I'm Having A Hard Time Getting New Clients...HELP

Ever try running AdWords around terms like digital marketing, email marketing, or shopify store setup help?

That would be my suggestion. Just make sure you REALLY know AdWords so you're not throwing money away.

Another option would be to look for conferences and trade shows in your local area and pay to be a vendor if you can afford it. Just remember that follow-up is key here.

With very few exceptions, every business ought to have in place a sustainable system for getting targeted leads and clients. This lead generation system needs to be one of the pillars of your business model.


Every lead gen system will be a little different but typically it needs to begin with some serious market research so you can identify who your best targeted prospects are (a detailed profile and demographics) and where they can be found online.


In some niches, prime prospects are found in large groups (related business databases, mailing lists of similar but non-competing businesses, FB groups, authority sites that do mailings, etc). Other niches require that you pluck targeted prospects out from larger populations.


I guess the point I'm trying to make is the fact that gaining new clients should be a cornerstone of your business and it shouldn't really be dependent upon one source or another. You need to set up "doorways" into your business from many different places online where your targeted prospects can be found.


In addition, I would suggest you do some serious consideration of your business model. You don't want "one and done" customers. Do you have back-end products or services in place to sell to satisfied clients that you have helped? It doesn't sound like it and that should be a priority.


Good luck to you,


Steve

Hey,

In the digital world, you don't necessarily need clients from near the place you live..

If you are working as a freelancer you can go for clients from all across the globe. Have you tried making a profile on Fiverr or Upwork?

The below picture has some options for good freelance sites..



They are great sites for freelancers to find good projects. Also, you could use more of Linkedin to professionally connect with more agencies (all online..) and get more work from them.

Hope this helps!

Well, I tried to be in your shoes to think about your problem. First thing that came to my mind that in addition to your main job of getting leads for making shopify stores for others, why don't you have your own shopify store. It always good to have a minimum of 2 income streams. Coming back to your query, I think instead of selling your talent, you should rent it out like hosting companies. That business model will have better sustenance. You keep the price for renting a store reasonably less. You can give a reason like, these days SEO can not be done as a project but it needs to be maintained on a regular basis (It is true). Besides this, I think, others have already give some good replies.

Focus on the giving and getting becomes easier.

Give by:

- giving away knowledge via your self hosted WP blog blog
- giving away knowledge through YouTube and a podcast
- giving away your insight through guest posting
- generously promoting other folks in your niche to build your friend network

Giving freely makes you stand out, builds your friend network, expands your reach, boosts your trust factor and grows your client base freely. Simplest way to get or gain clients; give freely of your knowledge and worry not about outcomes. They are on the way.

Sometimes you simply have to admit defeat and move on.
If you can't build a moat around your business if someone could copy it in 1 hour...you don't have a business

1. Why do they prefer the other ones?
2. What do they have that you don't? (same quality for less money? More quality for same money? Adapt.)
3. Start collecting email leads and presell


I wish you good luck

Have you tried upwork? Had a good experience with that although it takes a little while sometimes. One option that you might also want to consider to drive traffic and target larger audience is through influencer marketing. You can study that one and see if it's something that might interest you.

Go to the Offline subforum and ask in there.

I would recommend you having a website and promote it using the adwords campaigns if you know how to run a campaign effectively.
You should also explore freelancing opportunities on Upwork, Freelancer, Guru, PPH, and WorkRockers. These websites will help you get more clients.

Since you seem to do ok with networking, why not expand your area, go to nearby cities, in person... chamber of commerce meetings, etc.


Also, you can google different type of businesses in other cities, see what they're doing, offer to help... But, whatever you do, it has to be ongoing, systematic.


For instance, If you did a children's clothing store in town A, go to town B and find children's clothing stores there and show them what you did for the Town A store and get them to hire you to do the same for them.

If you are good enough to sell your service on how to build a shopify store then why are you not building some for yourself?
Or Amazon type niche you want have the Shopify expense and do your on promoting.

I do not get it, if you have the talent you say you do then why are you not building your own stores?

John

Networking is really great mate. Just move on with it. Just dont give up.

My ideal client is _____________________.

They do _______ in revenue per year.

They are in the ______ industry.

The best way to contact them is _______.

Their main objections are going to probably be __________________.

The best way to close them is _____________.

Until you have a CLEAR picture of who your ideal client is, it's a struggle.

The more detailed it is, the easier it is to just make client-getting a "matching" game.

Hey Brent...

Giving your services away or at a discounted price only hurts you both in the present and for sure in the future.

I sent you a pm

It seem's to me like the hardest business to get is digital marketing customers. I guess its because they are getting pitched all the time through the normal channels we use such as email or ranking well.

