Grow With Soul Ep.20: Getting Your First Client and Acquisition Strategies
Today’s episode is just me and I’m going to talk to you about a question I’ve had four times in the last two weeks - how do you get your first client? That is such a loaded question, as it’s not just about acquisition strategies, but also navigating the emotional rollercoaster of starting out. Even if you have booked clients before, or you’re not a service-based business, there is still lots in here for you - I’m going to talk about all the different types of acquisition you can do in any business, tell the story of booking my own first client and also give you some mantras to think about when you’re feeling stuck.
Here's what I talk about in this episode:
The difference between acquisition, conversion and retention
The theory of seven contacts
Choosing acquisition strategies based on your strengths
Types of acquisition strategy
How I got my first client
The silent watchers
Knowing when you need to change your product
Not panicking
Links and resources I discuss:
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Read the episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to episode 20 of Grow with Soul. Today’s episode is just me, and I’m going to talk to you about a question I’ve had about four times in the last two weeks which is ‘How do you get your first client?’
That is such a loaded question, as it’s not just about acquisition strategies but also navigating the emotional rollercoaster of starting out. Even if you’ve booked clients before, or you’re not a service based business, there will still be lots in this episode for you. What we’re going to go over is all the different types of acquisition in any business, tell you the story of booking my own first client, and also give you some mantras to think about when you’re feeling stuck.
Let’s get stuck in!
First of all, we need to think about what kind of marketing we’re actually doing here. There’s 3 key jobs that marketing does in any business. And those are:
Acquisition
Conversion
Retention
WHAT ARE EACH OF THOSE?
Acquisition is acquiring new customers; bringing in brand new people who have never heard of you before and bringing them into your world, into your orbit, so they can know what you’re all about and get to know you and move them towards a point where they might want to purchase.
Conversion is converting somebody who is not a customer into a customer; that’s the easiest way of putting it. This is the point at which you’re making the sale.
Retention is after you’ve made that sale, it’s retaining that customer, keeping them aware of you and getting them to come back and buy again.
All the different activities that we talk about in marketing – we tend to actually talk about them all at the same time – and actually the different activities really correspond most strongly with one of those three jobs the best. So for something like acquisition, advertising is the most obvious form of acquisition. Also things like certain ways that you’re doing social media, your SEO, all that kind of stuff – they are acquisitions activities.
Conversion is your content marketing, like blog posts, sales copy, certain types of social media (for example, an Instagram live on your course that’s going on sale, that would be a conversion activity)
Retention, generally, is email marketing, so when you’re sending out newsletters you’re keeping people aware of what you do and getting them to come back. In bigger businesses, things like loyalty schemes are the main type of retention as well.
There are your three types of job that your marketing has to do. Different activities do go across all three but really some are stronger on other things than others.
We’re going to focus today on acquisition because when you want to get a new client, you need to acquire them, particularly if you’re starting from zero, acquisition is what you need as you don’t already have a pool of retained customers.
One thing before we really start to dig into different methods of acquisition is the theory of the seven contacts. I will look up where this came from and see if I can stick it in the show notes but this is something that was in an old job of mine, where I worked for a recruitment company and the sales team were always told about this seven contacts rule. This is a piece of research that shows that when you’re thinking of buying something, you need seven contacts with the person that you’re buying from before you’ve built enough trust and you’re ready to buy. Those seven contacts can happen quickly or slowly, but you need to have had more than one contact if you’re going to buy from someone who is brand new. This is something to bear in mind as I talk through acquisition that you need to also be building up all these contacts before somebody will buy.
Different methods of acquisition
First of all there are no rights or wrongs in this, there is no ‘this is the right way to acquire new customers, don’t use any of the other ways’ because otherwise I wouldn’t be talking about them all. Really, this is a very individual thing and it’s all about your individual strengths. You need to lean into what you’re best at in order to choose the right kind of acquisition or combination of acquisition strategies for your business, so before you act on this, really think about yourself and the things that you’re best at and maybe make a physical list of your skills. Are you a really great writer? Are you really great in person? Are you best at writing emails? Are you the one in the office who always gets to write the tricky emails? Are you good at connection and collaboration? Are you better on your own being more of a quiet broadcaster than someone who is one on one? So really think about you as a communicator and where you best show up, because that’s the thing you need to lean into if you’re going to have the best acquisition strategy.
