How to Attract All the Clients You Can Handle by Jan Marie Dore

There is a myth among self-employed professionals that if you are really good at what you do, clients will automatically contact you.

It's just not so!

Ongoing marketing is an important aspect of any business. If you can 'systematize' your marketing, this will leverage your time more effectively, so that you can focus on what you do best, and still get the word out.

Here are eight marketing strategies that when applied correctly will help you attract all the clients and opportunities you can handle:

1. Have a Full Practice Attitude
Having the right attitude is the secret to success in building any business. Right from day one, act as if your practice is full - however you define full. Taking this attitude will help you feel more confident when you speak to prospects about your services. Your motto should be: be visible, make connections, deliver value, and have fun.

2. Get Really Clear on your Ideal Practice
If you don't know where you're going, how will you know when you get there? It's up to you to define what you want your professional practice to look like. The clearer you are on what you want to have happen and the way you want your practice to be, the more likely it will happen. Write out how many clients you want, who they are, where they work, and how many talks or workshops you want to give this year, how often you will send your newsletter out, and any other aspects of your business you don't now have clarity on.

3. Master Your Craft
Focus on gaining experience and being the best at what you do rather than building a practice. Plan to work with as many people as you can until you feel very confident and self-assured in your skills. Your practice will start to fill naturally as word gets around how good you are at what you do and the results you can help people achieve.

4. Make Marketing a Top Priority
Often we get so busy with the daily routine that marketing activities tend to fall to the bottom of the to-do list. A technique that top marketers use is to schedule a single, daily marketing action. What would be the one thing that if you were to do it consistently every day, or at a minimum three times a week, would move your practice forward? Take a moment to describe what your single, daily marketing action (or three times weekly if that suits you better) will be.

5. Improve Your Skills to Promote Your Business More Effectively
Marketing and self-promotion are based on natural abilities, but there are also some skills to learn in order to be an effective marketer. Some of the skills include speaking, writing, networking, marketing, selling, coaching, and training & facilitating groups. You don't need to learn all of these skills - perhaps just a few. Choose the ones that come most easily to you, and create a plan to really master them by reading, studying, or taking a course.

6. Use an Information Marketing Approach
Deliver valuable information to your ideal prospects, and you won't ever have to sell again. Look for opportunities to give your information away. Demonstrate how you can solve the problems of your perfect prospects. Taking the information marketing approach, rather than promoting yourself, you would give away your articles, newsletters, white papers, short talks, teleseminars, or interviews that would position you as the authority in your topic area.

7. Aim to be a Specialist in Your Topic Area
People will be drawn to you like a magnet as the subject matter expert in your field. And, they will pay a premium price for your valuable services. Aim to demonstrate your expertise in your specialty in everything that you do, and every contact you make. Share success stories about the results that people who work with you are able to achieve.

8. Position Yourself as THE Expert in a Very Narrow Niche
You want people to think of you, and only you, when they have a problem they need to solve. Positioning yourself as the go-to person in a very narrow niche is an extremely effective marketing strategy to attract more clients. It's a tactic used by the most successful professionals. People want to work with the best specialists, the subject matter experts, and the industry leaders.

The service professions are evolving, the competition is greater than ever, and marketing tactics that worked well before no longer produce results. Apply any one of these strategies to stand out in a crowded marketplace, come out on top, and attract all the clients and opportunities you can handle, and all the income you want.

Author Resource: Jan Marie Dore teaches women business owners secrets to success. Sign up for her savvy and smart FREE e-zine and receive a 30 page Bonus Workbook 'The 7 Critical Small Business Marketing Mistakes Women Make. . . and Solutions to Easily Fix Them' by visiting www.femalepreneurs.com

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