How to attract more clients without shouting louder

It's no secret that marketing and sales can feel loud, overwhelming and awkward for many business owners.

But when you base your marketing firmly around your unique value, and what that means for your dream clients, it can soon feel straightforward and natural.

If you've been quietly hoping there was a more natural way to market and grow your business, this session led by Melitta Campbell is for you!

Topics covered in this session

• How to stand out without hustling or shouting

• How to attract amazing clients who get you

• How to share what you do in a way that feels natural, not forced

• Have the time and energy to communicate your value consistently

About the speaker

Melitta is an award-winning business coach, author and international speaker specialising in helping female leaders and entrepreneurs unlock, communicate and step into their true value.

She is host of the top 2% global podcast The Art of Value Whispering, a TEDx speaker and the author of the best-selling book A Shy Girl's Guide to Networking.

Her thought leadership has been featured in the media, including Forbes, Fast Company and Thrive Global.

Through her work and content, Melitta continues to inspire entrepreneurs to succeed, without being loud or pushy, but by embracing their true value.

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Transcript

Lightly edited for clarity.

Beth: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's Lunch and Learn. My name is Beth, and I'll be your host today.

For those of you attending a Lunch and Learn for the first time, Enterprise Nation is a vibrant community platform for start-ups and small businesses.

I'm pleased to introduce Melitta Campbell, who is a business coach. In this session, Melitta will discuss how to stand out without hustling or shouting.

If you have any questions throughout the webinar, please post them in the chat and we'll do our best to answer them at the end of the session.

Today's webinar will be recorded, and we'll send a follow-up email with further resources and the recording later today. Over to you, Melitta.

Melitta: Thanks, Beth, and welcome, everyone.

Today, we're looking at how to attract more clients without having to shout louder, be pushy, or change who you are. It's my favourite thing to talk about, so thank you for being here.

I'm Melitta Campbell. You can find me at Melitta on LinkedIn, and I'm also an adviser on Enterprise Nation.

If anything we discuss today resonates with you, feel free to connect with me. And if I don't have time to answer your question today, come and track me down afterwards. I love connecting with people on these platforms and continuing the conversation.

What if attracting clients felt natural? What if self-promotion actually felt good? And what if being yourself was all you needed to do to grow your business?

I believe you can have these things, and my mission today is to show you how, so you can make your marketing and your business feel much simpler.

I'm going to give you my entire system as well. I'll introduce it today, and if it resonates with you, you can download it and take it further.

I've been working in marketing and communications for three decades. Over that time, I've worked with solopreneurs, founders, large corporates and non-profits, and I've seen clear patterns in what works.

Over my career, the marketing landscape has changed significantly. We have more tools than ever before. But I'm happy to report that many of the old methods still work, because regardless of how things change, we are still people.

Even across cultures, there are some simple things that people need. Once you understand these patterns, marketing, communicating your value, setting up a sales process and having great conversations all become much easier. They all come from the same space, and that's what I'm going to share with you today.

I've packaged these patterns into what I call the Value Whispering Blueprint. You can Google that on YouTube. I gave a TEDx talk about it if you want a quick insight into the deeper methodology.

I'm also an award-winning business coach, TEDx speaker, three-time bestselling author and host of the top 2% podcast, The Art of Value Whispering.

Before we go into how to do this, I want to touch on why marketing often feels harder than it should.

From what I've seen, marketing feels hard when you're trying to do everything you feel you should do. When it comes to marketing, if we go online, we're bombarded with advice. You should be on Instagram. You should post several times a day. You should host events. You should do this, that and the other.

But as far as I'm concerned, marketing is a personal relationship between you and your next client. Therefore, there are no shoulds. No relationship is the same.

Think about all the relationships in your life. None of them are quite the same. You never show up in exactly the same way, or build that relationship in the same way. So marketing has to be personal.

When you try to follow what appears to work for other people, you're not marketing in a way that aligns with who you are.

It won't necessarily correspond to the relationship you're building, or the experience and impact you want to create for your clients. It won't be following your vision or your strengths.

And the other challenge is that what you see in marketing is only a tiny fraction of what successful people are actually doing. You won't be seeing the foundational elements, or all the things around them that support what they do publicly.

They may be doing things in a way that corresponds to their strengths. They may have a big team. There are so many factors that can change things.

So it's important to find what is aligned for you in your marketing, and to align that with your strengths and vision. When you do that, marketing starts to feel much easier. I can promise you.

Doing more isn't the answer either. When marketing feels hard, people often come to me feeling stuck. Their marketing doesn't feel quite right, and it isn't getting the results they want. But because they don't know what else to do, they just work harder.

