12 Solopreneur Marketing Content Tips: Attract Ideal Clients (Even If You Hate to Write)

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As a solopreneur, “Penelope” had been a successful leadership coach for years, relying on referrals from her professional network to keep her business thriving.

But recently, she noticed the referrals had slowed down. Penelope decided it was time to become intentional about her marketing strategy.

She wanted to find a way of marketing to bring in leads from her online presence without having to invest in pricey Google ads–but she just didn’t know where to start.

She thought about blogging about how great her services were, or attending even more networking events; but deep down Penelope knew that wasn’t the answer.

What she really needed was someone who could help guide her through setting up an effective online presence by creating her unique content, without making it feel too “salesy” or “hypey”.

After all, this was something that made Penelope very uncomfortable—she was good at enrolling clients once they got on discovery calls, but not so much with marketing herself.

One thing was certain, she did NOT want to become a marketing expert!

That’s when Penelope found me—a marketing content strategist who specializes in helping women business owners create an effective online presence organically, without relying heavily on cold sales tactics like social media ads.

She hired me immediately and we embarked on the project together: I taught Penelope how to plan and write content for each one of her ideal clients while still staying true to herself. By focusing on her ideal clients’ key struggles, she was able to maintain an authentic voice throughout all of her marketing communications efforts.

We focused primarily on creating educational content such as blog posts that would attract attention from potential clients. She worked on crafting engaging emails to her list, filled with helpful advice related specifically to leadership and team building coaching (all tactics that can be done organically).

Within a few short months of launching our program together, Penelope experienced remarkable success. Not only did she start receiving more inquiries from interested clients, but also gained valuable insight into digital marketing strategies perfect for her, as a solopreneur coaches who wants to implement organic (non-paid) lead generation methods.

If you struggle and procrastinate about coming up with content to engage the right clients, or if you, like Penelope find that the idea of marketing your services makes you feel icky, I want to make your content creation journey easier and happier. So let’s dive in.

In this post, I share 12 tips to help you dig into your built-in, bottomless supply of inspiration.

Benefits of tapping into your dream clients’ world

First, let’s review why you want to be the *Consistent Content Creator Solopreneur* that your perfect clients can’t wait to hear from.

As a solopreneur, you want to build / increase your credibility every day with each piece of content you create and publish, so you can become known and trusted.

Today, your roadblock might be that you feel a bit uncertain about choosing the topics your clients care deeply about.

Or, you’re time strapped. You have a business to run, clients to support, you may have a 9-5 job, family to care for, tons of assorted commitments—the list goes on, doesn’t it? I see you.

As a team of one, with all your responsibilities swirling in your head and cramming your calendar, how do you block out time to create content? Not only that, how do you become consistent with your content, without feeling like you want to avoid showing up online to share content for days, or longer?

Then, once you’ve carved out time, how do you access your creativity? Before you can write that special piece of content that speaks directly to the clients you want to bring in, you need the right spark of inspiration, don’t you? After all, you want to understand how to best empower your audience of current and potential clients by sharing snippets of your expertise on your website and on social media.

Once again, I hear you. And you’re not alone! So, so many life coaches and solopreneurs feel the same way.

You want to create this kind of content

You can avoid three major content creation pitfalls if you start writing and creating marketing content after you’ve refreshed yourself about how your clients are stuck. After all, you want to create content that your clients, students are interested in, don’t you?

For starters, you’d risk sounding like everyone else if you hadn’t narrowed your content ideas down to topics focusing on your dream clients’ specific pain points.

Because, your clients need your unique expertise!

The second pitfall is, you’ll miss out on getting your message out to the clients you most want to serve. Unless you tune in to where they are in this moment, you risk ‘talking past them’ in your content.

The third mistake you want to avoid, is that you won’t ‘seem credible’ to future clients. if you don’t hit on urgent issues they’re grappling with right now, they’ll gloss over your content. Potential clients will think that you’re not the expert for them. We don’t want that!

Let’s look at 12 concrete marketing content tips, shall we?

12 Marketing Content Creation Tips for Solopreneurs (So You Can Engage Ideal Clients)

Tip#1. Here’s something we can agree on, your clients love working with you.

Energize yourself by dwelling for a moment in the glorious benefits that your clients experience from working with you. When it’s time to create a blog post, article, or email to your list, lift yourself up by recalling the many benefits your clients enjoy, after you’ve coached them, gotten their website running, or helped them get their books under control.

Relive the emotions and results clients have shared with you after completing your programs, working with you one-on-one, or consuming your content.

How can you create a blog post, lesson, or inspirational article helping your readers take a baby step toward the same remarkable outcomes?

Tip#2. This is important, scan your treasure trove of client messages.