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
This is the one that generally gives people the creeps, and is the one that people don’t want to do, but I’m going to talk about it anyway because I’ve got an example. Business development is something that you might think of as cold calling and pitching, so that’s approaching individuals that need what you do and asking them if they want to work with you essentially.
This generally is a method that service based businesses use. As I said, in that recruitment company that I worked for, this was a huge part of the sales team’s jobs; going out after companies to try and get them to use us to hire their jobs. It’s more traditionally salesly than it is marketing, and this is the kind of activity that marketing would support with materials rather than take the lead on. So I get that it feels pretty gross to a lot of you and it’s not something that I’ve done because it doesn’t play to my own strengths. I’m not good at going out and selling, I’m not good at one to one communication like this. It’s not something that I’ve done, like going out and cold emailing or getting in touch with people and saying ‘hey, do you want to work together?’ That’s just not my wheelhouse, not my strength.
However, I have got clients for whom this has been really, really successful, and I think that’s because they haven’t thought of it in these terms. I think when you say the words ‘cold calling’, we all immediately hunch up and go ‘I don’t want to do that’ but actually the key to being great at business development is standing behind what you do and really knowing that it’s valuable to the person that you are pitching to.
A client of mine realised that her strength has always been through her professional life doing presentations, chatting to people, going into businesses and just having a chat and talking about what she does, and so she made that the heart of what she was doing. She wanted to get some quick wins, some workshops locally to her, so that she could start to gain some income and also to become known locally for what she does. So she did, she went into studios and into cafes and to centres which were all on brand for her and she just asked them if she could do a workshop with them.
And really, that’s what business development is, it’s nothing more greasy or horrible than that, as long as you are really standing behind what you do. So although you might be cringing at the idea of cold calling, actually if you are somebody who is really charming in real life, great at making small talk, making people feel comfortable in your presence, then this might be something to do, because you can go out and speak to people and convince them one on one rather than trying to get them to read your content and convince people through that.
ADS AND OFFERS
Advertising, as I said, is really a classic acquisitional activity, especially now with online advertising, it’s so much more traceable and trackable, you can get so much more refined with it than you can with things like press or TV. It is a much more effective type of acquisition than it ever was. Similarly with offers, often offers and ads go hand in hand, because if you want to be attracting new people from the colder place of an advert, you need to have an offer to entice them in. So they go together like that. As I said, they’re very trackable, especially if you are a product based business and you need more volume than a service based business, they’re really good for getting you a couple of peaks when you need it. However, it’s not always the most engaged customers that you’re acquiring, particularly with offers. We very often see this with people who have got Facebook groups, or they do it on Instagram where they host a giveaway or an offer, but you have to join the group or follow them in order to get it, which gets them short term people to join or follow, but not a lot of people engaging. So really with that, think about what you need. It’s much more of a short term solution than for someone who wants to be building an engaged audience going forward, which is why I said that for service based businesses it’s not always great because you’re not getting those engaged people through, and that’s what you want to be building – a pool of engaged people.
An example for this in my business is that I offered a couple of free calls for people and the people that I got onto the calls were people who could never invest in coaching because that’s why they wanted a free call! This was absolutely fair enough and I was more than happy to do it, but in terms of a strategy for acquiring new clients, it didn’t work very well, because everybody just wanted the free call and then they were happy. So that’s something to think about, particularly if you’re service based.
OUTREACH/PR
I’ve got a blog post called What is Outreach and Why Do You Need It? So if you’re intrigued, that’s a good piece of secondary reading for you. I worked with a PR company in a previous job role and they called it outreach actually because it isn’t just traditional public relations anymore, it is about reaching out into lots of different places into the content ecosystem of your customer to be visible there.
So the best things about outreach are that it helps you to piggyback on another person’s reputation or a publication’s reputation. So if you go onto a really high charting podcast then you as the guest are kind of having a bit of the reputation of the podcast and the host rubs off on you in terms of the listeners who are obviously fans of that podcast.
