How to Attract EFT Clients Online
By Carol Solomon, PhD, Certified EFT Practitioner
A close friend referred a new client to EFT practitioner, “Anne.” The potential client looked for Anne online, but couldn’t find her. Anne found out later that the client didn’t hire her because she didn’t have a website. Needless to say, Anne now has a beautiful website for her EFT practice and is working with a new client in Singapore because of it.
Before the Internet, there were limited choices for marketing to potential clients, as well as resistance to whether or not it was ethical to do so. Therapy businesses used advertising in the back of periodicals, brochures, networking and cold calling to grow their clientele.
Then came the Internet.
Now, the Internet connects people to places, events, countries and strangers. We have Social Media sites like Facebook and Twitter, websites that we can manage on our own, blogs where we can share our knowledge, YouTube videos, and newsletter subscriptions we can offer.
Consider these facts, cited in the book, “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More” by Wired Editor, Chris Anderson. Internet search has overtaken television as our most time-consuming activity. In fact, the average person is watching record-setting lows of TV per week. Box office, radio, newspaper readership and magazine sales are all in some state of decline. The 2014 Sochi Olympics was down 12% from the previous Olympics in Vancouver; however, roughly 45 million people chatted about the Winter Olympics on Facebook – for a total of about 120 million combined posts, comments and “Likes.”
It is estimated that 3,000,000,000 people around the world now have access to the Internet while and in the U.S. about 2.6 million households are now “broadband only,” meaning they don’t subscribe to cable or pick up a broadcast signal, according to Nielsen’s Total Audience Report, released December 3, 2014. (Time)
Image from Longtail.com
What does this mean for you as an EFT practitioner?
Developing an effective, professional Internet presence should be your #1 priority.
Your potential clients are looking for you on the Internet. Are you findable? In the age of the mobile device, your Internet presence is your brochure. It’s hard to imagine a successful EFT practice without a website, a listing on Google Maps/Places, a listing on Yelp, EFT practitioner listings on popular EFT sites like EFTUniverse and the Tapping Solution, and a Facebook Page. Done well, your Internet presence can produce a steady stream of new clients. Done poorly, they can hurt your credibility.
Your potential clients are looking to find someone with your skills online. They EXPECT to find you online. They expect you to answer certain questions on your website, such as “How can you help me?” before they contact you. It’s a bit of a screening process. They can search for and evaluate several EFT practitioners in minutes. It’s easier, more efficient, and less risky for your potential client to search the Internet over calling you right away. If they resonate with what’s on your website, in your email newsletter, or on your Facebook Page, and they feel motivated to take an action step, then they will contact you.
Your practitioner website is the front door of your business. It has a big job to do. It needs to reach off the page and speak clearly to the needs of your potential clients. You need to communicate a professional image through your site, and you need to do it quickly.
Why? Consumers make decisions in a matter of seconds.
If you don’t have a compelling web presence, your potential clients will be gone in less than 4 seconds.
It’s even more important for EFT practitioners to have a professional online presence than other service professionals, because there are more potential objections to overcome. EFT is still being introduced to the world and isn’t often embraced immediately by people. For this reason, you need to have a professional email address. Hotmail, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL are not professional email addresses. How do you expect to build trust with a client when you ask them to email you ate some free email address like “beingcool@aol.com“? A custom business email address for your practice is important because it makes you and your practice more memorable in your potential and current client’s email inboxes and sets you apart as a profesional who takes their practice seriously.
You may have even worried if there are enough EFT clients for your practice to thrive. As long as there are problems, there will always be plenty of people who need your help–there is never a shortage of problems in the world to be solved.
The only reason it can feel like there aren’t enough clients is that you don’t have a big enough marketing reach. Maybe you are only looking for new clients in your local area. Or you do limited kinds of marketing that aren’t consistent enough. For instance, you may do a speaking engagement 3 times per year, email your clients once every 6 months, or you just tell all of your friends and colleagues what you are doing and hope they send people your way, then you sit and wonder why your schedule isn’t loaded with client appointments.
You are simply not reaching enough people and making them aware of the services you have to offer.
There are lots of ways to connect with potential EFT clients, but you need a big enough reach, and you need to reach out to clients in the Internet and via email consistently over time.
With the Internet, there are no limits to your potential reach. It’s just as easy to have a client halfway across the world as it is to have one next door. Skype is great for video chat and speaking with clients over a distance. Having an international practice adds depth, variety and a constant flow of clients to your practice. It also helps potential clients find you if you have a particular EFT niche, like EFT for weight loss.
We all know how transforming EFT can be. Your job is to connect to and communicate effectively to those who are looking for your help. They’ll thank you for it!