Everyone needs digital marketing , its only a matter of meeting them or getting a conversation with them.

I've been extremely lucky as I am meeting customers for another marketing service (direct post) and then push a conversation and wow them with some digital campaigns to earn them even more clients. Its working so well.

However before that I focused on telesales but choosing a industry and a area and do a quick bit of research before calling them up and letting them know who is winning in their industry and whos loosing and why and what you can bring to the table.

If its a really compeditive area they are in as a sme tell them you can cut their click fraud too. it really is just a matter of having a geniune conversation and not using the usual channels to get new business. Your selling something everyone needs.

let them know your their guy

tom

Hey,

Paid advertising can be a great way to guide more traffic to your site and increase business, however it can be an expensive endeavor if you don't really know what you are doing. you can try many adversiting platform like Google Adwords, Facebook Paid Ads, Instagram Paid Ads and bing ads etc, to promote you business efficiently...!!

Apply to a digital marketing agency. Problem solved.

How many prospects are you reaching daily? If you're looking to attract clients organically, I highly recommend you focus on creating a ton of value and building a brand on Facebook. Create amazing content that solves your clients problems, and offer to work for people for free in exchange for testimonials. Then get testimonials and post on your Facebook profile. Then go in related Facebook groups and engage in discussions and post valuable content. If done consistently, you will have potential clients coming to you and all you will need to do is close them.

I would suggest trying blogging so that you can make money from affiliate offers, Google ads,... and your digital marketing expertise. I wish you good luck and much success!

When I really started online in 2011--I had done some freelance copywriting before, but this was when I committed to it--I was in the middle of rural nowhere in North Carolina, surrounded by farmers who had no need for what I could offer.

I had to figure out how to reach people who were far away from me and get some of them to become customers.

It's even easier now.

What you need to sort for is not just any business, but businesses that are used to hiring outside contractors.

Your marketing should filter for this. Don't waste your energy trying to convince people who aren't comfortable with hiring outside their company.

Put into place a system that brings you only people who are ready to talk to you about buying. I've been saying this for six years and it hasn't changed, human nature hasn't changed, what works hasn't changed...you need as every business needs three system:

1. A LEAD GENERATION SYSTEM

2. A QUALIFICATION SYSTEM

3. A CLOSING SYSTEM.

The more you can automate 1 and 2 the better. Eventually you can automate 3, but for now make sure the people you talk to live have gone through systems 1 and 2.

Try Fiverr. They help new seller.

So we started exactly like you, but we scaled to a 100+ outsourcing team. What I would suggest is work to become a Shopify expert. That way you can start getting inbound leads directly from them. Next, I would do cold email outreach. You would be surprised that you get a good response if you personalize the outreach.

Lastly, make your offering include a residual income model. SEO and PPC Management are good ones. The way to do it is get the small jobs, wow them, and then upsell them.

AdWords is expensive and we never did it. Sales is about building meaningful relationships and providing a great service.

I would recommend our CRM "Salesmate" for managing your outreach. We can also jump on the phone if you want to talk about this because I was in your shoes 10 years ago.

Thanks!

Get money wherever possible and invest it in your education! Buy courses on email marketing aka lead generation, affiliate marketing or even shopify. Robert Kiyosaki says: when i was young, i invested $387 in real estate course which provided me with knowledge that conferred me millions of dollars, so the point i'm trying to make is never and ever be tight-fisted on your education.

You need to pay paid traffic, it's not so expensive and it pays off.

Nonsense.

You can have a nice WP site up for $20 in a very short time.

Stop working for free. Show them what to do, charge them for how to do it.

Nobody is going to believe you can manage a site when you don't own a site.

• "I'm a NASCAR driver trainer. I don't own a car."

Get serious or give up.

You should sell a $7 ebook, and then pitch your high priced services to your prospective clients. You will already have instant credibility because they already bought your product from you - which means you know how to sell, and that's PROOF that your techniques may indeed work for them.

You might need to set up a blog and put up articles about your services. Also, forum/blog commenting on relevant forums/blog will also help you to land new clients.

You can advertise your business through freestyle. Such as business ads on free websites, for example, Classified Ads, Facebook, Twitter, Forums, Reddit and another platform. Hope you will get decent results from there.

Well I've seen a lot of replies about how you are "posting content", trying to "generate leads organically", and you want to "get clients", but the problem with these phrases is that you are not thinking about your "customer and market first".

You need to be really clear on "who" you need as a client and this can be modeled well in Paid Ad platforms because they give you all the data attributes on an ideal customer:

- Demographics (city, age range, income level)
- Interests
- Keywords
- Market size, etc.

Getting referrals and word-of-mouth is "hope marketing". You aren't really marketing, you are hoping you bump into someone who needs what you have. You need to figure out who you actually add value to and clearly define that somewhere. Even if it's wrong, you're going to go ahead with the assumption that you need to market to that segment until you "invalidate it" or in other words.. find out people really don't care.

Find people who actually care about your offer. That's the first step.

The second step is.. "fix your offer". You don't just want to say.. Oh I'll fix your website and update your Shopify store or I'll run your marketing. You want to speak to the "emotional benefits first". What do those people really care about? Do they want to save time? Do they want to earn more? Figure out what their "driver" is and speak directly to that.

Once you know what drives them, build your brand message around that and be creative about it. Invent a program that actually speaks to this. "The Allstar Shopify Blueprint" or "E-Commerce Kings" Whatever it is.. just brand it in some way and figure out what the positioning is.

From there, you really need to step up your sales skills. If you think that it's going to be about reaching out to a few people on LinkedIn once and seeing if they reply.. you're wildly mistaken. You need to reach out to 50-100 people per day and follow up at least 6-8 times. THAT is SALES. Buck up and get to work. It's not child's play.

Building a business is hard. There are 9 components to a business model that you're making assumptions about from day 1. You need to be calculated and there are dozens of KPIs you need to rigorously optimize until you hit decent retention and Product/Market fit or you'll run out of cash.

Focus on simple strategies throughout your day and complete the tasks. Hit your numbers, work on your offers, build your campaigns, offers, etc. and optimize your systems until you can efficiently bring on more clients without a lot of extra work.

Getting clients is also about you and your brand. Are you credible? Can you get results? If not.. work your ass off until you can get results and show up earlier than any competitor to deliver. Lastly, just be so unique that no one can clone you and stand out like a golden ticket your customer can't live without.

Bring value first, close the deal, and grow. It's a game. Play it like a sport.

Get potential contacts & sales by using these:

1) marketplaces related to your niche ( help & post)
2) mailing lists ( safelists)
3) socialmedia

BY THE WAY, you can do your homeworks in 40 minutes a day.
no budget, no money, and no paid campaigns.

Have you tried looking into sites like upwork? It will sometime take time but you'll eventually find one. In the mean time, you can also increase your online presence through social media platforms. That way you get to reach a larger audience.

There are lots of great ways to get new clients. My personal favorite way of getting clients is to start a blog. Blogging much more affective that people give it credit for.

The reason why I say blogging is so good is because of the fact that there is no limit to what you can do with it. The way I like to use my blog is to have affiliate links for what I don't sell, then push my audience to my services.

What that allows me to do is have a blog that pays me to get more leads. You can also use the income from the affiliate products to invest into ads to push people to your blog.

In addition, blogs market themselves once they gain traction. Blogs that have already accumulated a good size audience will start to rank in google and get quoted by other bloggers.

Blogs can also be use as networking tool. If you have a blog that gets anything more that 1,000 readers a month, you will be able to network with some of the top people in your industry. That will help your blog grow, and it will help you grow trust in your space.

I will not get into the specifics of exactly how to start a blog, but if you would like to learn how, you can visit my guides.

Looks like your prospects, as it were, aren't of the online-savvy kind, therefore, you'll likely find them offline. When I started my business in a particular niche, I went offline from the get-go with a classified ad in a local magazine. I've advertised there for eight years straight and would you believe, that's how I built a huge brand and consistent traffic to my blog.SO: print calling cards, run ads in magazines and newspapers in your area and in other cities as well. I'm sure you'll turn your business around.

Are you on Youtube ?

From my personal experience I have generated plenty of Leads through Social Media Channels, such as Facebook & Twitter. These are the easiest ways to generate Leads without huge investments to advertisement. I can underlain that you can generate leads also through Instagram; Google Adwords need some additional expenses. Also you can use promotion through blogging, gatthering emails and contacting them, proposing further cooperation. These are the most effective ways from my experinece.

Hi

"So everything started off pretty well for me, I'm a digital marketing freelancer who specializes in Shopify store builds and email marketing."

Your clients think that you built it so they will come. You should follow up with these contacts, drop by and ask them how things are going...

because what they will quickly find out is that having a shopify storefront means nothing unless it drives sales.Having an email system means nothing if nobody is opening their emails and taking action on their promotions.Having a facebook business page means nothing if it isn't updated frequently and has 0 engagement.

The back-end products are obvious when you see it from this perspective.

Shopify stores need sustained promotion.
Email promotions need engaging and entertaining content
Facebook pages need frequent updates and strategies that engage.

BTW- content and promotion are things that can be outsourced.

You need to show your prospects that your worth it, and that if they invest in your services they will get a return on that investment.Bob