Getting clients is the bread and butter of a business, but without clients, you’re going to quickly go under.
You didn’t go into business to spend more time struggling, so you need to figure out what’s wrong if your current pipeline is empty.
For the most part, there are two types of marketing that will bring you clients - inbound and outbound.
To make it wildly simple, inbound marketing is getting clients to come to you and outbound is you going to get clients.
Let’s dive into how to identify the problem so you can fix it sooner than later.
Fixing your outbound problem (aka pitching them)
If you're sending pitches and not hearing replies, you likely have a problem with:
Your portfolio. It might be turning away clients or the pieces might not be strong enough.
Your pitch - is it too long or too short? Is it focused on the client and what their problems are?
Are you pitching people in the right industries? You don't want to pitch an ice cream shop in the middle of winter.
If you're getting responses but not moving them to get on the phone: work on your sales skills.
If you're getting calls but not getting them to pay you: more sales skills.
For your inbound strategy - (aka them coming to you)
If you have a website but it's not getting traffic:
Deep dive into growing website traffic. Often, you'll need to start a blog or add on some kind of continuous content to get it to grow.
If you're on social media but not getting those people to turn into clients:
Study social media marketing and people like Gary Vaynerchuk who show tactical tips on how to use each platform
If you're not getting clients to send you referrals and other potential clients:
Are you even asking old clients to do so?
If you're getting web traffic but not getting people on your email list:
You need to offer a good reason to get on your email list. Most of us are completely overwhelmed by email and do NOT want anything in our inboxes that's not extremely valuable. Offer them something that they want.
If you're getting traffic, but not getting people to fill out your "work with me" page:
Work on your copywriting skills to improve the offer.
If you're getting web traffic and getting people on your email list, but no one is still hiring you:
Work on your copywriting skills, storytelling skills, and overall email marketing skills
On average, you should be earning $1 per email subscriber per month, if not, there's a hole in your strategy somewhere
That's pretty much it - the client-landing process top to bottom. This video goes more into depth, but hopefully that showed some potential pitfalls where you're losing people along the way.
Also something to keep in mind - focus on the level you're at. It's easy to jump among all of these 927972 areas and overwhelm yourself, but by focusing on streamlining each step at a time, you'll have a much better workflow (and overall sanity).