The Art of Client Attraction & Conversion

Welcome to episode 92 of Dawn of a New Era with myself, Dawn McGruer, digital marketing author, speaker and trainer, and most importantly, the business growth coach, focusing on helping CEOs scale and grow their business. Now, as we're fast approaching episode 100, we're going to dive into a really interesting aspect, and this is all about how you attract and convert your clients. Now, this is all about the art of persuasion, and in particular, we're going to be looking at the art of client attraction and conversion for you and your business. Now, you may have heard of an acronym called AIDA.

Now, this is basically a marketing term. AIDA breaks down the steps required for successful marketing. Now, it stands for attention, interest, desire, and action, okay? And this is a model which is kind of the cornerstone of modern marketing.

It looks at all the different steps of the buyer journey, and what we have to do is really align our content and our marketing to the person we're trying to attract. So if you think about kind of what it means and how it works, then you have to think about initially getting someone's attention and how we do that. This is often the bit that people struggle with, and I see in marketing through social media, email subject lines, blog headings, that people have missed the mark slightly. And the actual content of, you know, the landing page or the blog or the email is amazing, but if you actually haven't got that person to stop and take actual attention, then they're not going to read it.

And if you imagine 80% of people will read a headline or a hook, and only 20% actually will go through and read that full email or article. So the attention really needs to be centered around a good hook. How do you grab that person's attention? How do you get them to stop scrolling through their feed in social media?

And hooks are these all-important one-liners, these amazing attention-grabbing statements that really, really hone in to getting the person to want to go and read, to want to do the next click. So when you think about grabbing someone's attention, it's the art of good copywriting. And there's so many tools out there at the moment, from ChatGPT to Copy.ai, and these all help kind of give the inspiration and ideas and creativity behind it.

So you have to really think about your client roadmap. And if you want to stand out from the crowd and you want to really shine online, you need to really start focusing in on what these hooks are. Now, there's lots of different hooks. The other day I posted on social media, and my hook was, The day I nearly died.

Now, I didn't die, but what I was trying to do, and the whole post was focused around, was getting people to stop being voyeurs, getting people to do some good in the world, and to actually comment, like, and share, to get involved in the conversation and be two-way. So when we think about client attraction, it has to be exciting. And you have to think that when people go onto social media in particular, they're looking to be entertained. Yeah?

They're not looking to read really heavy content. They're not looking to be necessarily fully educated at that point. It all starts with education. And entertainment.

So when we combine this, we're actually adding value. So you need the hook, first of all, to get somebody to actually get involved with what you're saying or get them reading. So if you want to get your dream clients seeking you out, you need to have content that sits in places like Google, on maybe YouTube, and using these hooks so that it's aligning to people's thought process. So there's two parts here: getting someone's attention when you are pushing content out, you're going to use amazing hooks.

And as I say, you can go and generate these hooks, these subject lines, these article headings using these AI tools. But you need to be super clear that when someone is browsing, we don't want to see long sentences. When you're posting on social media, we want to aim for maybe like sort of five words that really just is fully visible. The same goes on ads, that that is the one hook, and our brains can read around about 80 characters in three seconds.

Now that's all we're going to give you to actually get our attention. So when we think about interest, you know, you've got to think of the next stage of the model, and how does this work? You know, how are you going to get someone from interest through to creating the desire? So interest is all about generating interest in the benefits of your product or service.

So if you think back to getting the attention, that's really the awareness stage. It's about creating brand awareness or affiliation with your product or service, getting people to understand that you exist. Now interest is slightly different because you have to build sufficient interest to encourage the buyer to start to research further, to start to actually recognize that they're in the evaluation stage, that they're comparing one product or service to another. They're in that choosing stage.

Now when you create interest. We're trying to, number one, grab that person's attention, then move them through into really aligning with the pain points and the challenges so that they are seeing that this is relevant to them, that it can definitely help them achieve their goals, it can move them into the next level of whatever they're trying to do. Now, if you think about the next one, desire. This is the epiphany moment for your client or potential client because this is when the desire for your product or service is created through an emotional connection.

So showing your brand personality and then moving the consumer from liking to actually wanting it. So when you create desire, this is the most persuasive stage, and this is the bit where people are just sort of seeing that there's results that are absolutely part of what they want to achieve. They need this product or service. Now, desire can be created through testimonials, case studies.

