The best time to market your business on LinkedIn is when you don’t need clients

You might be in the fortunate position of having enough clients in your consulting business. You're enjoying the feeling of consistently being able to serve your clients, and have the revenue and profit to show for it. You want to keep it that way!

At the same time, you know that it took a lot of effort to get to where you are today, and you don't want your leads to dry up while you're working hard on client delivery.

You're right to be thinking this, because the best time to keep working on your marketing is before you need it. In other words, when you have a full (or nearly full) roster of clients is the best time to build relationships with your next round of clients.

I don't want you to fall into what I call the Reactive Marketing Loop, where you only market your business when you don't have clients, thus causing increased stress and inconsistent income. This looks like going quiet on LinkedIn for months on end, only to reappear when you have availability and want to find more clients (quickly).

In this post, I will walk you through how this could be holding you back, and how you can future-proof your business so you’re always prepared when a client leaves or you increase your capacity.

And by the way, before we dive in, this isn’t about convincing you to spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. In fact, it's the opposite!

I want you to spend less time on LinkedIn and make that time more impactful. With a strategic system in place, you'll stay in control of your marketing to stress less and grow your lead list so you feel confident about finding your next lead. Let’s dive in!

Why LinkedIn marketing doesn't feel like a priority when you're busy with client work

It makes sense that you feel like LinkedIn (or marketing in general) isn’t a priority when your business is in a good, stable place. When business is steady, your focus naturally shifts to serving the clients you already have, not finding new ones.

On top of that, as a consultant, you wear many hats from client delivery to sales to finance, and carving out time for LinkedIn can feel like one more thing on an already long to-do list. So, you may be avoiding it and justifying that by saying you have enough clients today.

However, as I shared above, that puts you into the Reactive Marketing Loop, causing preventable stress and instability. Instead, we can set up future you with a strong base of potential clients for when your current clients wrap up. A small investment now pays dividends later.

Many consultants have been conditioned to think of marketing as something you only do when things aren’t going well. But that’s actually when it’s the hardest to get results. Building relationships, establishing a presence, and finding great clients takes time.

(In this blog post, I share how my coaching program supports my clients, many of whom have full client rosters, book discovery calls consistently.)

Now, I want to share three reasons to prioritize LinkedIn even when you have enough clients.

Reason 1) Your current clients won't be your clients forever

No matter how amazing your services are, your clients won’t be with you forever. Projects wrap up, your main contact at the organization suddenly leaves, and budgets shift.

When that happens, you don’t want to be scrambling to find new business. The time to think about your pipeline is when it’s full!

By staying active on LinkedIn now, you’ll always know how to find clients when you need them. I like to think of this as having the engine turned on and going slowly, so that whenever you want to ramp it up in the future, you can.

Inside my Leads on LinkedIn program, I teach a consistent, repeatable system that allows you to nurture your network and stay top-of-mind with your audience, without spending hours a day on LinkedIn. Just an hour a week is all that's needed from you to keep the strategy going. The system, just like an engine, can rev up or down based on your current season of business.

Reason 2) You get to be picky about which clients you take

When you market yourself on LinkedIn, you don’t just attract more clients. You attract better ones!

Some clients, as you may have unfortunately experienced, are harder to work with, less aligned with your expertise, or simply don’t pay what you’re worth. When you don't have enough leads, it's hard to be choosy with who you work with. For example, you might have a sales call and hear red flags, but it is difficult to say "no" to work with that client if you don't have other qualified leads in your pipeline.

Having a good marketing system in place gives you the power to take control of your client roster by connecting with people who are a perfect fit for your services. That's because more leads result in more choice for you, and the ability to say "no" to those bad-fit clients who suck your energy and have unrealistic demands and expectations.

Through a combination of posting and direct messaging, you can build relationships with higher-paying and more enjoyable clients — clients who respect your expertise, budget appropriately, and trust your process.

Reason 3) People you connect with today will pay you down the road

Relationships in the online world, just like in person, take time to build. The content you share and the messages you send today might not lead to a client tomorrow, but they could lead to a client six months or even a year down the road.

The consultants who never panic about leads are the ones who plant seeds before they’re hungry.

When you invest in your marketing consistently, even during busy seasons, you’ll have a warm audience and strong connections ready to go when you’re ready to scale or need to refill your pipeline.

(In this blog post, I explain how consistent and proactive LinkedIn organic marketing helps you achieve your goal of generating leads for your consulting business. I share the right order to approach LinkedIn marketing so you don't get stuck or feel lost exploring LinkedIn's endless features.)

You don't have to figure out your LinkedIn marketing alone.

Here's how I will help you find your next clients on LinkedIn, when you're already busy and full up on client work:

Step 1: When I start working with a consultant, we always start with my Done-For-You Profile Optimization so that you clearly explain your credibility, who you serve, how you serve them, and what action the profile viewer should take.

This process takes about 3 weeks from start to finish, and provides you a profile that captures the attention of your ideal clients and gets them to take action.

Step 2: Once your profile is optimized, we then create your LinkedIn strategy so you can get visible to the right audience and attract more interest in your offerings through my coaching program Leads on LinkedIn.

This program takes two months. We focus on two main skills - LinkedIn posting and direct messaging. These skills bring the right clients into your orbit so you can consistently grow your business without relying on time-consuming strategies like video and expensive strategies like ads. 

Within just a month, you'll have identified and contacted 30 prospects for your business. You'll have the skills and systems to do it again whenever you want an influx of leads. And, this rinse-and-repeat process gets more effective every time you do it!

Step 3: After, we create a habit of LinkedIn marketing through my coaching program so that you can count on ongoing leads for your business. We integrate LinkedIn with your other marketing strategies (e.g. email and in-person networking) to prevent duplicate work and create a marketing ecosystem that gets you leads and clients.

Learn more and get started here.