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How to Get More Clients
But! If you don’t deal with this one thing on your website, most of your potential clients – the ones you tried so hard to get to your website – will leave your site without getting in touch.
Uncertainty.
Most of your prospects leave your website because they aren’t sure whether your offer is for them. Whether you’re too expensive. Whether you’ll do a good job.
Eliminate the uncertainty, and you’ll get more new clients for your business. Here’s how.
01 Tell them what you offer
Unclear copy is a major uncertainty trigger.
“What does this sentence mean? Will this solve my problems?”
If your prospects have to guess – be it the copy on your call-to-action buttons, your website tagline, or services description – they won’t click on that button or hire you.
So, make sureyour prospects always understand what you’re saying.
Here’s how:
Use words you’re sure your target audience will understand. Be clear and only then clever (if you must). Ordinary but clear always trumps creative but vague.
You don’t have to dumb it down. Think of the stage of awareness of your prospects – how much they know about their problems, possible solutions and your offer – and talk to them as you would if you met offline.
Read your copy out loud. Make sure to use the same words you’d use to describe your offer in a real-life conversation with your clients.
02 Tell them what it costs
Your fees are one of the first things your prospects wonder about.
“Can I afford you? Is it per hour? Per project? Per day?”
To disclose or not to disclose your fees upfront, that’s a widely debated question.
But if your prospects can’t see any indication of your fee range on the website, they may assume your services are too expensive or be too shy to ask (and go with your competitor who stated their fees on their website).
Even if you have valid reasons not to list your rates, there are ways to eliminate this uncertainty without selling yourself short or revealing your secrets to the competition.
Here’s how:
If it’s a service with a clear scope (for example, a one-hour consulting session) consider clearly stating your fees.
Otherwise, provide some guidelines on how you determine your fees so that your prospects have an idea whether it’s in their budget. You can also list your fees for a basic services package.
Preface your fees with “starts at” to leave room for yourself to adjust the quote if necessary.
03 Tell them how it works
“What happens after I contact you? Do you follow a clear process?”
A clearly defined process helps your prospects understand how you work. It also makes your prospects trust your more because it shows you’ve done this before.
The more you tell them about your process in advance, the more certain they feel that you’ll be a great fit (and the more they can imagine themselves getting those deliverables and benefits you describe).
Here’s how:
Add a couple of paragraphs explaining your process on your About page (if you offer one main service) or on the corresponding services pages.
For example, if you are a copywriter, tell your potential clients how the briefing happens, how do you deliver your copy, how many editing rounds are usually included, etc.
Consider answering frequently asked questions and addressing reservations your former clients had before they hired you.
04 Prove you’ll do a good job
You know you’re good, but your prospects have just met you. Worse, they may have met and hired someone else who was a major disappointment.
“Is she any good? What happens if I’m not happy? Is there any refund policy?”
Your potential clients are worried, and you need to reassure them of your expertise if you want to increase your chances for an inquiry, especially if you don’t have much of a reputation (yet).
Here’s how:
Make your website look trustworthy (this website credibility checklist will show you how).
Put up a professionally taken photograph of yourself or your team members. List the companies you’ve been working with if your prospects would recognize their names.
Your prospects decide whether you’re qualified not based on the schools you went to or your certificate. They want to hear from your former clients. So, don’t forget to include credible testimonials.
If it’s typical in your niche to have a portfolio (for ex., if you specialize in web design or copywriting) create a compelling Portfolio page and link to it from the main navigation.
Offer a money-back guarantee (for example, for a course) or mention what happens if a client is unhappy with your work (for example, that you include an editing round for free).
05 Make them like you
If you work with clients one-on-one, this question is as important as the costs or the offer itself.
“Will we get along?”
Show your potential clients that you’re a friendly likable person, and they may even look past some typos on your website.
Here’s how:
Include a video where you introduce yourself and your services. Seeing you and hearing you talk will help your prospects better understand if you’re a good fit and connect with you on a personal level faster.
If creating a video isn’t in your budget or you don’t feel comfortable on camera, make the photos and sparkle your web copy with personality.
If you’re a team, add a “Team” section to your About page with the photos and a short description of each member.
06 Offer an easy way to contact you
“What’s the best way to contact you? How soon will you respond?”
Don’t lose a client at the very last stage because of a too subtle link to your Contact page or a broken contact form. Let your prospects take that last step with ease and reassure them they’re making the right choice.
