So, you want to use your website to find clients – great!
Depending on who you listen to, there’s so much you need to do in order to successfully use your website. It doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re a life coach, business consultant or holistic healer, getting clients through your website takes time, energy and even a little bit of money.
More than anything, you need a plan.
You need to know what your website is about. You need it to clearly communicate how you and your service helps people. Moreover, you to set clear goals of what your website needs to achieve for you.
That’s the first step. Some would say you next need a business plan, a marketing plan and a clear revenue model (you do need to know how you’re going to make money, after all).
But I think it’s much simpler than all that.
Sure, a business plan is good. I coach my own clients on creating business and marketing plans so they can both keep themselves on track and see their progress. So using traditional business plans is something I highly recommend.
Yet, I’ve found it helpful to begin any service business with 4 simple questions. These questions provide the foundation for all else. Answer them fully and you’ll have the beginnings of your business plan, an outline for your marketing plan and you’ll know how you’ll make money. You’ll also have an idea of who your client is and what their needs are.
What’s more, these four questions give you a chance to simplify the whole business development process. You may still want to formal business plan or work through how you’ll market your business. Yet it can be less necessary as long as you can stay focused. I’ve had a handful of clients take just the answers to these four questions and go on to both build successful life coaching and holistic healing practices.
So what are the four questions?
- Who you are?
- What you do?
- Who you do it for?
- Why do you do it?
Simple questions, right?
Now there can be other questions to add. Depending on the client I might add ‘how do you do what you do’ or ‘what do they need.’ But honestly, even these questions are pretty much covered in a thorough answers to the four questions. Plus, I find simplicity wins out most of the time.
Is it really this simple?
Yes…and no!
The questions, themselves, are simple, of course. What’s important, though, are your answers. And sometimes that can take some work.
Your answers should have layers.
That’s right. If you really work with these four questions you’ll find a different set of answers for different parts of your business.
For instance, there’s the at the surface answers – the easy ones. These answers you’ll come up with immediately. Usually you don’t have to think too hard about them. These are good, but not complete answers.
The next layers of answers are the deeper ones. These get to the core of why you do what you do. Often, these speak to your deep inner reasons for offering this sort of service at all. You may share these with clients or on your website, but sometimes they’re too personal.
Another layer – a very important layer – is your story. These four questions beg you to craft your story of why your in business. And this is very important because a business – a website – without a story to tell doesn’t connect to potential clients.
It’s about connecting to people
And this brings us to the last layer I’ll cover. You can use these questions to tell your prospective client’s stories as well. When you understand their story – where they are, what they’re dealing with, how it feels and how they’d like to transform – then you have a something to share with them that has meaning.
That’s really what a website, social media, email marketing, etc is about – connecting with people. And the best way to connect with people – online or off – is to tell your story in a way that includes their story. You connect to them by connecting your stories.
And that’s the secret of successful marketing online. When you’re clear enough to connect your story to their story then you have something compelling that reaches people, connects with them and clearly communicates that you understand their situation and can help.
Make sense? Where are you stuck or overwhelmed?
I will get you out of overwhelmed and unstuck. Contact me today!
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