For coaches, healers and consultants, the best way to create great clients continues to be through word-of-mouth, relationships, and referrals.

But there are three situations when this time-tested approach to growing a business doesn’t supply you with as many great clients as you’d like.

In these moments, it pays to stop and reevaluate your marketing message, marketing strategy, and way you reach out to prospective clients in general. Thankfully, it doesn’t take a whole lot of time or unnecessary work to turn your ship around, when you use these three mighty magical tools. You’ll be up to your ears in great clients before you know it.

Three Times to Stop & Pivot

There are three common moments when word-of-mouth, relationships, and referrals fall short of drumming up as many great clients as you’d like, and it’s time for something different:

(1) When you’ve done business offline for years, and you move online.

Many seasoned coaches, healers and consultants see the vast opportunity of growing their business online. Clients around the world, access to a greater customer base, more leverage through online groups, and travel are just a few of the reasons people cite for digital expansion.

But what they don’t anticipate is that they need to develop new skills to be as successful online as they have been ‘in real life.’ These skills include: being genuine, building rapport, and knowing how to communicate so it feels like you’re talking right to a prospective customer.

Like any skill, these skills take study and practice to develop.

(2) When your marketing is being ignored.

Many coaches, healers and consultants attempt advanced marketing projects like email sequences, running Facebook ads or even creating video or writing long sales letters, without having a clear and compelling marketing message. Most marketing strategists teaching these projects have a generic ‘pain point’ marketing approach to crafting a marketing message.

This is a problem because the online marketplace is saturated with generic ‘pain point’ marketing, so you’re easy to ignore.

It’s also a problem because ‘pain point’ marketing attracts people with a victim mentality, who are looking for a quick fix or cheap Band-Aid, not transformation.

Bottom line: it takes more than a marketing strategy to resonate with people.

(3) When you are attracting the wrong people.

Every word you write or speak teaches your colleagues, collaborators, and other allies who you work with and what you do with them. If your friends and colleagues don’t understand what you do, they can’t refer you business.

Three Magical Tools

When they run into one of the challenges above, too many coaches, healers and consultants squander their time, energy and money ‘working on’ their marketing message and marketing strategy alone for months or even years. Here are three magical tools that dramatically decrease the drama and radically improve your marketing over time:

(1)  Community

One of the things I teach all my clients is that creating in community makes a HUGE difference. This is because marketing is a relationship between you and your prospective customer. When you develop marketing in a community, you can talk out your ideas and get feedback in real time about whether or not you’re on the right track.

(2)  Collaboration

Working alone rarely works. This is because we get ‘in our own heads’ and it slows us down. Having colleagues and collaborators who know you and your work is a ‘secret weapon’ to getting consistent in marketing, and coming up with great ideas and insights you don’t have to think of yourself!

(3)  Conversation

Talking things out is a great way to get clear fast. There’s simply no better way to get fresh ideas and inspired insights about what needs to shift in your marketing!

The days of working alone – or relying on some ‘magic bullet’ strategy – are over. There’s a new game in town – and it’s working together with other smart coaches, healers and consultants to create clear, compelling marketing that creates great clients.

This is wonderful news, as it takes the pressure off having to have all the answers yourself. All you need to do is keep putting one foot in front of the other, ask for help when you want it, and make sure to give as good as you get.

You already know how to do that, so you’re bound to be successful!