I promise you, you know a ton about what’s challenging your dream clients. Pour through your client emails.

• What pesky questions do they ask you over and over?
• Which issues torture them constantly?
• What frustrates them?
• What have they tried to solve their problem that HAS NOT worked?
• What do they NOT ask you, that you know they need to understand?

There, you have a boatload of content ideas for blogs, videos, or podcast topics.

Tip#3. Here’s what coaches often miss; you want to stay on top of your clients’ urgent problems.

Make a fresh list of your perfect clients’ most painful problems. As a purpose-driven coach, you want to stay on top of your audience’s key pain points anyway. Choose an urgent pain point and write a deep dive on ways clients can solve this problem.

 

Tip#4. As only a solopreneur can, tell a client success story.

We all love to read about how people like us, got through problems like ours, and arrived at a happy ending, right? Yes! Don’t be intimidated by “telling a story” if you don’t love writing.

1. Imagine your client’s sitting next to you.
2. She asks, “Will I ever solve this ginormous problem?”
3. What exactly would you say to her?
4. Write it down. That’s your marketing content-story.

Tip#5. To bring your audience closer, share your own experiences.

How did you overcome a problem your clients’ struggle with? Not to bang the drum too often, as a solopreneur it’s a must that your audience know you. To make this easier, jot down a list of personal experiences you’d feel comfortable sharing. Next, choose one and write it as a story. Don’t feel like you’re a storyteller? No worries.

Here’s a simple formula you can follow: each memorable story ever written has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Fast Company magazine confirms that people best recall a narrative with an actual beginning, a middle, and an end.

Solopreneur Storytelling

Read this story example below ⬇︎ from a recent post of mine. How can you adapt this flow to be your own?

Story Beginning

One of my health coach clients, *Amanda*, wasn’t excited about the project of writing her clients’ story. Truthfully, she hated the idea of “writing”.

Story Middle

Instead, over a span of three months she collected 8 pages of rich bullet points describing her dream client! She said it was a snap. She would add to the document after client sessions and conversations, and answering questions via email and social media—whenever she interacted with one of her ideal clients.

Amanda captured phrases, problems, complaints, and dreams that said to her: “Wow, this is the third time I’ve heard a client mention this.”

Examples of the content/story ideas she assembled included:

• Questions her clients asked constantly… (What foods do I eat? When can I snack?)
• Emotions clients shared about how their results made them feel… (Because I could fit into my fave dress, I felt like a million bucks at the party!)
• Hopes they expressed for what their lives would be like after Amanda helped them solve the big problem… (I just want to be able to keep up with my grandkids.)
• Lists of solutions, tools, and processes clients had tried before working with her—that didn’t bring results… (Extreme workouts, restrictive eating plans.)

Story End

After putting together her unique bullet-style of client story, Amanda confidently created blogs, emails to her list, and videos, based on the common pain point themes she’d heard over and over.

In her content, she taught short solutions and snippets for how to solve small problems.

As a result, Amanda increased the size of her list and began to fill her programs.

Tip#6. This one’s easy-peasy. Jot down content ideas as soon as they inspire you.

Recall recent client conversations, find a point of confusion for your audience and make sure it also sparks excitement for you. In your case, inspiration may be an insight, or an aha! moment that pulls at you. It makes you feel like you have to drop everything so you can share your explanation of this nagging issue that’s (apparently) driving your dream clients crazy. Keep your marketing content ideas list handy for times when the blinking, blank computer screen stares at you and you can’t think of a bloody thing to say.

When you hear or see the path to clarifying the problem, misconception, or point of frustration amongst your audience—that’s your inspiration. Be the diligent solopreneur, seize it and get the content out of your head and onto paper right away!

Tip#7. What is your favorite piece of marketing content that you’ve created?

Which blog post or email to your list did you feel amazing about? Which one did your audience of future clients love?

• How did you create it?
• Were you away from your home office at an outdoor coffee shop? Or in the park?
• Did it flow after a breakthrough session with a coaching client?
• Was it a section from a talk you gave?

What worked for you before, to become inspired and dive into writing or recording the article? Do that again.

Tap into your deeper solopreneur mission

Tip#8. What or who inspires you?

Is it a favorite author, TED talker, or mentor? Are you motivated to create after working with clients? Or catching up with past clients? Figure out your life-changing sources of inspiration and use them to get into a remarkable state of content creation.

Tip#9. Call up your “why”.

Clearly, as a solopreneur, you’re doing what you love in your business. Beyond earning a living, what’s your mission?
How do you describe your purpose?

