Finding and Landing Clients – Five Ways
Finding and landing clients for your virtual professional business can seem daunting. However, if you follow these five tips you’ll soon find yourself with a full roster of clients.
If you don’t have customers you don’t have a business. It doesn’t matter if your business is virtual or a bricks and mortar business. You must have clients to have a true business. After all, the name of the game in any business is making money, right? A lot of virtual business owners do a lot of planning and learning but they never move to the next level and actually find a paying client.
Five Ways for Finding and Landing Clients
- Create a Professional Profile
It all starts with your professional profile, which is really just an online resume that you will use on all your social media accounts, especially linkedin.com and on your website. It will show what you have done, and what you can do in clear bulleted points. Ensure that your profile on all your social media accounts is accurate, professional and complete. Don’t forget a professional headshot. Don’t be anonymous on the interwebs if you want to be taken seriously.
- Create a Professional Website
Working virtually requires a certain amount of technical skills one of which is the ability to showcase your work virtually. The best way to do this is to build a professional website that showcases what you’ve done and what you’re doing. You can easily build a website that looks great using self-hosted WordPress. If you are uncomfortable with the technology, this is something you can easily outsource to others if it’s not within your particular expertise. The important thing is to get a professional website up and running fast.
- Ask for Testimonials & Recommendations
Even if you’ve not worked virtually before, you can ask people you have worked for to provide testimonials and recommendations for you. If you don’t ask, you won’t get them. Make it a habit of asking every person you know for a recommendation. It doesn’t matter if you’ve done actual paying work for them, perhaps you’ve assisted on a project in school, or gave them some advice that worked, or volunteered with a particular group… ask them to give you a testimonial and a recommendation.
If you have a roster of past and previous clients, then get testimonials from customers. Most people out there will be very happy to write a review of your services, so don’t be afraid to ask.
- Ask for Referrals
Referrals are a great way for finding and landing clients and to create buzz for your business. Ask your friends and people that you know for referrals to others who may need the work done that you have to offer. You can incentivize them to help you find clients by offering a discount on work they might need or even free time in exchange for a paying client referral. Eventually, your virtual professional business will run mostly on word-of-mouth so it’s important to always ask for referrals.
- Promote What You Have
Once you have a website, social media accounts, and testimonials be sure to actually promote your website via blog posts that you share with people on your social media accounts. Participate in online events where you can talk about your expertise. Be part of your community and you will find that soon enough you’ll have more business than you know what to do with.
Enhance your online presence
For finding and landing clients it’s important to become your own best first client. If you have a professional online presence, and ensure that everyone you come into contact with online and offline knows about your business and that you’re accepting new clients, you’ll go far in starting to fill that client list until it’s bursting at the seams.
