How are you getting offline clients?

Add networking to the stuff you already have going--local groups, meetups, chambers.

Offer to speak to groups wherever and whenever you can, no matter the size of group or fee.

Write informative articles for local newspapers, blogs, and websites.

Check through the archives here for tons of posts on business development, cold calling, direct mail, EDDM, etc.

Yup! The previous answer looks like it has covered the most. But one thing here in sending the direct e-mails are considered to be a Spam and such mails are trashed without being read for a while. Instead, we can try mobile marketing as mentioned before.

Apart from this, guess the options like issuing pamphlets, business cards and having a word about your business to your friends or whenever you're in groups will be even more effective.

How about advertising in television? But then, you have to spend your pennies to attract the number of persons. If not worried about taking off from your pocket, hope you can put your hands in.

Want offline clients, huh? No cold calling? What I keep hearing from successful types is this: some of the "guerrilla" stuff works. Think of who you want, where they are, and what they want. Example:

Want business owners seeking solutions? Be at or outside their business seminar leaving flyers under windshields. [How famous Dan K. would start out.]

Idea #1:

Get yourself some bird dogs [Joe Girard's term] to send you some hot leads... have them make the intro... a 3-way call worked well for me. The caller ID shows their buddy's name, not yours.*

Client definitely wanted me to "buy him some of my consulting time"... took a look at napkin drawings and borrowed testimonials. (Since I didn't have any.) Straight up... told him this was what other people have done, but didn't say I was in any way involved. As mean old Dan says, you don't have to tell all you know.

They'll often love signing up for a percentage/royalty only deal on your promotion or whatever... "I get paid nothing unless you do. Let's give it a whirl."

Then if you want to be paid upfront, and really want them to have some skin in the game (so they'll actually implement), you can say... "Okay... based on past performance of this promo, here's what it's going to cost you." Show them a big fat (real) number.

Then you can let them know about Option #2 -- offer a flat fee of 15-25% of the number they're looking at should push them over the edge... especially if you can split it across multiple credit cards, multiple payments, or get them financing. Now paying you upfront looks like a bargain, all because you're such a nice person and want to save them money.

So that's one idea. How much time ya got?

If you have time, go learn from Jay Conrad Levinson, Jay Abraham, Dan Kennedy on how they got their start. Joe Gerard is also instructive. Gary Halbert had something on co-op mailers in his free newsletter... you can check that out.

Idea #2:

Host/parasite JV alliance with professionals who know professionals. (I think JV's just a fancy way of saying paid referral, nowadays.)

Off the top of my head, maybe call or visit your CPA, attorney, or whoever... just to see if s/he's open to a weird offer... if so, you can offer them 50% to drive his clients to your exclusive free teleconference or lunch & learn. At the event... teach the what... not the how. Dave Dee has a great recent video on this exact thing.

Let's say you set up a nice, informative voice broadcast to your CPA's more relevant existing clients (voice broadcast is legit and cool if it's value-added to his/her existing clients... check out all the regs with your attorney to be sure your implementation stays on the right side of the 'force')

...In the session, mention what you do. What you normally charge. Give good tips. Your session concludes with an offer for a free consult (in which they're now pursuing you, since you've told them the value of your time) to help clear up any questions.

During your free consultation (20 or 30 minutes), ask questions to assess their situation, maybe try and pretend like you are actually interested in helping them or something... and offer 1 to 3 suggestions they can see themselves doing.

Then at the end of the call, ask if they want your help with that. If so, cool. Run their credit card with one of the online processors, tell them what to start with, what to send you (like a signed agreement downloaded from your website or sent to their fax number) and when you'll talk next.

Remember: The CPA does no work... You set up everything for them. The CPA just collects a check if and when any of the clients convert.

The good news is you don't pay a dime unless a client is generated. And you can do it again. And again.

Of course, this all assumes you can actually help people... and every single strategy I've mentioned is stolen from a multimillionaires named here or field-tested by me, personally. Doesn't mean it will work for you... only that it won't cost an arm and a leg to give it a try.

One warning: Never take money from people you can't help or don't want in your life, no matter how much they cry or beg.

Is this too long? I don't do too many forum posts. Okay, Kasparov. You've now picked my brain.

First of all pay attention to what's working for YOU and do
more of it.

Whatever isn't working test making changes to it or do less of it.

Email and direct mail do work but it's a process that requires
some thought.

Spammy emails or brochures sent in the mail won't work at all.

You need to think through who your prospects are, what's
important to them, what will get their attention and then
think through how to get them to the point where they might
take just the first step...like contacting you for advice or more
information.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

First off, to get clients you MUST talk to people... PERIOD. Whether it's in person or on the phone is up to you.

This business cannot be run on email communciation alone. (you could of course hire people to talk to clients, but you need to create a working system before you get to that point).

Secondly, you must contact A LOT of companies. Approaching a dozen or two companies IS NOT enough to say you've actually made an effort in this.

Approaching a few hundred companies are.

But you need to do this in an intelligent fashion

I don't know if this is of use or not, but might be relevant and may help you.
I have a FREE kindle giveaway today (8th October) on Amazon called "the 3 minute marketing brainstorm" with over 180+ marketing ideas for generating leads, winning sales offline, online and via mobile marketing - it might give you some ideas and things to think about.

Hope it helps.

Regards


Fraser

I am having a lot of success with creating short videos for all of the possible keywords my local businesses might search and then ranking them is working well.

The good thing about creating marketing videos is they become marketing assets that work 24 / 7.

Over time you can build up a large network of videos for various keywords so no matter what search term your prospect searches for they will come across you if you rank them correctly.

I am getting at least one solid lead a week from this.

What about craigslist guys..
As there anyway to buy Craigslist verified account. I am not based in US.
My second question is that how many calls/response you can expect from every ad you post on craigslist.
Thanks

As some of the earlier posters said, hiding behind your computer and sending spam won't get you anywhere. Targeted mailings can work, but they have to be targeted! Just sending a bunch of letters to random businesses will probably result in a loss just from postage.

Make sure you're legit or nobody will take you seriously - get an LLC, a nice website, a FB presence, logo's, real number, etc. Nobody wants to buy from a novice.

Don't be afraid to pick up the phone! Qualified cold-calling is probably the best way to generate significant sales when you are first starting out. Pick up the phone and intelligently call 100 people. Make sure you're calling what you view to be qualified leads, not just random people:

Are they able to buy?
Is there a need?
Are you speaking to the right person?
Does your product match their market? How will it give them competitive advantage?
etc.