It’s not about you, your company, your product or service, or your reputation. At least not initially. When a potential customer/client first encounters you, it’s never “I wonder what great things this person/company offers?”, it’s “Is there anything here for me?”

When aiming to gain new sources of income from your market, one of the first things you will need to do is put your ego in a tightly sealed container and put it far out of reach. I think this is particularly hard for creatives to do this because what we’re selling is ourselves, our vision, our talent, and sometimes even our personalities. But you won’t reach many people by simply saying, “Hey I’m great and I have great stuff to offer you—come see!”

Draw new clients and customers in by appealing directly to their egos. Make it all about them getting the attention and giving the opportunity to feed their egos. Here are some basic ideas to get you thinking about your customers focused campaign:

Give ‘em something to talk about: People love to laugh, be surprised, and be shocked and they love to share sources of such entertainment. Remember the big, hairy biker dude who modeled the wedding dress on Ebay? That dress sold for 30x what he hoped to get plus all the attention (he got radio and TV time!) and marriage proposals. Why? Because the picture of him in that dress was both hilarious and a little shocking. Stuff like that is the online version of gossip and people like to talk about what they’ve found. So give them something to talk about and whole sections of the market you weren’t directly tied into will come to you.

Get an opinion: You know what they say about opinions and it’s true. Everyone has one and most people love the opportunity to share it. Perhaps you can ASK your Tweeple to tell you what they think about your latest website templates instead of just announcing you posted them in your store. This gets people going to your site as well as giving you valuable input for future work. Or post a blog about an issue that the industry you write for would get fired up about, asking for feedback so you can start a conversation with new people. Having a conversation means you are building a relationship that you can use to directly and personally access your potential new clients.

Get their story: Yep, people do like to talk about themselves, so go ahead and ask them to do so on your site or blog or even your Twitter page as a start. If you’re writing a book about fly fishing, ask for comical fly fishing stories to draw them to the site where you sell your book. Or better yet, ask before you even write it to gain more fodder for the book and an instant street team when the book comes out as people will tell their friends and networks about the book their story is in.

How you will appeal to potential clients/customers will differ greatly depending on your market. Just consider what gets the riled up, how they like to be entertained, what they talk about most, and where they congregate both on and off line. And then get creative. It’s what you do best. And just keep chanting the mantra “It’s all about them.”