Here’s how:
Having a Contact link in the navigation goes without saying. But you shouldn’t stop there.
Add a link to your Contact page on your About page and any other page where you talk about what you can do for your customers. Consider including a contact form directly on a service page so that a potential client can send you an inquiry without leaving that page.
Yet, contact forms don’t always offer enough room for a long inquiry or may seem impersonal. They could make your prospects wonder, “Will my message be read?”.
To counter that, additionally to a contact form, add your email address, your photo and a line saying how soon you’ll respond.
TL;DR: How to Get More Clients Online
- Communicate you offer to your prospects using clear words.
- Tell them how much it costs.
- Tell them how it works.
- Prove that you can do a good job.
- Make your prospects like you.
- Offer them an easy way to contact you.
How to Create a Services Page That Gets You New Inquiries on Autopilot
Posting your prices or not is indeed a very heated debate. I used NOT to for a long time, but what happened didn’t make me happier: I’d get calls, people would tell me they wanted to work with me (it appeared to them that I do have good skills and I can solve their problems). We’d chat for few minutes, then, when telling them how much it would cost, bam! it’s at least 2-3 times more than what they expected. I do not have big prices (I’m actually mid-priced, if I can say that), but, compared to competitors who create websites for 500 bucks, I’m clearly out of range.
Now I have my main fees on the website, people get into contracts with me easier (most order online) and they understand that 20 years of experience don’t come with 5 bucks/hour fees.
While I’ll clearly lose potential clients, I do believe those wouldn’t be willing to pay my rates anyways. So, instead of wasting few hours/week chatting with people who’ll never work with me anyways, I can just focus on those who are comfortable with my rates.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience, Ramona. It illustrates my point about this perfectly. Listing your fees on your website is an important way to prequalify your leads and save yourself a lot of time and nerves. Glad to hear your lead generation process became easier for you.
Hello Gill
I love this format. It’s much more engaging than the sea of text you sometimes see. And the images are lightweight.
In your latest newsletter, you said you should “Look like your competitors”. What do you think of the trend for full-width images used as backgrounds for headlines? Gutenberg makes this much easier but it can result in one megabyte or more download per page.
Is the eye-candy worth the wait, and what about mobiles?
Hi Philip,
Thank you for your kind words. Glad you enjoyed the post 🙂
Re your question: Great question, which reminds me once again that there are a lot of nuances in every piece of advice.
To answer your question, let’s take a step back and think about how you generally decide whether that thing your competitors do (let’s call it “thing X”) belongs to 80% where you should be prototypical or the 20% where it doesn’t matter and it’s your call.
To decide, ask yourself this: If I DON’T have thing X on my website will my website:
If you answered “yes” to at least one of the questions, you should probably have that thing X on your website. Unless…
Unless your competitors have no idea what they are doing themselves (a great example: sliders in the header sections).
To avoid blindly following the crowd, ask yourself the final question:
What’s the point of that thing X (i.e. does it have a particular purpose that helps your prospects or is its only purpose to look pretty)?
For a background image for headlines it’s a “no” for all 3 questions. Moreover, this element doesn’t have any purpose except of looking pretty. It doesn’t make your article more valuable or more easy to understand.
So I would say, background images for headlines belong to the 20% that don’t affect prototypicality and where it’s your call whether to use them or not.
Hope this helps.
Hello Gill
Thanks for your comprehensive answer.
This is what I’ve learned from your newsletter, this article and your reply to my comment.
Make sure your site is…
Easy to use, navigate and understand.
Looks familiar. The user thinks I know how this works.
Provides all the information your prospect was hoping to find.
The information is clearly labelled using headlines that help your prospect skim through and find the bits of information they need.
Use eye-candy islands with graphics to aid and speed up your prospect’s ability to understand your message.
And make sure your site is accessible and mobile responsive, so nobody feels left out of the party.
Always ask…
How will this element make my article easier to understand or more valuable to my reader?
And remember that your competitor might not know what they’re doing. So don’t just blindly follow them.
Yikes, I’ve learned a lot from you today.
Thank you.
Hi Philip. My pleasure 🙂 You summarized it perfectly!
Over to you! How many from these 6 points have you found missing on your website? Which ones have you covered already? And most importantly, what do you think of this new format, postogrphic? Let me know in the comments!