The trouble is that posting more, adding another strategy, trying something new, or putting more time and effort into your marketing can keep you stuck.

I've put this picture up because so often, when I speak to someone, the visual I have in my head is from when my children were small.

I don't know if anyone else has small children, but they have a tendency to make art that is just splodges everywhere. They're not quite sure what to do next, so they add more stickers, more glitter and more colour.

To them, it's beautiful, and who are we to judge? But when it comes to your marketing strategy, if you treat it like a child's art project, it becomes messy and overwhelming. The pieces don't add up and work together.

So we end up putting in more time and effort, but it doesn't necessarily work.

Instead, I encourage you to aim for less but better. That's my big motto.

Aim for one dream client. That doesn't mean you can only serve that client. When you focus your marketing and messaging on a really clear niche, you often start attracting more people from outside that niche because your messaging is clearer.

People can see the journey they're going to go on. They can see the result.

I'm known for working with women, but men come to me quite often and say: "I know you only work with women, but the result you get for them is what I've been trying to get. Would you consider working with me?"

Then I can have a conversation and decide whether they're a good fit.

So when you aim everything at one dream client, that doesn't mean you only ever work with that one client. Don't worry about limiting your business. It simply focuses your resources.

If you're a smaller business with limited funds and limited resources, it means you can get more done with those resources rather than spreading yourself too thin.

Having one core strategy also makes things much simpler. If you have too many moving parts, you don't know what's working and what isn't. You don't know when something is broken.

Having one core marketing strategy makes things easier for you, and it feels easier for your prospects too. They won't get lost in the system or fall through the cracks.

I'm going to show you how to develop that one core strategy. There's the one-page marketing plan. I'm going to show you the one-slide marketing plan. We're bringing it all down.

You want to make sure everything you do is aligned to your client journey. How do your clients find you? How do they fall in love with you? From that point, what path do they take to decide to work with you, and then to decide to stay with you?

When you align your marketing with the natural journey they're taking anyway, it feels natural for them and for you. Your marketing becomes a natural extension of the value you already create. You're not trying to create a whole new thing.

I see this quite a lot. People create a marketing plan over here, a sales process over there, and their messaging is somewhere in the middle. Then their actual business is somewhere else again.

You want the whole thing to be one seamless journey. Then it's much easier for you, for your dream clients, and for you to stand out and become known in the market for the results you get.

All of this is in my book, The Art of Value Whispering, but don't go there yet because I'm going to give it to you for free in a couple of slides.

Instead of the children's art project with colours, sparkles and stickers everywhere, you want to aim for that beautiful Picasso one-line drawing. It's much more elegant and much easier to understand.

You don't want to confuse yourself or your clients. Aim for less but better, and create an elegant strategy that is easier for you to manage and easier for your clients to follow.

So, a quick recap. Marketing is not about being loud, being pushy, reaching everyone, or aiming for any client.

If being loud is your personality naturally, great. But if it isn't, don't try to be someone you're not, because you'll start attracting someone else's clients. You won't be attracting clients who relate to you, fall in love with your methodology, and want to work with you.

So be true to yourself. Authentic is a bit of a buzzword, because what does it actually mean? It changes in every situation. But make sure everything is coming from your truth.

Being pushy isn't fun. Most people don't like being pushy, and most people don't like being pushed. We've all had messages saying: "We should work together", followed by a long pitch. And you think: "You don't even know who I am yet."

Being pushy doesn't work. In sales, the bottom 5% of sales professionals are the pushy ones. That idea of the pushy salesperson often puts us off.

I know some people hold back from their marketing because they don't want to have the sales conversation, and they don't want to be that kind of person. You don't have to be. It doesn't work anyway.

When you're trying to reach everyone, your message won't connect or resonate. It's very difficult to put content out there and market your business in a way that connects with everybody.

So you want to hone things down to that one dream client.

Aiming for any client is also a problem. You want the best clients. If you have a service or product that could help everyone, like coaching, that doesn't mean everyone is going to be a dream client.

We've all had painful clients. Not everyone will be ready. Not everyone will be willing to pay. Not everyone will be willing to do the work and show up.

So we want to narrow things down. Who are the people we love working with? Who gives us energy? Who gets amazing results? Those are the people we want to focus on.

Typically, your top 20% of clients bring in 80% of your income. Pareto's principle works all the time, and you can boil that down even further. Aiming for any client is a recipe for burnout.

Marketing, as far as I'm concerned, is about building relationships. It's depth over volume, connection over attention, and understanding what works rather than continuous guesswork.

There is always a bit of experimentation required in marketing. But if you have a solid foundation, you're in a much better place than if you're just trying anything. And that's where we get into children's art project territory.

