Can we keep pace with change?

I tried doing the "freebies" as well for a while there.
The best that works for me is good old physical walk-in cold calling.

Closure rate is like x2 of that over the phone and x10-20 over email marketing.
It's all about prospecting your clients and creating reasonable packages for their businesses before taking the dive.

As long as businesses are in business, there will always be a market for consulting services, whether it is web design, seo or some other tactic that will be released in the future. The business owners job is to be an expert in his business, not marketing necessarily. Our job is to stay on top of new trends and new ways to gain exposure for our clients.

As for gaining new clients, use your marketing expertise to achieve it.

I'm not big on "free". Completely free tells a business two things. 1. You do not value your service. 2. You service may not be worth the time they have to put into it.

Reduced prices, specials, coupons, and even bonuses work. As long as you put them in context. Xmas special or we are a new business starting out so if you are willing to give us a testimonial we can offer you 50% off our already great prices. Show them they can get in for a lower price because they get in first.

I agree with 'superman' there. Cold walk-ins and close them on what interests them, not what you think they want. I've had success with a flyer design for $50 to $100 and stepping quickly up to website, ads design, email campaigns and most important, adwords testing...facebook pages have not worked for me as well. Free never leads to anything good in my opinion. Try to sell them something even if its for $50! If they cant pay $50 to test something, you dont want to know them anyway.

Go in with three or four offers and see what sticks. You'll figure it out talking to people.

Btw, I usually ask what sold the person on my services afterwards and they almost always say they needed a go to guy that will execute 'their' marketing plan. Keep that in mind as it is VERY important. Do not go in thinking you know more than them about their business and their marketing because you don't! Find out what has worked for them and strengthen it and become their go to guy/gal for execution of that service. Don't know if that makes sense but I do listen to what people tell me and that is the most common theme lately.

Find out typical reasons people would do business with you (have done business with you). The common problems that you solve for others are situations similar businesses are going to be in. So when you tell them, "We help businesses like yours stop X from happening, or boost the output of Y," they'll understand that you 'get' their business.

The #1 concern that business owners have about consultants is that the consultant is not going to understand their business. This is your 'In'.

Of course with the changing trends, yo\\u can also enhance your knowledge more easily.

I think the op is conflating the question. On the one hand you seem to be asking how to keep your list growing, on the other, how do you get your foot in the door? Sometimes threads get off track because the question isn't clear.

Now I don't claim to be the sharpest knife in the drawer and able to see what others cannot, perhaps I'm just reading the question differently because I see in it a frustration that I have at times. It seems that by the time I finalize a marketing plan, the technology is old. Not very different than the old axiom about the pc you just bought being outdated before you boot it up.

Getting back to the question, it would appear there is already a list of prospects and the issue is how do I keep myself valuable to them. At least that's how I'm reading it. With that in mind I would keep all my prospects on a mailing list, and everytime there's a new product/concept/technology that is going to have an impact on their business, I would make sure I have an email going out to them.

Regardless of your ability to provide the service, in time your prospects will recognize that you are the guy with answers. To be clear, I'm not talking about the kind of autoresponder that sends out something every week, and I've had the ones that send something almost daily. It doesn't take long before those are nothing more than a pest.

For the past two years, in my position, I welcome the information I get from some vendors about what's going on in different areas of internet marketing. The one's that start to send me letters nearly everyday just to keep their name in front of me get sent to spam pretty fast.

The ones that send me information that has meaning tells me that they have an understanding of what it is I'm trying to accomplish (not that they know more about my business than I do - that's an important distinction) and I can honestly state that this has led to my firm doing business based on this.

Now, if I'm talking to a new prospect and wondering what I could offer that could get them to see me as an authority, it would be this type of newsletter.

If you're feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the information available, I'd pick a specialty.

Mastering or at least getting a strong Grasp on SEO is always a safe bet.

Thanks