New Clients Now! Marketing Strategies for Freelance Success

Generating the Perfect Lead

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there are many different ways to attract the attention of your market.

When people think of marketing, they tend to visualize large-scale, costly tactics, like radio advertising or newspaper inserts. Be aware that not every marketing tactic you use has to be a huge one-to-many transmission like a flyer or an ad in the local paper. In fact, a small-scale promotion allows you to target the needs of a particular market segment with much greater precision.

In my business, we often turn to small-scale, carefully considered promotions in order to generate leads from highly qualified prospects. This might see us run a competition from the local stationery supply store, where we offer a free template-based web site as a prize for a winning customer. The stationery store owner is happy to allow us to run the competition from his store as it makes him popular with his clients, especially the lucky web site winner.

For our trouble, we receive the 100 or so entry forms submitted by competition entrants. We have 100 names, titles, business names, addresses, and telephone numbers of business people within our area who have expressed interest in a web site. As you've guessed, these forms are the basis of the next step in our marketing process.

These competition entrants are mailed a "You're a winner" letter, which informs them that although they didn't win the free web site, they have won a free mouse pad (featuring our branding, of course), and a free hour-long consultation with a web consultant to help them identify whether or how their business would benefit from a web site. The letter finishes by telling them that the writer will be in touch.

That letter is accompanied by an article we've written, entitled "Does your business need a web site?" In addition to this, we include some articles that have been written about us, along with testimonials from happy clients. Now we have 100 potentially hot prospects, all expecting a call from us to set up a meeting to discuss their needs for a web site. We don't ask them to call us -- they wouldn't get around to it. Let's look at the characteristics of this market segment.

• They want a web site, otherwise they wouldn't have entered the competition.
• They've been educated about the benefits of a web site in our letter and article.
• They know about our business, which has also benefited from the implied endorsement of the stationery store, increasing our perceived credibility.

From those 100 hot prospects, I'd be very surprised if we didn't make at least three sales.

• That's three new clients: at least $6,000 even if they only want teensy-weensy web sites. Three more clients on our ongoing list, and three more clients to give us referrals.

Another excellent tip is to always offer the competition winner several options for the site they've won:

• the template site for free
• the template site for free, plus a few other added extras for a little money
• a custom-designed site, with the total bill discounted by $1,000

They'll almost always choose from the two options that will cost them money. We have a client who manages a resort and runs a monthly competition for two nights' free accommodation. Of the winners, 80% extend the length of their stay by up to five nights, and 42% rebook within the next 12 months.

Now, these are just a couple of ways to market your business for a minimal investment. Don't blindly follow the herd by throwing good money away on marketing tactics that won't work their very best for your business. Research your market, talk with your market, analyze your market -- that's the way to cost-effective marketing.

Key Points

• Tightly targeted marketing is inexpensive and should generate a decent ROI.
• Research your audience, and use what you learn to refine your marketing efforts.
• Ask your clients how they found you. This should indicate what marketing channels your prospects will use.
• The perfect lead is well-qualified, so try to use marketing tools that prequalify the potential client.

Advertising, Promotion, and Public Relations

Now that we've discussed the importance of highly targeted promotions and qualified lead generation, it's time to turn our attention to some of the more common marketing alternatives. In this section, I'll be a little more specific about advertising, promotion, and public relations (PR).

We'll look at how you can assess the potential of a particular marketing tool. We'll also consider a range of different tools, and what they can and cannot do for you. Lastly, we'll delve into PR in some depth -- if you've ever wanted to know how to write the ultimate media release, keep reading.

Assessing your Advertising Options

Just what is the best way to assess your advertising options?

There's no right answer to that question. There are all sorts of cultural, economic, and local considerations that impact on the effectiveness of every advertising medium. However, here are some general guidelines that will help you assess each different medium you consider using.

Using your Research

Study the audience survey you completed to see whether the particular advertising medium you're considering is mentioned.

There's no point advertising in the newspaper if your target market didn't identify it as one of the ways they found a web developer. Similarly, there's no point advertising in a particular newspaper if no one in your target audience reads it. Rely heavily on your research -- that's why you go to the trouble, after all!

Analyzing the CPM

CPM stands for Cost Per Thousand, M being the Roman numeral for 1,000. CPM is the most analytical and objective measurement you can make of a communications vehicle. Once you know how much it costs to use a particular means to contact 1,000 businesspeople, you can easily compare the costs between media.

