Today, we’re going to walk you through the process of finding new clients using workshops. In this process there are five key steps:
- Determining the purpose of your workshop
- Visiting how you’re currently finding new clients
- Reviewing your overall client intake strategy
- Using social media to attract new clients, and
- Where your new clients are coming from – warm or cold leads.
Table of Contents
What’s the purpose of your workshop?
Have you ever thought of creating a new workshop? or perhaps you’ve already hosted a few. Regardless, you need to understand your purpose. There are a couple of ways to look at it, based on how you’ve defined your business goals and planned out your strategy.
If you’re looking to ensure your business is not running as a hobby, you need to have a solid strategy in place before you start creating your individual workshop or series. Your strategy doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to be mapped out. If you’re having trouble creating your strategy, we can help.
Assuming you’ve mapped out your strategy, the next question is how will this workshop be positioned to support your strategy? Depending on what goals you want to accomplish, the content of your workshop may not change, however, the way you market and nurture your leads likely will.
Typically there are a couple of key reasons for hosting a workshop. It can be about:
- Gaining new leads and information to build your mailing list (and eventually sell to)
- Warming up an existing audience in preparation to sell a product or service
- Providing additional value and knowledge to current or previous paid clients
Knowing your desired outcome will help define the path to follow
How do you currently find new clients?
Now that you have your outcomes and goals defined for your workshop, let’s take a look at how you’re currently finding clients. What is your primary source? Is this through a referral network? Social media (if so, what platform)? Your website? Something else?
If you’re able to identify a plentiful source of clients, the obvious answer is to keep doing what you’re doing and optimize the process. In the case where you’re finding lots of clients, what type of leads are you attracting? At what rates are leads converting into opportunities? and what is the level of effort you’re spending on to turn these leads into clients?
If you’re having a hard time finding clients, we can help.
Really, it’s about taking a look at the leads that are becoming customers. Are they the ‘right ones’ for you? Regardless of the type of strategy, you’re using for your workshop, it needs to align with the ‘right clients’
This leads into the next topic, of knowing how to determine if the leads you’re finding are the right ones, and once you’ve found them, how to tailor your workshop to drive the outcomes you’re looking for.
Looking at the data – are you getting your ‘right clients’?
In planning for your workshop, it may seem obvious to some, but you need to be targeting your ‘right clients’. This means clients that are aligned with the products and services you’ve created. Those that your vision, mission and values are designed to serve.
If you’re struggling, or want to scale further, starting with the data is an ideal place to look. Start with the data you’re gathering for lead generation. Within this data is a treasure trove of wisdom:
- Where are your leads coming from?
- How many of these leads are converting into clients – warm and cold leads?
- If you’re offering programs or online courses:
- What percentage of your students are finishing the course
- What’s your refund rate for students signing up – are they satisfied with the offering?
- What are your email stats when you’re nurturing that lead into a client?
- What are your testimonials saying (if you’re gathering quantifiable stats in your feedback)?
It’s always a great place to start with the data, rather than the emotional aspect of finding clients. Knowing which demographics make up your most valuable customers will allow you to target those. The trick is focus, rather than investing your time and money casting a wide net with little value.
At some point, I think it’s fair to say we all have moments of imposter syndrome that we’re not doing the ‘right thing’. Likely you are doing the right thing, perhaps it simply needs to scale, or be targeted, and/or tweaked. Following a strong strategy, consistently, allows you to drive success.
Using social media to find new clients
If you’re not already, using social media is a fantastic way to find new clients. Remember, however, that this again needs to be part of your strategy and aligned with your ‘right clients’. Though not always recognized, your clients may not be hanging out in the same places you are as a service provider.
It’s important to identify your ideal audience, and what platform they’re hanging out on. If you haven’t started looking into your ideal clients’ location, start with one platform and look for what they’re already talking about, and frustrations they may be expressing.
For instance, if you’re working with moms and little ones, head into your local FB moms group for your city/area. Typically there are loads of new moms online in these groups asking a multitude of questions. The search tool is your friend here. Within the search (whether you’re on mobile or desktop), add in a few keywords about the problems you solve with your services or programs.
It’s important when you’re looking for information, it’s not about how you can help, per se, rather the issue they are encountering at that time. For instance, “I help new moms help their six-month-old transition onto new foods”.
Within the search, you may find some information using the term ‘six-month-old’, however, the results you’ll get back will likely be stronger with using a search term such as “afraid to start foods” or “how do I start …”.
Start off fairly broad, then narrow down the words you’re searching for afterwards. Starting big and narrowing, not only gives you a sense of what information is in the group, but it also avoids frustration when starting with a concise search and not seeing results.
Attracting warm or cold leads to find new clients
Now that you’ve identified your clients that will LOVE your workshop, how are you going to attract them, and let them know you have this amazing value to provide?
Warm vs cold leads. If you’ve been looking for clients for a while, and have been doing some marketing, you may be familiar with the terms – warm and cold. A warm lead means they have some exposure to you and know who you are. A cold lead means they are not familiar with you, your brand or offerings. Warm leads are more likely to lead to an opportunity as there is already a kernel of interest.
Based on who you want in your workshop, your marketing strategy needs to be aligned with the type of lead you want. If you’re continuing to warm up an existing audience, this can be done through email nurturing, existing client or community groups, word of mouth with existing clients, bringing your clients together for a special offering etc.
Warming up a cold audience is typically trickier. This involves identifying one challenge or ‘pain point’ your potential client is encountering and your offer to fix it. As you won’t have them in your email list, or groups, typically ads are the method to bring in and find new clients for your workshop.
In Summary
Finding new clients for your workshops starts with your strategy and objectives, followed by understanding your existing lead generation data.
Find new opportunities using social media and understanding who you’re targeting with the workshop.
Always start with your strategy and try to keep the emotions out of the decision. Instead, ensure you’re looking at the data and most importantly, listen to what your leads are asking in their own words.
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