It can be created through really showcasing that end result that that person will go through. And often, you know, by seeing things like endorsements and reviews and social proof, this is creating even more desire. And the all-important FOMO that, you know, someone sees that someone else is doing it or has got it or that they've got amazing results on the back of it, that they want a part of that. So when we move to the action stage, the actual call to action, this is when we're moving the buyer to interact with your company and taking advantage of the next step.

Now, this could be from purchasing, but this also could be true in terms of lead magnets. So it could be downloading a brochure, making the phone call, joining a newsletter, or engaging in sort of a live chat on a sales page. So you have to think through the whole customer journey, and the easiest way to do this is I always map it out. So, for instance, if I was creating a product or service, I will have done some really good market research.

I will have spoken to past clients. I will have spoken to prospects. I will have spoken to people in my target market. I will be super clear on their pain points, their challenges, their goals.

I will have created a persona around this person, so I will know all of their key characteristics. What do they read? What do they do day to day? I'll have such a clear picture that I'm very confident about my product or service.

So when the marketing starts and we go back to the customer journey, I have the right content. I have the right motivations to move them through to that compelling event, to align whatever it is that they want. So I've created a product or service that has demand. I'm super clear on the person that we are marketing to, so I know what's going to motivate them to go from awareness to interest to desire.

And I will start creating content for these different stages. I will start to look at the end result. So let's say you want to take someone to a landing page. I will go through this landing page and start thinking about how do we really kind of get that interest there?

How do we create that desire? And how do we get the action? Then I go back to the awareness and think, well, how do I get this landing page in front of the eyes of my potential market? I'll start thinking about the places that I will be using.

For instance, it could be Instagram and Facebook ads. I could be using email marketing. I could be using organic social media posting. I will think about where my audience are, where do they hang out, and I'll start thinking about the different content that's going to grab their awareness.

I'll start creating different hooks to test, different creative, different media to see what is motivating that person to actually stop.

And then you have these different stages in the journey. And what's great is that when you have a landing page for a lead magnet or a product or service, a sales page, then you can start to look at how well your content is moving people from awareness to interest. So how much are they doing? You know, what actions are they taking from?

Are they going from Instagram straight onto the page? What is the point that desire is created for them to take action? You know, if you have multiple buttons on a landing page, there are tools like Hotjar and Crazy Egg, which allow you to heat map what people are doing. Now, if you see on that page that there's a center of green all around a particular case study or, you know, it could be a testimonial or social proof around the product or service or, you know, lead magnet, then you know that that's the most persuasive content.

So you can start to redesign the page to optimize it. You can move content that people are viewing in green to the top. You can front-load these things. So there's two aspects always.

It's how often or how well are you getting people to stop with your hook? How many people then are coming from that piece of content, that post, that email, wherever you're promoting it, could be ads, and how many of those people then who are landing on the page are taking action? And also what action? Now, one of the things I want you to consider is the actual buttons that you put on these pages, because I always go for multiple success factors.

So I like to see what people are doing and what stage they're at in terms of readiness. So it could be that I have a learn more button. I have an inquire now button. I have a download button, or I could have, you know, make an inquiry button.

I could have brochure buttons. I want to see what people are clicking on, and I want to see visually using tools like Crazy Egg and Hotjar, how many people click on those on-page elements. What's the most popular part of it? This helps to understand your client because you understand where they are in their journey, and you're giving them multiple options.

Now, there'll be different stages that people are at in terms of, you know, their desire. If someone has just landed on a page, never knew you, and has maybe come from an ad, that's very different to maybe someone who's been in your email list for many months or even years. So by having multiple call to actions on the page, you start to understand how well you're converting and what you're converting to. And this is all about having a steady pipeline.

And one of the things that I always teach on the Get Visible and Get More Clients program is that people need to understand the customer journey. Now, once you get super clear on this, the magic happens when you start to be able to generate leads on autopilot. And this is definitely something that I would say is my passion because once you have leads coming in each and every day, your whole role as a business owner and marketer changes because those things are already happening. You're not waking up every day thinking, I've got to find new people.

I've got to get more people in. Got to get people onto my lead magnet. You're pulling people in every single day. One of the things that we do, we have a new lead every eight minutes.

We use a combination of marketing methods to cause the ripple effect, and this is exactly what the program is for, because we need to be able to understand our clients so well that we know exactly where they're going to be. How do we hook them in? Once you get that magical hook working, honestly, it's the best feeling. You may have had products or services that when you tweaked them and tested them, and you get that epiphany moment where it's just really flowing.