CPM works like this: the local newspaper reaches 50,000 people. You can buy a half-page display advertisement in the paper for $1,000. Therefore, if we divide 1,000 by 50, we find that it'll cost us $20 to reach a thousand people.

Obviously, the lower the CPM, the better, but keep media waste in mind . Media waste refers to the number of people who see your ad, but who aren't in your target audience and don't have a need for your services. Usually, the more mass, or general, the reach of the medium you use, the more media wastage there will be. For instance, a TV ad on the local television station will likely reach far more uninterested parties than will a direct mail campaign targeting businesses in your area that lack a web site. The CPM of a newspaper ad might be cheap at $20.00, but if 90% of the paper's audience aren't in your target market, it doesn't matter how low the CPM is, you're still wasting a lot of media -- and money!

Over the years, I've taken out expensive newspaper advertisements and I've taken out cheap classifieds. Surprisingly, the cheaper classifieds have given my business a better return on investment.

Speaking with Other Advertisers

If the local TV station representative is trying to sell you some space, choose an advertisement or two you see running on that channel, and call those advertisers. You'll soon gain a reasonable idea about what sort of response those ads are generating for those businesses, and this will help you decide whether it'll be worth the cost for your business.

Timing your Advertising

Timing is important. It's not news that some times of the year are simply a dead loss for web design businesses. For example, most businesses close down over the end-of-year period, while their owners are off enjoying the season's festivities. There's no point wasting your money on advertising at that time.

Timing can even be considered when it comes to choosing what day of the week to advertise. With newspaper advertisements in my home city, we'll generally only advertise on Wednesdays and Saturdays, as wide research indicates that those two days have by far the biggest readership.

Sticking to your Budget

Budget is a major consideration -- it's not how much you spend, it's how well you spend it.

Running three radio advertisements across three days might be within your budget, but it won't be of any benefit. Some media, like radio, require repetition of your message in order to be effective. If you don't have the budget to suit the medium, then don't bother buying the space; save your money for a more effective way. Having said that, there are often great deals to be had and you'd be surprised how much you can haggle radio spots down -- once the day has passed, the radio station can't sell that time again, so they're often receptive to last-minute deals.

Keep track of your expenditures using the Marketing Budget that's included in the budget spreadsheet on this kit's CD-ROM.

Considering the Real Costs

The fact that an advertisement generates an inquiry doesn't necessarily mean that it's successful. For example, one of my clients is currently running an advertisement in a local free weekly newspaper. His thinking was that if the ad generated one new client in 12 months, the advertisement would have proven successful.

Wrong! The ad has been a disaster. After 16 weeks at a cost of $60 per week, his ad has generated 12 inquiries and he's yet to make a sale. Yet he estimates that meeting with the 12 prospects who inquired, putting together the proposals, and talking on the telephone with these people, has cost him in excess of $2,000 already. He now subjects each lead to a fairly rigorous qualifying process before he takes the process any further, and he's trying to off-load the advertisements, as he's tied in to an advertising agreement with the paper for the full year.

It's not only about leads generated?it's about the quality of that lead. It's been my experience that prospects who find us through our Yellow Pages advertisement are far less likely to become clients -- often they're just people searching around for the absolute lowest price. Conversely, people who are referred to us by happy clients are far more likely to become clients, because there's an inherent trust from the very start.

Which Promotional Option Suits You?

I can't give you the definitive answer to that, I'm afraid. However, taking into account the targeted marketing tips I provided earlier, we'll discuss a few of the popular options for advertising, promotion, and PR efforts.

All of the techniques listed below are perfectly capable of generating new clients in droves, given the right circumstances. Your challenge is to identify which option suits you, try it, and measure the results so that you can improve your ROI in your future promotional efforts.

Newspaper Advertising

Newspaper advertising needs to be really well targeted to be successful. It would probably be more cost effective for you to advertise in a business newspaper, rather than the local community newspaper.

Base your budget on the CPM mentioned in the section called "Analyzing the CPM." In terms of the size of your ad, it's advisable to start small and increase the size of your ad as you measure its effectiveness. Of course, the downside of this approach is that if you start small not as many people will see your advertisement, and it may not be a true measure of the effectiveness of advertising in this particular newspaper. The moral of the story with newspaper advertising is to test, as cheaply as you possibly can.

