Attempting to grow a business online can feel a lot like trying to scream into a void. Even when you’ve crossed that six-figure mark, it can feel nearly impossible to get beyond that and keep growing.
How do you keep growing and achieve sustainable growth online? How do those big gurus making a million plus keep their business growing, getting in front of more and more people?
You need to follow the same best practices they do.
If you want your business to grow online, it’s not about the tactics. It’s about the underlying choices of “why” you choose to do what you do.
The online world changes so fast that something that worked last week might not work tomorrow. But if you have a roadmap that tells you how to think, you’ll be able to make those shifts with confidence.
Want to know what you need to do? Let’s unpack the basic roadmap to sustainable growth online.
Know Who You’re Talking To
Growing your business means you need to consistently attract new customers. Growing your business in a way that you actually love (and that gives you the freedom and income you want) means that you need to attract your dream customers.
How do you do that?
You need to speak directly to them!
Shortcut the hard work and create a buyer persona that helps you to get into their heads and learn exactly what they want and how you can pull those levers to get their attention.
(Make this super easy by grabbing my free Canva template for your buyer personas.)
Put Your Customer First
Once you know who you’re talking to, you need to make them the main character in your brand story.
They need to feel like you see them and understand them. That you appreciate what they’re struggling with and can offer them a solution.
What does that look like in your marketing? It means putting them first in all of the content that you’re creating.
Any post, reel, article, podcast, or email you send needs to have an answer to “Why would they care about this?”
The easiest way to do this is to address their needs, their pain points, and their struggles then you talk about how your service can help them overcome all of that.
The most important thing to remember? It’s not about YOU. Your customer cares only about how you can help them, not what services you provide.
Know Your Unique Value
Want to attract more of those dream clients? You need to know the unique value you provide for clients.
Not quite sure what makes you different from your competitors?
I want to take you through a quick exercise that I do with my clients while working on their website messaging.
Grab a notebook or open your Notes app and answer these questions:
- How do you help people? (What services do you provide?)
- Now, how do they feel after working with you? OR, how do you want them to feel after working with you?
- What do you do right that you see a lot of your competitors doing wrong?
- What are two or three things that you feel make up your “special sauce?” Do you have great customer service, easy to work with, get people better results?
- What are some real-world examples that back all of this up?
I want you to not just answer these on the surface either. You need to dig deeper into how you help people.
You may think “But I’m just a bookkeeper” but I promise you that you do something different that will connect with your dream clients.
It can be difficult to see your own value, so if this exercise is hard for you to do, ask a close friend or a client you trust to help you go through it.
When you know your unique value, you’ll be able to set yourself apart online. You can talk about what makes you different from “everyone else” and start to attract clients who want to work with someone just like you.
Focus on the Transformation You Provide
You know who you want to work with and what unique value you provide, now what kind of content do you need to be creating?
The kind that shows them exactly what happens when they work with you!
All of your clients want to work with you for selfish reasons, right? So focus on those reasons!
Instead of saying “I provide this service,” focus on saying, “I help you go from point A to Z.”
When you can show the online world that you can help someone literally transform through working with you, they’re going to want to have you help them, too.
This is where a lot of my clients and students get tripped up because they don’t necessarily know what transformation they’re providing or they think their transformation is too small.
Let’s think back to that bookkeeper again. Even if you think you’re “just cleaning up their books,” what you’re doing is saving someone time, helping them to pay more accurate taxes, and removing a stressor from their day.
Let Your Clients Do the Talking
Want to shortcut these conversations and make it really hit home?
Let your current clients say the nice things about you and the transformation they’ve gotten while they’ve worked with you!
You can share testimonials and reviews from current clients across social media, your website, emails, and all of your marketing to drive the point home that you are helping your customers achieve those transformations.
Keep Consistent
You’ve got some impactful content to share now, but where do a lot of people fall short?
They’re not consistent!
Content overwhelm is a real thing (I even struggle with it at times!), but you need to be consistent with the content you’re putting out.
That means posting regularly on social media (yea, I know), creating blog articles on the same schedule, and sending out emails to your list regularly.
How can you reach people if you’re not putting yourself out there to be heard?
Trick question, because the answer is you can’t.
Great messaging can only work when you’re getting in front of your audience regularly. They need to see you and your content to decide to work with you.
And it’s not just about being seen, but creating consistent content is the simplest way to build trust.
If you say that a podcast episode is going to drop on Tuesdays but you do it sporadically, well, that says you don’t have the follow-through.
You erode trust before they’ve even chosen to buy from you.
Consistency helps you to build and stay in front of your audience, but to create trust with them that will lead them to trust you with their dollars, too.
Be Authentically You
Want to continue to attract your dream clients and build an audience of raving fans?
You have to be you.
Let me share something with you that I make sure my MBA students know every semester – the internet is a vicious place. If you lie about who you are, you will be found out and it will affect your bottom line.
Especially if you build a business and an audience on false ideals.
Even if you somehow don’t get “found out,” you’ll be miserable running a business that doesn’t fit with who you are.
Lack of Authenticity Drains You
Let me tell you a short story about my first business. I created this business with a partner who wanted to be super professional. To her, that meant a full face of makeup, wearing dresses, and trying to act a certain way.
What did that mean to me, the giant nerd? I was coerced into wearing makeup when I never did, wearing dresses when I’d much rather be in pants, and hiding how much I love comic books and nerdy things.
That, you can imagine, meant I was creating a business that constrained me in ways that I didn’t like.
It only took 3 years for that to completely drain me of all creativity and I had to walk away to create Captain Coder where I could be myself.
And honestly, who has the time and energy to be anything other than themselves?
Allow Dream Clients to Connect on Ideals
Another thing authenticity allows? It lets you connect with your dream clients and create relationships focused on ideals and things that matter to both of you.
Being human is the only marketing tactic that works forever because we want to know who we work with.
The internet has allowed us to get to know the people behind the businesses, and that includes those things that matter most to us. We want to give our money to people who share our values on the things that matter most to us.
Don’t be afraid to show what matters to you because you’ll start to connect with the clients who fully align with you, too.
Get Your Personalized Roadmap
When you can take all of these pieces, you can create a roadmap that will help you to create consistent revenue online. Not only can you attract new leads, you’ll be able to grow with the leads you already have.
Want to make this easy and knock this out in just a couple of hours?
It’s time to sign up for my Leads Growth Strategy workshop.
Within this workshop, we’ll work together to deep dive into your business, answering these questions so you can dial in your messaging to what will matter to your clients.
Plus, we’ll create your buyer persona and give you an action plan that you can follow for the next year.
There’s plenty of time to make 2024 your best year yet. Let’s get to work.
