Category: HTM Blog

While there may be some truth to the saying “any press is good press,” the same philosophy doesn’t apply when it comes to the saying “any client is a good client.” Just because a potential prospect is willing to say yes, that doesn’t make them a valuable asset to your business. This is where you need to make sure you’ve determined who your ideal client actually is, and not just the usual easy to work with, doesn’t complain, etc. The real determining factor should be whether they are bringing in true value to your bottom line.

Some clients may be too small or even too big to help your business actually grow. You might find that while the money that comes with a big client is attractive, the effort you’d need to expend to provide a good product isn’t worth the money. The same goes for smaller clients. You might think multiple clients at a lower price will help you grow. However, if you are spending too much time trying to deliver the product for small profit margins, you may be better off raising prices in order to do less work for the same profits.

There are a lot of factors that go into figuring out your ideal client. To help you determine your sweet spot, consider these three tips:

If you raised your prices by 25% what difference would it make?
Would it take you out of range of qualified prospects? Would you lose customers, but still keep the same profits? When it comes to multiple clients at lower prices, it’s important to really keep track of the time and energy you are spending on each client. You might find that if you offer more services to less clients at a higher price you would actually end up doing less work since you already know that particular clients needs and wants.

As an example, let’s say you have five active clients you are working with – you are not only doing the work for each one, but also handling any communication and admin associated with them. Add five more, and you now have the work of ten clients plus the need to communicate with and keep track of administrative tasks related to each one.

However, if you increase your services for an additional fee to a few clients and drop the rest, you might be increasing your workload by a percentage, but you will be removing needless communication and admin time. This could result in a huge change in not only your profit margin, but your energy levels as well. You’ll be able to focus on less clients and do better work, which will enable to charge more premium rates as time goes on.

What size clients can you create the most value for?
Take a look at your staff and the resources available to you. What is the best work you can do with those resources? How much time and money is involved with creating this type of work? If a client wants to pay you 25% less for this, is it still worth the effort? If a client wants to pay you 25% more for 50% more work, do you have the resources and time to pull it off?

The best client opportunities are the ones where you are both creating value for each other. When it becomes unbalanced, one party will always be dissatisfied. If it’s the client, you lose the possibility of future referrals. If it’s you, your work experience with that client will become miserable, which affects your quality of life.

Don’t be afraid to say no.
When it comes to sales, we all want the yes. It makes our day, builds our confidence and hopefully contributes to the bottom line. However, the best way to make sure you are working with your ideal client is being able to recognize when they aren’t. Make sure you have your own list of red flags or criteria to help you make this determination. You don’t need to be spending time and resources handling issues with clients that aren’t contributing to your overall business success. That starts with understanding what that means for your business and being willing to turn down someone who wants to say yes.

There’s a hard truth about business success. If you don’t have leads, you won’t have any sales. Without sales… there’s no profit, meaning you’re out of business. It’s no wonder so much emphasis is put on lead generation. However, sometimes it can feel like you’ve tapped out your resources and the leads just may not be coming in like you hoped. If this has happened, you’ve likely missed out on a few of the basics involved with lead generation. To help get you back on track, keep these principles in mind.

Value Creates Value
If your website or product doesn’t provide value for your potential customer, they aren’t going to stick around long enough to even consider becoming a future customer. The problem with this approach is that it’s hard work creating something someone might consider valuable. You have to provide thought-provoking articles, be an industry source for news or an entertainment machine. The good news is, yes, it’s hard work – that’s why your competitors probably aren’t doing it.

Think about what your customers need and want and figure out a way that works for you or your company to deliver it. If you are a personal trainer looking for more clients, offer content that will show how much you care about health and fitness. This could be achieved through a blog, a Pinterest account or even a video series.

If you can provide value for your customers before they buy, they’ll give value back to you by becoming brand loyal and purchasing more than just that initial product or service.

Always Be Targeting Buyers
While not every prospect will be a buyer immediately, you at least want to make sure you are targeting people who actually want to buy something at some point. For instance, many online marketers focus on getting people to subscribe to their newsletters or social media accounts. They offer contests and prizes to help facilitate this growth. While this is an effective way to grow your lists, you have to make sure that these tactics are still targeting people who will actually want to buy something at some point. You don’t want a list filled with people looking only for deals or freebies. Consider options like a free night after two stays or discount coupons instead of free products.

Partners Make It Easier
You don’t always have to do the heavy lifting alone. If you know another company or organization that has an audience similar to your target audience, you might want to consider some cross-promotion. A good way to do this is through interview – especially video or podcast interviews. These are easy enough to do and allow both companies to create something of value to share to their audience.

Always Create Opportunity for Conversion
When you are promoting your product or company, you may find that you are mentioning it across multiple platforms. For instance, if you do a radio interview you probably mention your website. If you are on Twitter, you probably mention your website. Just sending people to your homepage isn’t enough to capture leads from specific sources. Each medium will attract a different type of visitor.

One golden rule for lead generation is to always have an offer or landing page to send these potential customers to. It should be crafted to attract and meet the needs of the people you are sending there. In the radio interview example, you could give a link to a page where listeners could download a free report “just for the listeners of that station.” Before you promote, always think about what end result you want and then craft a landing page or offer targeted to that to help generate more leads.

More and more people seem to be interested in understanding how display traffic works these days. Content Network is nothing new, in fact it is the original form of online advertising, but so much attention has been focused on search that many people have simply brushed off banner ads as ineffective. I hear this a lot, “Well, I NEVER click on ads.” Bottom line is it’s just not true. When web visitors see interesting, relevant ads that peek their interest, they click on them. The display ad world is essentially media buying and the folks at performerinsider.com put this together and I think it is worth checking out.

People often ask us what they need to do for SEO. It’s a complicated answer. We often try to simplify it by saying that SEO is really just good marketing. You need good content and people talking about that content (links). However, as the conversation progresses, they often get frustrated with the multitude of ways to execute this. There is no one answer that is right for every website, just as every business grows in its own unique way. However, the good folks at Search Engine Land have put together this chart that really spells out what you need to know. If you pay attention and reference this as you build your strategy, there is a good chance you will be on the right track to building a long-term, high quality site that will rank well with relevant users, no matter what category or niche your site falls into. Enjoy!