1. Why do you want to serve and impact your specific clients?
2. Do you want to provide a role model for your child, so she sees that women run successful businesses every day?
3. Are you working toward a time when you can pull back from your business and travel more?
4. Is there a cause you want to support in a bigger way?
5. Do you dream of taking care of your family while working less?

Do this for yourself, tap back into your bigger reason when “Content Creation Day” comes up on your calendar. I promise you; it will make your feelings, thoughts, and insights flow. The ones your ideal clients are waiting for.

If you’re indecisive about what content to create

Tip#10. As a solopreneur, what’s the awesome transformation you help clients make?

Have you thought of it? Wonderful, talk about that in your content.

Now, in spite of what I said earlier, you don’t always have to share baby steps with your content.

Sometimes, set a bold, badass goal and ask your readers to step up. It’s true that normally you want to avoid overwhelming your audience with too much information in your blog post, social media post, or video.

For the most part, you want readers to feel like they’ve solved a tiny piece of the puzzle that’s frustrating them. You want clients to feel like they’ve accomplished a small step, don’t you?! Yes!

However, it’s your content. Because it’s your business, you can break the rules.

So, once in a while share with your audience the kind of scary, audacious steps they can take if they choose. Challenge your future clients with your content!

Tip#11. What do you say during an *in person* conversation with your future client?

If you’d still rather eat glass than write content each week like a blog post, try this.

Imagine, you’re sitting across the table from the client you’re hoping to enroll in your program. You’re each sipping your favorite hot beverage.

Stay with me here; she’s poured her heart out. She’s painfully honest and raw about her years-long problem. She’s told you that it’s driving her to distraction.

So, in that moment, as a solopreneur it’s your mission to provide leadership to this struggling human:

What exactly do you ask her?

What baby steps do you recommend that she take toward solving her challenge?

How do you give her hope, so she can get through her urgent situation?

What precise words do you use to inspire her?

Put these words into your marketing content.

Don’t polish them. Write exactly what you’d say to give your client hope for her future.

 

As a solopreneur, it’s okay to get angry

Tip#12. What about your industry makes you angry?

Think of the persistent pack of lies, the loathsome habits, and oppressive practices that permeate your field. That mislead people like your clients.
Doesn’t it fill you with frustration?

Aren’t you ‘up to here’ with how some in your field rampantly distort the methods that truly work to help and empower clients like yours?

Now, talk about that. To make a point, once in awhile you can go on a rant. Here’s mine.

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It drives me bananas, and worse, every time I find another statistic about the miserably large gap in revenues earned between men and women entrepreneurs. To keep my agony at bay, I go for weeks without even searching for stories and news on the topic. And yet, they still pop up.

To be fair, there are good news stories about how many women entrepreneurs are starting businesses every day, currently it’s about 1800. The exciting part is, more businesses are started every day by women than ever before in history.

Despite the fact that women nearly half of all privately held businesses in the US, they still bring in only 11% of the revenue. And the 51% of businesses owned by men? They produce 79% of revenues.

And don’t even get me started when you look at outside financing for women founders, such as angel investors or venture capitalists. Funding for women-led companies hasn’t moved out of single digits since it’s been tracked, about 2003.

When I’ve shared this stat in a group, several men have been quick to say one of three things:

Women start yoga studios, day care centers, and similar service businesses. What do you expect?

Where did you get your statistics? (I always offer to send them links to research sources. They don’t take me up on it.)

Women don’t think big enough. (This is a theme for another day…)

It’s true, there’re plenty of men who are supportive of women growing businesses as big as they want. And yet the stubborn facts remain; the earnings gap between men and women entrepreneurs makes the corporate gap look small by comparison.

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In my corner of the world, I want to equip life coaches like you to strengthen your skills, so you can get clear about your message and get your voice out. Because, first you get your voice out, then you bring in the dream clients that want what you offer. You know, clients who are a joy to work with, collaborate with you, and then you help them solve problems so they can do the big things they want to do. That way, you can earn the precise amount of revenue you want to earn.

Conclusion

Once you find the content creation tactics that work for you, to tap into your dream clients’ giant pain points, your inspiration will appear. Then, your marketing, which is the unavoidable starting point for getting your solopreneur business known, becomes something you do three days a week instead of three days a month.

So, as a solopreneur myself, that’s how I overcome my feelings of injustice about the earnings of women in business, by focusing on what I can do. I can share content with my best ideas, tips, lessons, and examples.

I want the same for you. When your calendar says, ‘Content Creation Day’, I want you to feel energized and unstoppable.

Perhaps, when you draw a blank about your next action to create content for your dream clients, riling yourself up about an industry issue just might be the shift you need.

Or, empathy for your audience may jolt your words, your story, and your message to flow from your head and your heart and onto your computer.

~ Cynthia

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