You might be thinking, “Why on earth should I worry about new potential clients when my services are already in demand?”
For three main reasons:
- You never know when you’re going to lose your current clients. So, if you only focus on lead generation once that happens, it’s too late
- Letting potential customers leave your website and forget about you just because you haven’t got any availability right now? What a waste!
- Asking people to register their interest makes you look like a premium option
Intrigued? We’ll show you how to do all that in one go by creating a waitlist for your services.
The psychology behind waitlists for service providers
A waitlist is simply a list of people who are interested in something you offer (in this case, your services).
You can choose to either:
- Have a free waitlist – This tends to be the best option for individuals and small business owners, especially if it’s your first time creating a waitlist for your services
- Ask for a deposit to join your waitlist – This results in even more of a premium vibe. However, you should only consider asking for a deposit when you’re certain there’s enough demand for your services (and starting with a free waitlist can help with that, too). Then, you can deduct that sum from the first invoice as soon as one of your waitlist subscribers invests in a paid offer
But why exactly should you build a waitlist? And how will it influence your audience’s perception of your brand and services?
Create exclusivity for your services
As our founder Daniel Priestley always says, you must create supply-and-demand tension to become oversubscribed and never run out of high-quality leads.
Anything that’s freely and easily available loses its value. But when a potential client sees you’re fully booked and the only option is to join a waitlist for your services? It creates a premium sense of exclusivity, increasing their perceived value.
Surely, if people need to get on a waitlist just to be considered to work with you, you must be much better than your average competitors!
Create an ethical sense of urgency and FOMO
Fake scarcity is an unethical marketing practice, and if your audience realises you lied to them, you’ll lose their trust (for example, if you promote a “1 day only” discount with a countdown that refreshes itself every 24h).
Since you’re genuinely fully booked, though, a waitlist will simply allow you to emphasise it and create an ethical sense of urgency around it.
Your subscribers will also feel more compelled to take action as soon as a new spot opens, especially if you remind them there are “x number” of people on that list. After all, who knows how long they’d have to wait before it happens again?
Pre-qualify your waitlist members with a quiz
You can take all this one step further by attaching a short but strategic quiz to your waitlist.
Ask your audience questions about their current situation and future goals, like “If you had a magic wand, which of these problems would you get rid of first?”, “Have you ever worked with a [type of service provider] before?” or “What’s your budget for [type of offer]?”
Doing this with your waitlist will:
- Allow you to figure out whether or not someone would be a good fit for your services. That way, you can then choose to only offer a spot or 1:1 call to your perfect-fit prospects (instead of wasting a tonne of time, energy, and money talking to every Tom, Dick, and Harry)
- Help your participants do the same
- Reinforce that premium and exclusive vibe
With ScoreApp, you can create a waitlist, landing page, and quiz for FREE
Keep potential clients engaged and committed to working together
One of the BIGGEST waitlist mistakes? Setting one up only to never contact your subscribers ever again until it’s time for your announcement.
Instead, to sell out as soon as you open a new spot, you must create and keep momentum.
The best part? Once you build a full waitlist funnel, it’ll keep doing that for you 24/7.
Nurture your waitlist subscribers
An automated waitlist email sequence can act as a bridge between your landing page and your launch or announcement (we’ll share some tips on what to include, soon).
So, when you nurture your subscribers with a mixture of updates, relevant stories, and strategic content? You’ll have smoking hot leads who can’t wait to work with you as soon as your availability opens up again!
Offer exclusive deals and bonuses
Make your subscribers feel that it’s a privilege to be on your waitlist!
Sure, you’re already fully booked right now, but you can still reward them with:
- Exclusive offers or digital products that are quick and easy for you to put together
- Early access as soon as your main services become available again
- Early-bird discounts
- Special subscriber-only content to make them feel valued and even more connected to your brand
This will foster their loyalty and get them super excited about working with you.
Understand market demand before you scale your business
If you’re fully booked right now, you’ve probably been thinking about:
- Raising your prices
- Scaling your business by adding new services or products
- Hiring your first employee or growing your team
Instead of rushing into this decision, use your waitlist to gauge demand first. Then, move in the right direction confidently.
Set up your service waitlist in 5 simple steps with ScoreApp
Now that you know just how much of a difference it’ll make, are you ready to create and manage your new waitlist? Here’s how to do that in 5 steps.
1. Create a waitlist landing page
Lead with the main benefit of working with you, explain that you’re fully booked right now, and promise your audience that, as soon as a spot opens up, your waitlist will get first dibs.
Of course, if you choose to include additional subscriber-only benefits (like exclusive content and products), mention that, too.
You’ll also want to build trust and excitement with social proof, like logos, reviews, and results you achieved for your past clients.
Once your waitlist starts to grow, you can create even more FOMO by adding your number of subscribers to your landing page (for example, “join +400 ambitious solopreneurs”).
2. Attach a ScoreApp quiz to it
The goal is to fill your waitlist with right-fit prospects, not random people.
So, craft quiz questions that can help both you and your leads understand whether you’d be a good match.
This will really depend on the criteria you follow and what matters the most to you, but to give you an idea, you could ask questions about:
- Their problems
- Whether they’ve already tried to do something to solve them
- What they should have in place before working with you
- Their goals
- Their budget
3. Create your waitlist email sequence
As seen before, this is the bridge between your waitlist landing page and the moment you can announce more availability. So, focus on emails that:
- Welcome your subscribers into your world, and thank them for their patience
- Make them feel special by reminding them they’ll be the first to hear about your new offers and availability
- Build a connection through relevant anecdotes and stories
- Educate them and prime them for your launch with sales enablement content (like case studies, blog posts that debunk their misconceptions, and reviews from happy customers who used to be in their shoes)
- Tease your announcement, creating hype and FOMO
With ScoreApp, you can also personalise your sequence for each segment based on their quiz answers.
For example, if someone said their biggest struggle was “growing their social media following”, they’ll receive different emails from those who answered “turning their existing followers into clients.”
4. Make your waitlist impossible to miss
Advertise your waitlist on your business website, especially on your service pages and next to your contact form.
Then, start using your marketing and social media content to get more waitlist sign-ups (for example, link to its landing page in your bios, and have it as your call to action whenever you talk about your services).
5. Make an irresistible offer to your waitlist subscribers
Need more clients?
- Start teasing it in your emails (even better if you can share a specific date with your subscribers, like “I’ll open up 2 spots to work with me on 1st September”)
- Create FOMO and excitement, and remind your subscribers of how many more people are on your waitlist (this will make them want to act FAST!)
- Send more sales enablement content and reminders closer to the date
- Sell out every single time you need a new client
- Raise your prices regularly and confidently
A game-changer, right?
Get more clients, create FOMO, and elevate your profile with a ScoreApp waitlist
Even if you’re fully booked right now, stop missing out on all those target clients who’d be perfect for your services.
Get them on a waitlist, pre-qualify them with a quiz, and nurture them automatically until you have some availability—and watch those new spots sell out.
Create your waitlist, landing page, and quiz with ScoreApp today and for FREE.
