How to Get Clients: 40+ Tips from Real-world Coaches & Consultants

Looking to land the clients of your dream in 2020 in your coaching or consulting business? Now’s the chance. Read this article to learn how to hook, capture, and convert new clients for a prosperous new year.

How to Get Clients: 40+ Tips from Real-word Coaches & Consultants

The self-employed coaching and consulting field is teeming with opportunity. In fact, there are thousands of untapped clients out there… The battle so many face is figuring out how to attract and book them.

So, how do you get qualified clients in this day in age? While some things seem like a waste of time, other seemingly small ideas can make a big splash.

To get down to the truth of the matter, we spoke to dozens of coaches and consultants worldwide whose successful strategies enabled them to bring their transformative skills to the lives of their clients.

Whether you want to know how to get your first clients or even how to get clients fast, you’re in the right spot. Here, we’ll highlight some of our favorite tricks of the trade that coaches and consultants wish they’d known at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey to inspire your own marketing efforts.

Shorten the learning curve so that you can spend more time doing the transformative work that you were called to do.

Jump ahead:

• Attracting your first clients
• Getting clients online
• Focusing on Facebook to find new clients

How do you attract clients?

The laws of attraction hold true in any element, from dating to marketing. Learn a few ways to get to the core of a customers’ needs and how to attract that ideal client...

Keep your ear to the wind

Set yourself up for social listening! Social listening is how businesses crawl the internet to find out what people are saying about them and their main competitors. It’s a crucial component of business in the 21st century given the pervasiveness of social media.

Besides enabling marketers to address their clients’ concerns, social listening also opens the door to attracting new clients away from the competition.

It can also be used to help pinpoint social media influencers to create mutually beneficial partnerships. Keep in mind that consumers trust information that comes from real people as opposed to advertisements, which is why influencer marketing is so powerful.

Nate Masterson

Marketing Manager,Maple Holistics

Share your authentic message

If you want to stand out in this noisy online world, you can’t just say what your ideal clients want to hear (or worse: what all your competitors are saying!). You need to speak your truth. When you share your authentic message, you stand out from everyone else and attract your dream clients—those who don’t just value what you do, but who you are.

Cindy Schulson

Marketing Consultant, MarketingfromWithin.com

Stay client-centric

When you’re trying to attract new coaching clients it’s critical that you try to communicate in terms that your client easily understands and relates to, as opposed to speaking in ‘techie terms,’ or using specialized lingo/jargon that your target audience might find intimidating or off-putting. I encourage new coaches to always remember who your client is.

Suzanne Feinberg

Founder,Powervision360.com

How can I get clients online?

When you’re ready to expand beyond your word-of-mouth network, digital channels are a haven for sourcing untapped clients.

Create & optimize landing pages to capture leads

Free consultations have a higher barrier to entry than other types of lead magnets (opt-in bribes). Because of this, your landing page and process needs to be highly optimized to convert. After all, the visitor isn’t just giving an email address—they’re giving you their time and energy. Create a conversion-optimized landing page to pitch your free consultation call and keep the following in mind:

• Be specific—both with the format, purpose, and process of your consultation. Bullet the benefits—describe both the short-term and long-term effects of the consultation.

• Be transparent—include a photo of yourself and a quick overview of your credentials.

• Include social proof—use testimonials, reviews, or ratings to increase your trustworthiness.

Need examples of what a conversion-optimized landing page looks like? Get inspired by other coaches who have conquered this offer!

Leadpages

Marketing Team

Create sales-funnel specific content

We’ve seen a lot of success with creating content for specific phases of the buyer’s journey. Most service companies have “service pages” generally designated for buyers at the end of the journey in and blog posts for those in the awareness/interest phase of the marketing funnel. If you stop to ask the question, “If I were seriously considering making a purchase in this category, what other information would be useful in making my decision?” Even better, take a minute to ask, “What are the most frequently asked questions that you get?” This gives you new perspectives and ideas around mid-funnel content far beyond case studies.

Chris Mechanic

CEO,WebMechanix

How do I find Facebook clients?

If you want to master how to get clients on Facebook and other social media sites, you’re in the right place. Here are a few hand-selected tips from some pro consultants and coaches:

Locate a like-minded local group

If you’re getting started with local workshops, locate a like-minded Facebook Group in your area. Attend a gathering or two, get to know the members, and invite them to take place in your workshop event. Then, offer your expertise as a guest speaker to a future meetup for that group. Not sure where to find “your people” in your local area? Try using Discover Facebook Events and other local meetup apps.

Leadpages

Marketing Team

Sift through the social media chaos

Staying active on social media is an excellent way to increase your brand awareness and drive traffic back to your landing page or website.

But how on earth can you get it all done in a day?

The trick is to be ‘findable’ everywhere and active only where it’s most beneficial to your business.

So, rather than splintering your time and focus in a dozen different directions, invest some time upfront to find where your target audience hangs out online and spend the majority of your time (and content) on those channels. Make sure all your social media profiles contain an excellent bio with links back to your free consultation landing page. And make sure your thank you pages contain links back to your prominent social channels.

Leadpages

Marketing Team

Find your tribe— both online & offline

Before starting my business, I was already connecting and communicating with various people who are in the communities I am involved in. But it wasn’t until after starting my business that I realized the importance of building a network of people around you.

Whenever you’re networking—both online and off—try to focus on helping others and building relationships with the right kind of people, rather than selling. After all, nobody wants to be at the end of an unwanted sales pitch, which can be experienced as extremely alienating and off-putting.

If you focus on adding value, the trust between each party will naturally grow and can generate new leads, whether it’s with the people you know or through their contacts. And the great thing about this is that you have subconsciously filtered out those who do not fit into your audience persona.

You have focused more specifically on more qualified leads and contacts. So, if you are not part of a community of like-minded people, seek out a few. There are various places you can do that, from Facebook Groups to joining a paid online membership community, to looking on Meetup.com and meeting people face-to-face.

Ahmed Khalifa

Digital Marketing Consultant,
Khalifa Media

How to get clients on Instagram

I made over $20,000 last year from Instagram – and all of it was income from providing 1:1 services, no digital products. It wasn’t a fancy strategy, I just spent time connecting with potential ideal clients.

I wasn’t pitching them in the DMs, I was just asking questions on their posts and Instagram Stories. Everyone can leave generic “love it!” reactions on posts. But, when you engage someone with questions and try to start a dialogue – people notice. So, I made a point to engage with 10-15 people every day on Instagram. Eventually, some of those people would hop over to my profile and see what I offered. From there, people would either DM me or fill out the form to officially inquire about my services.

Jess Creatives

Owner,
JessCreatives.com

How do small businesses get clients?

They start by trying some of the strategies and tactics we've outlined here today. Not every approach will be right for every person or every business and growth typically comes from getting started and gaining the insights you need to hone your approach.

Gain more insight into how to get clients for your consulting business

While we shared how to get clients for a consulting business, but we’ve got (even more) insight to tell you about!

Download this guide to learn how to start attracting more clients and build a business only dreams are made of. The tips include everything from online marketing, old-school marketing, audience engagement, sales techniques, online marketing hacks, products & pricing, and more! In fact, the e-book runs the gamut from how to find ways to infuse your marketing with meaning and land those oh-so coveted customers.

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Here's what we suggest:

→ Here’s How to Deal With "Clients From Hell"

→ 10 Fast + Simple Strategies For Getting Clients

→ The Art of the Free Consultation Page: 7 Real-world Examples to Boost Your Client Roster