George Kao presents a short, practical video advising service providers to get clients by encouraging recommendations rather than direct selling. He gives three concrete approaches: (1) create useful, consistent content aimed at your ideal clients so they share and recommend you; (2) practice authentic, service-oriented networking—help people first rather than delivering an elevator pitch; and (3) do excellent, delightful work so clients spread word-of-mouth. He frames these as authentic-marketing strategies and closes by inviting comments and questions.
Chapters
I get asked a lot. The question of where do I meet more people who are my prospective clients? How do I find more people who could be interested in my services? And in this short video, I'll give you this simple answer from an authentic marketing perspective, which is, instead of trying to sell yourself, do things that encourage and inspire other people to talk about your services. Okay, so how do we do that? Let's apply it in three simple ways. The first way is through content. Creating relevant content consistently that helps your ideal client audience. And you can see that this is what I try to do. I try to walk my talk whenever I can, which is creating videos regularly that benefit my ideal clients and my current clients and past clients, and writing blog posts as well, so you don't have to do both. Pick one to start with, and then once you get going on that, you might want to add the other one, whether it's videos or writing first. So when you create content consistently, number one, you get better at it. And number two, some of the stuff that you put out there through video, writing on social media, etc. Will then get shared by the people who are reading it to others. And if you're creating content with your ideal client audience in mind, naturally it's going to be your ideal client audience who is more likely to like your content and share it forward. And that is when other people start talking about you. Okay. And I'll tell you, it's really been almost. It seems almost miraculous that I started creating content consistently three years ago. And, you know, first year people liked some of my content. Second year people start sharing a little bit. And now in the third year, what's miraculous to me is that I haven't done anything different other than keep sharing content. But now I almost never need to sell anymore. People find me through recommendations of my content, and then people say, hey, can I work with you? And so it doesn't have to take you three years. Hopefully if you take some of my advice, they'll take you a lot shorter than that, especially if you're creating content that's relevant for your ideal client audience. The more relevant it is for them, the quicker this learning curve, this cycle becomes where you create content and then you get people asking to work with you. Okay, so that's one way we're applying this. The second way we're applying this about being recommended instead of always thinking of, how do I find more people and talk to them about my services. The second way is networking. But not any kind of just the traditional networking of getting an Elevator pitch and always trying to talk about yourself. The kind of networking that I recommend from an authentic perspective is to always be in service to the other person you're talking to. And of course, be in service in a way that you know how, which is from your expertise. And so see if the person you're talking to can actually be helped by what you do. And if that is the case, then help them as much as you can in that short conversation. Meet as many people as you can who are like them and help them as much as you can in that short conversation. Or if they're not the kind of person you can help to ask, ask them about what they need help with and see if you have some resource for them that's not even about your business. Be of service, be of help, and others will remember you and start spreading word about you. And maybe you get to partner with certain people to bring your content to their audience, but people are more likely to do that when they like you, when they see that, wow, you are a person of service. You're not just trying to sell yourself all the time, right? And the third and final way, and I'll end the video like this, is do work that is really useful and delightful to your ideal clients and to your clients. If you treat your clients with love and do work that is useful to them, if you do great work, in short, people will talk about you, your clients will eventually, more and more and more of them will spread the word about you. And eventually your business will just come from word of mouth. And that's really what we're all trying to get to, right? So how do you find prospective clients? How do you find more people? By doing things that inspire others to talk about your content or about your work. So until the next video, I'm George Kao, and I hope this is helpful. Always open to your comments and your questions and always be serving and you'll find that your word of mouth about your business will continue to grow. Be well.
