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While many entrepreneurs are able to make a living within their current network, there’s no denying that they could be far better off if they were able to land a few more high-ticket clients. These so-called dream clients pay at higher rates and allow you to work smarter, not harder — dramatically increasing revenue without having to scale your team or up how many hours you work each day.
Of course, landing these clients is a process, but following some tried-and-true steps will help, and make you much happier (and more profitable) in long run.
Determine who you actually want to work with
To find high-paying clients, you need to identify problems that actually need to be solved. This requires evaluating your own areas of expertise, as well as the current needs in the market, to identify which groups would have the greatest interest in what you have to offer.
Generally speaking, this means you should focus on needs, rather than wants. While it’s true that brands like Netflix have achieved their growth by solving a want like easier access to movies and TV shows, focusing on needs tends to have greater longevity — especially for B2B providers.
For a client to truly be a dream client, try to find pain points that intersect with your passions. For example, if there is a social cause that you feel extremely passionate about, you might want to consider niching down and making your services tightly focused on brands that work around that same issue.
Don’t try to be all things to all people. While niching down may limit the scope of your target audience, it will make it easier to fine-tune your messaging and identify the unique ways that your offerings and your audience’s pain points intersect.
When you look at your audience based on what they need, rather than just their demographic info, you’ll be in a much better position to engage with them and create content that gets their interest.
Related: Don’t Just Start a Business, Solve a Problem
Dial in your messaging
A clearly defined target audience will help you craft content that speaks to their pain points. Interestingly, HubSpot’s 2020 “Not Another State of Marketing Report” reveals that on average, most brands create content marketing materials for three distinct audience segments, with the messaging adapted to each group’s interests and needs.
As brand and website designer Elizabeth McCravy notes in a blog post, establishing empathy is a vital part of creating that initial connection between your brand and your dream clients in content marketing. “A great message is NOT when your ideal client understands you, it’s when your ideal client feels understood BY YOU,” she writes. “We trust people who understand us and who are like us. In business, it’s the same: People trust brands who understand them. People want to be seen, heard and understood. Empathy is NOT about talking about how great your business and your services are. It’s about the customer.”
Content that successfully addresses your dream clients’ pain points helps foster an immediate connection and sense of community. Leads recognize that your business is focused on helping people just like them and respond accordingly.
During a recent email exchange, Robb Gilbear, founder of Growth Habit explained, “Brands that form a strong connection with their dream clients by demonstrating that they fully understand them and their challenges find themselves no longer really doing sales. Instead, leads line up to work with them.”
Continued Gilbear, “When this happens, not only do eager clients initiate contact with you, but referrals increase as you’re seen as an expert at solving these particular problems. This makes the enrollment process so much easier since half the work has already been accomplished by creating a bond through your intentional content marketing.”
Related: 7 Content Marketing Tips for New Entrepreneurs
Deliver on your promises
At the end of the day, your ability to build a strong brand associated with high-ticket clients depends on your ability to deliver results to your current customers. Living up to your promises is how you retain your current clients and gain the referrals and testimonials that help you bring in high-quality leads.
While your content marketing can be immensely powerful in forming those initial client connections, testimonials and word of mouth will ultimately be the biggest factor in your long-term scalability, offering the type of genuine authority that paid marketing can’t replicate.
In fact, research from BigCommerce indicates that testimonials can increase revenue by 62 percent, and that 72 percent of customers will trust a business more based on its positive reviews.
Of course, you can make these testimonials work for you beyond personal one-on-one referrals. Ask your most satisfied clients if they would be willing to write a testimonial that could be published on your site, or if they would be willing to be featured as a case study. Research from BrightLocal indicates that 85 percent of customers are willing to leave reviews. Quite often, all you have to do is ask.
Find your dream clients today
No entrepreneur should let themselves get stuck in a routine where they work for clients who underpay and provide work that they aren’t passionate about. By better defining who you want to work with and using powerful messaging to convert leads into sales, you will be far more satisfied and successful in your business.
