How to get clients: it’s the universal challenge faced by 99.9% of business owners, freelancers and service providers. Well, maybe not Elon Musk.
After lots of blood, sweat and tears (and then probably a few more tears), you’ve perfected your service or product. You’ve painstakingly chosen accounting software you don’t hate and can actually afford. You’ve created a sleek, beautiful website. You’ve ordered supplies and maybe even rented out a storefront that gets a decent amount of foot traffic.
But business is still slower than you’d like. You and your team aren’t fully booked. But a full schedule is what you need for your business to thrive and for you to prove all your haters wrong (just kidding 😅).
Let's walk through the basics of getting clients before we jump into nine tactics for how to attract new clients and get them on your schedule, while ensuring existing clients are eager to book with you again.
It’s tempting to jump directly into tactics when you’re eager to get new clients. But taking the time to understand your business and the value you bring strategically will save you time and headaches, and ultimately bring in more paying customers and clients.
What’s your core offering? What makes you unique? In a sea of similar service providers or products, what makes your business special? The more effort you put into articulating your business and its value to customers, the easier it will be to attract new ones.
Consider why you started your business, what it has to offer, what values you want to embody and why your future customers need what you’re selling.
When you have a deep understanding of your customers, their goals, and challenges, it makes it easier to make sound business decisions. Some of the ways you can go about deepening your understanding includes:
You’re going to want to do everything, especially at the start. One customer might say they found you on Instagram... so you'll want to go all in on Instagram marketing. And then another might tell you they were referred to you by a friend. Now you've also added referral marketing onto your plate.
The best lesson to learn fast and early:
Prioritize one or two things and do them well. The alternative is doing everything—badly. Choose a handful of things you know you can excel at.
After six months (or whatever time frame you’re comfortable with), measure the effectiveness of the efforts you prioritized. That’ll give you a chance to improve your efforts or pick a different path. On that note, let’s dig into the things you can try.
You don’t need a dedicated social media manager to get active on social. But you should consider where your customers are active and how they like to consume content. Are they watching your stories on Instagram or liking your posts on LinkedIn?
If you’ve got your hands on some demographic data about your intended clients, consider whether your Gen Z customers are loving the trends and memes they can find on TikTok if your Gen X customers are primarily using Facebook.
When you’ve got a sense of where your customers are consuming content, grab your laptop and smartphone and start creating.
The type of content you produce is going to depend on your business. For example:
If you’re a hairstylist specializing in blonde highlights, you might share before-and-after Reels on Instagram. Your clients will want to see you work your hair magic.
If you work in the B2B space, maybe LinkedIn posts about smashing productivity goals, setting KPIs and creating an inspiring workplace culture will be your jam. It’s all about where your future clients and customers are hanging out and they want to see or react to.
If your brand personality is particularly playful and irreverent, you might take a stab at recreating memes on TikTok—but that’ll mean dueling it out with Gen Z for likes (and they are ruthless and hilarious).
If that sounds like too much guesswork, you can get super specific when trying to reach future customers on social media with targeted ads. This means using your ideal customers’ traits, interests and preferences to create targeted campaigns and content that’ll appeal to them (and hopefully encourage them to buy!).
Your website is not a maze. No one should be getting lost in it.
There’s nothing more frustrating than wanting to grab an appointment on a website and not being able to find the Book Now button. I want to give you my money! Let me!
Have you ever closed the browser tab in a huff and gone to book with someone else? Yeah, us too.
Don’t aggravate your future customers like this. A user-friendly website keeps prospects on your site longer and makes it simple for them to access important information about your business, like your services, your address, your cancellation policies and *drum roll* how to book an appointment.
On an intuitive website that uses an all-in-one booking system, your clients should be able to book automatically—with absolutely zero manual labor from you (yes, this means you can get bookings in your sleep).
If you want to boost bookings, you can integrate the best online booking system directly into your website. With YouCanBookMe, you can add a custom booking link to your website or embed an entire booking form.
Either way, you give your customers an easy way to grab that booking or meeting time they want, without having to call you on the phone, calculate different time zones or hunt through your website for the right link.
See how executive coach, Gareth Marlow, embedded his booking page directly onto his website to easily let visitors book a meeting with him.
Sorting out how to get clients doesn’t have to be hard — as long as you’re focused on making the experience easy for these clients.
Email isn’t dead, despite what you might have heard from a startup bro claiming to be “dropping marketing facts” on LinkedIn.
Eighty-one percent of companies use email as part of their marketing strategy, according to Forbes Advisory. Email marketing is one of the most effective channels for driving conversions—it offers a 2.8% conversion rate for B2C businesses and a 2.4% conversion rate for B2Bs, according to data from FirstPageSage.
Choosing the words you use carefully in your emails also matters because 47% of email recipients say they open an email based on the subject line alone, says Hubspot.
(Check out this whole Hubspot report for a boatload of email marketing statistics).
So if you’ve started building an email list, now’s the time to put it to work! Email marketing is an ideal way to nurture your leads, offer them helpful tips, invite them to events and encourage them to book.
There are countless email marketing campaign ideas out there, but here are three you can try automating or sending periodically.
This is the perfect way to welcome and onboard your new clients into the fold! Offer up tips and tricks for getting started — including how to use your online booking system to nab the meetings and appointments they want.
Not everyone is ready to commit to services. In many cases, people might shop around to find the right fit for them. But, remember that there's a balance between a free consultation and giving away your services for free.