You start to get leads in, you start to get people converting. Now, one last thought is that out of people who visit your, you know, landing pages or websites or, you know, blogs, 80% of the time, obviously people are going to read that article. Only 20% will go through and read the whole thing. The headline is the hook, and yes, they will understand that article headline, and that might be motivating enough or compelling to read the rest, but people tend to scan.

And you've got to also understand that on buyer behavior and user journeys, that 97% of people who visit a page or a website are just browsing, okay? They're not ready to buy. So this is why you need a steady flow of people coming in, because people are at different stages of their journey. And honestly, you know, when you realize that only 3% of that traffic are ready to buy and inquire, then you start to understand how much traffic you need, how many people you need to visit that page, and your whole maths of selling and marketing begins to take a strategic flow.

Now, the key here is, and the art of client attraction and persuasion and conversion is being super clear on what it is that you do, how well you know your actual potential customer, and also what is the compelling event. So understanding why people bought before, where did people come from before, what was your best lead source, and then trying to emulate the success you've had before to build on and use that as a foundation, because if it's a new product or service, You want to make sure that you're utilising the things that have worked in the past as that foundation block, and then you're going to test and test and test. The key to good marketing is always testing. And when we go back to this AIDA model and we think about, you know, the awareness stage, you need to test different hooks because, especially if you're using advertising, we have an ad out at the moment generating leads about 50p per person, which is amazing.

And it's taken us a few tests to get the right hook, to get the right creative, to get the right copy and captions within those ads to start pulling people in. Now, the difference is if we hadn't tested, we may be paying like £1.70 per person versus, you know, 50p. So it's a case of testing audiences as much as it is testing the actual creative too, and also testing lead sources.

So I hope this was helpful, but one thing I would like you to do is really chart out your customer journey and look at it from a whole online value proposition piece, whereby you're seeing in social media or email marketing or whatever you're using to pull people in, what is that hook? You know, is it strong enough? Is it compelling enough for someone to actually go and visit the page? Are people clear on what the benefits are of your product or service to actually get the interest?

Often this is the bit that is broken the majority of businesses. I would say that probably 85% of business owners that I meet that I work with to grow and scale their businesses, when they want more clients, it's not that the product or service isn't amazing. It's not that maybe the actual delivery of that product or service isn't amazing, and they get amazing testimonials and reviews. The bit that's not working is the bridge has not been built for the awareness and interest, and this is the key.

It's often trying to get enough people in the volume of that pipeline to get them super clear on the interest, to pique their interest, to get to that desire point. Because when you get someone to desire, You are like 75% of the way there. You know, you've done the job of the marketing, and then it's just down to optimizing the actual page to make it better and better. Because once you have desire for the product or service, that is somebody who is connected emotionally with your brand, with your business, with you or your products or services, and they've gone from just liking it to actually wanting it.

This is the critical stage. But if we just operate at desire and we don't have enough people coming through, you can see where the gap is. So really chart this through and think about the end-to-end pipeline. You know, what are the things that you can do?

So, for instance, we know that if we're running ads and we're doing maybe promotions on a particular course or service, if we want someone to buy quicker and we want to accelerate that sales cycle, and we want to get someone from who on average maybe purchases within a week or three months, we want to speed it up, we would have to look at then the interest and desire by putting in maybe an incentive to buy now. It could be a bonus. It could be a monetary or financial benefit. But you have to think at each stage, how well are you getting people in?

How well are you actually getting people to understand how your product or service works? A great way of getting people to buy into the benefits of your product or services is using things like tables on your website, so that you're using things like ticks and crosses to kind of identify the different maybe packages you have or different options. We know that everyone always wants the VIP or the platinum version, the one with all the ticks. So you have to think about each stage and really be clear on the content so that you know that from maybe testing it and getting other people who maybe are current customers to tell you what was the piece of content that made them purchase.

What was the stage that really piqued their desire? Now, if you understand the desire piece, you can take that and then move it through to the awareness and use it as your hook. So I hope you've enjoyed today's episode, and don't forget to subscribe. We also have another podcast, if you are interested, which has just hit number eight in the marketing charts called Dynamic Digital Marketing.

This podcast is always about entrepreneurial journey, marketing, motivation, mindset.

that we talk about money and models, whereas Dynamic Digital Marketing talks about all sorts of digital marketing and social media strategies, keeping you abreast of all the most up-to-date tips, tools, trends, insights, and the ways that businesses are using these strategies right now. Thank you for listening to Dawn of a New Era podcast, and for your free checklist to find out how to boost your business for growth, profit, and success, and join our community, go to dawnmcgruer.com.