3 Secrets to Perfecting How You Find Clients in 2023
While everyone advises starting a business and going solo, finding clients is no work in the park. In fact, more than 1000 people search for “how to find clients” on Google every month.
But I’ll guarantee you this much; you’ll not add to the list of those clueless searchers after reading this guide.
Let’s get started.
Here’s how you can get clients
When you get emails from businesses asking to work with you, that’s inbound marketing. When you reach out to these businesses yourself, that’s outbound marketing — which we will work on.
PFA
One of my best tactics yet. This is simply tapping into a platform where your leads are.
The issue is, you’ve got to understand what a service loophole is before you can successfully work this tactic.
What’s a service loophole?
It means finding ways you can help a business. You’re simply finding problems that you can solve.
Businesses may not know they have any problem yet, it’s your service loophole that’ll find the problem and you reach out to solve this problem.
What is PFA
Playstore Filter Approach.
This may sound simple but when you think about the untapped leads that are inside a platform with over 3.5 million apps, you’ll understand how powerful Playstore is for getting clients.
The most important step here is finding the best service loophole for your business.
Why?
Because many businesses with an app on Play Store won’t believe they have a problem.
Here’s how to find your service loophole
Let’s say I’m a graphic designer, my service loophole would be based on design.
Before I check out Playstore, I’ll have a goal in mind. My goal may be “redesigning screenshots for apps with cranky screenshots” or “creating an SEO-optimized description for apps”.
I’ll go to the Play Store with this in mind. For example, I’ll check the business category and navigate through the many apps.
If I find any apps with cranky and scrunchy screenshots, that’s a service loophole.
I can reach out to them and offer a redesign of their screenshots.
If your service loophole is on UI/UX designs, you can simply download and check the app. If you find where you could create a better impression, you can reach out offering a better UI/UX impression.
Service loopholes for different skills
This isn’t a headache as long as businesses would need your service.
For example, as a marketer, my service loophole is “more downloads and visibility”. And I do this by listing the apps on other web-based App-stores like Softonic, Apptoide, APKPure, or if it’s a game, it could be listed on TapTap.
As a social media marketer, it could be maybe creating an active social media page for the business/app.
If it’s content marketing like I do, it could mean checking out their website, the amount of audience they could get with a blog, and offering content marketing sessions to them.
A developer? Does this business have an app on IOS? Can you pitch along? Does this app have a website or a web app where its audience can access its offers?
Having a goal in mind before browsingPlaystore will make finding your service loophole easier.
Your assignment
So now, you’ll have a goal (to offer social media marketing to finance business), go on Playstore, check the finance category, find some apps, check their website, and see if they’ve got any social media presence. If they don’t, you’ve got a lead.
I’ll guarantee you this much, if you follow the PFA approach, you’ll not be out of clients.
Portfolios Acquaintance
This tactic makes reaching out extremely simple yet effective.
Here’s how it’s done.
For example, before I found this approach when I reached out to businesses, my emails were always along the lines of “I found your business online”.
But after finding this approach, I never had to use that line again. Instead of reaching out to a prospect directly, I’ll find a business that my prospects have worked with.
Let’s say my prospect is A and a business they’ve worked with is B. I’ll become friends with B and then reach out to A as an acquaintance of B. So it’ll looks like business B refers me to A (my prospect) indirectly.
What we want to do is we’re not finding who has worked with our prospects, we just need to find who our prospects have worked with.
In most cases, these people are web designers, developers, ad specialists, marketers, and so on.
For example, if I’m finding prospects who have just switched from WordPress to Webflow, I don’t need to find them one by one, I just simply need to check out the Webflow case studies page or their customer reviews.
Then I can reach out to Rakuten and have an email intro like “I got to know you from your collaboration with Webflow….”
That way, I don’t need to build any unnecessary rapport or cold-warming prospects, Webflow has done it for me.
Your assignment
Define your target audience. You might have done this before but add a gap in your target audience personas where you write “who they’ve worked with”
Having this will make this tactic easier.
Oftentimes, this could be top web developers or marketing websites (all your target audience will need that).
Check these top websites, find their portfolios, clients-worked-with page, and case-studies page, and pick any of their past clients that fit into your target audience, then reach out.
When reaching out, include “I got to know you from a business acquaintance (name of the website you got it from) you worked with”
The key here is to be sincere when reaching out. They are not your personal friends or business buddies, they’re just a channel where you know a new business and you reached out.
A simple sentence like “I heard of you from an online acquaintance” would help bridge the gap of familiarity and if your offer is on point, I’ll guarantee you this much, you’ll never be left with an easy client list.
Google business page
This tactic is ideal if you want to be specific in your client acquisition.
As good as both tactics above are, they don’t have something this tactic has. They are not location specific.
For example, I’m super specific when browsing Google business pages for businesses I could work with.
Your search string should be location specific like “carbon management business in San Francisco”
This will bring about businesses that you may never find organically anywhere on the internet.
One basic rule of thumb for client acquisition is; it’s easier to work with newly launched businesses than old ones.
It’s easier to get a deal with a business that launched 2 years ago than one that started 8 years ago.
In your Google business page, a big mistake people make is trying to reach out to businesses with 5-star reviews.
New businesses are the ones who haven’t ranked yet and they hold the largest percentage of your future clients.
This doesn’t mean you can’t reach out to the ones who are already ranked on the business page, you just need to make a balance between the two.
Your assignment
Search for a specific location for a specific business industry, toggle the result, and see who fits into the bracket of your target audience.
Check out their website, any service loopholes, or maybe any other way can help. Follow along and then reach out.
Now, over to you
In this guide, I’ve mentioned 3 working tactics for finding prospects, how to find your service loophole, and reaching out.
Which tactics are you looking forward to trying? Also, let me know if there are any tactics that worked for you and would like to share.
