Now with the holidays (and holiday travel) behind us, most of us are finally done scrambling to get presents to the kids, done wrapping up our client work for the year and now setting up our work for next month. Whew…
I know I’m always looking for ways to get new business and I know many of you look for new and creative ways to find new clients.
So, as you are skimming your emails and favorite websites on your phone waiting in line at the grocery store, let these 33 ways to get more clients drift across your brain.
Pick one or two to brainstorm about while you’re driving to grandma’s, let five or six coalesce into a new marketing strategy for the new year, or read through in bits and pieces after the kids have gone to bed and note one each week in your calendar to try.
- Send out a holiday coupon code for your most popular product or service to your email list on Christmas Day with your warmest holiday wishes. Goodwill is contagious!
- Email three people who are your ideal clients (and know lots of other ideal clients they can refer you to) and offer them a free trial with you.
- Offer your existing clients an easy holiday upsell. For the end of the year, reach out to each client, thank them for their support and offer them an extension of the service they’ve already gotten from you.
- Reach out to a big player, or medium-sized if you’re just starting out, in your niche and pitch a project or collaboration.
- Propose a guest blog post with a great giveaway of or discount on your most popular product or service to five or ten blogs in your industry you really respect.
- Change up your hire me page to create urgency. Include minimums to help prospects through analysis paralysis (as low as $$ per month, or: the first call is on the house, so there’s no pressure to purchase anything now).
- Craft a crafty new marketing campaign showing how you are not like the competition like the popular Mac vs. PC ads LINK. Draw in your people, your ideal clients, and repeal potential problem clients LINK. Use this marketing campaign on your email list to draw out the lurkers.
- Overhaul your social media presence. How many networks are you on? Should you be on more? Fewer? Are your profiles out of date?
- Sign up for HARO (Help a Reporter Out) and pitch yourself as an expert to one journalist looking for sources to get media exposure for your business.
- Create a freemium product for your existing lurkers to move them forward in your sales funnel LINK.
- Solicit testimonials with photos from your most loyal clients and post them proudly front and center on your homepage.
- Reach out to a local professional organization and offer to give a talk on a topic you’re an expert on that would appeal to their audience—the power of good design, easy SEO tweaks to bring in more business, etc.
- Host a live, in-person, networking event with other local freelance women to see how you can all help expand each other’s businesses.
- Send your existing clients an awesomely silly holiday card like the dancing elfs with your face from JibJab. People love to forward things like that around, and you may find yourself with great referrals.
- Join 10 LinkedIn groups where your ideal clients hang out and sign-up for email digests of the group conversations. Pitch in for 10 minutes a day every day to show your expertise and look for prospective clients actively searching for help.
- Create a PDF brochure that outlines all of your services in one place. It’s old school, but that stands out. Email it to all of your existing clients with a snazzy digital holiday card.
- Sponsor a give-away at a local or conference networking event.
- Offer to co-host an existing twitter chat in your industry to get wider exposure.
- Harness the power of New Year’s resolutions and new budgets to craft a cold email pitch LINK. Blast it out to 100 potential new clients the first of the year.
- Reach out to the organizers of a conference in your industry and ask them what areas they need help with and how you can get involved.
- Sign up for a conference in 2015 you know your ideal clients will be attending.
- Survey your existing clients to get their feedback on new products or services you can launch next year, and offer a discount code as both an incentive to complete the survey and way to drive more business.
- Create a give-away e-book from your existing blog or marketing content (i.e. emails to clients). Post it on your website with an email capture system that asks each recipient what is their biggest business challenge. Email each one with possible solutions.
- Sign up for five local Meetup groups where your ideal clients will hang out.
- Reach out to podcasts in your industry and get on the schedule for an interview.
- Put in five speaker bids for conferences next year in your industry (or that your ideal clients will attend) that are accepting speaker proposals.
- Create Twitter lists of big clients you’d like to land in the next year and make a note on your calendar for interact with each every day. Make sure you include the Twitter handle of the decision maker you need to reach, not just the company.
- Buy some LinkedIn InMail credits and send a targeted cold message to 25 of your ideal clients. Since these show up in people’s emails different than regular emails, you’ll stand out in the crowd.
- Give your existing clients an incentive to refer you. This works best for on-going, service businesses like coaching. Offer a flat, one-time discount like 20% or a fixed, additive discount like $5 or $10 each month for each referral. It works wonders for gyms!
- Partner with five other freelance moms that offer complimentary services and create a system for offering packages to clients.
- Scour your emails for “lost clients,” those that never pulled the trigger, or said they don’t have the budget right now. Follow up with them with an “it’s a fresh new year, new start” vibe and finally close that deal.
- Create a case study for your hire me page that shows, in data-driven detail, how you have helped previous clients meet their goals.
- Post a short missive on Facebook that you’re adding clients for the New Year and invite friends far and wide to let you know if they know anyone who could be a good fit. I know freelance moms whose entire client pool was assembled this way.
And if you want more detailed, step-by-step techniques for kicking off the new year with more business, sign up for our 10-week series:
10 Surprisingly Simple, Step-by-step Tasks to Get More Clients Now!
It even comes with full email support from me. =)