Similarly with press, if you are featured in vogue, then obviously it goes without saying that you’re incredibly chic, so the reputation of the place really rubs off on you and puts you in a good light with the new people who find you there.
Secondly it’s more organic than something like business development and advertising. People are finding you naturally through their everyday content consumption; they open a paper and you’re in there, they plug in their favourite podcast and you’re there, they look at their favourite blog and you’re there, it’s happening very organically so that it’s not you disrupting them with your ad or your cold email but just being there present in their life.
It also really helps you to own your expertise. Particularly with things like podcasts, you’ve got an hour to talk to people about what you do, where else in the whole world do you get to do that? Certainly not in press PR, so if you’re pitching to be in an article you might get a couple of sentences, with a blogger it’s similar, you don’t get an hour to go through everything that you stand for and essentially sell what you do.
The other great thing about outreach which the other options don’t do as much is it closes down those seven contacts. So, as I said, everybody needs to have seven contacts with a new business before they’re willing to buy from them. If you’re doing outreach, and you’re there on a podcast, you are in a magazine, they see you mentioned on Instagram by one of their friends, they sign up to your mailing list, so what outreach does is closes those down; it gives you so many opportunities to have those seven contacts that aren’t just relying on people following you on Instagram or being on your mailing list or anything so it’s really great for that.
For a bit of context, outreach has been a real focus for me this year, I set myself a goal at the beginning of the year to have one piece of coverage go live every month, and I’ve sort of managed that, I’ve had some months where I haven’t but some months where I’ve had two, so it’s sort of balanced it out. And I, actually, I can track 36% of my income this year to people directly having found me via a piece of outreach that I’ve done. The actually number is probably higher than that because there’s some people who don’t say where they found me, or it’s a lot more holistic, so it might have been that they followed me on Instagram but didn’t really engage but then heard me on a podcast and then came over and decided to buy, so it’s a lot more of a holistic strategy, outreach. This is the downside with it really, is that unlike ads, where you can put out a piece of content, pay for it, and then see how many people came over and how many of those bought, it is a lot more, I don’t want to say woo, but it’s a lot less traceable than other types of acquisition. It’s putting something out into a magazine and then seeing if people come over and remember you, but also it’s not just about acquisition it’s about brand building as well. Somebody might see you in that magazine and then six months to a year later remember you and then buy, but you’d never be able to track it from that very first magazine feature. It’s difficult in that respect, which is why I wouldn’t ever use it just on it’s own, because it can take a long time for results to come back to you and you can’t always see whether the results are working or not. I’ll give another example of that when I tell the story of how I got my first client and you can see how everything goes together.
COMMUNITY BUILDING
This is your content marketing, your social marketing, and really putting stuff out there into the internet, into the world, and using that to become a magnet to draw people to you and create a pool to sell to. This takes longer but it’s generally the most accessible way to do it, and generally the way that most of my clients work because they are not people who feel confident doing business development or have the resources in which to invest in ads, so this is the most organic form of marketing, and it’s about creating valuable, rich, inspirational content, being clever about how you put it out into the world and getting in front of the right people so that you start to create a community around you who will then not only buy from you buy recommend you and refer you.
This is very much my focus in my business, it’s this and outreach, this is my marketing strategy is content and outreach. I know it works because I booked a client who said that she heard of me because somebody recommended me in a Facebook group, and I knew that nobody I had worked with was a member of that particular group. So that means that it’s just somebody who followed me and enjoyed my content recommended me as a coach based on the strength of my content which is totally amazing, and just shows that when you’re doing this consistently and you’re doing it well, it can be fingers for you, it can really extend your reach in ways you can’t even really imagine. That is very often the focus of a lot of people that you probably look up to and follow and businesses that you buy from as well.
