102823 marketing mistakes_2023-10-20T12_01_01
[00:00:00] Whenever I talk to someone with a personal chef business who’s really struggling to get clients, I can usually figure out pretty fast what the problem is. I don’t want this to happen to you if you’re just getting started, so I’m going to share the big, obvious f ups that I see all the time in people that don’t have as many clients as they want.
And I’m going to share what you should do instead. Hey there, Chef Shelly here. When I’m not cooking for my own clients, I help passionate cooks like you start a personal chef business. Because you can absolutely get paid to do what you love, doing meal prep services, doing small caterings, even teaching cooking classes.
And you don’t have to go to culinary school and spend tens of thousands of dollars to do it. So if that’s something that you’re interested in, you’re watching this on YouTube, hit subscribe and be sure to ring the little [00:01:00] bell so that you never miss a weekly video. Or if you’re on my Facebook page, like and follow so you don’t miss a post.
So the first big mistake that I see a lot is people who have a really crappy website. Or even no website. And it doesn’t have to be a Facebook page. I mean, a website. I totally count a Facebook page. So, things that people do are, um, wait until they think they can hire some high paid web designer to make it for them.
You totally do not need to do that. Any place that you can register a domain name like GoDaddy or Bluehost, they totally have templates that you can easily set up your own website yourself. Mistake number two on the website, bad pictures or Facebook page. If you can’t take the time to just get some basic [00:02:00] food photography skills down, then skip putting up crappy pictures.
You’ve seen them. The pile of just brown goo that you can’t even tell what it is. And don’t get me wrong, that probably looks delicious in person. Food photography is just a different bag of cats. And there are some basic and not intuitive things that you need to know to be able to take good food pictures to put online.
If you don’t have the time or desire to do that, Then just invest in some decent stock photos. You can probably even find a free website because putting up bad pictures is just turning people off to your food. The third thing I see people doing on their website is just bad messaging. You need to be able to clearly represent yourself and your skills.
In a way that makes the client want to hire you and the way to do that is to talk to things the client wants [00:03:00] to read. The client wants to know what you’re going to do for them, not where you went to school or what you like to do on your weekends or anything like that. They want to know what’s in it for them.
Then the problem with the website in general is that some people put up a website and then think that they’re magically going to just getting started getting clients. You have to have good SEO on your website before people are going to be able to Google and find you. And that can be a great tool to get leads for your personal chef business, but it is a slow burn.
Again, the best way when you’re just starting out is to actually have interactions with people. So those are website mistakes. The second thing I see, and this, you may not think this is a problem, but I see it over and over again, is people not getting back to people who’ve asked them about their [00:04:00] services.
Like, not only does this make you look unprofessional, but it’s just costing you clients, okay? This is not high school. Don’t play the three day game where when someone Calls you or whatever. You wait three days to call them back. So you don’t look too needy. This is business. People are looking for a solution if they contact you.
And if you don’t get right back to them, they are just going to move on to the next person. If somebody has reached out to you, you need to get back to them immediately. If they’re interested, why on earth would you make them wait? And even if it doesn’t work out with them this time, here’s a tip. But keep them on your contact list.
When you have an opening, follow up with them. When you’re doing something special, maybe for the holidays or something, follow up with them and let them know. They’ve already told you they’re interested once, so keep them in your pipeline. The third big mistake I made, and I touched on this briefly under [00:05:00] website, is focusing only on online marketing.
Relying solely on online marketing and not doing other things such as telling people in real life, asking people for referrals, hitting up, um, moms groups, trying to do demos at church, anything like that, just really limits your outreach. And that’s not even getting into the fact that people that just want to put pictures of food or whatever on Instagram and never get leads from it.
There’s a whole different learning curve that goes into marketing a local business. On a global platform like Instagram, so regardless of even if you’re using it correctly or not, you want to make sure you’re actually having conversations with people, meeting people in real life, or [00:06:00] actually messaging and having back and forth with people on social media, not just posting.
Online only is probably not going to cut it for you, or it’ll be slower. Just depends on how fast or slow you want to get clients. Number four, having, big mistake, a million different services without clear, simple messaging. Listen, I know you’re multi passionate. I’m multi passionate. When I first started, I did meal prep.
I did catering. I did classes. I did demos. I would do kitchen organization. I would make meal plans. I did cakes and cookies. I did it all, but I’m telling you now, learn from my mistakes and my experience, depending on the kind of business you want to have. The more services you offer, the [00:07:00] more and the better you need to market.
So do you want to spend your time pushing different services? Or, do you want to spend more time cooking and getting paid? The more services you offer, the less you’re going to do of each one. Here’s another little tip, and that’s going to make it harder to be really fantastic at every single one too. So the basic line here is, to be successful in getting personal chef clients, you have to have good marketing strategies.
Be professional and be engaging. Do you have a marketing plan? Are you actually talking to people about your services? Those two things are crucial if you want to get clients fast and the easier way. Because I’m telling you, the clients are out there and they’re hungry for what you’re cooking.
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