With any advertising you just need one client to make it worthwhile. I remember taking a small ad in a business newspaper a few years back. Nothing came of it until a couple of years later, when a prospect called to arrange a meeting -- she had that tiny advertisement from years before. We've since completed almost $10,000 worth of work for her company.

Yellow Pages Advertising

Advertising in your local Yellow Pages is almost a must-have for your business, as many people will turn to it when choosing a designer. These ads can be very expensive and, unfortunately, with this medium it's a case of the bigger, the better.

If you commit to buying a large, prominent, and expensive Yellow Pages ad for a year, then make sure to very closely measure which clients find out about you from these ads, and what sort of return you receive on your investment in order to ascertain what you should do for the next edition. We find we generate a few decent clients from our Yellow Pages listing, but also get a lot of inquiries that don't amount to anything.

Radio Advertising

Radio spots are not usually well targeted. Don't advertise on radio unless you can try it out very cheaply, and be sure to track the results. If you try it and it works, great. Do it again.

A radio appearance, however, can be a great way to boost your profile. For instance, if you can be interviewed as a special guest during the computer show on your local radio station, you can attract real attention to yourself and your business. I managed to get a regular gig on talkback radio as the resident web expert -- every Wednesday I'd go into the studio for a chat with the host about what was new on the Internet. That ensured, for the radio listeners at least, that I was perceived as an expert, generating a lot of business as a result.

Writing Articles

If you can have a "Why you might need a web site" article accepted and published in a business magazine, it can work very well to generate leads. Writing articles is an excellent form of PR, and allows you to borrow credibility from the publication in which your article appears. As the only expense involved is the time it takes you to write the article, this form of promotion can be very cost-effective.

Delivering Flyers

Flyers are okay, but only because they're fairly cheap. You can target them a little -- by delivering them only to local businesses, for example -- and with a little luck you might receive a call or two as a result of your efforts.

Like that tiny ad I mentioned earlier, you never know -- sometimes you just need the right flyer to fall into the right person's hands to make it all worthwhile.

Holding Seminars

Why not hold a seminar titled "Developing a Web Site for Your Business?" It's beautifully targeted, you have the opportunity to build enormous credibility, and you have a group of hot prospects in a room for a day, learning all about the Web -- direct from you!

Spend $1,000 to promote the seminar, fill up a good-sized room, and you'll likely gain your business some great leads. The trouble here is that you have to spend a little to make a little. Charge a token fee of say $10 per head, so that your audience perceives some value in spending a day with you. Granted, you may not make much of a profit from the event itself, but it's the lead generation that'll benefit your business in the long run.

Asking for Referrals

It didn't take me too long to realize that the vast majority -- and most profitable part -- of my business came from prospects who were referred to us by past and current clients. We now ask everyone we know to refer their friends or business contacts to us. If someone refers us a client, we thank that person in all sorts of different ways.

Referrals are perfectly targeted, and don't require any work on your part. If you're not asking everyone you possibly can for referrals to your business, then you aren't serious about being in business. Asking for referrals seems to intimidate a lot of people -- I've found the method that works best for me is to just relax about it and be casual: "Megan, do you have any friends or colleagues that are looking for web services? We'd appreciate any referrals you can send our way." I found that when it's a simple request like that, clients tend to want to help out.

Another rich source of referrals can be your local providers of computer and Internet-related services. Contact them to establish a reciprocal arrangement through which you refer hosting clients to them if they refer web design clients to you. This arrangement can also work well on a commission basis.

Using Branded Merchandise

T-shirts, stickers, buttons, mouse pads, pens, and mugs with your logo on them? Don't even think about it!

What influences people to select your services, out of all the options in your line of business? I'll bet it isn't how nice your branded coffee mugs are. Having said that, I do find these products great as gifts for clients you want to thank for some reason -- after all, it's good to keep your business firmly in their attention -- but this kind of expense can only really be justified when you're well established and very profitable.

Writing Reports

Another great lead generation tool is to write a report devoted to making and saving money with a web site, and give it away for free. Once the report's finished, take a small ad in the local paper, do a post office box flyer drop, send targeted direct mail, and shoot out a media release promoting your report. You'll soon have prospects on your doorstep!

We have a number of free reports we use as bait to generate leads, using a variety of sources -- Figure 6.1, "Free report advertisement" shows an example of one of our newspaper advertisements that worked well.

