4 Simple Ways to Get More High-Paying Clients with Your Blog

How many new high-paying clients do you get for every hour you spend blogging?

What’s that? You have no idea?

We need to talk.

Building a client-based business isn’t easy. But if you’re spending hours every week on an activity that’s not generating qualified leads, you’re making it harder than it has to be. You’re keeping yourself from making money by wasting the most valuable resource you have: your time.

Wouldn’t you rather spend your time as efficiently as possible, so you can have that “life” you thought you were going to have when you went into business for yourself?

Of course you would. Here’s how.

Strategy #1: Solve one problem per post

High-paying clients tend to be busy. They’re willing to pay more to get things done because (1) they don’t have time to do everything themselves; and/or (2) their time is worth a lot to them.

Which means that they aren’t just browsing around the Internet, looking for interesting blog posts to peruse. If they’ve made it to your blog, they’re probably looking for something specific.

Give them what they’re looking for, and make it easy for them to find.

If you solve one — and only one — problem per post, your readers will be able to do a quick search, find the relevant post, and find the answer they needed in the first place. You want to be the person they turn to when they need something, so when they need something bigger than a blog post, your name is the first to come to mind.

When your prospects think of you, you want words like these to pop into their minds:

• Quick
• Smart
• Helpful
• Knowledgeable
• To the point

Most of all, you want your prospects to see how highly you value their time. Treat their time like the precious resource they believe it to be, and you’ll become a precious resource to them.

Strategy #2: Speak your clients’ language

Your ideal clients don’t know as much as you do about your area of expertise. That’s why they need you.

If you’re talking about their needs in technical terms, instead of in the terms your clients actually use, you’re missing an opportunity to connect with the people who need you.

Say your ideal clients are local businesses who want to use the Internet to expand their client base. How do they describe their needs?

• “I need to learn how to install WordPress.”
• “I need to get a web designer, an SEO expert, and a social media consultant.”
• “I need to figure out this whole Internet thing.”

It could be any of these, of course. The trick is to figure out how your ideal clients actually speak, so you can relate to them on their terms.

Strategy #3: Tell your readers what to do next (and make it easy)

Your ideal client shows up at your blog. She reads your post, loves your work, just generally thinks you’re awesome.

Now what?

Are you telling your reader what to do next, or are you just letting her wander around your blog, looking at all the things she might do:

1. Go to your “Contact” page, fill out the form, and wait for you to call her back.
2. Sign up for your e-mail list.
3. Go to your “Services” page, find the relevant service, and pay for it using a Paypal button you conveniently placed at the bottom.
4. Call the phone number on your “Contact” page.
5. Set up a free consultation.
6. Download a free resource.
7. Check out your “links you love” page.
8. Read other posts on your blog.
9. Leave a comment on your blog.
10. Subscribe to your RSS feed.
11. Sign up for your free webinar.
12. Etc.

How much time do you think your prospect will spend trying to figure this out?

Probably about as much time as you spent reading that list (not much).

Instead of letting them stumble around, become your prospects’ guide. At the end of every post, tell your reader exactly what to do next. Make it a simple, low-risk task that requires next to no thought. For example:

Click here and enter your e-mail to learn more about how [your great service] can help you with [their pressing problem].

Then follow up with some useful information about your services and an invitation to talk by phone for a few minutes. Keep it simple.

Strategy #4: Stop writing about yourself (or stop blogging)

Your business blog shouldn’t be about you. It should be about your clients.

That doesn’t mean you can never write about yourself — only that you should write about yourself in a way that’s relevant to your prospects.

Telling a personal story that helps potential clients understand your commitment to quality? Good.

Telling a personal story that helps potential clients understand how big a crush you have on the hot new boy at Starbucks but your roommate thinks he’s really not that cute but your mom wants to know whether or not he’s Armenian or just looks Armenian but how can you ask that without sounding like a total weirdo and by the way you’re thinking of switching to decaf?

Not so good.

Sharing some details of your personal life can help potential clients know, like and trust you. And that can be useful.

But oversharing is not interesting to your clients. (It’s not interesting to your friends either, but that’s a post for another blog.)

