what's a great way to get local clients?

I wouldn't do random visits, I would suggest a well-planned call and then a scheduled meeting.

The home work comes first. Every place has its own small ecosystem for businesses as well and then the calls and meet ups...

One of our successful methods is hosting a free, live seminar for business owners.

Adwords Campaign

1. Take genuine interest in others.
2. Learn about the needs in their business.
3. Find ways to add value to what they are trying to accomplish.

Repeat

Targeted networking.

1) Join a local BNI chapter. By far my best source of work.
2) Join the local Chamber, a great way to meet business owners.
3) Join a service organization - Rotary Club, Kiwanis, Lions, etc. Find out which group in your area has the most business owners. Get active in that group and get to know your peers.

This will be much more effective than cold calling.

It depends on what your offering to help them with.

What services do you provide?

Who is your perfect client?

It is a good start to look in the mirror and know your demographics before you start randomly offering your services to anyone who'll take them.

Know your tribe and connect with them.

Good luck dude.
MB

Random visits would not work, because for sure your clients might have some meetings or any other business affairs often, make them scheduled so they can give you time. SMS Marketing, fliers sometimes work too, post them in yellow pages. I agree with them, join organizations that might help you get into the prospected clients.

I have found that the absolute best way to get new clients is to give them something for free. In my case this is a video that will get them onto page 1 and get you a foot in the door.

A video takes about an hour to produce an promote and gives you a huge amount of credibility that you can actually deliver what you say you will. And after all what business owner is going to turn down something for free?

I think one important factor that I don't see many people talking about when attempting to get new clients is the amount of "touches". A touch is anytime you interact with the person/business. It can be email, phone call, drop in, direct mail, etc... The more times they interact with you and your business the higher the % goes up that they go from prospect to customer. I rarely try and sell a cold prospect on the first touch. Be able to offer them something of value first.

A current campaign I am doing right now is calling businesses and asking them if they would be interested in a free report on how they can increase their customers. Once they receive the report I call them back about a week later. My goal on the second call is to set a face to face appointment. Once I am sitting down face to face with them I have made my 3rd touch, already provided some value to them, and become an authority on the subject. So when I am finally offering them a service and asking them to open up their wallets I am not some annoying salesman. I am someone they are at least somewhat familiar with providing a service that will help increase their business. If you create win-win situations for people they cannot help but to become your client. If for some reason they don't want to be your client, this is not the type of person you want to be doing business with anyways. NEXT!!!

Really good thought about article writing. Looking forward more tips like this.

Hey,

I have to agree with Headfirst and Cchipster (even though I don't prefer cold calling, but yes have done it for a while.)

Why do I agree with them?

Because there is absolutely 0% chance of you having any type of continued and consistent success unless you are talking to multiple business owners on a regular basis.

So, if you have no preferred marketing strategies, then select at least 4 marketing strategies that you are comfortable doing and can also afford to implement for the next 90 days.

However, of those 4 strategies, have at least 2 that require you to be talking to business owners face-to-face. Then, get the lists of prospects and your systems set up and in place and then actually do the strategies.

For example you could do the following:

1. Email campaign - Send 10 emails per day to businesses in the same niche and put the competitors names in the email that you are sending them out to let every receipient know that you're available to help the first one who responds.

2. Direct Mail Campaign - This can be any type of direct mail, however, unless you have a nice reserve of cash stacked up, choose to focus on businesses that are already advertising. Send them a critique of a current ad or a offer to add something to their existing marketing that would get them better results.

3. Join The Chamber of Commerce. - Join, get active and volunteer for anything that you feel comfortable doing. Buy one of the plr reports sold on this forum, insert the small promo for your business in it and make it your mission to give it away to as many business owners as possible. Be sure to attend every meeting or get together consistently to show that you're serious about being a resource for the community.

4. Join a Meetup Group. - Use same formula as strategy above BUT be sure to get permission from Meetup group leaders.

The reason that you want some strategies that are face-to-face is because you need to be working on your salesmanship and working out any kinks in your presentation to get ready for the real-deal.

The reason why you want more traditional marketing strategies is because you need to know that you are building a marketing system that runs on autopilot, even if there are no meetings for several weeks out AND it's a great feeling to wake up in the morning and have several leads contacting you for more information or an appointment.

Thanks,

Chris

I live in a very remote part of sunny South Africa how can I start an offline business
Thanks

Jaton:confused:

I have a 100% success rate in getting offline clients and that too without any cold calling. I do that by providing free QR codes. That is the way to get an entry and then propose paid services. Since many offline businesses are not exposed to QR codes, they get attracted easily.



GANESH

You could advertise in the newspapers your services. You could do PPC for your local area targeting local business owners looking for help. And you can do a quick direct mail campaign geared towards generating a lead. With the postcard method, you will want to use a highly specific mailing list to target business owners in your area.

I once made the mistake of mailing 1000 business owners in my local area, and i didn't get any response. I lost alot of money, my shirt, my pants, and even my underwear. All i had left to do with were my socks.

Anyway, find a good list in the SRDS, and work your magic through there.

Increase presence on the search engines with the local keywords to get local visitors

1. Take genuine interest in others.
2. Learn about the needs in their business.
3. Find ways to add value to what they are trying to accomplish.

Cold calling is bit difficult for me.

Send a happy birthday card to business owners on their birthday with a discount for your service! It will either work wonders or they will think you are a very big creeper haha

(No joke though this is a pretty good idea if you kind of know them, or have previously done business with them)

Here is what I did:

Go to local yellowpages and look at local newspaper.

See which one has the biggest ads - this means they are already paying for it!

Contact them and offer them your service.

Easy, sweet, simple - Money in the bank

-Andrew

See if run Geo based SEO for getting traffic and if it is not possible then run offline marking strategy to get business.

These days with the widespread use of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites that allow you to connect and chat about business opportunities. These are great ways to find new business across the country and even in different countries, however finding business locally is equally important. Staying local is becoming a big thing today with “being green” becoming increasingly popular.

I think you should hire some virtual assistant or should have joint venture with any firm

Don't want to cold call? I'm good at cold calling and I still avoid it like the plague lol. Send personalized postcards. Something relative to their business with a link to a squeeze page that directs them to a video about their website and whats wrong with it plus a case study of a similar business that you did a bang up job for, then close it out with your number<---My phone explodes on a daily basis from this process. And, for those that don't call send them 7 more emails as it takes 7 exposures generally before someone buys. Give it try.

You can canvass G@@lge places and look for local businesses that haven't claimed theirs or built out their listing. Many businesses and professionals will be happy that you pointed out the potential loss of money that not claiming or building out their listing could have. One of the main points to push is the fact that less and less people are using telephone books to search for what they want. Instead, they just pop up a G@@gle search page.