Presenceology Founder and Branding Expert Mila Yoli on How Entrepreneurs Can Attract the Right Clients

Attracting clients is an ongoing conundrum for all business owners. From top-level entrepreneurs to local shop owners, and from online storefronts to established corporations, we can’t do business without customers. According to Presenceology Founder and CEO Mila Yoli, the actual issue is not attracting clients — but attracting the right ones.

By ‘right’ clients, Yoli means people that are rewarding to work with, who appreciate your products or services, and whose values or way of doing business align with yours.

“As a business, it’s much more rewarding to work within a community that feels just right for your offers, for whom it would be joyful to serve each day,” Yoli stated. “The most important thing you can do is ensure that you can sell to the clients you most want to work with, who are a great match for you as a business.”

As a trained psychologist, she has worked with emerging and established brands to develop authentic and engaging brand stories since 2018.

For those that can’t meet with her, she’s also developed an online program that teaches the essence of what she does, the psychology-rooted program called “Your Standout Offer”.

Here are some of her best tips for finding and attracting the right kinds of clients for your brand.

Create a Client Wishlist

No, your client wishlist shouldn’t be a Post-it that reads: Apple, Google, and Nike; instead, this should be a list of qualities your dream clients should have.

It can include demographic info, including age, location, industry, and company size. But it can also have the triumphs your dream companies might be celebrating, the pain points they can be dealing with, and what services they might need.

You can also add their company values to take this exercise a bit further. For example, do they have a sustainability component, are they dedicated to assisting local children, or do they donate to a charity close to your heart? Or are they on a 4-day workweek or around-the-clock schedule that matches how your company operates?

Asking — and answering — these questions are the basis for creating client personas, an essential aspect of professional branding. After all, how can you cater to a clientele if you haven’t considered who they are?

Craft Your Marketing Plan

Once you’ve got a handle on your client personas, you need to create a plan, an ideal client wishlist, to draw these ideal clients to your business, products, and services. That’s where marketing comes in. This should highlight where you want to infuse your marketing message, based on the ideal client research that has been conducted, and plan it all out.

And you don’t need a huge budget or a marketing director to start. Do what you can and do what you can afford, but do something.

“To truly attract clients, you can’t just sit on your hands and wait for inquiries to pour in. You have to work to reach the right people,” explained Yoli.

You need a website, and plenty of competent web designers are available on sites like Upwork and Fiverr that can create simple or complex sites with e-commerce plugins and more.

And, of course, social media pages are free and easy to set up. Unlike many marketing people, who take a ‘more is more’ approach, Yoli suggests starting with just one platform — choose the one that appeals most or is the best natural fit for your business — and putting your energy into that to start.

For example, if you’re a writer, a word-driven platform like Twitter might be the best place to focus your energy. But, if you are a gardener and your work needs to be seen to be believed, Instagram is the natural home for you.

Be Choosy

Yes, this sounds crazy to anyone just starting out and very concerned with their monthly bottom line. But Yoli says that you’ll do yourself a favor — and likely save time and money down the road — if you say no to clients that don’t seem to align with you from the outset.

The time, money, and stress that comes from working with clients who are too demanding, always asking for discounts, or constantly changing their minds will end up taking you away from where you should focus your energy.

It’s also unlikely to serve you well to take on a client who makes products you don’t approve of or believe in; it will make every project with them an unpleasant chore.

At the same time, go ahead and take on clients that feel right, even if there seem to be small stumbling blocks to working together at first. If you’re excited to work with them, that enthusiasm will come through in your work.

Using these excellent tools, you should be able to start attracting high-quality clients quickly.

About Mila Yoli: Mila Yoli, CEO and Founder of Presenceology, has helped entrepreneurs reinvent themselves by utilizing her extensive psychology expertise. A former therapist, Yoli helps business leaders find their unique presence and offers that make them stand out as more than just another voice in the crowd with her signature program, “Stand Out Brand”. To learn more and discover the science behind Presenceology, visit www.presenceology.com

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