The following answers are provided by members of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
1. Connect With Your Client’s Senior Team on LinkedIn
“When you visit other LinkedIn profiles, the person gets a notification that you were on their page. Build up your own profile to tell the story that you want them to see, i.e. that you have thousands of happy clients using a cool product at a great price. If they see you visited them, and your story piques their interest, this is a valuable touchpoint.”
Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches
2. Start or Join an Industry-Focused Facebook Group
“If you can leverage your industry contacts into joining a niche Facebook group or join a group they are already in, you can help steer the conversation your potential customers are already having. Share valuable insights, receive validation (in the form of likes and comments from your customer’s peer group), and use your online brand to become a resource for your industry.”
Nicholas Haase, Startup Drugz
3. Highlight What’s Unique About You
“The “right” clientele are ones that want to see you because you are offering something that someone else doesn’t. A quick way to easily discern why you are unique or special is to ask yourself: If you stopped providing services tomorrow, what would your clients miss most about you? The answer to that question is what makes you different, and should be clear from your website and online presence.”
Rachel Beider, Massage Greenpoint, Massage Williamsburg
4. Create Highly Targeted Content
“If you know who the right clientele is, invest time researching their online hangouts, interests, and values. Once you understand the online profile of your ideal customer, create great content and spend money to put it on the right channels. For high-value customers, 500-word blog posts won’t cut it, so be prepared to spend a chunk of your marketing budget on creating the best content in a niche.”
Vik Patel, Future Hosting
5. Adapt Your Brand to Your Ideal Customer
“Make sure your brand represents the wants and needs of the customers that you most want to attract. Focus your message around that customer. If your brand message is too broad, you will struggle to find customers, because no one will relate to you. By narrowing your brand message, you will lose some potential clients, but if it’s done right, you will attract your ideal clients.”
Alan Carniol, Interview Success Formula
6. Take Advantage of Audience Targeting Tools
“Use Facebook’s business manager or the new LinkedIn Matched Audiences tools to create social media campaigns that are personalized and highly targeted. This might be more time consuming, but could actually decrease your ad spending and attract the right kind of clientele.”
Russell Kommer, eSoftware Associates Inc
7. Focus on the Outcome for Your Clients
“Prospects want to know what you can do for them, not about you. Focus your content and craft authority messaging on how you have made your clients lives/businesses better. Then leverage those stories to attract others.”
Kim Walsh-Phillips, Elite Digital Group
8. Get Your Clientele Involved in Content Creation
“Continue to produce content that the audience segment wants and share it with them regularly. This thought leadership reflects positively on your brand and builds loyalty and credibility with this clientele. You can even ask them what they are most interested in so you can keep producing relevant content for them, and it makes them feel more involved.”
9. Look Bigger Than You Are
“My best clients tend to be large, well-known organizations, and they are looking for a partner that also has brand recognition and a platform. If I want to be taken seriously, I need an online presence that wows them and provides the impression that I am running a big-time operation. This has involved creating a website and social media profiles that maximize experience and accolades to the fullest.”
Alexandra Levit, PeopleResults
10. Create Value and Speak Your Clientele’s Language
“Focus on creating value within your brand for your clientele. It could be unique messaging, specialized content, or even catering to something like the style of humor your audience likes. You need to address your audience at their level with your brand. Speak their language and understand them as best you can.”
Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now
11. Focus on Your Landing Pages
“It’s about the sales funnels you set beginning with your landing pages. For each type of client we seek, it is important for us to first create a landing page on our website that attracts the profile of the right type of clientele. These landing pages are created specifically to vet the “right” type of clientele and weed out the ones who would not make a good fit.”
Jacob Tanur, Click Play Films
12. Create a Cohesive, Seamless Experience
“By creating a cohesive online brand experience through channels such as social media and your website, you can target specific client demographics, rather than confusing visitors looking into your brand. A united brand identity goes a long way in getting the right message to the right people.”
Stan Garber, Scout RFP
13. Use Visuals to Show Off Your Products
“Because our clientele needs to see a transformation, we use photos and videos — visuals to explain how our product works and how people are transformed through our products. We post our stories, photos we’re proud of, and inspirational messages we want to share.”
Daisy Jing, Banish
14. Create Useful Video Content for YouTube
“The best way to leverage an online brand on a long-term basis is to create video content and post it on Youtube. Since people love to watch videos, it makes sense to start doing videos such as product reviews, tutorials and Q&As which can position your brand for higher visibility. Some industries have built very loyal followers and have attracted the “right” type of clientele by doing so.”
Derek Broman, Discount Enterprises LLC deguns.net
15. Go Where Your Ideal Clients Are
“Identifying which social media platforms your ideal clientele is using regularly is a simple yet effective way to attract them to your online brand. Once you determine the social media platforms, the next step is to tailor content and digital marketing efforts towards that demographic.”
Bryanne Lawless, BLND Public Relations
