So you say you want to attract more clients? What if I told you that you do not need to wait around for them to come to you? That you can actively be out there attracting the right clients for your business. Or train someone on your staff to proactively attract more clients.
Social media. You have heard me say it before and I will say it again. Social media works. It is how you are using social media to attract more clients, that is either working or not working for you.
Today I am giving you three easy ways you can be using your social media to attract more clients, that you probably aren’t already doing. Along with success stories of clients who are doing it!
These are three high-level, strategic marketing moves that you can’t afford to overlook.
Biggest Takeaways:
- 0:40 Create your content with a strategy and position yourself as an expert.
- 3:35 Always try to be tagging people and places when posting
- 5:40 Have an outreach strategy
Recommendations:
Social media does work. And sometimes we need to step out of ourselves and admit that maybe we need some inspiration and to learn something new. Doors for Better Marketing With Bella are opening soon and an awesome change is coming. As well we are rolling out a new feature because as the times have changed, so has social media and so has (and should) your strategy. When you are looking to attract more clients, social media is the place you need to place your focus. And when you are given the correct tools to utilize social media, the sky is the limit. Joining a community of business owners who know how to attract more clients, grow your business and find serious success puts you in a position to succeed as well. Doors are opening soon, join the waitlist today!
Links:
Better Marketing With Bella
Bella Vasta Instagram
Mastermind Group
Transcript
This is episode 311 of Bella in Your Business.
Hi there, I’m Bella Vasta from Jump Consulting. You might know me from CBS, NBC, Fox, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, or maybe you’ve seen me speak on stage or read my book The Four Dogs That Every Business Owner Needs. In any case, get ready because you’re about to get your hashtag Bella Butt Kickin’ in this next episode of Bella in Your Business.
So what do you say? Let’s get ready and jump.
Welcome to another episode of Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta, your coach and host, and I’m here today to tell you three easy ways to use social media marketing to get more clients. Who wants more clients? Maybe you just hired somebody and you want to get them going. But did you know that you don’t just have to be a sitting duck? You don’t have to sit there and wait for the phone to ring or your email to go off with a notification.
You can actually get out there and be a little proactive about it. And today I’m going to give you three different ways and methods that you can do right now—or you can train someone to go do for you. It might be one of the shorter episodes, so you’re in for a treat, and you probably can listen to this driving between houses.
Actually, go ahead and send me a DM and let me know—how do you listen, or where are you listening? Are you walking dogs? Are you driving? Are you folding laundry, working out? What are you doing? I want to know, and I’ll probably give you a shout-out too.
All right, the very first one is: Create your content with a strategy and position yourself as an expert.
This means to locally reference where you are and utilize local platforms to gather your information like Nextdoor. Present yourself as an expert, then ensure that your content is something that you can reuse every single year—and local to you and your clients. So let’s unpack that for a minute. That was a lot.
When I say “become an expert,” I do not mean sending out tips about, “Did you know that a parakeet has 200 feathers?” I don’t care. That is not what I mean. What I mean is things like—I’m going to use Arizona examples—like javelina, which are wild boar running around the desert, and they have tusks. When they have their babies with them, they can attack. And they love pumpkins. You don’t really put pumpkins out front of your house here until Halloween day because javelinas most likely will come up from the washes and eat them.
And if they’ll eat that, they’ll also eat small dogs and cats. It happens. And also bobcats and coyotes. It’s like the Wild Wild West out here. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s still a very good public service announcement.
As an example, one year around this time, I made some graphics of javelina and was like, “What you need to know about javelinas and your pets.” And it was because I was on Nextdoor and I saw everybody talking—“Oh my God, saw a javelina, what am I gonna do?”
So it’s the perfect time for me to come in as the pet expert to give some people some tips and tricks. What do you do if you see a javelina? What do you do with your dog if you see one? How to not attract the javelina—all of it, right? It’s a good time to position yourself.
Same thing around here with bobcats. Bobcats are massive, and they look like little mini lions. They jump very high, so they can scale the brick walls that we have in our backyards. And again—the small pets, the toy Yorkies, all of them—the same thing with hawks.
That’s just one section: animal life. Maybe you have a Founder’s Day coming up, maybe a small-town event, or a farmer’s market, or maybe there’s a new local dog park or outdoor patio that’s dog-friendly. It doesn’t have to just be about wildlife.
What I’m saying is: figure out a strategy and what makes your area unique. What kind of things can you add to people’s lives? When you can do that and post it in local groups, you’re adding value to people’s lives—or to the message boards. That’s how you establish yourself as an expert.
It’s not just about posting on your feed.
The other beautiful thing about this is that October comes around every year. Javelina season comes around every year. Snake season, hawk season—all of it. Most of it is evergreen, and you can keep using it over and over again.
Think about it—maybe you’ve already done this. What did you do last year? Is there anything you could reuse from last year? I love looking at my feed sometimes and seeing what I did a year ago. Because guess what? No one’s going to remember what you posted last year. They barely see what you post this year.
On that side note, I’m going to say this again because I keep trying to say it somewhere near the beginning:
Social media used to be about being seen in the feed—“Can I beat the algorithm?” But now, with the amount of content being pushed out every second, you can’t just beat that. Nobody cares about you. I’m sorry, but they don’t.