This brings me onto the story of how I got my first client. So when I first launched my services, I think I had around 4000 Instagram followers and I remember thinking that it was a shoe-in because if only 1% of those 4000 had booked me, I’d be great, I’d be grand. If 10% booked me then I’d be overbooked, so I was pretty confident that I was going to be fine. Then, obviously, none of them did book me, because they didn’t know me yet as somebody that could do this work. I hadn’t created any content about it or spoken about it, they had absolutely no way of knowing whether I was somebody worth investing in. So what I started to work on was my outreach and my content. I was putting blog posts into the world which were all about marketing, all about personal development, I did a speaking gig at Blogtacular that year, and I was building my newsletter list by putting out loads of free resources for people to join up with. As a result of my speaking at Blogtacular, I got asked to go on a podcast, which was my second podcast, which was Sas’, and that was a really great opportunity for me at that time, so that was where I was three months after launching. I had no clients, I’d been on two podcasts, I’d been blogging consistently a couple of times a week, I’d been Instagramming consistently, probably daily at that stage, and I was sending out newsletters. But still, nobody was booking me, nobody who I Instagram ‘knew’ had really shown much interest, they were really engaging with the content but not in the services. And then it was out of the blue that I got an email from somebody I’d never heard of before, and she had heard me on Sas’ podcast, she’d then come and read my content, quietly followed me on Instagram, had never commented, never messaged, just quietly watched me. She’d signed up to my mailing list and got one of my opt-ins, which had some of my exercises in it for her to do, and all those things combined got her to the point at which she was happy to invest in me. So then that’s the point that she got in touch.
So you can see through that story all those different things combining. It started with the outreach, because she heard me on somebody else’s podcast, but then that wasn’t enough to make the decision because she needed all those other contacts. She consumed the content I was putting out there, became quietly part of the community, she stuck around, she signed up to the newsletter, she got proof through the opt-in, through the emails, through the content that I could do what I was doing and that got her to the point where she was happy to invest. That’s what I mean about becoming a magnet, that was very much my approach. And actually, following that, my second and third clients also weren’t people who I saw on Instagram every day, they weren’t people who I Instagram ‘knew, and similarly they found me either via podcasts or via Instagram, but they weren’t necessarily active or that I knew but they discovered me after I’d changed to being a marketer and not just an Instagrammer and a blogger. I think that’s the interesting thing for you to takeaway is that if you’re waiting for your first client, they might not have even found you yet, and so it’s really a case of thinking, especially if you have changed from being one thing to another, whilst you’re educating your existing audience, you need to think about building a new one because it takes longer to change somebody’s mind, to change that first impression, than it is to make a new one. If you are in that position, start to think about how you can attract brand new people to that pool, that pool of your community is a really good thing to think about.
One thing that I want to pick up that I just talked about in terms of how I got my first client is about the silent watchers. You have got so many silent watchers, I absolutely promise you that. There are always so many more people who are watching you who are looking at what you do but saying nothing than there are the ones who are saying something. Even if you feel like you’re not getting a lot of engagement, and you’re not getting a lot of people reading your blog there are people there, they’re just not talking to you yet. People don’t, always. If you think about extroverts and introverts and all the different people in the world, not everybody is going to be the type of people that can do business development, there are going to be people who sit at the back and consume and then wait and wait and wait and then they’re ready. So don’t lose heart if you’re feeling like you’re not making an impact, because you are. They’re just not telling you that you’re making an impact on them yet, so you have to keep showing up, keep being consistent, keep putting your content out there because there are people watching and waiting for it and they’re going to notice the moment that you stop, and in that moment you’re going to show them that you’re not somebody who can consistently show up, and you’re going to cause doubt in the silent watchers. So you’ve just got to consistently keep going and keep going, because it’s the silent watchers who will convert quicker.
Maybe that’s something to think about; if you are feeling like you’re banging your head against a brick wall, and you’re just talking to that wall and nobody else, maybe in your next caption acknowledge the silent watchers. Invite them to participate, invite them to do something else, just know that you’re there because I promise you that they are.
