You’ve been in business for five or more years, have a service-based company, and things are going well. You put the necessary time and effort into marketing, have a great team by your side, and your systems and processes are in place. The website for your business also looks good, but you’ve noticed that it doesn’t always attract the right type of customers.
How often do you get enquiries from people who are just shopping around, or from those who simply can’t afford your services? Maybe you’ve encountered prospects who take forever to decide, or those that don’t quite understand what your business is all about?
Dealing with people that won’t become clients is both time consuming and unproductive. That’s why here at Monster Creative, we often talk about disqualifying customers with our clients, and explain to them how a website can be used in that process. It may sound strange at first, but testing prospect’s viability of becoming a long-term customer and disqualifying them early if they’re not a good fit means less stress and more revenue in the long run.
You’re not right for everyone
As business owners, we’re quick to say yes to just about everything. We want to be known as someone who gets things done, not as someone who says something isn’t possible. But while we might pride ourselves on a can-do attitude, always saying yes to jobs and projects can quickly become a negative.
Of course, getting new work is important. But we’ve seen from time to time that getting the right kind of work from the right kind of customer is much more important. Otherwise, that business you love so much could become nothing more than a job you hate.
The concept comes from the idea that concentrating your marketing on only the most qualified leads is a successful way to increase sales. Qualifying is determining whether or not that guy who got in touch to find out about your services is worthy of the time and effort it will take for you to convert him into a customer.
But how do you disqualify clients, and how do you find the type of clients that lift you up? The first step is to determine what types of clients are your best and worst fit customers. Then, you must clearly identify the main criteria for disqualification.
If you find this process difficult, think back to the jobs and projects you’ve done in the past that weren’t a good fit, either because you didn’t enjoy the work or the relationship, or because it didn’t bring value. Compare that to the projects you loved doing and the clients you most like working for.
Harness what you have learned from the negative experiences and decide who you want to work with, and who you don’t. Knowing this will bring you much closer to your ideal client. When you communicate who you want to work with throughout your sales and marketing, potential clients that are not a right fit are much less likely to contact you.
Make your website your best sales tool
To help you attract your ideal client to your website, we’d like to share five elements for your website and digital marketing strategy that can make a huge difference.
- Concentrate on the services that are of most value
There’s no need to list absolutely everything you can do on your website. It’s better to narrow it down to your key services only. Focus on the services that are of most value – to you and to your clients. You can always present add-on services once you’ve established a relationship. For instance, the core services at Monster Creative are creating fantastic websites plus branding and logo design. We can also organise things like signage and marketing materials for clients, but that’s not our core business. If our existing clients need it done, we’d be more than happy to help but if a new client comes to us just to get a business card made, we’ll disqualify them.
- Only showcase your ideal types of work
Your image gallery, project page or case studies should clearly show the types of work that you love doing. This is the place where you can show the type of work you want to do more of, for the type of clients that you love. Also only display testimonials from your ideal clients, about the work you like to do most of. That will give your website visitors a great indication of who you are, what you do, and who you do it for.
- Be upfront about your pricing
Prospective clients will appreciate it when you show them right off the bat what they’re likely to spend if they consider working with you. We believe that if you do have a compelling brand and authority-building content for your service-based businesses, there shouldn’t be any hesitation around putting prices on the website. Pricing transparency immediately weeds out bargain shoppers and if you show enough of the value you’re offering, you can confidently display your rates or package pricing online.
- Include an extensive FAQ page
Having a dedicated page on your website to give answers to commonly asked questions is a great idea for several reasons. Even if you’ve thoroughly explained your services elsewhere on your site, chances are you can still benefit from a FAQ page. Site visitors will get a much better idea of who you are and what you do, it provides helpful content for users and address their hesitations, it provides a good online customer experience, and as an added bonus – it’s great for SEO.
- Use your enquiry form wisely
Another easy and super effective way to assess if a prospect is right for your business is to ask them the right questions on your contact form. It will help quality the lead better and their details will be fed straight into your CRM (means Customer relationship management) which saves time and manual handling. If a prospect is already in the funnel, you can send them an onboarding questionnaire as that’s an excellent way to get to know them better and start your relationship off on the right foot.
Disqualifying clients has helped us attract our own ideal clients and that has accelerated our growth. It’s been a game changer! If you think your business and Monster Creative are a great fit, we’d love to hear from you. We love nothing more than seeing our clients get great results from their digital marketing with a stunning website that attracts and converts the right type of clients.
