How to attract online, private pay clients

Presenter:

Alexandra Whitehead
MBA, PGDip(Psych), BSc
Founder of The Practice Activator, Registered Psychologist, 3 x business owner, and entrepreneur.

Transcript:

In this video, I’d love to talk to you about the foundational items and the strategies that you need to have in your business so that you can successfully start attracting and getting online private-pay clients.

It’s incredibly important to start actioning the strategies that I’m about to give you. Because when you have a schedule, which is full of online private-paying clients, you get a lot more freedom back in your life and in your business, and you are in a lot more control. You’re also not resentful because you’re able to charge what you’re worth and you’re also not freaking out because you know that the foundations that you’ve set up have done so correctly and it’s a perfect place from which you can build off.

Let me start by saying that an online business requires you to develop a different set of business skills. They’re not massively different (to a brick and mortar practice), but they are different in the tactics and the strategies are different. So let me go into your very first steps.

Step 1:

Initially, you will want to differentiate and refine your niche and your ideal client avatar. To be found online by private-paying clients, and to be attractive to them, they need to feel like you’re speaking just to them. You want to leave them thinking like, “Wow, how does she know me so well? How is she inside my head? We’ve never even met.”

When people try and please everybody, it’s very easy for them to end up being quite invisible and even mediocre. Particularly in the online space, which is a very crowded and noisy market. So niching and differentiating makes you stand out. When you are able to do that, you’re then playing in your own slice of the market rather than competing with a bunch of other people or just being drowned out.

So that’s why niching and differentiating is so important. And now once you’ve got a rock-solid niche and you know your ideal client avatar, here’s the next step.

Step 2:

Come up with an irresistible offer.

What do I mean by this? People are not paying you for 50 minutes of your time or whatever the amount of time is for your normal sessions. They’re paying you for the value that you’re providing them and they’re paying you to deliver what you’re promising them. Cease thinking about money in exchange for your time. And start thinking about ‘clients for life’ and begin to unpack your ideal client avatar or ICA for short.

What are you promising them? What are you promising your ICA? Can you offer packages that help you to more successfully deliver that promise to them? Can you provide a VIP experience for your clients, if that’s important for some of them? What is going to make you irresistible to potential clients? What do you actually need to offer them?

Step 3:

Now, you need to set up your website correctly so that your ideal client can clearly understand that you are the right person for them to engage with. Here are the main pages that you need to focus on:

Your About page.

So who are you, how can you help me, what’s your deal? What’s your story?
If I’m your ICA, do I feel connected to you after reading about you, after reading your story? Do I feel like I’m going to be understood by you? Do I like you, do I trust you? These are all things you need to be thinking about as you’re refining what you’ve got on your About page.

Then you’ve got a sales page.

This is where you have your main offering. This part is incredibly important. This replaces the old school services page. Gone are the days where you list out every single approach you have, every single skill set you have, all of the courses you’ve done.

The whole point of your sales page is to deeply connect with your ICA and have them buy from you. Because if they don’t buy from you, you can’t help them. And if you’re truly the best person to help them, then they really need to know that.

Your homepage.

Your home page is the page that ties your whole website together. So I should be able to look at your home page and understand if you’re for me or not. And get a general sense about what you are about, and what you might offer.

Contact form.

And finally, you need to have a contact form and a way for people to make bookings and take payments. So with your online business, the idea is to make it as automatic as possible. So another benefit of this is there’s no need for you to chase cancellations and no-shows because people pre-pay.

So there’s zero chasing people for money.

Step 4:

Step four is setting up your website so that you can much more easily convert browsers into bookers. So converting people that are just browsing through your website and converting them into new paying clients and customers.

Your sales page and your irresistible offer will really assist with this part. Some browsers that come to your site are not yet ready to buy. And that doesn’t mean that you don’t want to engage with them. You do because they’re going to probably buy one day and if not from you, it’s going to be from somebody else.

And remember, I’m going to go back and say it again, if you’ve refined your ICA and you’ve niched down, you’ve differentiated yourself in the market, the people you’re attracting are likely going to be the people that you can best serve and best help. And they’re going to get a better service, better outcomes from you delivering your promise compared to going with someone who’s more generic.

Some people are not yet ready to buy, typically because they’re still in their own decision-making process or buying journey. And it’s your job to help them, move them through their own process. So someone lands on your website, whether that’s from a referral, your socials, or Google search, you need to, at the very least, be collecting their email addresses via a lead magnet.

Now, a lead magnet is a free thing that you’re giving people in exchange for their email address. And once you have their email address, you then stay in touch over email, you build and nurture the relationship with them, you provide value, and you make them offers that they can’t resist so that when they are ready to buy, they’ll buy from you.

These are the foundational components you need to act upon so that you can build your online private-pay business. And this is such a cool topic. I’ve seen this method work so well with online health practitioners, wellness practitioners, and online coaches who are just starting out in building up their online private-pay business.

Now, this could be because you want to stop or reduce insurance work or other poorly-paying programs and schemes. It could be because you actually just want to have a profitable and successful business, which is not too much to ask!

Or perhaps it’s because you want to connect with clients whereby you’re both an amazing fit for each other. Because when you’re able to do that, it’s a totally different experience. A more positive experience I’d say.

If you’d like more help with this, check out my Membership – The Online Practice Activators. In the Membership, you’ve got access to weekly group coaching calls plus access to a four-week foundational course on attracting and getting your first high-paying online clients.

If you want to have a thriving online business, one that gives you freedom (think immersive holidays where you’re not thinking about work, Friday’s off forever, working from wherever you like, more quality time with your kids), then the Membership is for you.

And if you’re really on a budget, you can follow my free guide on getting online, high-paying private clients for a DIY approach. Get your copy here.