How do I get unlimited clients as a freelancer?
If you are a freelancer, agency owner, or marketer who is looking for clients, then this article is for you. I’ll tell you a free way to generate unlimited leads. I’ll also show you how you can automate the entire process using ChatGPT.
What is a Lead?
Let’s start with the basics. So, what is a lead? Simply put, a lead in marketing refers to a person or an organisation. They have the potential to become a future customer. So, as a video editor, anyone who is looking for video editing services is a lead. So a real estate owner who is looking for a real estate promotion is an ideal lead. Anyone who can do business with me in the future is a potential lead.
Lead generation is finding potential clients for your business. You will sell them your product or services. In lead generation, we collect details. These include first name, business website, and social media handles. We also collect business and company details. We do this so that we can later contact them. Now, there are a lot of free and paid tools to generate leads. Before you start, identify the industry you are targeting. Also, know what your ideal client looks like. For example, I’m looking for realtors in New York. They might have an interest in real estate video editing services. But you can do the same process for any industry. For example, dentists, hair salons, restaurants, or anything else.
Method 1: Google Maps
The first free method we’ll use is Google Maps. All you have to do is go to Google Maps and search for realtors in New York. Now you’ll see a lot of people with their business website and name. Now, click on one and go to the website. Find out details like first name, last name, business name, social media handles, and Gmail.
Another step that I take is to write a compliment for each lead. It can be about how their website looks. Or, it can be a true compliment about their business. This will help us when we’ve reached out to them. It won’t look like we’ve sent the same email to thousands of people.
Now take your time, repeat this process as many times as you like, and add all the data to an Excel sheet. Build a lead list first, then reach out to people directly. So in around two hours, you will generate 50 to 100 leads. This process is highly effective, but it might take some time.
Method 2: ChatGPT+ Google Search
Now let’s move on to the second free method, in which we’ll use ChatGPT and Google search. To start, go to Google and search for the site Instagram.com. Then, inside the quotation marks, write the industry you want. For me, it’s Realtors. Then leave a space and write the country or city that you’re looking for; for me, it’s New York right now. After that, leave a space, and in the quotation mark, write ‘@gmail.com’. If you hit enter, this will make a list of realtors in New York. They have included their Gmail on their Instagram profiles. Now, you can press ctrl-a and press ctrl C, which will copy all the data that is available on that page.
And now go to chatGPT, open a new window, and paste this data. After that, copy the prompt below. It asks you to format the data into a table. It should have a column for the count. The columns are for first name, last name, company name, company website, Instagram link, and email. Once done, ChatGPT will go through all the data, clear out entries which are repeated, and put the entire thing into a CSV file for you. Now all you have to do is copy this and paste it into an Excel sheet.
Now you can do this process for all the websites and all the industries and locations. For example, you can be a content writer who’s looking for entrepreneurs to work with. Now you can repeat the entire process on the site. You can either select Instagram or do it with another site as well. For example, on Twitter or Facebook, you can pick cities and countries. Also, when you search, you’ll get many result pages. So you can copy and paste all the data into ChatGPT and repeat the entire process. And in just 30 to 40 minutes, you’ll have 500 to thousands of leads. I have personally used both methods, and they have worked for me.
If you have a budget for lead generation and don’t want to spend time, you can try tools like Apollo.ai or D7 Lead Finder. They can generate thousands of leads in just a few minutes. To save even that time, you can go to Fiverr and look for someone who can do lead generation for you for just $10 to $20.
Once you have the lead list ready, you can start sending emails or messages to them. To get better results, write a personalised email. Add a compliment and their name. And, it should not look like you sent it to thousands of people. So no one would like that.
The email that I use. It starts with ‘Hi,’the first name, and then a compliment. And then I ask them a genuine question about their videos. After that, I introduce myself and the business. After that, I write two lines about how I can help them. After that, I end the email with a call to action so that they can book the meeting then and there’.
Method 3: Paid Tools
If you're just starting, you can start sending emails manually to each lead.
But that might take some time. So, I’ll tell you how to automate this process using Lemlist. Please note that Lemlist is paid software. If you’re someone who has a budget and wants to automate this process, you should check it out.
There are multiple ways to complete this process. I’ll guide you on how I do it.
First, export the Excel file as a CSV. Then, go to Lemlist and click on New Campaign. We’ll create a manual campaign. You can name the campaign anything.
Then click on the lead list and click on import from CSV. After that, go ahead and select the CSV file, and make sure all the variables are correct. This means the column name and the Lemlist variable type should match each other. So for example, with the first name for name, the email for the email, and the complement, you can select an icebreaker.
Now you can come back to the sequence and write your email. For the subject, I’ll use would love to work together and then the first name variable. This first name variable will be replaced from the lead list. Similarly, we have written an icebreaker. It will be replaced with a compliment. After that, I like to add three, or four follow-up emails because not everyone has the time to check their emails all the time. I usually follow up till I get a yes or no. These are simple, one-line emails. For example, did you get time to check this email or did you see this or would you be interested in it?
Now, I do the first follow-up after two days, the second after four days, and then after seven days. You can also do one after 14 days, if needed. I check the preview of some leads to see if it’s showing the right first name. and the right icebreaker. The idea is to send 500 to 1000 emails every single month. Usually, after starting the campaign, I start booking a lot of calls. I use Calendly for discovery calls.
That’s my whole method. It creates endless leads and turns them into clients. If you are a freelancer who doesn’t have the budget for automation, you can also use the manual process. Remember, cold emailing has an average response rate of 8.5%, which converts clients from that to 1 to 5%. That means that out of every 100 emails you send, maybe 8 to 10 people will open them. They might buy if your offer is good. But that’s the average and I’m here to tell you the truth. Sometimes it’s worse than that.
Before you do the entire process, make sure your offer is so good that people can’t say no to you. That being said, keep trying and keep changing things. What has worked for me might not work for you. So it’s all about learning from your own experience.
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