Hello and welcome! I’m Gabrielle Chipeur, and I help female web designers build sustainable and profitable businesses so that they can attract the best clients, charge what they’re worth, and fall in love with their work again.

Today I want to talk about how to magnetically attract clients to your web design business. If you want to make more revenue, and work on fulfilling projects, you need the right clients. That’s the be all and end all for web design professionals.

Clients are your lifeblood. So let’s talk about ways that you can make yourself more magnetic, bringing those clients to you. You want to set yourself up to be the logical choice when people are looking for someone with your expertise.

If this sounds like what you’re looking for, come join us at secretweapon.club, where you’ll find lots of resources to help you attract the clients you’re looking for. You can also join our Facebook community and connect with other creative professionals.

Okay, so let’s talk about attracting clients. As web designers, we need clients, and one of the most common questions I get is “How do I get more clients?” This goes hand-in-hand with another question: “How do I bring more revenue into my business?” Finally, I often hear “People aren’t hiring me and I don’t know why.”

There are three little things you can do. Well, I say little, but they’re not really little. They are actually incredibly powerful ways to shift your appearance so that you become the logical choice when prospective customers see you, and they’ll come to you rather than you having to go out and hunt them down.

Find Your Unique Angle

The first thing to do is identify the unique angle that you’re bringing to the table for your client. A lot of people call this niching down, and as web designers, we can get kind of uncomfortable with this idea. I know it make me uncomfortable, because I didn’t want to be pigeonholed. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to do certain projects or work with certain people, because my chosen niche was so narrow.

But let’s take a closer look. We don’t really want to serve everybody. We want to serve a certain slice of the market. When we look at a niche as not a pigeonhole but rather as a way for us to clearly communicate who will be best served by what we have to offer, it actually gives us more freedom, not less. It’s not that you can’t ever work with someone who doesn’t fit your specific niche. It’s just a way to hone your messaging so that your services are made clear.

When someone who falls into your niche sees you, they’ll go “Oh, hey, that’s me!” and they can approach you knowing that you’ll understand what they need. They’ll feel that you’re talking directly to them.

There are a few ways to niche down as a web designer.

First, you can say that you only work with a certain type of customer. I did this for a while: I said that I only wanted to work with health and fitness coaches. So those are the people I marketed to, and I did fantastic work with them. I had a background in the field, so I knew the industry well, and I had insight into what they were dealing with. So that’s the first way to niche down: target a specific type of client.

Another way to niche down is to offer services centered around a certain platform or software. I know a guy who is very specialized: he works 100% with the Thinkific platform, and he’s turned this into a huge business. It’s amazing to see what he’s built over the past couple of years, focusing just on this one platform. His clients come to him: he’s become the go-to Thinkific expert.

Finally, you can specialize in a particular kind of project. I know a couple of VAs who specialize in company launch projects. They get called in when a company is launching to provide the extra support needed during that hectic time. They may also work on other projects, but they’ve become go-to names in their niche.

Focus Your Messaging

Once you know how you’re going to niche down, the next step is to focus your messaging around that niche. Your messaging and how you communicate your niche is really, really important for attracting clients. We have to be very clear about why someone would want to work with us, and what benefits they get when they do.

First, your messaging needs to be easily understood. Cut out all the fluff and get straight to the core of your message. As experts in our niches, we often want to really get into it, sharing all the details. We want to be sure that we’re being clear and explaining ourselves properly, but in reality, what you want out of your messaging is to be succinct.

Sometimes that does mean glossing over some of the details that feel very important to you. But the client doesn’t need to know the technical ins and outs of how you’ll get them what they need.

What they need to know is who your services are for, what results you’ll get them, and why you’re the best option.

When you talk about who you’re helping, that’s your niche. It could be a specific type of client, a specific type of platform, or a specific type of project. You want someone to recognize themselves in your messaging.

Then you want to talk about your results. This can be something that web designers can easily miss, because we focus on the project and the process. We don’t necessarily pay attention to the results that clients get with our work after we deliver it. When you’re creating your messaging, you really have to focus on the results that you’re getting for your clients.

So yes, you might have created a new website for your client. It’s beautiful, mobile responsive, functional, and you’re really proud of it. That’s great. But what results did it get for the client? Did it get her more leads? Did more people sign up for her email list? Did she get far more bookings because she had this fantastic website?

Those are the kinds of results that a client is looking for. A great website in and of itself is not their goal. So it’s important to follow up with past clients and talk about their results, capture those, and use them in your messaging so that potential clients know that your beautiful websites get them great results.

The last piece of messaging is why you’re the best.

There are a myriad of ways that you can highlight why you’re the best for your client. Your years of experience and specific background are obvious points here. Also consider personal experiences that are relevant to your niche.

Once you have that nice messaging package – who you want to help, the results you get for them, and why you’re the best choice – you can start spinning all of that into your actionable items.

Now I’d like to give you a secret weapon: the Secret Weapon audiobook. If you visit secretweapon.club, you can download it for free. It’s my gift to you because I want to help you get started on your path to improving your business. So go grab your copy!

Communicate Your Message Consistently

Okay, you have your niche, you have your messaging, and now it’s time to apply that messaging to all your outlets: your website, social media profiles, and anywhere else that people could stumble across you online. You’d be surprised at how many web designers I’ve interacted with who don’t make sure their message is consistent and prominent. It’s a real shame, because they’re missing out on attracting more clients to their business.

When you’re consistently using your succinct messaging, again, who your services are for, what results you get for your clients, and why you’re the best choice, you’ll find people are much more inclined to take the first step and approach you about your services.

So the first step is to update all of your social profiles. Make sure that your Facebook page, your Facebook profile, your Instagram profile, your Pinterest account, your website, all sound the same. You don’t want there to be a disconnect from one to the other.

Once that’s in place, then it’s a matter of posting that messaging consistently on social media and anywhere that people are going to find us. I’m not gonna lie: I struggled with consistency on social media. As web designers, we get our heads down and we start working on our projects and days go by when we don’t look up. We’re often so focused on delivering for our existing clients that we neglect promoting our own business.

That leads to the cycles of feast and famine that we probably all know because we’re not consistently showing up. People forget about us. We fall off their radar, and then when they’re looking for someone of our skills, we’re nowhere to be found. So being consistent on social media is incredibly important. You don’t have to post four times a day or be a constantly available presence. It just means that you shouldn’t go for a long period of time without posting, and when you do post, you want to keep reinforcing your messaging: who, what, why.

Tying It All Together

Once you have these three things working for you, your unique angle, your messaging and your communication, and then consistency, that’s when you’ll start really magnetically attracting clients. It gets you out of that feast and famine cycle, because when you have constant clients coming in and you’re creating those solid relationships with those clients, they’ll keep coming back again and again. You’re their secret weapon.

So let’s recap. You need three things to attract clients to your web design business.

First, a unique angle, your niche. Whether it’s a certain type of client, a specialized platform you work with, or a specific kind of project, your niche will help your potential clients recognize that you’re there for them.

Second, you need to focus your messaging. Who you’re there to help, what results they’ll see, and why you’re the best choice for the project.

Finally, consistently posting that message anywhere you are visible online.

If you want to learn more about all of these methods for boosting your business and attracting clients to you, come join us in the Secret Weapon Club. It’s an amazing community, full of individuals all working to build their client base and achieve their business goals. Visit secretweapon.club, where you’ll have access to free resources, and you can join the community from there.

Until next time!