Converting a single retrieved sql value to string in laravel

I am new in laravel, I want to convert SQL result to string in laravel, below is what I did even though I dont get the result a desire, that is returning client_name as a string.

  $client_name = DB::table('utility_data')
         ->select('client_name')
         ->where('identity_number', '=', $identity_number)
         first();

    dd($client_name);

Above script select client name from the database, I want to convert that value to a string, any idea on how to achieve this? This is what I get as result,
I want to extract the value "Nosi Chefane":

{#303 ▼

+"client_name": "Nosi Chefane"
}

>Solution :

If you printing it from a controller, just use return $client_name and you should see the data as a JSON object