How do you attract paying clients to your online services?
It’s so important that we look at the best way to grow a freelance business. If you want to fill your client-cabinet with real paying persons, you’ve to do something different, and upgrade your marketing concept.
Most of us have used cold-calling to promote our services, but very few people reaped the rewards. This type of marketing whereby you chase clients, and beg them if you can, is called outbound marketing.
You can’t go far in your freelance career if you continue chasing after the next paying client. What you need is something cute – inbound marketing.
What Inbound Marketing Isn’t
Contrary to what we think, inbound marketing isn’t about starting a new blog and updating daily or three times per week. This could enhance the overall efforts you put into attracting clients, but it doesn’t work by itself.
Inbound marketing primarily deals with persuasive contents, which attracts clients via targeted sources (search engines, social media networks, news portal, offline prints et al).
So, instead of chasing after clients, and using all manner of tricks, and marketing gimmicks to convert them, you use rich, valuable and excellent content to ‘soak their interest’ and persuade them. That’s when clients could pick up their phone and give you a call.
A lot of freelance writers, web designers & developers and consultants are not paid what they’re worth. They’re still in the service-providers-fold, but, the reward for creativity is denied. Do you know why clients don’t appreciate your work as they ought to?
You came to them with your services – and so, did other freelancers. So, what’s the difference? Change your marketing style!
All right, now, let’s look at the two effective ways to attract high paying clients without biting your fingers.
Geo-Specific Keyword Targeting
If you truly want to grow a freelance system that can sustain you for years, getting good spots on Google homepage is necessary. But traditional keyword research and targeting would render your efforts homeless – there is a better way to start ranking for your primary terms without getting drowned.
Is it possible to rank #1 on Google in your city?
Potential clients are very creative in their search for quality service providers. They’re very specific on what they want. You could target “web developer in Los Angeles” if that’s your city. Interestingly, you don’t have to live in Los Angeles or be a citizen of United States before you can target related key terms.
Research geo-specific key phrases; those terms which has city, district, county or country name as the qualifier, then write a detailed, well optimized article and publish on your blog.
Get few relevant backlinks from web 2.0 sites and relevant blogs, relax, and enjoy the free-flow of clients. A well optimized web page could rank within 30 days – strengthen the base and make ranking possible with quality external links.
Email Marketing Strategy
Inbound marketing can be effective if you’ve the right marketing buttons to press. And when you 
build a list, you can ‘push’ a button, and have hundreds of potential clients running to you.
Getting potential clients to subscribe to your email list may take some time, but the efforts you put into building a response list is worth it.
Once your geo-specific key phrases are gaining momentum on Google homepage, you could easily harness the traffic, and convert them.
When you send organic traffic to your valuable posts, have an opt-in form with catchy bait, either, as a pop-up or beneath the post.
Do everything possible to convert a strange prospect and build relationship with her.
We’ve heard so much about email marketing, but very few freelancers are using it.
If you want to quickly explode your email list of qualified prospects, start guest posting on A-list blogs. 95% of these top blogs allow two links on the author bio – link to your landing page first, to capture prospect’s email address, before linking to a helpful post on your blog.
Inbound Marketing Results
Day-after-day, the freelance industry is getting overcrowded.
Everybody is trying to make a living out of it, and it seems the juicy freelance opportunities are scarce. Truth is: there are freelancers who reject new projects, because their desk is filled, while other freelancers struggle to attract and retain a client.
The difference lies in the marketing style used. Those who have recorded tremendous success advocated for inbound marketing, while the beggarly ones are constantly chasing after the “nest” traffic generation technique (outbound marketing).
Set your marketing priorities aright, challenge yourself to produce helpful, valuable and keyword-rich contents consistently; you would experience a surge of desperate clients rushing to you with their hard-earned money. See you at the top!
Image Credits: blog.marchanttribe, abdtechnology
as the world is going to capitalization then the competition between companies is too much increase so the companies are using new and new strategies in the marketing to attract the customer
Whoa! I have learned a lot from this article. Nice post! 🙂
all the time i used to read smaller content which as well clear their motive, and that is also happening with this paragraph which I am reading at
this time.
Michael, I totally agree with your points. The issue with finding local searches is obviously key. The problem is that keyword research is so much more subjective because the Google Adwords tool isn’t as helpful. Fortunately, there are other some ways you can do keyword research to at least guess what kind of searches will bring results locally.
Inbound marketing, that is really the essence of content marketing and you have made it quite simple to understand.
My only worry is that idea about building a list of potential clients. Frankly, that is something that is not easy to do. From experience I’ve discovered that businesses and webmaster who are the potential consumers of your service rarely subscribe to give away list. To be successful with this you will need to be really creative and offer something that will pique their interest and curiosity to make them subscribe.
Thanks for this great post my man!
Hi there, I discovered your blog by means of Google even as
searching for a comparable subject, your site came up, it seems to be good.
I’ve bookmarked it in my google bookmarks.
I am no longer positive where you are getting your info, however great topic. I must spend some time studying much more or figuring out more. Thanks for magnificent information I used to be searching for this info for my mission.
I have just discovered your blog today through your comment on Problogger “A Systematic Approach to Writing Successful Blog Posts” and you also have a very helpful blog.I use to believe that blogging is just updating daily or three times per week with unique posts,know I know that it is more than this because seeing the great success you’ve achieved with a blog of two years.You have such a unique style of writing.Thanks for sharing this info.
Thank you so much for coming over to my blog. It’s great to have you here. Yes, blogging is more than writing, marketing is the ultimate part. Keep checking back for updates.
You really make it seem really easy together with your presentation but I find this topic to
be really something that I think I would never understand.
It kind of feels too complex and very large for me.
I’m looking forward in your next post, I will try to get the dangle of it!