There’s a number of things that your graphic design business depends on. These are your creative and technical abilities, and how you show and market your skills (including your personal brand)
Expert graphic designers and business owners rely on their savvy marketing skills. They’re proactive and consistently showing up wherever their target audience is.
The best way to succeed; is to follow graphic designers with superior marketing skills. Attend their events (both online and offline) and make friends with professionals with similar audiences. Join their email funnel and learn how they educate their crowd, and how they present their portfolio and skills.
Notice the type of clients that they work with and the featured testimonials (and client success stories) on their website. This is fundamental competitive research that’s most often overlooked by graphic designers in the first year of their business.
There are some veterans in the game who are making this costly mistake too.
Perfecting your marketing is a continuous process and requires you to track your website traffic and funnel. You can monitor your social media channels and interactions too.
Testing, and tweaking your marketing is what separates you from competitors, and this, in turn, propels your business to a higher level.
Here’s how to create your ultimate lead generating machine. Follow these 3 simple and proven steps:
#1. Find a key pain point or major struggle your client deals with.
All challenges are unique to every client and some are more serious than others. As humans, we spend our lives seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. The same is true in digital and offline marketing.
Often we are looking to find easier ways out or around things. If you want to win your dream customers’ attention and business, you need to show them that you CARE.
Now, the best way to do that is to understand their challenges and you’ll help alleviate their pain. Once they see you understand their pain points much better than your competitors, trust builds and you’ll be able to solve their problems easily.
Communication will flow easily and projects will move forward.
Let’s look at this example.
Like most people, a visit to the dentist is the last thing you want to do. The lights are blinding, the smell of chemicals overbearing, and the sound of the drills are plain terrifying.
Dental Bliss wanted to change that perception and address this problem head-on. That’s why they created a dental practice with a spa-like atmosphere.
Patients enjoy refreshments (including wine!) and get a massage while they wait for their appointment. And while other patients are treated, those waiting get to wear noise-canceling headphones so they don’t have to hear the sound of the dental tools.
This dental practice went to great lengths to remove all the barriers and common pain points to create an experience that is completely different from any other dentist you will find.
Think about how you can apply this example to your clients’ wants and adjust your offers to their particular needs. If your solution to their biggest problem is so magnanimous, you’ll generate clients easily.
Speak to your clients one-on-one to find their biggest challenge so that you’re able to come up with a solution that they really want.
Questions should be open-ended. And, ask follow-up questions to find out more.
Develop real, in-depth conversations and let your customer talk for as long as possible without interrupting them. This way they’ll share more.
Let’s look at another example.
You may find that their branding needs are for Facebook and landing pages because their graphics are lacking compelling elements and the “wow” factor. Because of this, their content converts lower than they expect it to.
This is the part where you explain how a combination of what they need, with what they’re missing, can 10x their ROI. This is so, because multiple content “upgrades” which work in sync, will help their marketing efforts attract better clients and scale their business.
#2. Create the best resource for that particular problem
You’re the business and marketing doctor for your dream clients. Your resource has to offer expert tips, guidance and most frequently asked questions to their pain points.
Although it’s common to think of pain points as simple problems, they’re often grouped into several broader categories. Here are the four main types of pain points:
- Financial: Your prospects are spending too much money on their current provider/vendor and want to reduce their spending.
- Productivity: Your prospects are wasting too much time using their current provider/vendor and want to use their time more efficiently.
- Process: Your prospects want to improve internal processes, such as assigning leads to sales reps or perhaps nurturing lower-priority leads.
- Support: Your prospects are not receiving the support that they need at critical stages of the customer journey or sales process.
#3. Offer a free resource in exchange for your prospects’ email address.
This is where landing pages come into place through design and lead data collection. There are plenty of free landing page templates that you can use and customize online. This helps you set up your funnel and start generating leads imminently.
However, if you want to make a great first impression, invest in a premium landing page building service. These have more features like web hosting, sales funnels, webinar funnels, and transactional emails.
Copywriting plays a crucial role in the overall landing page creation process.
While simple, clean and fast loading website design comes first, copywriting comes second, and is even more important because it can make or break your conversion ratio which is the number of leads that you generate.
For e.g, out of 100 visitors to your landing page, you may receive only 10 active subscribers. That’s a 10% conversion rate.
A well thought out change in a headline (like a rewrite or a different headline) could double and even triple your sign-ups.
“On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.”
David Ogilvy
Looking to further boost your conversions and convince more target prospects to join your lead magnet?
Take advantage of pop-ups. Now, you’re probably thinking “But,I hate pop-ups!” The truth is, that if the pop-ups are customized to your target prospect’s pain points and exit intent pop-ups, it’ll work.
Most businesses have similar surface-level problems. They often need more clients, problems in growth or even assistance in streamlining processes. But the problem is sometimes different. Copy Tactics suggests finding out that surface-level issue and asking ‘why’ five times. Do this until you get to the heart of the issue.
Address what it is your dream clients are most struggling with and offer them the one lead-gen tactic that will naturally lead to your expert service or solution. You’ll be the person that they choose as you’ve provided value right off the bat.