A while back I had a call with a potential client. She was in a bit of a panic. Her life coach training course had ended six months earlier. She’d been working on a few initiatives to grow her business – a women’s group, some local advertising, updating her Facebook page.

She’d just lost her other full-time job. And she needed clients. ASAP.

She contacted me because she wanted help on her marketing. She felt she needed to create better messaging or a strategy, and she wanted my help. Like a lot of coaches, healers, and creative entrepreneurs, she assumed that in order to get clients coming in the door, she needed to work on her marketing. Like, yesterday.

During our consultation session, it became clear to me, she wasn’t certain about her niche.

The area she wanted to focus in was broad, and that, in and of itself, isn’t a bad thing. But she had trouble articulating what problems her ideal clients were struggling with and what specifically her coaching would help them solve.

As a result, her messaging lacked electricity.

What she was trying to say felt bland, a little like any number of other coaches could be (and probably were) saying exactly the same thing.

Something similar happened to me when I started my business. I was still in my coach training but had been working with writers helping them with their manuscripts for a couple of years before then. I was doing this all part-time while managing a busy full-time job in corporate marketing and a family, with a husband and two girls at home.

When I sat down to write the copy for my website I was building, I tried to incorporate the work I was doing for life coaching…But, I’ll admit, it felt…bleh. Boring, even!

I was bored reading my own copy.

In one part, for example, I said “I help people who are feeling stuck find and believe in their own deep inner wisdom.”  Now, I know my heart was in the right place, but the truth is the copy was so vague! It was devoid of anything concrete. I couldn’t get excited about it. And more importantly, it didn’t offer much for potential clients to either.

Now, those same words might work for someone else, but they didn’t work for me at that time. And that rang through loud and clear. It wasn’t where I was meant to focus my business, and I hadn’t done the work on figuring out where my soul was calling me to go.

I wasn’t clear on my niche, and my marketing copy reflected that.

My point in telling you this, which is what I told that potential client, is that in this type of case, it isn’t the marketing that’s stopping you from getting clients. I needed to get clear on my niche, and that’s what I suggested she do as well. Then she could come back to focusing on her marketing.

I’m glad I could share this with her.

It would be so easy to spend thousands of dollars on hiring a business or marketing coach, undertaking a branding initiative, or hiring a copywriter, only to find herself in the same place after a lot of expense and time.. Once she got clear, it’d be much easier to write the messaging and it would resonate better with her ideal clients.

There are so, so many reasons why you might not be getting the clients you want right now. Some of them could be related to your marketing, and some may not be at all.

It’s important to realize where you are and where your business is in terms of its development.

Then, when it’s time, you can focus on your marketing, getting exactly the right kind of help you need so your ideal clients can recognize you’re exactly the one to help them.

Struggling to find clients?

It’s disheartening how many creative entrepreneurs do incredible work but struggle finding clients.

Let’s transform that.

I want to help people learn where they need to focus their efforts to find clients and grow their businesses. To do that over the next six weeks I’ll be giving away 30 one-on-one assessment sessions to business owners who need more clients. The assessment is to help them understand what their business needs and where, how and why to focus their efforts next to get clients.

I’m doing this because I really want to help people turn their dreams of creating a business that aligns with their souls into a reality.

Does this sound like you?

If so, here’s a link with more information about the assessments and how to sign up.

Photo credit: Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash