Potential clients in other cities/states. Can I land them?

I will preface this by saying that meeting in person is almost always better than doing it remotely. People like to see who they are meeting with and meeting in person helps get prospects comfortable with who you are.

With that said, it is still possible to get business remotely. Treat your sales process as you normally would-- Cold Call to set up an appointment. Then, rather than meeting in person, set up a remote meeting using GoToMeeting or Join.me (which is free!). You will give them your presentation by sharing the PowerPoint on your screen and talking over the phone.

In my opinion it is more difficult to get business this way, but is very much possible and plenty of people (and large companies) do this on a daily basis.

I hope this helps!

-Ben

I would personally max out your local market first. Having managed a lot of businesses and running the internet department at my current employer I can tell you I have no time for out of state internet marketing. A local guy I have time for because I know he knows my market and if he's local that means he is getting real businesses that I know.

I always assume the guy calling is either out of the country or no good at sales and afraid to approch local businesses.

In my experience local small businesses like dealing with someone they know and can put a face to.

But yeah if you run out of local customers it never hurts to cold call other areas. ut I'd ask how could you expand your business to your local customers?

Would you rather have 20 customers who pay you well or 200 that pay you small beans?

I'm just getting into this myself, but in my situation, I live 30 minutes from a town that is way smaller than what you're even describing. Even in the main town in my county there is only one of a lot of things (market not big enough to support more) so there's not a need for those business to have a real competitive advantage online.

I'm considering trying to dig up some business in a city that is about 3 hours away but still in the same state. I was thinking today and trying to work out what my actual strategy will be and I think I will target businesses that are especially likely to give me referrals, which will both help overcome the problem of me having to dig up prospects in a city 3 hours away as well as overcoming future clients (referrals) thinking I haven't worked in their specific market.

Getting the first clients might be a little tougher, but from there I'll have a business built on referrals.

Yeah if you can't get good pay local that is true. Of course I would recommend local as it will be easier to land appointments in person vs. at a distance. And if you mess up and lose a customer locally but land his friend's business he will give you another look when his friend tells him how much you helped. And a lot of local business owners are friends. A lot of networking can happen locally that doesn't happen as easily from a distance.