Another idea is to include a tips sheet as part of the free report. Then use this tips sheet as the main part of your media release, which you write like a top-ten list, such as: "The Top Ten Ways to Avoid Being Ripped Off on the Internet!" That sort of release, backed up by some research, will almost always get a run in relevant media.

Classified Advertising

Advertising in newspaper classifieds is very inexpensive and can work quite well. Its cheapness means that testing it out is well worth it.

Guest Speaking

Guest speaking is free, and generates real interest on the spot. You'll be perceived as an expert, you'll learn the techniques required for public speaking (a huge advantage), and you'll be exposing yourself in the nicest possible way to your potential market.

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak for a government small-business program. I was marketed as the keynote speaker for the occasion, and I spoke for an hour to 120 people who were interested to hear what I had to say. The topic of my presentation was nothing other than the very service that I sell -- on which the attendees could only see me as the recognized authority.

In that hour, I had the opportunity to say exactly what I wanted to say without interruption. I provided interesting, relevant, and entertaining information about a topic in which the audience was interested. I had the opportunity to connect with the audience, to demonstrate my expertise, to talk about my experience, and generally to market myself and my business. By the end of the speech, the audience knew me and what I'd done previously, and saw me as an expert. The work generated from that seminar alone was worth a very substantial amount to my business.

Printing Brochures

Printed brochures can be good, but only once you've established your business. While the cost of brochures has decreased significantly over the years, I see brochures as more of a sales assisting tool rather than a tool that will help you generate leads. When you're starting out, it's much more cost effective to demonstrate your professionalism in other ways that require a smaller initial outlay -- our research tells us that fewer than 20% of an audience will actually read your brochure.

Producing Newsletters

Newsletters are great! They're cheap and they're easy. By using a desktop publisher and some decent paper, I can produce a great-looking newsletter for about 60 cents a copy.

For some reason, people seem to attach more credibility to the printed word than they do to an electronic message. Newsletters can help build recognition and improve perceptions of your credibility within the market, especially if your newsletter's continued regularly, over a long period of time.

That said, we also use enewsletters as a marketing strategy. We have a general enewsletter that goes out to our web site subscribers, another that goes out to our client list, and yet another that goes out to our prospects list -- a very easy process with the aid of ConstantContact.

It's all about keeping reminders of your business in front of prospects, and providing offers on an ongoing basis.

Networking

Love it or loathe it, networking is a must. Join the local business groups, go to the lunches, attend the charity golf days. Once you're out and about in the local community, you'll give your business a strong advantage. Remember, however, to keep a close eye on the amount you spend on these events, and analyze the return you make closely. This can be a little difficult to quantify, as the contacts you meet today might not lead to anything for a good while.

I'm the vice-president of a local media charity organization, I'm the president of my son's scout troop and I'm the keynote speaker for a local business college's annual event. I've met a lot of local businesspeople through these associations and have the added advantage of being seen as a leading figure within these organizations.

It makes sense to join business groups: you meet lots of useful contacts and potential prospects. Are you a member of your local chamber of commerce? What about a local charity group? Perhaps you could do a public-speaking course or join your local Toastmasters group -- learn a new skill and meet people who are, more than likely, in business.

Preparing Videos or DVDs

Describing your business and the benefits you provide on a video, DVD, or CD is a great idea, right? Not really. People are actually quite unlikely to watch the video, nor will they look at the DVD. You'd think they would, and these media do provide a great way to demonstrate your expertise, but it's too easy for people to procrastinate with any media that can't just be picked up and read. If someone dropped off a DVD to your office, would you be likely to find time to look at it?

Providing Sponsorships

Sponsorship opportunities usually require you to provide cold hard cash or services. The impact of these kinds of arrangements is very difficult to measure, as sponsorship rarely provides an immediate response. It's a strategy probably best left to larger companies who want to put their branding out there, at least until your own business grows large enough and profitable enough to bear the cost against an uncertain return.

Public Relations

Love it, love it, love it! PR's free if you do it yourself, and the impact can be enormous if you get your story covered on a decent TV show, radio program, or newspaper feature. PR's greatest benefit is that it doesn't have to be particularly well targeted if it reaches one million people in your city, and it doesn't cost you anything!

The media has enormous power and influence, and is always looking for good stories to run. If you have a newsworthy story, it might well be run -- giving your business tremendous exposure. Let's take a closer look at this form of promotions.