Are you afraid of getting lost in a sea of competition? Want to stand out from the crowd so your clients can find you?
When you’re establishing and growing your business, it’s vital to set yourself apart from the rest of your industry. You need to quickly and convincingly demonstrate that you are more suited to meet your clients’ needs than anyone else in your field.
The good news is, it isn’t difficult. Here are three methods you can start using today:
1. Choose and Specialize in a Very Specific Problem
Many entrepreneurs describe the problems they solve, or their areas of expertise, in ways that are too general and vague to get good results. They’re afraid that if they specialize, they’ll have too few potential clients, and they’ll exclude people who really need their help.
But the truth is, the more specific you are, the more easily your clients can find you, and the better you’ll get paid.
Imagine that your knee is injured, and you’re seeking a doctor. Will you choose a general practitioner, or a knee specialist? And of those two, which would be worth paying a higher price?
Or, if you had a headache and you were in a pharmacy, would you pick up a bottle marked “headache relief”, or a bottle of “cure-all”? Chances are, you wouldn’t even notice the cure-all, because you’d be looking for something that specifically matched your needs.
One of my colleagues has a client who specializes in helping overweight women with knee pain. That’s a very specific field, but her business is thriving.
The people you specialize in helping won’t be the only ones who come to you. If someone’s a bit outside the box, but is still a good match, they’ll still find you and you can help them. By choosing an area of specialty, you set yourself apart from the sea of general practitioners and tell your ideal clients that you’re more specifically suited to help them than anybody else.
2. Use Your Life Story to Show Your Qualifications
Have you ever noticed that “About Us” pages tend to be boring? Encyclopedic lists of qualifications may be mildly impressive, but they make for a dry read, and they distance you from your clients.
So instead, tell a brief version of your life story, with a focus on helping your clients to relate to you and trust you.
Tell them how you or someone close to you experienced the same problems that your clients are facing. Reveal how you overcame those difficulties or helped the other person to do so.
While you’re telling your story, don’t be ashamed to reveal your darkest hours. The bigger the obstacles you overcame, the more you’ll give your readers hope that no matter how bad their situation looks, it can get better.
Explain how your experiences gave you traits or perspectives that make you uniquely suited to solve your target problem quickly and effectively. And don’t be afraid to brag about your accomplishments, because this is the part that demonstrates that you can create the results you’re promising.
3. Let Your Personality Shine in Your Marketing
When you aren’t completely confident in yourself, it’s easy to slip into the trap of being so stiff and professional that you completely lose your magnetism.
Writing and talking in a way that isn’t natural to you, concealing your quirks and preferences, trying to look perfect, and imitating the style of someone more successful than you are all ways in which you can hide your light and prevent your clients from being drawn to you.
Uniqueness and authenticity are magnetic. They humanize you, they help your clients to relate to you, and they show that you’re so confident in yourself that you aren’t afraid to look imperfect. On a subconscious level, this tells your clients that you’re a self-assured success, not an insecure wannabe .It instantly helps them to trust you more.
Standing out in your industry takes courage, but it doesn’t have to be hard.
When you choose a specific problem to solve and allow your clients to truly see you warts and all, you set yourself apart from the rest of your field and make yourself magnetic to the people who are the best fit for you.