Content from “Can You Be A Hypnotist?” by Erika Flint
Offer a solution to your potential client that solves their problem.
We are offering our clients results. A solution to their problem. We don’t focus on hypnosis. Hypnosis is the method; the results are what our clients want. For example, your clients likely don’t care what type of hypnosis you use, or the hypnotherapeutic techniques you offer. They want to know, “Will this solve my problem?”
A good awareness strategy helps our potential clients know that we will help them solve their problem.
Generate Awareness With An Awareness Strategy
An awareness strategy is how people you don’t know become aware of your business. This includes marketing your hypnosis services, which is really offering a solution to their issue.
Professional hypnotists don’t focus on offering hypnosis; rather we focus on offering solutions to our client’s problems.
For new hypnotists, it’s common to work with friends or family initially, but very quickly you’ll need a new batch of potential clients every month. Part of what makes hypnosis so attractive for our clients is we deliver results in a short amount of time - on average we work with our clients for five sessions. This means that needing new clients every month is a natural part of our business model.
It’s common for new practitioners, and new entrepreneurs, to want to try “everything and see what sticks,” regarding marketing, but this strategy is not effective.
If you put ten percent of your time and energy into ten different things, you’ll likely get a ten percent result on all of them and feel as if nothing worked.
Instead, implement the following strategy:
How to decide on an awareness strategy: Focus on one thing at a time and get good at it, then add in new strategies.
Deciding on what to focus on first to bring in new business can be challenging for new hypnotists because they’re often so excited to get started helping people they want to do everything all at once. Yet it doesn’t have to be challenging at all when done well.
The following question is designed to help you understand what awareness strategy may be best for you.
How did you become aware of hypnosis, and then hypnosis training, or this book, in the first place?
This will help you understand what awareness strategy worked for you that you may want to implement in your practice.
Download your Awareness Strategy Worksheet online at CanYouBeAHypntosit.com.
Identify And Attract Your Ideal Client
Identifying an ideal client for your practice brings clarity and effective communication to attract the right clients to your practice.
My ideal hypnosis client is Mary. Mary is a specific person with a particular issue. Mary is forty-nine years old and wants to lose weight. She feels out of control in her life because of sugar and overeating. Mary is smart, and successful in every area of her life except weight loss. She works as an office manager at a large retail store. She’s tried everything to lose weight yet has been unsuccessful for the last thirty years.
When I think of Mary, I imagine her in a dark room, with the television on. She’s crying. She just finished another half-gallon of her favorite ice cream, yet she still doesn’t feel satisfied. Instead, she feels distraught. She feels like a failure and is desperate for change. Mary grabs her phone, and with a last bit of hope, types “help with weight loss” into her browser. My business appears top on the list of search results “Lose Weight with Hypnosis, Proven and Effective. Call to Schedule Your Complimentary Consultation Now.”
Mary calls and schedules her consultation, and I get the honor of helping her lose weight and keep it off, for life.
Identifying and attracting your ideal client is not “niching” down your practice. We are not eliminating issues for you to help with. You may have multiple ideal clients that you love working with. The goal is to understand your client’s problem so you can focus your marketing efforts and communicate with them appropriately.
When done well, your client will say to you “You were talking to me!” when referring to the article you wrote, or the ad that attracted them, or the podcast they heard you on.
The Key to Identifying Your Ideal Client Is to Be Specific
The more you understand your ideal client, including their issue and what they want, the more likely they will be drawn to working with you.
You may be wondering how identifying one ideal client with a very specific job, and a very specific issue can help grow your practice? Taking Mary as an example, how many women aged forty- nine with a job as an office manager want to lose weight?
There are thousands.
Thousands who identify with Mary’s story. Thousands who, when they read or hear your story about Mary will identify with her situation. Our brains are good at pattern matching and making generalizations, so even though Mary is an office manager, a man working at the bank will identify with Mary’s frustration and feelings of inadequacy. A woman working as a hospice nurse will resonate with Mary’s inability to eat healthy at the end of the day.
Specificity is the key because in making the story specific, Mary becomes a real person with real issues. Potential clients will think ‘you’re talking to me’.
While Specificity is the key, it’s a means to the end result which is the ability for you – the hypnotist, to love your client before you even meet them.
Heather was a student in my hypnosis certification training course. She asked how she could possibly love her sister who had willfully and purposefully bullied her as a child, then manipulated her and caused significant stress in her life as an adult.
