The global consulting market size is valued at $132 billion. And with innovative new technologies that are making it easy to create a digital-savvy business structure, new players are entering the consulting market every day.

For most consultants running an online business can be challenging as you have to combine project work with marketing activities, which are needed to attract new clients. But it’s an inevitable task for any business that seeks revenue growth. Marketing success depends on the tactics you use.

If you target the right people, go to where potential customers are, connect with them, and recognize your existing customers as a rich marketing resource, your future is bright.

You’ll beat the competition and attract clients.

Let’s get into the details.

5 Ways to Attract Consulting Clients to Your Business

Here are five proven tactics that’ll help you change how you approach marketing in your consulting business.

1. Identify Your Ideal Client

To ensure your client outreach strategy gets you in front of the right audience, know who is likely to be interested in your services and focus on them.

It’ll keep you from wasting resources on attracting leads that are unlikely to convert.

You can attract the right consulting clients by first listing the key qualities of your ideal client. 

Based on your service offering, start by asking yourself:

• Are my services ideal for individual clients or organizations?
• If I’m targeting organizations, what size of companies can afford my rates?
• What does my ideal project look like?

Once you have these answers, you can create a buyer persona.

A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal client.

So, it’s essential to base it on deep research of your desired audience. Use your best lead generation software to collect information on the kind of customers that are already interested in your services.

Your buyer persona should include details like:

• Demographic data like age, sex, and location
• Their job profile, such as seniority, income level, and main tasks
• Their pain points
• Where they hang out online

Once you have a good understanding of your target audience, it’ll help you tailor your content to address their specific needs and use marketing channels that’ll reach them.

2. Ask for Referrals

Don’t shy away from asking for referrals. It’s one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to attract consulting clients.

If you’ve offered an exceptional experience to your clients, they’ll be more than willing to refer your services to another contact. But they’re unlikely to do so voluntarily.

Get your customers excited about providing referrals by offering a small commission—fixed or percentage-based—for each referral. You can also provide them with upgraded services.

Just make sure to validate the email or phone number before paying the customer, and you should be good to go.

A referral contest can also get your clients pumped up about referring customers.

Several factors can make your referral program effective at helping you attract more consulting clients. These include:

• Be quick at rewarding those who refer new clients.
• Have a reward for referred clients as well.
• Referred customers are highly likely to bring in other customers too. So, follow up with the new clients to ensure they’re happy with your services. You can use an effective experience management solution to exceed their expectations.

Be sure to track the results. See how many clients your program is bringing in and the value of those sales.

3. Get Active in Online Communities to Attract Clients

One way to attract new consulting clients is to show your expertise in your field.

It’s easy to achieve this through forums like Reddit and Quora.

You can also join social media communities on platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook where most of your potential consulting clients hang out.

Be active and give answers to questions relevant to your industry in these forums to establish your authority. 

When you establish yourself as a credible industry expert, potential consulting clients will notice you and reach out for your services.

Remember to keep your profile optimized by including keywords that potential clients would use to search for your consulting services.

4. Network Aggressively

Networking is a potent way to attract new consulting clients.

You can attend meetups and track events related to your niche, such as trade shows, niche-specific speaking engagements, networking meetups, and roundtable events.

Attending the same events your ideal customers are attending helps you make new connections. And this can help you attract new consulting clients and referrals.

Here are a few tips to network effectively to build trust and attract leads:

• Don’t rumble about yourself and your consulting business. Keep this info short and interesting. You don’t want to hard sell it.
• Always have your business card with you. And make sure you collect theirs too.
• Be confident about your skills and consulting business.
• Use QR codes to attract clients to your website and track them well.
• Don’t limit your conversations to one person and don’t force conversations. If the other person appears uninterested, move to the next one.

Don’t just attend others’ events, though. Host some and invite prospective and existing clients to them too. 

Promote the event well to attract an audience. For instance, ask your clients to invite friends, family, and colleagues. 

You can also use a video editor to create videos promoting your event. Include the names of your speakers, their credentials, and what qualifies them to speak at your event.

Additionally, you can run a social media contest where your audience is required to like and share the event videos for a chance to win a gift. This can help you get more attendees.

5. Give Paid Advertising a Try

Paid advertising will create brand awareness and attract potential clients to your consulting business. Create hyper-targeted campaigns using social media ads and Google ads.

To make your ads effective and attract the right consulting clients, communicate your value proposition through them.

What makes your consulting services different from the competition? What will your service offering give to the customer? Answer these questions in your ads.

Create a custom landing page where you’ll direct traffic from your paid ads. You can customize the message for these visitors and encourage them to take specific action like making a booking with Afpraakje.com

A custom landing page will also make it easier to track these visits. You’ll get in-depth analytics into the kind of visitors your ads are attracting, which can help you conduct effective audience-ad pairing.

Be sure to use powerful growth software to nurture these generated leads to conversion.

Start Attracting Consulting Clients

The ball is in your court. Take the first step and combine these five tactics into a powerful marketing strategy that fits the needs of your consulting business.

Start by creating buyer personas. Once you know who you’re targeting, get them to know and trust you by getting involved in industry events and becoming an active participant in relevant communities and social media groups.

Use the clients you attract to get even more clients through a referral program. Finally, give your marketing strategy a boost through paid advertising.

Apply these tips and you’ll be on your way to becoming a fully booked consultant.