. She sees other people achieve the success she wants for herself and she feels like she deserves it because she’s working harder than they seem to be.
Imagine this: You spend hours researching your ideal client and weeks creating the perfect irresistible free offer or ethical bribe. You finally put the opt-in offer up on your website and work like crazy to promote and market it, driving loads of traffic to your website. You’re thrilled because lots of people opt-in for the offer and join your list.
Sounds pretty good right? But the next step is where most business owners fail. What happens after someone opts-in?
If you’ve been thinking of your landing page a just a holding area where your website visitors can launch browsing excursions to all the other areas around your website, I’d like to change your way of thinking. You do not want your visitors to leave your landing page to browse your website. Your landing page isn’t just a portal or a launch pad. It’s the first place you’re going to clinch a conversion and win a new customer.
If you haven’t been thinking of your landing page as a place where you land conversions, your strategy may need some revising. Here are five keys to creating a landing page that does what it’s supposed to do – win customers.
Now that you know the 8 components of a successful website opt-in box, you have all the information you need to create an awesome opt-in box. But, even though your opt-in box has all the right pieces and works the right way … it may not actually work to build your list?
What?!
If your free offer — the thing you’re giving away for free in exchange for their name and email address — isn’t what your visitors want or need, they won’t sign up and enter their name and email, even if your opt-in box is awesome!
Last week I published a blog post on writing and using your mission statement. I shared what a mission statement is, how to write one, and why you need to use it and live it — how to turn your mission statement into your own personal uplifting affirmation or motivating mantra.
I keep my mission statement on the bookmark I use in my journal. In the morning each day, I clear my mind, focus my thoughts, and read it out loud. If it is a particular stressful day or week, I may read it several times until the impact and power it has fills me up and inspires me to start my day.
Here are some ideas to help you turn your mission into your mantra:
Currently, we have a good friend’s two youngest kids (ages 12 and 15) staying with us while they take their oldest on a two-week graduation trip to Paris (lucky kid right!).
We’ve been having a blast baking and eating junk food, swimming and relaxing, doing some great craft projects, and even going fishing (check out the photo!) at S and J Mandarin Grove, my in-laws’ organic mandarin orchard in Newcastle, California! My two kiddos, ages 4 and 6, have LOVED having their new “big sisters” to play with every day.
During their stay, I’ve drawn some interesting conclusions about the similarities between my young teenage house guests, marketing a business, and why you might be a lazy marketer.
There are so many people out there in the “Wannabe” Internet Entrepreneur world that think that just because you have a blog, you’re immediately going to be a total rock star with thousands of people flocking to your blog to leave you tons of comments and subscribing left and right. But here’s the problem… That’s not true. You have to work to get your blog noticed and to get in front of your target market. And you have to consistently publish great work to get visitors to come back again and again!
Here are eight ways you can build a better business blog and make blogging for business payoff sooner, rather than later:
I’ve been working in the creative field since 1997, when I landed my first job as a production grunt at a small advertising agency. Since then, I have been a Graphic Designer, Senior Designer, Creative Services Director, Graphic Design Specialist, Publication Manager, Creative Director, Instructor, Lecturer, and Business Owner. I also did internships and worked at a magazine, a newspaper, an advertising agency, a public relations firm, a marketing firm, a design company, and a printer.
As you can imagine, I have seen some pretty bad graphic design mistakes and marketing mistakes over the years. The graphic design mistakes alone could take up a few blog posts, so I am going to focus on and share with you the biggest marketing mistakes I see business owners, service professionals, and entrepreneurs make.
Forgetting about your current clients and customers. While it is very important to always be marketing your business, engaging new prospects, and generating new leads, it is just as important to nurture the relationships with your existing customers and clients. They are your most valuable resource and you want them to always feel important.
