Three reasons you may be attracting the wrong clients

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi. It's Laura. I wanted to talk to you today about a question a client had last week that you may have experienced as well.

She came to me and said, "I'm doing all of these marketing activities and I'm attracting people and I'm having calls with people to further explore working together and I'm connecting with the people and it's great, and then I realize that they don't have money to buy my services."

She's attracting the wrong kind of clients to herself. So we had a conversation about some of the reasons that that might be happening. There's a number of reasons that can happen, and sometimes it's more than one reason, but I just wanted to talk to you today about three reasons that you might be attracting the wrong kinds of clients.

The first is that your branding might be off. In the video I shared yesterday on my personal page, I talked about being clear and specific about who your ideal client is and understanding what their pain point is so that you can message in all of your communications to those pain points. Well, if your visual brand, including your website, and the way that you're presenting does not connect with that ideal client, and the messaging and the language that you're using does not connect with that ideal client, you're going to attract the wrong kinds of people to you.

The second thing that could be happening is you could be using the wrong tactics. You might be clear of who you're trying to reach, but you're choosing ways to reach out to them that just don't line up. Maybe you're accepting speaking opportunities, but the audience isn't the right kind of audience, or maybe you are on certain social platforms, but that's not where your ideal client would be hanging out. It's the wrong tactics that could be contributing to attracting the wrong people.

It also could have to do with money, both their views of money and your views. So when I say their views, you might be trying to help them solve a problem, but they don't feel that it's a burning need for them. So it's a problem that they have, but they're not in a position that they really feel like they need help to solve that problem, so they're not willing to make the investment. So being clear about the problem you help solve and helping people see how much better it can be if you help them solve it, is a part of your job in your marketing messaging.

On the other side, your own views about money could be attracting the wrong kinds of people to you. So this is a little bit more on the woo-woo side of things, but if you are not feeling comfortable with the fees that you're asking for, people are going to feel that. So if you don't feel the value in your own service offering, people are also going to feel that in the communications that you have with them and the interactions you have with them, and it's going to affect their decision.

I was at a conference last year before all this stuff ... I guess it was in the fall. Someone was saying, "Are you thinking that your clients are buying services in the way that you would buy services?" That really got me thinking. So if you're thinking, "Well, I wouldn't spend that much money for somebody else to provide that service,” other people are not going to pay you that either. So you have to be clear about your own value and confident in the value that you're bringing to the problem that you're helping solve for your client.

Those are just three of the things that could be happening, that could be the reasons that you're attracting the wrong clients. There's usually one or more of these things happening because it's all very layered. So if you're not clear on who your ideal client is, as we talked about yesterday, then you're not going to be messaging clearly to that client, you're not going to create a brand that resonates with that client, you're then not going to choose the right tactics that maps back to those clients to get in front of those people, and you might have some money stuff going on. It's all very interconnected.

I'd encourage you to step back. If you're having that same challenge and you're attracting the wrong kind of clients, step back and ask yourself some of these questions. Am I being clear in my ideal client? Is my branding and messaging clear? Am I focused on the right activities? How am I feeling about the fees that I'm asking for? Do I really think that I'm positioning myself to solve a problem that's a burning need for my client?