Whether it's on your booking page or through email, offer up a free trial of your product or complimentary services for clients. Remind them of the benefits of your paid services. Bonus points if you offer a time-sensitive discount code!
Who doesn’t love free stuff? Hype up your product by asking your email list to enter a contest to win your product or service — for free. It’s a perfect way to ask them to make content as part of the contest and then use that content to drive even more awareness of your biz.
If you’re still wondering how to get new clients, try creating urgency with some limited-time promotions (like the ones we mentioned in the previous strategy!). These are special offers and discounts that’ll get new clients in the door, or maybe even light a fire under that customer you haven’t seen lately to finally book a follow-up meeting with you.
These kickass incentives and promotions include:
Who doesn’t love a little social proof? Show your future customers how happy your current customers are. Send a series of emails that profile your success with each customer (and don’t forget to include a link for them to book the same service).
Here’s what our fans say about YouCanBookMe (and you better believe we shout it from the hilltops):
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“YouCanBookMe makes it easier for potential new clients to book with me because it removes the barrier of them needing to email me first. It gives them a clear and easy call to action and an easy first step to connect with me.” |
Pro tip: when using YouCanBookMe for appointment scheduling, you can use automated SMS or email follow-up communications to ask each of your clients for a glowing Google Review after their booking is finished. Work smarter, not harder, folks.
What’s that saying? Small business loves company?
Seriously though, when you find opportunities to partner with colleagues and other businesses, you all end up thriving. You’ll feel more inspired, meet new people, encounter more diverse suppliers, promote products you believe in and get support when you need it.
Ask your community how to get clients and they’ll most certainly have unique answers.
Feeling part of a community also feels really good — and it’s good for business. Once you’ve established strong relationships, you can approach other businesses about cross-promoting products and other joint ventures.
These are our top tips for becoming a networking genius:
| 💡 Pro tip: When networking, especially in moments when you're trying to grow your network, be sure to ask every individual if they'd be open to introducing you to 1-3 new people that you can chat with. This is a great way to build a never ending stream of incredible connections. |
SMS marketing is messages sent directly to your customers’ phones. Here’s why we love it as a way to connect and get more clients:
They’re great for last-minute reminders: Signed a new client but haven’t met with them yet? An automated SMS reminder is the perfect way to make sure they show up and you get paid.
If you're new to this, let's walk through SMS marketing best practices to keep top of mind:
We’re all really good at something. The same is true for your business. You’ve got the secret sauce in one specific area — we’d bet money on it! Honing in on your genius is a perfect way to avoid being just one generic option in a sea of businesses offering the same products or services.
Let’s use leadership coaches as an example. There’s a lot of ’em! But what if you focused specifically on coaching C-suite leaders at growing startups in the tech sector. You’ve just differentiated yourself and made it easy for your perfect clients to see your pitch and say, “YES, that’s exactly what I need.”
→ Check our Jimmy Newson, a growth advisor who specializes in growth advising for small businesses.
Here’s one more: you’re a personal stylist. You help folks revamp their wardrobe. But what if you were a stylist for moms? Maybe they’re dressing a body that feels different after babies or maybe they’re returning to the office after parental leave. Whatever the reason, you and your services have a chance to stand out.
When you niche down, it will make it easier to get referrals because you’ll build a name for yourself within a community (the tech executives will talk about your in their Slack groups and the new moms will share your name with friends via text message).
Whatever you do, don’t niche down too much. You might want to exclusively dog-walk poodles, but there probably aren’t enough in your neighborhood to keep your business afloat.
When you’re hungry for new clients, it can be easy to forget about the ones you already have. Be sure to reach out to your existing client base to see if they’re interested in booking another service or purchasing another product.
You can revive their interest by offering a promo code to use on their next purchase. Try sending a “We miss you!” email that shows them your new merchandise, explains any new services and invites them to make a booking.
What’s better than promoting your business? Getting your customers to do it for you. If you’re wondering how to get clients, take a look at your own network. You probably know dozens of people who work in similar roles or in the same industry as you. Maybe you’re in a networking group with some of them, swapping resources, recommendations and referrals.
There’s no reason your clients can’t do the same for you!
You can push this idea into motion by sending your customers thoughtful gifts that are relevant to them! If it’s a fun and relatable t-shirt or mug, they’ll almost certainly share it on social media. And their network will see it — and come searching for more information about your brand.
While flipping a magic switch isn't going to get you ranking for competitive search terms right away, it's important that you make your booking page indexable on search engines.
What does that mean? You're giving search engines like Google and Bing the green light to look at your booking page and share it when people submit relevant searches through their network.
Think about the last time you looked for a plumber or real estate agent, you likely did a Google search to try and find the right person for the job. But, you didn't just search "plumber". You probably went a step further and niched down by location, specific job to be done, like:
So, as you build your booking page and toggle it on to be indexable by search engines, keep in mind what your potential high-value customers might search to land right on your booking page.
For example, instead of using their company name, Sage Benefit Advisors, on their booking page, they used "Colorado Health Insurance Advisor."
Getting more clients in the door or booked into calls can feel daunting (and sometimes impossible) without a clear plan. But lucky you — you’ve got a solid plan that includes:
Implementing stress-free bookings — for you and your clients — is a grow-your-business strategy you can implement today. Because you can offer a variety of appointment types, your new clients will be able to book exactly what they need, without hesitating.
You’re so close to more clients and better bookings. Get started today.