“Everybody liked better to conjecture how the thing was, than simply to know it; for conjecture soon became more confident than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the incompatible.”
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
When I talk to consultants, advisors, and service providers about their marketing, this quote often comes to mind.
Because what happens all the time is business owners talk to me about the clients they want to have.
They tell me stories about the potential prospects out in the world they’d love to work with.
And they’ll go on and on about the amazing work they’ll do with them.
And it’s all just fantasy. None of it is actually real.
What’s real is the clients they currently have. What’s real are the prospects currently considering them.
Everything else is fun and games and, largely, a waste of time.
Our ideal client, the one we daydream about, will work with us because of the work we’ve done with others and our ability to market, promote, and gain attention from it.
And we need to work, one step at a time, toward that ideal client by getting clients that are closer and closer in terms of budget, need, or prestige.
But we’re not going to wish hard enough one day that our ideal client messages us out-of-the-blue (or responds to our out-of-nowhere outreach).
Marketing success is path dependent. It accrues, it doesn’t appear from nowhere.
So we’ve got to stop daydreaming and conjecturing about the clients we might one day have and start focusing on the ones we do have.
And ask ourselves:
How can we get another client that’s one step closer to the one we dream of?
Kelford Inc. is the marketing team that’s never at a loss for words. If you’re struggling with what to say and where to say it to attract ideal clients, we’ll show you the way.