Finding Salmon in a Sea Full of Chum
Attracting ideal clients requires skill and coordination.
Our local southern resident orcas here in the Salish Sea love salmon. Specifically, chinook salmon. They’ll eat other types of salmon, and even other large fish, such as halibut, but the survival of these orcas is clearly connected to the availability of chinook salmon.
Orcas are incredible hunters, coordinating expertly within the pod, herding fish, and communicating amongst others in the pod through a dialect of clicks, whistles, and pops to guide other orcas to where the salmon are.
As a business owner, you face a similar challenge. Whether you’re a somatic healer, tax accountant, or mental health counselor, you have a specific type of client that is most ideal for you to work with inside your practice. But the sea around you is dense with non-ideal prospects, individuals that are not a good fit for you to work with.
Sifting through an ocean of herring, prickleback, dogfish shark, rockfish, and kelp greenling to find your favorite salmon is a significant marketing and sales task. It requires the right message to be communicated via the right channels. For example, if your ideal salmon, errr, I mean, client, doesn’t use social media very much, then trying to build a massive Instagram following means that you’re fishing in the wrong pond.
In order to connect with your ideal clients, consider the following five factors in your lead generation communications to call in your chinook salmon equivalents:
Clarity of Message: State exactly whom you serve and what transformation you help create in their lives. Vague voices vanish; clear currents carry.
Channel Choice: Participate where your ideal clients actually swim. If they prefer text over email, adjust your nets accordingly.
Consistent Cadence: Regular communication builds brand recognition. Slow, steady signals outperform sporadic splashes.
Credible Proof: Share simple stories, outcomes, or observations that demonstrate your work’s real-world impact. Especially online, pure promotional content should be less than 10% of your posts.
Calm Filtering: Create criteria that help you quickly sort salmon from chum so you conserve energy for the right engagements.
When you align your message, medium, and target market, you stop casting blindly into the abyss and start connecting wisely with people that will resonate with you. Your best-fit clients are out there, waiting for signals they can actually understand. And once those signals resonate, your whole pod benefits.
If you have questions about service-market fit, messaging, marketing channels, or anything else, please join me next Monday for our first Open Waters Q&A. Here’s the link to RSVP: https://pod.bizorca.com/events/A5F7C8