publishing Archives - Get Clients Now!

To Get Clients from Writing and Speaking, People Must Know What You Do

A few months after I started my business 25-plus years ago, I was delivering a workshop one evening on an ideal topic to attract likely clients. And sure enough, the room was full of self-employed professionals who were excellent prospects to hire me as a business coach. I presented what I thought was a value-packed program, and my audience seemed to be learning useful material from me. “I’m sure to land some clients from this,” I thought.

After the workshop, a woman came up to me hesitantly. “This class was very helpful,” she said. “But I’m wondering… would it be possible for me to hire you to work with me personally? I don’t know if you do that.”

Writing for Your Business: The Five “W”s and One “H”

by Kristine Carey | Writing & Publicity

Writing is a great way to build your business, and whether you’re new to it, or have been doing it for some time, there are ways to make it easy. Below are ideas on how to write so that it can be simple, fun, and effective to accomplish, and create a steady stream of interest in your services.

What to Write
Finding inspiration for what to write is, at times, daunting. Inspiration is all around, though, and often times it’s a matter of adjusting your perception to see it. Just finished a client session? There’s an article in that!

Is Your Marketing Niche Truly a Niche?

by C.J. Hayden | Success Ingredients & Tools

As a self-employed professional, have you defined your marketing niche? You may think so, but a closer look might reveal that your chosen niche isn’t as effective as it could be. You may have selected a target market, but have no defined specialty among the services you offer. Or you may be clear on your professional specialty, but vague on who to target as prospective clients.

A clearly defined niche for an independent professional is one that spells out both a target market and a specialty needed by that market.

Not an Extrovert? You Can Still Market Your Business

by C.J. Hayden | Fear & Resistance

It seems that a considerable amount of marketing and sales advice to self-employed professionals is aimed at extroverts. “Go to networking events and meet new people,” the authorities say. “Speak in front of groups.” “Call people up and chat with them.”

If you are an introvert, these experts might as well be telling you to fly to the moon. What if you don’t enjoy public gatherings, dislike being the center of attention, and hate to call strangers on the phone? Can you still do well at personal marketing?

Written Content Can Be the Answer to Your Follow-Up Woes

by C.J. Hayden | Following Up

To the average self-employed professional, following up with prospective clients feels awkward or even scary. You hate making phone calls that might not be welcome. You think you might be pestering people. You worry about being rejected. You aren’t sure what to say. After all, how many times can you ask, “Are you ready for us to work together?”

I get it. My clients and students share concerns like these with me all the time. I’ve even had them myself.

Five Reasons (Almost) Every Self-Employed Professional Should Have a Blog

by C.J. Hayden | Writing & Publicity

When self-employed professionals come to me with questions about how to attract their ideal clients, one of the first places I look is whether they have a blog. In my experience, most self-employed professionals have the potential to be excellent bloggers, even when they haven’t written anything longer than an email since leaving college.

Authoring a blog can solve several of the stickiest marketing problems for professionals. Here are five reasons that blogging is one of the marketing methods I recommend most often to my clients and students:

Why You Need to Include Outreach Strategies in Your Marketing Mix

by C.J. Hayden | Filling the Pipeline

I’m a big fan of using attraction strategies to fill your marketing pipeline as a self-employed professional. Attraction-based tactics like blogging or publishing articles, posting on social media, and generating media publicity can all be effective ways to bring prospective clients into your sphere. Under the right circumstances, promotional events and advertising can work also.

And… attraction strategies alone are rarely enough to build a thriving business.

Hate to Sell? You Can Fix This

by C.J. Hayden | Sales Conversations

Do you love your business but hate the selling part? Whether it’s calling prospective clients on the phone or writing persuasive emails and web copy, most self-employed professionals say that selling is the element of their business they dislike the most.

If it was possible to sell without having that feeling of discomfort in your gut, or those sweaty palms and increased heart rate, would you be willing to make a change?

Eight Reasons Why Your Blog Isn’t Bringing You Clients

by C.J. Hayden | Writing & Publicity

A common complaint I hear from the self-employed professionals I work with is that they’ve tried blogging as a marketing approach, but it hasn’t paid off. No one is reading their blog, they tell me. Or they’ve got some readership, but their readers never seem to become paying clients. Is it time to give up blogging, they ask? Maybe they should focus on social media instead.

Yikes! Don’t make that choice. Social media marketing doesn’t work without good, original content to share.

Should Your Marketing Plan Include Creating Content?

by C.J. Hayden | Marketing Plans & Strategies

Does content marketing have any relevance to you as a self-employed professional? When you hear or read conversations about using free content to attract and persuade clients, the type of marketing being discussed may often seem out of your league. After all, you don’t have a marketing department down the hall that you can ask to produce a video documentary or customer magazine.

But creating content for prospective clients that is useful and relevant to them doesn’t have to be out of reach for a solo professional or small partnership. Much of the best content for professionals to use in their marketing is based on the written word. Consider these forms of content that you may already be producing, and that others like you frequently create:

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