The thing that interests your prospective clients is how you can help them, and what you would be like to work with. Give them what they want.

If you can’t give potential clients what they want, stop blogging.

Yes, this is a radical solution to propose on a website called Copyblogger. But the truth is, if you’re spending several hours every week on a blog that doesn’t interest your potential clients, you’re not marketing. You’re either wasting your time, or writing what should be a personal blog.

And one more thing …

If you’re spending a lot of time wracking your brain trying to figure out what to write about, you should probably be blogging less and talking with your prospects more.

Seriously. Just talk to them.

Offer a free consultation, spend some time helping them with their current issue, and then ask a few questions. See what comes up.

Talking (and listening) to people in your target market is the best way to generate ideas for your blog, because it’s the best way to find out your prospects’ problems, concerns, and the language they use to talk about those things.

Wondering how your blog stacks up?

If you’d like your blog to generate more leads for your business (or higher quality leads), leave a comment below with your URL and whatever questions you’d like us to answer.

Traci and Rudy will provide in-depth feedback for 3 of the blogs listed in the comments, and will respond to as many people as we can for those who comment within the next 24 hours.

We may not get to everyone, but we’ll respond to as many people as we can.

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A Four-Step Guide to Generating Sales Leads from Your Blog

Dean: Did you know you can use your blog to make money offline?

Blogger: Offline? What is this “offline” you speak of?

Dean: It’s the opposite of “online.”

Blogger: (confused silence)

Dean: You know. Offline. Not on the internet. The real world.

Blogger: (shaking phone) Not only does this stupid phone drop my calls, now it’s translating them into crazy moon language.

Okay, I jest. But to listen to some bloggers, you would think a blog’s only purpose is to make money online, by selling ebooks, membership sites, or advertising.

The truth is, blogs have grown into a more powerful tool than anyone ever imagined. They’re ideal for making money online, of course. But they can also be used to generate profits for nearly any kind of business, including those that provide real services in the offline world.

This often means generating sales leads for a service or consulting business. This is how I use my copywriting business blog, which accounts for most of the new clients who call me these days.

Okay, sounds great. People read your blog and then call to hire you, right?

Well, not quite.

Are you selling a product or a service?

First, it’s important to understand that selling a service is not like selling a product.

When you sell a product, the process is usually pretty straightforward. Basically, you introduce the product, spell out some benefits, make an offer, and people make a buying decision.

Selling a service can be a little more involved.

Prospects first inquire about the service, usually comparing you with other providers. If the service is expensive, like my copywriting and marketing consulting, people are even more careful about their decision.

I’ve had clients take years to finally made the decision to hire me. And it’s common for people to start a phone call by saying, “I’ve been reading your blog for quite a while now. Do you have a moment to talk about a copywriting project?”

This shouldn’t surprise you. The more expensive the service, the more important it is, and the more commitment it requires from the customer, the more careful that customer is going to be.

Think about it. If you need your bathroom painted, you might spend an afternoon looking for a decent painter. If you need to build an extension onto your house, you might spend weeks or even months finding the perfect contractor for the job.

So if you provide a service, such as freelance writing, graphic design, web consulting, wedding photography, event planning, translation, or whatever, you can use your blog to attract prospects and begin the process of selling them on your services.

Here’s how.

Create your sales funnel

Professional sales people often talk about filling their “sales funnel” or “sales pipeline.”

What they mean is that in order to make a sale sometime in the future, they want people to inquire today. They always want to have lots of people who are in various stages of readiness to buy.

To keep things simple, I like to think of the sales funnel as having just 4 simple steps.

1. Generate inquiries

This means getting people to contact you. Typically this is done by offering something of value in exchange for contact information.

For my business, I offer a free newsletter. If people go to my main website, I also offer a free white paper. In both cases, they have to give me some contact information before they get the freebie. I also provide a contact form and phone number for “hot” leads who are ready to talk business.

I get many inquiries every week. Most can’t afford my services. But a few are high quality and good candidates for future business.

2. Follow up

After you’ve delivered the freebie or provided whatever information you have promised, it’s time to schedule your follow-up, usually either by email or phone.

