How to Find More of "Your People" with More Ease and Speed

Something I often hear from the people I work with is "how do I find my people?"

What they're really asking is "how do I find the people who will genuinely appreciate my unique approach and will happily pay me for my services?"

Referrals remain the best way to connect with great-fit clients. However, referrals can take a long time to materialize. Especially if we aren't intentionally developing a referral pipeline.

Two strategies I recommend are:

1. Actively work on creating your referral system.
2. Use your favorite clients' words and language in your marketing! Let your best clients speak directly to potential best clients!

If you want to attract more great-fit clients with more speed and ease, I urge you to put these strategies into action! The sooner you begin taking steps to cultivate these connections, the sooner people will be showing up who can't wait to pay you!

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My mission is to change the way small business owners market themselves and it’s very important to me that I reach as many people as possible.

Transcript

05.25.26 [MRW Podcast] Searching for Clients 
 

Hi, this is Judy Murdoch, and you're listening to the Marketing Root Work podcast. And today I'm gonna be talking about a topic that is especially heartfelt for a lot of the people that I work with, which is this question about how do I find my people? You know, how do you connect with your best clients with more ease? 

So in a recent session, a coaching client asked me this very heartfelt question: How do I connect with my people? This question came up in a discussion about what offer she should be focused on creating. What she was really asking was: how do I connect with the people who will buy and appreciate this service? 

And wow, I deeply resonate with this question. I'm guessing many of you listening may resonate as well. The thing is that we know there are people out there who will love and buy our unique offerings. As I write this, there are over eight billion human beings living on planet Earth. And if you're a mission-led service provider, you don't need to connect with eight billion human beings. 

You probably just need to connect with maybe one hundred people to earn a good living doing what you love. Now, the virtual marketing world, in particular social media, gives us the idea that we need huge numbers of impressions to have a viable business. And some businesses, in particular ones selling inexpensive products and services, do need a lot of impressions. 

They need a lot of awareness. You need a lot of small sales to make a profit. But the client that I was talking with, she doesn't need huge numbers. She needs a small number of people who are a great fit for the particular service that she's offering So how do we connect with our people? Well, the best way in my experience is through devoted fan referrals. 

And business owners I talk to rarely disagree with this. If you are offering your expertise through high-priced consultations, coaching sessions, therapy, et cetera, you already understand the power of referrals. The people I work with get most of their referrals or get most of their clients through referrals. 

They may also get clients through Google search, professional speaking, and other marketing activities. But by far, referrals are their first and best source for right-fit clients But there's a problem with referrals. After someone tells me they get most of their right-fit clients through referrals, they almost always say this: "But referrals are unpredictable. 

I love getting them, but I never know when they'll show up." And this is true. You know, getting a steady stream of referrals that supports our business takes a long time, months, maybe even years. Why? Because a lot of factors need to come together for a referral to happen. So first of all, our referral sources need to know that we actually want referrals. 

Um, and most business owners that I know are very, very reluctant to ask for referrals. Another thing that happens is a referral source needs to know who a great referral is for us. They need to come into contact with someone who happens to need what we offer. They have to remember that we exist. And finally, they have to talk about us in a way that is clear, memorable, and engaging. 

So this is why referrals can take such a long time to show up. So the natural next question is, okay, so how do you connect with more of your people sooner and with more ease? So let me suggest a couple strategies that you can begin putting into action right now. So the first thing is to have an intentional system for actively attracting referrals, and some of the, you know, activities that this includes are things like, again, you know, actively ask for referrals. 

Get into the habit of doing that. Another thing is coming up with something I call, um, a looking good, um, statement. A looking good statement is something that you tell your clients to say about you when they happen to be talking to a person who needs what you are offering. The second strategy is to create marketing content that resonates powerfully with your people, meaning all the content you put out there, whatever kind of marketing you do. 

The best marketing uses the language of your favorite clients when they talk about why they think you're the best, and this marketing offers what we call social proof. It offers clear evidence about the outcomes and successes you create for clients. Again, you're sharing your clients' success stories, but you're letting them do it in their own words. 

You know, the thing is that our best clients create our best marketing. It might seem obvious that client successes and testimonials are a great way to build trust and credibility through our marketing. I'm sure you know this. What blows my mind is that very few service-based experts actually collect this information, and even when they do, they don't use it. 

And I wanna add that these folks are generally very smart. They're very good at what they do. Most of them are quite savvy about marketing. They understand how marketing works. Um, I wanna say, too, that I am guilty of this myself. Um, there are currently, um, if you were to look at my Substack or LinkedIn, you wouldn't see, um, any testimonials or success stories. 

However, one of my short-term goals is to begin sharing clients', um, client stories, and I am in the process of making these changes right now. Another thing that I'm doing is I'm going to be launching a new service, and the service includes me interviewing five to 10 of your best fit clients to learn why they think you're amazing, and I turn this information into powerful marketing for your business So, curious, what is your experience finding your people? 

Can you relate to the challenges I've shared in today's newsletter? What do you do to connect with your people? What's moving the needle? What's not? I appreciate you. Judy Murdoch, word of mouth marketing expert, writer, and artist