You want to aim to attract the right clients.

I have a case study of someone I worked with who was very much in this situation. She described herself as drowning in a sea of marketing woes. She had multiple marketing activities she was trying to manage, and her business was just her.

She ran a small tutoring business. She had a physical location, but she was trying to post every day on social media, advertise online and offline, hand out flyers and use business cards. Nothing was quite working, and she hated it all.

She felt burnt out and thought marketing didn't work for her.

What we did was take a step back and find what I call her value sweet spot. This is where we looked deeply at everything that was unique and different about her.

Why did she do what she did? What motivated her? What were her strengths? What was her vision? What lessons had she learned the hard way that gave her the conviction that her philosophy was the best way to teach children?

Then we did a similar exercise for her dream clients. Once we discovered who those dream clients were, we looked at who they were today, where they were going, how her service fitted into their world, what else they were trying to achieve, what their values were, why she was the perfect person for them and why they were the perfect clients for her.

We looked for the overlap. That is your value sweet spot.

When you build everything from that space, it's naturally differentiated. It's naturally aligned to your strengths and vision, and it filters everything through what has the most impact and relevance for your ideal clients.

The world is really busy. I started training communication professionals nearly 20 years ago, and even then, I was saying everyone was overwhelmed with messages. At that time, people were getting about 20,000 messages a day. I think that's now closer to 80,000.

So people are really busy. We have to share content, messaging and marketing activities that are highly relevant and interesting if we want to get their attention and cut through the noise.

From that information, we created one new marketing strategy and one clear message.

She hadn't made a profit in her business. It had been losing money for two years. She was at the point where her husband was saying: "You have to close this down. We can't fund this anymore." But she wasn't ready to give up.

After finding that one marketing strategy, which saved her a lot of money and time, she had an activity she did once a month.

It didn't even have anything to do with teaching children, but it had everything to do with showing parents that she was there to support them, that she shared their values, and that she could bring them together and add value to their lives.

That one strategy, which she loved implementing, got her into profit within three months. Within six months, she had a waitlist. 12 months later, she was looking at opening a second location.

All of that came from finding one marketing strategy that worked for her and one clear message that felt natural.

Once we found her message, she came back the next week and said: "I just got five clients, and I didn't even sell to them."

I think very often, what we think of as sales is sales done badly. When sales is done well, we just think: "This person really understood me. They asked great questions. They cared."

That was definitely the camp she was now in. When she talked about the work she did, why she did it a certain way, the results she got and why she loved certain aspects of what she did, her clients wouldn't dream of working with anyone else.

So things can come together quite quickly once you get them right and keep them simple.

The key is to make marketing feel aligned and natural by finding your value sweet spot.

That value sweet spot is the overlap between everything that's unique and brilliant about you and the real needs, desires and priorities of your dream clients.

No other business will have that exact same overlap, which is why it naturally differentiates you.

We don't have time to go deeply into that today, but if you scan the QR code or go to melittacampbell.com/en, you can get a free copy of my book, The Art of Value Whispering.

That book has the entire process. The value sweet spot is the first part, and then you look at value weaving, how to build your mindset and how to have sales conversations.

The whole thing is in that book, and I'm happy to gift that to you today to support your business growth. You'll also get the value sweet spot cheat sheet.

So where do you focus? First, get clear on your value sweet spot: your value, your client's needs and the overlap between the two.

Then understand your client journey. You may have already done this work, but it's about looking at where your clients are now and where they want to get to afterwards.

Where do they want to be after working with you? Once they get their big problem solved, what does that look like? What can they do after working with you that they can't do today?

What are the steps that will get them there? And for each of those steps, what do you want them to think, feel and do? That becomes your marketing plan.

Let me break that down.

The simple client journey starts with awareness. This is when someone first becomes aware of you. At this point, if you have based your marketing and content around your value sweet spot, your messaging is going to get their attention. It will resonate with them, and they'll start to build know, like, trust and belief.

The belief part is often missed. They know who you are. They like what you do and how you do it. They trust you to deliver what you promise. But they also have to believe you're the right person for them.

They can have all the rest, but if they don't believe you're the right person for them, they won't become a client.

Going through that process takes time. One social media post won't take them through the whole process. So breaking down the client journey slows your marketing down in a helpful way, so you can build know, like, trust and belief as you go.

The first step is awareness. They discover you somehow.

Then they start considering whether you are the right supplier for them. That's a process in itself.

Then they make the decision. Do they buy from you or not? And when? Only 3% to 5% of people are ready to buy at any one time, which is why nurture campaigns are so important in marketing. You want to stay front of mind for when they are ready to make that decision.