Because you are responding to someone’s inquiry, it’s not a cold call. You have a valid reason for making contact and have an opportunity to gauge how serious the person is. Are they just gathering information? Do they need your services immediately? Or are they somewhere in between?

The most serious are your sales leads. Everyone else is a prospect. You will want to spend more time on sales leads than prospects.

3. Nurture leads

This is the step most people are tempted to skip.

Like every other person selling a service, you want to make a sale right away. But while a few people will hire you immediately, most will not. Their interest needs to be nurtured until they’re ready to buy.

You should store all contact information in a database, which could be a simple customer relationship management system like Highrise or a desktop-based program such as ACT!.

Find ways to regularly communicate with your leads. Over time, they will become more familiar with you and more comfortable with the idea of hiring you. People always prefer the familiar over the unknown.

There are many ways to nurture leads. You can send news or information they might be interested in, make additional offers for low-cost or introductory services, connect with them socially, and even seek their advice from time to time.

4. Close sales

This step is self-explanatory. A potential customer needs your service. You provide a quote or estimate, answer questions, overcome objections, and eventually close the sale.

This is your end game, the goal of your efforts. And if you’ve set up a good lead generation system and kept your sales funnel consistently full, it will actually be the easiest step in the process.

Easy ways to generate inquiries from your blog

The hardest part about generating sales leads is getting people to contact you in the first place. If you’re just starting out and no one knows who you are, this may seem impossible.

As a blogger, you may know a variety of ways to promote your blog. Obviously, the more blog traffic you get, the easier it will be to generate leads. But you don’t need a ton of traffic to make it work.

According to Alexa, my business blog is ranked at around 100,000 or so. That’s not bad, but it’s nowhere near superstar blogs such as Copyblogger. However, I get enough of the right kind of people reading it to generate a steady stream of inquiries for my services.

So don’t worry about becoming a top-ranked blog. To successfully sell your services, you just need regular inquiries from the right kind of people. The more specialized you are, and the more targeted your blog posts, the more likely this will happen.

Of course, bringing people to your blog is one thing. Generating inquiries is another. Here are some simple things you can do to make those inquiries happen.

Contact Form — If you have a blog, you almost certainly have a contact form. However, the standard contact form is not enough. You should modify your form to match the service you sell. Take a look at the highly specialized form I use.

E-Newsletter — This is an easy way to stay in touch with many people and provide great value while you’re at it. Since I specialize in copywriting for direct mail and direct marketing, my newsletter features articles and information on the subject. I have several thousand subscribers and about half of my new clients say they became pre-sold on my abilities by subscribing.

Free White Paper — While a newsletter requires an ongoing commitment, a white paper is a one-time effort. Write it, post a contact/request form, and send a link to the PDF when requests come in. You could also automate the process with an auto responder, but I like to fulfill these requests personally so I can watch for hot leads from companies I want to work with. My white paper on improving direct mail response generates many requests every week.

Information Kit — If you’ve built a blog or site around your services, you should provide plenty of information online. However, you can offer pricing, forms, a client list, and other information in the form of a downloadable PDF. Remember, when someone requests information, it gives you the opportunity to capture contact information.

Webinars — These days it’s fairly simple to put together a webinar using services such as GoToWebinar. You can also create non-interactive presentations with software like PowerPoint or OpenOffice. The idea is to provide something of value that enables you to collect contact information.

Videos — Using software and hardware built into many computers, you can create simple, informative videos. They don’t have to be fancy. Just look into the camera and talk. Or edit together simple footage demonstrating your work or how you solved a problem. Video can also be a helpful tool to encourage people to sign up for your newsletter, webinar, or other information.

Pay Per Click — If you write and promote a good blog, you’re probably getting a fair amount of natural traffic. But pay-per-click ads can give you a boost for people looking for your particular services. Your results will vary depending on the level of competition and amount you’re willing to spend, but it’s worth a test.

Just remember: Your blog is a means to an end. If you use your blog to attract the right kind of traffic, and follow the advice above to generate sales leads, you should see a dramatic increase in your business.

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