As well as that I really would encourage you to get some support for this emotional rollercoaster, that was something that I had during this period which I’ve spoken about before; I was working with my coach Jen Carrington at the time, so it was good to have the fortnightly calls with her because over the course of the fortnight I’d start to get more and more panicked and desperate, and then when I spoke to her, I was able to remember that I was doing the right thing. If you can have, even if not a coach, a peer support that you can check in with, a business bestie, a real life bestie, anybody who can just keep you on track and tell you that you’re doing the right thing.
And don’t panic, particularly if you’re doing a community building or outreach strategy; you’ve chosen that because that plays to your strengths, but also those are the strategies that take longer to pay off. You have to know that it’s doing the right things, but they’re the things that take longer to pay off, so you can’t expect immediate results. If you do want immediate results, try something like business development, so maybe if you’re getting a bit desperate financially, try setting up a workshop at, say, a yoga studio at your town, they can promote it for you, just so you can get that income coming through.
The other thing to do is to stand behind your product. It’s so easy when you feel like you’re not making waves, you’re not getting traction, to think that it’s not the right product and to change it quickly, but you’ve really got to stand behind it, because the more that you change, those silent watchers will be like ‘what’s even going on here? I was going to invest in that and now I can’t’. So stand behind your product if you believe in it and you know it’s the right thing to do, you’ve got to continue to believe in it and talk about it as if you do believe in it.
Having said that, however, you’ve got to give yourself a time limit on that, because, yes, it’s not realistic that in a year from now, you can’t still not be booked out. So if it’s not working, rather than panic, rather than get desperate, really investigate. You’ve got to try and be as objective in this as you can because the moment you get subjective, you lose it, you begin to give into the bad voices in your head and you can’t make the right decision. So if it’s not working, if it’s been several months and you’ve not had any sort of sniff of anything, then start to investigate why that might be.
I had a client who put some services on sale, and she was writing about them, she was talking about them on Instagram, she was doing all the right things, but after a couple of months there hadn’t been any sort of interest. She was getting to a point where she really needed something to happen so we investigated what it was that was really the problem. What you have to decide is it is the concept that’s wrong, or is it the format that’s wrong? There’s two very different solutions to those. If it’s the concept, then you’ve got to go right back to the drawing board. If it’s just the format, then you just need to shift it slightly. So with my client, we had two different options to that, so rather than just go ‘oh, that’s not working, I’ll take it all off’, let’s ask people who this isn’t making them respond, and let’s analyse your traffic. We worked out that a lot of her traffic was coming in from Pinterest, and with Pinterest you get a lot of volume, not as much engagement. It’s not surprising that one-to-one service wasn’t doing so well, because traffic coming through wants more instant fixes. So we decided to change the format of the service from a one-to-one to workbooks that people coming from Pinterest can buy for a couple of pounds and drive volume through that.
On the other side of it, and because she still wanted to work with people one-to-one, we changed the concept. We thought that the concept of what she was doing wasn’t quite right because it was more of an optional purchase, so something for themselves rather than something for their business, and we changed that round so it was more of a business based service so that people could justify it better because that was the feedback that she got. That’s the way to focus on that, it’s not to go ‘it’s not working, take it all off, I’m going back to my day job’, investigate, be objective, and work out whether it’s the concept or the format, and change that thing.
But ultimately, just don’t panic, it’s all within your power, there’s nothing that you’re doing that’s wrong, there’s just things that aren’t the most efficient or effective, just investigate, change, test, and do all those things. As you heard from my story, I was doing things that weren’t going as well so I changed them up and that’s absolutely fine, you’ve got to react as well as proact.
In conclusion, it’s really thinking about what is the job, getting really clear on this objective, and having that for a period of time. If you are in the position where you’re starting from zero, it’s thinking about ‘what is my job for the next few months’, my job for the next few months is being really visible for new people to come and find out what I do. Maybe if you already have a pool but they’re not as engaged, my job is being present and re engaging people.
Get really focused on what that objective is, and then look at the method of acquisition that suits you best, that’s going to help you do that job to the best of your abilities. Lean into what you’re best at, and find a combination of strategies that will work for you, whether that is content and outreach, or putting out ads, or whether it’s doing some business development alongside your community building. Find the combination that’s going to work best for you. Don’t panic, stand behind your product, get support, and think about the silent watchers.