8 Ways to Land Clients When You’re Starting out as an Entrepreneur
Land Clients When You’re Starting out as an Entrepreneur!
Being able to land the first client(s) when you’re starting out as an entrepreneur is one of the many major concerns for people starting out as an entrepreneur.
Landing clients those first clients will help you make sure that your business model works and that you have an opportunity to make your business work for you.
What all new business owners really want is to land that first client, right?! But how can you land your first client(s) even if you have zero social proof or a portfolio to show? This is a big worry for all new business owners, so today we’ll share with you 8 ways to land your first client(s)!
8 Ways to Land Clients When You’re Starting out as an Entrepreneur
1. Define Your Niche and Target Audience
The first advice most entrepreneurs get while starting out in business is that defining their target audience is something that they need to do as soon as possible. And while we partially agree with that, this is not something that should stop you from start promoting your products or services.
To be completely honest with you, when we were just starting out we struggle for a while to define with whom we actually wanted to work with. We knew that small-to-medium-sized businesses were the perfect audience for the services we were offering, but that was as far as we went at defining our ideal client.
It’s very easy to ignore working on this first step, but if there’s one thing we want you to take from this post is that having a well-defined niche from the beginning will help you to land clients much more easily.
If you don’t have a niche or an ideal client in your head don’t worry! With time you’ll eventually realize what kind of client you enjoy working with, and you’ll start building your business around that ideal client.
We’re not going to lie, this is a REALLY important step if you want long-term success in your business, but with time you’ll get there!
In our case, it became very easy to decide who was our ideal client after a couple of projects. We had done some projects we truly enjoyed and all of them had one thing in common - they were all for health and wellness brands.
Our niche had finally just “come” to us, and we were ready to start shaping our business around that! Now everything we do is much more focused on that niche and it allowed us to grow significantly.
2. Share What You’re Doing With Everyone On Your Network
Without a doubt, the fastest way to get clients when you have just launched your business is by reaching out to family and friends.
We can guarantee you that one (if not more!) of your family members or a friend will need a website! Reaching out to them not only gives you the opportunity to land them as clients, but they’ll also be the first ones to refer you to their network or share what you’re doing on their social media channels.
We totally understand that can be pretty daunting to tell everyone you’ve started your own business. After all, you’re still figuring everything out and you’re not sure about how things will turn out.
When you feel afraid of telling people about your new business because you may fail, remember that if you don’t tell anyone it’s almost guaranteed that your business will fail.
3. Build a Strategic Portfolio
Is it really important to have a portfolio? This is a question that we get a lot from new service-based entrepreneurs!
YES! YES! YES! You need to show proof of the kind of work you can do or past projects you might have done, otherwise, no one will want to hire you. And also yes, you will need to build up a portfolio even before you get clients!
Before starting working on your portfolio, you need to have your ideal client (or at least an industry) in mind. Your portfolio should be a strategic one where you will display workpieces that reflect the kind of clients you want to attract and work with.
Let’s say you want to be a graphic designer for fitness brands, don’t go design a bunch of logos for the gaming industry and put them in your portfolio.
To create a strategic portfolio you have two options, create “mock” pieces or create a portfolio with “real” work. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a mockup or a real project because what’s important is to show off your skills, and experience.
4. Design a Website
“What do you mean to design a website?”
Designing a website (especially if you’re just starting out) doesn’t need to be complicated. Think about it, you just started your business so a basic, clean, and easy-to-use website that shows your work, your services, who you are, and how to contact you will be enough.
Not having a website is not really an option, you REALLY need to have a website! Why? Simple, because people will not trust you or take you seriously as a business if you don’t have a website.
Remember, your website is what people find online if they’re searching for your business, it’s your business’s front door! What happens if you try to search for a business and they simply don’t have a website? You probably buy or hire someone else.
Before heading to the next step, if you need help with your website, check out our web design services, or if you’re planning on designing the website yourself check out our Squarespace template store.
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5. Share On Social Media
Sign up your business on social media, and share everything you’re doing! Being present in social media channels helps you build trust, and increases your reach.
The more places you share, the more potential clients you’re going to find. Although we’re definitely NOT advising you to create an account on every single social media platform that exists, that is a wrong practice and you WILL feel overwhelmed trying to keep all those profiles up to date.
What you need to do is select the platforms that you think are going to be the best for your business and stick to them!
6. Share Valuable Content
This is one of our favorites because sharing valuable content through a blog, for example, is an amazing way to get clients organically!
Blogging increases your trust factor as you’re seen as an expert in your field. Not only that but this also keeps your audience engaged, if they enjoy your content, they will come back to read the new posts that you write and possibly become your clients.
Keep in mind that blogging can be time-consuming as there’s a lot of work involved. You need to write about a certain subject, and you also need to come up with the subjects that you are going to write about.
This is also a long-term strategy and it can take a while until you see results, so don’t give up!
7. Create a Free Opt-In
Creating a free opt-in is closely linked with creating valuable content, and offering free valuable content to your visitors is KEY to landing clients!
Creating a great opt-in offer that resonates with your audience will help land clients because:
Positions you as an expert: You’ll be recognized as the go-to person, because no matter what question they have, you always have legitimately useful answers.
Creates a genuine relationship: By sharing genuine and consistent content, people will feel like they know you and trust you with their business.
Builds trust: By sharing little tips, tricks, and insights for free, you’re building up the trust they have in you. Plus, they’ll see you as an advisor. They know they can count on you to be sharing useful content consistently and, eventually, they will become clients.
As you might have noticed, along with the information we share on our blog we also offer free pieces of training and downloadable content to our visitors. With all of the freebies and free education, we provide people to visit our website, and people meet us, and see what we’re doing. And the more people you have looking at your content means more potential clients!
8. Go The Extra Mile
Once you’ve landed your first client, make sure you go the extra mile on the service you’re providing. But should this be only applicable to the first client? NO, you should go above and beyond for all of your clients!
Going the extra mile for your clients will probably lead to a great review, future collaborations, and most important referrals!
If you want to be mega-successful and you need to over-deliver on everything, and always do your best to impress every single client. It’s totally worth putting in the extra unpaid time to please your clients, and not just when you’re starting out. This is something you should do ALWAYS!
Of course, we’re not talking about working for free when it’s not reasonable, and we’re confident enough that you’ll be able to identify the situations where it’s worth it or not.
We always make sure, we give our clients a “premium” experience sometimes even more important to me than making a good profit. We always want to give our clients the best service we can, because the best marketing is when clients brag about what you did for them!
Final Thoughts
That’s it - 8 Ways to Land Clients When You’re Starting out as an Entrepreneur!
We understand that it’s daunting to start a business and sometimes seems like an impossible task to land your first clients. One thing we can guarantee you is that situation you’re in now is not be permanent, especially if you keep your head in the game and do the strategies we mentioned above.
And if you’re not getting any clients yet use your time wisely and start implementing some of the strategies we mentioned. Don’t just sit around, and wait for clients to just come to you. Entrepreneurship is a game, and this is the best time to get out there and promote yourself!
If you do some of the strategies mentioned, soon you’ll be so booked that you no longer need to promote your business because your super satisfied clients will do that for you!
Now it's your turn to tell us, are you already using any of the ways mentioned to land clients? What is the next step you’re going to implement to land your next client? Have you missed any tips on this list? Send us your answers, and any other questions you might have, and we’ll do our best to answer them.
If you want to start working on your online presence, and learn the 5 steps on how to do it, be sure to check out and sign-up for our free training!
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