What they do care about is once they find your website or learn that your service exists—and they’re in the discovery stage of the sales process—they’ll go to your Facebook and Instagram (if you invite them on your homepage) and see if they can get to know, like, and trust you.
That, my friends, is exactly what social media is for.
It’s not about beating the algorithm or being seen in the feed. That should be secondary.
Number two: Always try to tag people and places when posting.
Start conversations. This is actually a loaded number two, so I’m kind of giving you more than three tips here.
Start conversations. How can you connect yourself with local groomers, vets, dog walkers, pet shops? Who’s active on social media in your area, and how can you create content that lets you shout them out or support them once or twice a month to strengthen your connection?
Keep conversations and relationships strong. Yeah, you might have to schedule this.
So, in the Better Marketing with Bella program (where our doors are opening very soon, and you need to get on the waitlist if you’re interested—or just shoot me an email at [email protected]), think about it like this:
When it’s World Veterinarian Day, you can start before you even post that post—two days before that, “Who’s your favorite vet? Tag them below!” Have people tag their vet. You tag the vet.
Then, when World Veterinarian Day comes along, tag the vets again. Make an excuse to talk about grooming, training, or whatever it might be.
Just make sure that whoever you’re shouting out on social media is also active on social media, because you don’t want to be the only one doing all the heavy lifting.
And sometimes, because they’re business owners and they’re busy, you might need to send them an email and say, “Hey, we mentioned you today.” Just like I do on this podcast to anyone that we mention.
Solicit after you post. Think about: how can we be tagging people?
Stephanie from Chicago Urban Pets has been doing this fantastically. She’s in the Mastermind and also doing intensives with me now. She did the sidewalk chalk thing and said, “Bella, we didn’t get any clients.” I was like, “Uh-huh.” She said, “But my gosh, the connections we made are amazing.”
She made so many connections from that guerrilla marketing campaign—relationships built, partnerships formed. She now has patios where she can host events easily because those businesses said, “Yeah, put the sidewalk chalk here.”
They shared it, there was collaboration, and you never know what can happen from these relationships. Really—the world is your oyster. Whatever you can cast as a vision and execute can really happen.
Why not gain relationships with points of influence in your community?
That right there—remember that sentence. If nothing else from this podcast, remember that.
Gain relationships with points of influence in your community.
Leverage it, guys. You got this. You can totally do this.
All right, and the last thing: Have an outreach strategy.
We talk about this in depth in the Better Marketing with Bella program. It’s how Becky went to a 400% engagement increase in one week—because she followed my scripts and did the tactics for outreaching to people.
Think about it—would you ever walk into a networking meeting, sit in the middle of the room, and not say anything? Maybe occasionally say, “Hi, I’m a pet sitter. Hi, we want to walk your dog.” That would be so awkward.
But unfortunately, 90% of business owners are awkward on social media. They’re not doing any outreach. They just expect everyone to bow down to them. They care so much about me—you should talk to me, you should contact me.
They do not contact a single soul on social media.
When was the last time you reached out to someone, tagged a client, or created a storyline about somebody else or another business? When was the last time you went through your town’s hashtag and commented on dog photos without asking for anything in return?
You need to have an outreach strategy.
All right, so let’s recap:
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Create your content with strategy and position yourself as an expert.
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Always tag people and places when posting.
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Have an outreach strategy.
Guys, these are three high-level strategic things that you can do.
If you feel like social media doesn’t work—well, you don’t work. Respectfully, you don’t work.
Social media does work. I’ve built an almost half-a-million-dollar coaching company on social media. It works. You just need to know how to work it.
And we need to step outside ourselves long enough to think: maybe I need to learn something new, or maybe I need inspiration, or maybe I need to be around people who are killing it—doing what I think is impossible.
Because when you get around people doing the impossible, guess what you start doing? The impossible.
So yeah, I want you in Better Marketing with Bella. I really do—because it’s a lot of fun, and I kind of know what I’m doing.
I have so many testimonials that show how great the program has been for the businesses that have met me halfway.
The object for me as a coach is to phase you out of the program eventually. I want you to have your entire staff doing it, strategizing it, and attracting clients and employees left and right.
We’re going to be announcing it soon, and there’s a big, awesome change coming to the program that I’m really excited about—never done before.
We’re also adding a new feature to the program because social media changes. Better Marketing with Bella is not the same as it was in January 2017. Why? Because social media is 100% different than it was in 2017.
Maybe I should do an episode about how we changed our program—because that’ll make you think about your own social media strategy. That could be interesting. Hmm.
Gillian, darling, as you’re listening to this podcast making the show notes, could you maybe make a note of it?
You guys don’t know my British accent—that’s my attempt.
Anyway, I’m going to stop rambling because you’ve got dogs to walk, litter boxes to scoop, and clients and staff to manage.
I hope this has given you food for thought. I live for your feedback, so please let me know what you thought of this episode.
And don’t forget to go to jumpconsulting.net/waitlist.
And remember—when life gets you down, always keep jumping. Bye now.
So what did you think? Did you love this episode? I sure hope you did, because I put a lot of love into this for you.
The best way you can show me that is by going to iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts and leave a review.
I just might read it on the next episode.
I also want to remind you that when life gets you down, remember to always keep jumping.
Thanks for listening.