Once they decide to work with you, the next stage is retention. Then advocacy.

Retention is where they stay with you for longer and increase their lifetime value. Advocacy is where they talk positively about you to other people and bring you more clients. That takes their lifetime value to the next level.

What you want to do with your marketing is weave your value sweet spot through each of these stages, breaking it down into what you want people to think, feel and do at each stage.

Maybe they become aware of you, and you want them to think: "Sarah sounds perfect for me." You want them to feel: "I can trust her, and I want to know more." Then you want them to do the next thing, whether that's clicking through to your website, booking a call, or downloading a PDF.

Then you think about how you can help them do that. That is your marketing plan.

Brainstorm all the ways you can help them at each stage. As they go through the journey, their needs and questions will be different. When they are just becoming aware of you, you want to keep the information quite light and encourage them to take the next step.

At the consideration stage, you can take them on more of a journey and help them learn more about you.

At the decision point, they want all the information. But if you give them all the information when they've only just discovered you, they'll feel overwhelmed. A confused or overwhelmed mind doesn't take action, so they don't buy into what you offer, no matter how good it is.

So break it down into a journey. Brainstorm ideas for each stage. There will be some overlap. Then select the best and most doable ideas for where you are right now.

You can always upgrade and add more things later. But once you do that and align it with the client journey, you have your marketing plan.

That is my one-slide marketing plan for you. That is how you can attract more clients without shouting, being loud or being pushy. You are being yourself, and your business is representing the value it can offer to the right people.

You can then attract the right people naturally, nurture them through that sequence, and make it feel natural for them.

Because all of this is aligned to your strengths and vision, it feels natural to you too. You'll start to have more clients dropping into sales conversations, landing on your sales page and becoming clients.

I'll pause there and answer any questions. I'll leave this slide up, so if you want to get the book that takes you through all of that, and the value sweet spot cheat sheet, you can either go to melittacampbell.com/en or use the QR code.

Beth, were there any questions?

Beth: Thanks very much, Melitta. Lots of people are saying thank you for the book. I think there was a bit of difficulty using the scanner, but someone has popped the link to the web page in the chat, so everyone should have that now.

We do have a few questions. Dan asks: "What are some of the methods or exercises we can do to start thinking in the direction of finding our values for marketing? When there's so much out there, it's hard to know where to start."

Melitta: Start with what's meaningful for you.

In marketing, we very often look out there, but you want to start with what's meaningful for you and your business. Why did you start your business in the first place? Start there.

When you're looking at your values, don't just say: "My value is excellence," for example, because excellence means something different to everybody.

Break down your top three values and what each one looks like when you live it. What does excellence mean in your company? How does that show up in your business? How does it drive what you do and what you don't do?

Your value sweet spot is as much a filter for what you don't do as it is for what you do.

And it isn't just your values. It's everything that's unique and brilliant about you. Anything that's a little bit different. Why you do things in a certain way.

It takes a bit of thinking, and the questions are in the book. But once you understand that, the way you talk about what you do changes, and that already starts to attract the right clients.

Beth: That's great. Thank you. We had a question from Iselle on the last slide. Iselle would like to know: "What's a good way to understand what prospects think, feel and do?"

Melitta: It's about what you want them to think, feel and do.

They will act in a certain way, but when they become aware of you, say they land on your website for the first time, what do you want them to think, feel and do? That's a really nice filter to use.

Very often, websites talk all about the business, but in quite a vague way. They don't actually tell anyone what they do.

So think from your client's perspective. If you want them to land on your site and think: "Thank goodness, I've found someone who can help with my problem," then you'd better tell them what problem you solve right at the beginning.

If this is you, and you have this problem, you're in the right place. That is what the first thing on your website should say.

Then think about how you want them to feel. Maybe you want them to feel relieved. Then ask: what's the next stage? Follow the logical questions they will have.

I always think it's a bit like the TV series 24. Every time something was going to happen in that hour, you'd think: "I've got it. It's this." And just as you think you've solved it, they solve that already and move you on to the next thing.

You want to do that with your marketing as well. Go through the logical questions your clients will have, answer those, and then draw them into the next section and the next step of your marketing plan.

Beth: That's brilliant. Thank you. Unfortunately, that is all we've got time for today.

Thank you so much, Melitta. People found that a really great session, and there are lots of thank yous in the chat.

If you still have a question that we didn't get around to answering today, please feel free to reach out to Melitta via LinkedIn or her Enterprise Nation page.

We'll send the recording and further resources later today, along with the cheat sheet. Thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you, Melitta, and I hope everyone has a good rest of their day.

Melitta: Thank you. Bye.

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