Is your branding attracting the wrong type of clients?

Can you relate to attracting clients who: 
• are very price conscious and don’t focus on the value you can provide
• are a poor alignment to your values
• always seem to be at odds with how you like to work and run your business
• don’t get your sense of humour and you don’t have great rapport with.

Then brand alignment issues are at play. 

Here are a couple of reasons why you could be having an alignment issue and attracting the wrong people.

Your brand is cheapening your image, attracting low-budget clients

It could be that your current positioning (through your visual branding, copywriting and design) doesn’t convey the quality and calibre of what you do. When your brand looks basic it infers your service is too, even if it’s anything but. Your brand is your first impression, so you’re not going to get your foot in the door with high-end clients who appreciate quality and won’t haggle over price if you don’t look high-end and high quality too. Your service needs to match its external image, because that is how we project out to the world who we are to influence how clients will perceive us.

Action step: invest in making sure your outward image matches the amazing quality of your service through branding, design and copywriting.

You’re not making it clear who you are and why you’re different

Are you not really telling people who you are in the first place, and setting those boundaries on your process and how you operate? This is your business, you make the rules! But clients aren’t mind readers, it’s our job to tell them. You may find some resistance shows up around sharing more personal stuff online. It can feel a bit vulnerable to share who you are (rather than hiding behind the business or a shiny website). Or you may not really even know who you are in the first place, or have clarity on how to bring together the many parts of who you are into a cohesive whole. If you don’t know who you are, neither will your audience. It can take some bravery to build your brand in an authentic way that rings true to you rather than following the pack. It may seem like there is safety in following trends and industry norms, as if everyone else is doing it then surely there is some merit there, right? We all have an inherent desire to conform, but this only dilutes your brand.

Warren Buffet said:
“The five most dangerous words in business are: ‘Everybody else is doing it.’”

Being more of ourselves in our branding, infusing our personality, our sense of style, our values and our story will help us draw in aligned clients. The ones who feel a FULL BODY YES! when they see your branding and can’t wait to explore every inch of your site.

Action step: Work on your brand strategy. Really define who you are and who you’re not. Write a compelling brand story. Give people a window into your world and an opportunity to get to know the person behind the brand.

Your ideal client is not defined and conveyed in your messaging

This probably sounds like a no-brainer, but if you haven’t actually defined your ideal client and built your message and visuals around attracting them, you’re unlikely to be calling them in. Instead, your brand’s image is likely to be either too vanilla and vague or inadvertently suggesting you want to attract a completely different clientele. That way, if your ideal client happens to stumble across a touch point of your brand (i.e. website, socials), they will think subconsciously, ‘oh this isn’t for me’ and move on. If any fear is holding you back, take notice of that. For example, you might be worried that marketing to a really honed-in ideal client will limit your business and you’ll end up with no one interested, so it would be better to at least get some clients even if they’re not ideal. You’ll likely find this is not the case in reality. Remember: You can be explicit or implicit with conveying your desired ideal client. An example of being explicit would be to say “I work with women” or “I work with {Insert specific niche}. An example of being implicit, if you want to be more subtle, would be to use a more feminine look, while not saying you only work with women. Or every stock image you use of a person is someone that looks exactly like your ideal client (i.e. if he/she is edgy and modern or maybe in their 50’s not super young or look like creative business owners not corporate business owners). So there are different ways of getting your ideal client across to people depending on your comfort level and whether you want to dip your toe in or jump in with two feet.

Action step: define your ideal client and make sure your branding (visuals and writing) actually speaks to this person. It might help to think of your ideal client as one person, maybe a client you’ve loved working with, so the process feels more personal and less like this vague group of people you can’t really connect with on an emotional level.

I hope that helps!

All these topics will be covered in my upcoming branding course “Aligned & Embodied — The Soul Stirring Branding Method.” So, please be sure to look out for when it launches.